Hacking Gmail?

Of course, all that power just begs to be abused. Power corrupts, as they say, and hackers are nothing but a corrupt bunch: Almost as soon as Gmail was launched, hackers were looking at ways to use those capabilities for other purposes. They investigated the incredibly rich interface, and saw how much of the processing … Read more

What’s Gmail?

March 31, 2004. A watershed in human history. Google’s web-based e-mail service, still now at the time of this writing in Beta, and available only to people invited by other existing users, was launched. Offering a gigabyte of storage, an incredibly advanced JavaScript interface, and a series of user interface innovations, Gmail was an instant … Read more

Web Application (In)security

There is no doubt that web application security is a current and very news-worthy subject. For all concerned, the stakes are high: for businesses that derive increasing revenue from Internet commerce, for users who trust web applications with sensitive information, and for criminals who can make big money by stealing payment details or compromising bank … Read more

Kernel Modules Versus Applications

Before we go further, it’s worth underlining the various differences between a kernel module and an application. Whereas an application performs a single task from beginning to end, a module registers itself in order to serve future requests, and its “main” function terminates immediately. In other words, the task of the function init_module (the module’s entry … Read more

Java 2 Class Loading Mechanism

The class loading mechanism plays a critical role in Java security since the class loader is responsible for locating and fetching the class files, consulting the security policy, and defining the appropriate permissions associated with the class object. In JDK 1.1, local code and correctly signed remote code were generally trusted to have full access … Read more

Evolution of the Java Security Model

The Java programming language is one of the fastest-growing technologies in use on the Internet today. The principal reason why Java has scored over other languages is the promise that an application written once in Java can be run from any machine that has a JVM. From the early stages of Java development, it was … Read more

The New Java Security Model

The Need for Java Security From its inception, Java has shown that it was designed for the net. Java brought about, for the first time on a large scale, the concept of dynamic loading of code from a source outside the system. Though this is very powerful, and adds several features to the system using … Read more

What is the Internet?

we use the public Internet, a specific computer network (and one which probably most readers have used), as our principle vehicle for discussing computer networking protocols. But what is the Internet? We would like to give you a one-sentence definition of the Internet, a definition that you can take home and share with your family … Read more

GNU and Linux

Where did the name GNU/Liux come from? You’ve certainly heard of Linux before, and you may have heard of the GNU Project.You may not have heard the name GNU/Linux, although you’re probably familiar with the system it refers to. Linux is named after Linus Torvalds, the creator and original author of the kernel that runs … Read more

Elon Musk: New Self-Driving Features Will Come Out This year

No Hands! According to a tweet by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the electric car company is going to “release more [Full Self-Driving] features later this month.” While Musk hasn’t confirmed what these features will turn out to be, we can make some educated guesses — and it might even be the long-awaited “City Autopilot” feature. FSD … Read more