NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Edward Felten

Edward William Felten (born March 25, 1963) is a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University. Edward W. Felten Photo credit: Office of Communications, Princeton University. ... is the 84th day of the year (85th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Nassau Street, Princetons main street. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States of America. ... The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech)[1] is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... A bachelors degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years. ... The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph. ... SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) was a forum formed in late 1998, comprised of more than 200 IT, consumer electronics, security technology, ISP and recording industry companies with the purpose of developing technology specifications that protect the playing, storing and distributing of digital music. ... The EFF Pioneer Award is an annual prize for people who have made significant contributions to the empowerment of individuals in using computers. ... is the 84th day of the year (85th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Public affairs is a catch-all term that includes public policy as well as public administration, both of which are closely related to and draw upon the fields of political science as well as economics. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States of America. ...

Felten has done a variety of computer security research, including groundbreaking work on proof-carrying authentication and work on security related to the Java programming language, but he is perhaps best known for his paper on the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) challenge. This article describes how security can be achieved through design and engineering. ... Java is a programming language originally developed by Sun Microsystems and released in 1995. ... SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) was a forum formed in late 1998, comprised of more than 200 IT, consumer electronics, security technology, ISP and recording industry companies with the purpose of developing technology specifications that protect the playing, storing and distributing of digital music. ...

Biography

Felten attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a degree in Physics in 1985. He worked as a staff programmer at Caltech from 1986 to 1989 on a parallel supercomputer project at Caltech. He then enrolled as a graduate student in Computer Science at the University of Washington. He was awarded an MS degree in 1991 and a PhD in 1993. His PhD thesis was on developing an automated protocol for communication between parallel processors. The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech)[1] is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ... The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. ...

In 1993, he joined the faculty of Princeton University in the Department of Computer Science. He has served as a consultant to law firms, corporations, private foundations, and government agencies. His research involves computer security, and technology policy.

He lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his family. Since 2006, he has been a member of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Nassau Street, Princetons main street. ... EFF Logo The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving free speech rights such as those protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of today...

US v. Microsoft

Felten was a witness for the United States government in United States v. Microsoft, where the software company was charged with committing a variety of antitrust crimes. During the trial, Microsoft's attorneys denied that it was possible to remove the Internet Explorer web browser from a Windows 98 equipped computer without significantly impairing the operation of Windows. United States v. ... Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer, abbreviated MSIE), commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of popular graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. ... Windows 98 (codenamed Memphis and formerly known as Windows 97[2]) is a graphical operating system released on June 25, 1998 by Microsoft and the successor to Windows 95. ...

Citing research he had undertaken with Christian Hicks and Peter Creath, two of his former students,^[1] Felten testified that it was possible to remove Internet Explorer functionality from Windows without causing problems with the operating system. He demonstrated his team's tool in court, showing nineteen ways in which it is normally possible to access the web browser from the Windows platform that his team's tool rendered inaccessible.

Microsoft argued that Felten's changes did not truly remove Internet Explorer, but only made its functionality inaccessible to the end user by removing icons, shortcuts and the iexplore.exe executable file, and making changes to the system registry. This led to a debate as to what exactly constitutes the "web browser," since much of the core functionality of Internet Explorer is stored in shared DLLs, accessible to any program running under Windows. DLL is an abbreviation which can commonly mean: Data link layer, a layer in the OSI network architecture model Dynamically Linked Library, a binary application library file format in Microsoft Windows and IBM OS/2 (see the Dynamic linking section of the Library (computer science) article) Doubly Linked List, a...

Microsoft also argued that Felten's tool did not even completely remove web-browsing capability from the system, since it was still possible to access the web through other Windows executables besides iexplore.exe, such as the Windows help system.

The SDMI challenge

As part of a contest in 2000, SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) invited researchers and others to try to break the digital audio watermark technologies that they had devised. In a series of individual challenges, the participants were given a sample audio piece, with one of their watermarks embedded. If the participants sent back the sample with the watermark removed (and with less than an acceptable amount of signal loss, though this condition was not stated by SDMI), they would win that particular challenge. 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Digital audio comprises audio signals stored in a digital format. ... Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the intended recipient knows of the existence of the message; this is in contrast to cryptography, where the existence of the message itself is not disguised, but the content is obscured. ...

Felten was an initial participant of the contest. He chose to opt out of confidentiality agreements that would make his team eligible for the cash prize. Despite being given very little or no information about the watermarking technologies other than the audio samples, and having only three weeks to work with them, Felten and his team managed to modify the files sufficiently that SDMI's automated judging system declared the watermark removed. Confidentiality has been defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ensuring that information is accessible only to those authorized to have access and is one of the cornerstones of Information security. ...

SDMI did not accept that Felten had successfully broken the watermark according to the rules of the contest, noting that there was a requirement that the files lose no sound quality. They claimed that the automated judging result was inconclusive as a submission which simply wiped all the sounds off the file would have successfully removed the watermark, but would not meet the quality requirement.

SDMI Lawsuits

Felten's team developed a scientific paper explaining the methods used by his team in defeating the SDMI watermarks. Planning to present the paper at the Fourth International Information Hiding Workshop of 2001 in Pittsburgh, Felten was threatened with legal action by SDMI,^[2] the Recording Industry Association of America, and Verance Corporation, under the terms of the DMCA, on the argument that one of the technologies his team had broken was currently in use in the market. Felten withdrew the presentation from the workshop, reading a brief statement about the threats instead. SDMI and other copyright holders denied that they had ever threatened to sue Felten. However, SDMI appears to have threatened legal action when spokesman Matthew Oppenheim warned Felten in a letter that "any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public Challenge....could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.".^[3] Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Nickname: Motto: Benigno Numine (With the Benevolent Deity) Location in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Coordinates: , Country United States Commonwealth Pennsylvania County Allegheny Founded November 25, 1758 Incorporated April 22, 1794 (borough) March 18, 1816 (city) Government - Mayor Luke Ravenstahl (D) Area - City 151. ... The RIAA Logo. ... The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a controversial United States copyright law which criminalizes production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright, not merely infringement of copyright itself, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. ...

Felten (with help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation) sued the groups, requesting a declaratory judgement ruling that their publication of the paper would be legal. The case was dismissed for a lack of standing with the judge noting that: EFF Logo The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving free speech rights such as those protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of today... A declaratory judgment is a judgment of a court which declares what rights each party in a dispute should have, but does not order any action or result in any legal damages. ...

Felten presented his paper at the USENIX security conference in 2001. The Justice Department has offered Felten and other researchers assurances that the DMCA does not threaten their work, and stated that the legal threats against them were invalid. The USENIX Association is the Advanced Computing Technical Association. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... DOJ headquarters in Washington, D.C. Justice Department redirects here. ...

Diebold controversy

On September 13, 2006, Felten and two graduate students were able to hack into a Diebold Election Systems voting machine. Their findings claimed, "Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss."^[5] is the 256th day of the year (257th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... Diebold Elections Systems is a subsidiary of Diebold that makes and sells voting machines. ...

Current activities

Today, Felten is an active voice in the area of technology policy, having started the Freedom to Tinker weblog and testifying before Congress on copyright issues. Type Bicameral Houses Senate House of Representatives President of the Senate President pro tempore Dick Cheney, (R) since January 20, 2001 Robert C. Byrd, (D) since January 4, 2007 Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, (D) since January 4, 2007 Members 535 plus 4 Delegates and 1 Resident Commissioner Political... Copyright symbol Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. ...

The 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal started when it was discovered on October 31, 2005 that Sony's XCP copy protection software on the CD Get Right With The Man by Van Zant contained hidden files that could damage the operating system, install spyware and make the user's computer vulnerable to attack when the CD was played on a Microsoft Windows-based PC. Sony then released a software patch to remove XCP. On November 15, 2005, it was discovered that Sony's method for removing XCP copy protection software from the computer makes it more vulnerable to attack, as it essentially installed a rootkit in the form of an Active X control used by the uninstaller, left on the user's machine and set so as to allow any web page to execute arbitrary code without any need to authenticate to the machine or request the user's permission. Felten and graduate student Alex Halderman, who explored the removal program, said "The consequences of the flaw are severe, it allows any Web page you visit to download, install, and run any code it likes on your computer. Any Web page can seize control of your computer; then it can do anything it likes. That's about as serious as a security flaw can get."^[6] The 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal was a public scandal dealing with Sony BMG Music Entertainments surreptitious distribution of rootkit software on audio compact discs. ... is the 304th day of the year (305th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... XCP-Aurora Extended Copy Protection (XCP) is a software package developed by the British company First 4 Internet and sold as a copy protection or digital rights management (DRM) scheme for compact discs. ... Copy prevention, also known as copy protection, is any technical measure designed to prevent duplication of information. ... Van Zant is an American country rock duo comprised of older brother Donnie and younger brother Johnny Van Zant. ... is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A rootkit is a set of software tools intended to conceal running processes, files or system data from the operating system. ... In programming, the Component Object Model (COM), also known as ActiveX, is a Microsoft technology for software components. ...

Quote

In computer security, dancing pigs or the dancing pigs problem refers to a statement on user attitudes to computer security: that users primarily desire features without considering security, and so security must be designed in without the computer having to ask a technically ignorant user. ... Copy prevention, also known as copy protection, is any technical measure designed to prevent duplication of information. ... Teleportation is the movement of objects or elementary particles from one place to another, more or less instantaneously, without traveling through space. ...

See also

The RIAA Logo. ... SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) was a forum formed in late 1998, comprised of more than 200 IT, consumer electronics, security technology, ISP and recording industry companies with the purpose of developing technology specifications that protect the playing, storing and distributing of digital music. ... EFF Logo The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving free speech rights such as those protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of today... The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a controversial United States copyright law which criminalizes production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright, not merely infringement of copyright itself, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. ...

References

is the 116th day of the year (117th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... The Industry Standard was a weekly magazine based in San Francisco which began publication in the spring of 1998. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 99th day of the year (100th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... EFF Logo The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving free speech rights such as those protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of today... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... April 23 is the 113th day of the year (114th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Current logo of The Register. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... EFF Logo The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving free speech rights such as those protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of today... is the 332nd day of the year (333rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 256th day of the year (257th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States of America. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Gary McGraw, Cigital, Inc. ... New York, New York redirects here. ... The Wiley Building in Hoboken, New Jersey, located on the waterfront between River Street and Frank Sinatra Drive. ... The Library of Congress Control Number or LCCN is a serially based system of numbering books in the Library of Congress in the United States. ... OCLC Online Computer Library Center was founded in 1967 and originally named the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC). ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

Categories: 1963 births | Living people | American bloggers | Computer scientists | Computer security specialists | Copyright activists | EFF Pioneer Award recipients | California Institute of Technology alumni | University of Washington alumni EFF Logo The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving free speech rights such as those protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of today...

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