ImperialViolet – Apple’s SSL/TLS bug
as we all know by now, a misplaced “goto fail” caused a critical, huge security flaw in versions of IOS and OSX SSL, since late 2012. Lessons: 1. unit test the failure cases, particularly for critical security code! 2. use braces. 3. dead-code analysis would have caught this. I’m not buying the “goto considered harmful” line, though, since any kind of control flow structure would have had the same problem.
(tags: coding apple osx ios crypto ssl security goto-fail goto fail unit-testing coding-standards)
Comcast’s deal with Netflix makes network neutrality obsolete
in a world where Netflix and Yahoo connect directly to residential ISPs, every Internet company will have its own separate pipe. And policing whether different pipes are equally good is a much harder problem than requiring that all of the traffic in a single pipe be treated the same. If it wanted to ensure a level playing field, the FCC would be forced to become intimately involved in interconnection disputes, overseeing who Verizon interconnects with, how fast the connections are and how much they can charge to do it.
(tags: verizon comcast internet peering networking netflix network-neutrality)
Data visualization: breaking down The Economist’s classic chart style
nice piece of classic graph design
Netflix packets being dropped every day because Verizon wants more money | Ars Technica
With Cogent and Verizon fighting, [peering capacity] upgrades are happening at a glacial pace, according to Schaeffer. “Once a port hits about 85 percent throughput, you’re going to begin to start to drop packets,” he said. “Clearly when a port is at 120 or 130 percent [as the Cogent/Verizon ones are] the packet loss is material.” The congestion isn’t only happening at peak times, he said. “These ports are so over-congested that they’re running in this packet dropping state 22, 24 hours a day. Maybe at four in the morning on Tuesday or something there might be a little bit of headroom,” he said.
(tags: packet-loss networking internet cogent netflix verizon peering)
Hospital records of all NHS patients sold to insurers – Telegraph
The 274-page report describes the NHS Hospital Episode Statistics as a “valuable data source in developing pricing assumptions for ‘critical illness’ cover.” It says that by combining hospital data with socio-economic profiles, experts were able to better calculate the likelihood of conditions, with “amazingly” clear forecasts possible for certain diseases, in particular lung cancer. Phil Booth, from privacy campaign group medConfidential, said: “The language in the document is extraordinary; this isn’t about patients, this is about exploiting a market. Of course any commercial organisation will focus on making a profit – the question is why is the NHS prepared to hand this data over?”
(tags: nhs privacy data insurance uk politics data-protection)