I recently came across this study titled “Unknown Threats are The Achilles Heel of Email Security”. It concludes that traditional e-mail scanning tools, that also utilize machine-learning to cope with emerging threats, are still not reacting fast enough to new threats. This is probably true, but I think this conclusion should be considered even more widely, beyond e-mail.

Threats are dynamic. Threat actors are creative and well-motivated enough to make threat mitigation an endlessly moving target. So aren’t we fortunate to have this new term, “machine learning”, recently join our tech jargon? Just like many other buzzwords, the term is newer than what it denotes, but nonetheless, a machine that learns the job autonomously seems to be precisely what we need for mitigating ever-changing threats.

All in all, machine-learning is good for security, but yet in some cases it is a less significant addition to our defense arsenal. Why? – Because while you learn, you often don’t do the job well enough; and a machine is no different. Eventually, the merits of learning-while-doing are to be determined by the price of the resulting temporary imperfectness.

Continue reading "An obvious limitation of machine-learning for security"

One of the biggest technological controversies of the decade are blockchains. There is no debate on how brilliant the technology is. It is very clever, if not genius. The only debate is on how useful it really is. Crypto currencies like Bitcoin are a strong use-case for blockchains, but how many other real use-cases are there? Some people claim that blockchains will change the Internet for good, while others consider it as a clever solution still seeking a problem. Reality is probably somewhere in between, as it usually is.

Blockchains often appear to be more useful than they really are, because their proponents bring up uses for blockchains which could also be facilitated using other, simpler and traditional techniques. Most of those uses, which could also be attained without blockchains, are indeed better off without them. As clever as blockchains are, they always add complexity where they are deployed. In other words, I have not yet seen a single problem that could be solved by either blockchains or other technical means, and where the blockchain-based approach was the simpler one. It follows that if we want to discuss the true merits of blockchains, then we shall identify those problems that could be solved using blockchains, and which could not be solved by simpler existing technologies.

Continue reading "Blockchains: useful or not?"

When people discuss Bitcoin, one of its properties that is often considered is its presumable anonymity. In this respect, it is often compared to cash. However, it shall be recognized and understood that Bitcoin is not as anonymous as cash; far from it, actually. Its anonymity relies on the concept of pseudonyms, which delivers some (unjustified) sense of anonymity, but very weak anonymity in practice.

Continue reading "Bitcoin does not provide anonymity"