Ben Adida is giving a talk tonight at the IEEE Boston’s Society on Social Implications of Technology. The talk is called “Beyond the Paper Trail”, and is located at Lincoln Labs at 6pm. More info on the IEEE web site.

Mark Stefik from PARC is visiting us this Wednesday 02/27 at Noon in MD-119 to talk about DRM:

Social & Personalized
Re-Inventing Digital Music as a Social Medium

Mark Stefik
Intelligent Systems Laboratory
Palo Alto Research Center

Abstract
Technology gets simpler before it gets popular. For digital music the path to simplicity is just beginning. Today, things that should be easy are complicated and awkward. People with music players need to master multiple devices and deal with technical issues that could be handled automatically. Simplifying these matters will create bigger markets for digital music. Looking further ahead, it could also be much easier to encounter, discover and promote new music that delights and amazes. Making that really easy requires delving into the social dimensions of music. The future of digital music is still being invented. It will be built on several technical foundations: cross-platform wireless integration, social media, personalization, and interoperable DRM (digital rights management).

Speaker: Stuart Schechter, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Date: Wednesday, 7 February January
Time: talk 12-1, discussion 1-1:30 (lunch provided)
Place: Maxwell Dworkin 119

Title: “The Emperor’s New Security Indicators: An evaluation of website authentication and the effect of role playing on usability studies”

Abstract:
We evaluate website authentication measures that are designed to protect users from man-in-the-middle, `phishing’, and other site forgery attacks. We asked 67 bank customers to conduct common online banking tasks. Each time they logged in, we presented increasingly alarming clues that theirconnection was insecure. First, we removed HTTPS indicators. Next, we removed the participant’s site-authentication indicators—the customer-selected image that many websites now expect their users to verify before entering their passwords. Finally, we replaced the bank’s password-entry with a warning page. After each clue, we measured whether participants entered their passwords or withheld them.

We also investigate how a study’s design affects participant behavior: we asked some participants to play a role and others to use their own accounts and passwords. We also presented some participants with security-focused instructions.