Friends of Switzerland1 The Changing Landscape of Programming Technology Karl Lieberherr Northeastern University
Friends of Switzerland2 Swiss connection PhD from ETH Zurich: Pascal, Modula, Oberon (Wirth) Sabbatical 2000 with UBS Zurich Sabbatical 2006 with Novartis Collaborations with ABB and Mettler- Toledo One Swiss PhD Yearly summer vacation in Switzerland
Friends of Switzerland3 How I came to Boston 1983: GTE in Waltham, now Verizon 1985: tenured full professor at Northeastern I like it here!
Friends of Switzerland4 Goal We want reliable and secure software. No technical vulnerabilities. Not enough: social vulnerabilities are also very important in the age of the web.
Friends of Switzerland5 Outline Program Organization –Crosscutting Concerns –Law of Demeter Programming Team Organization –Extreme Programming Security: –Social Phishing –SAT solvers
Friends of Switzerland6 Software bugs Excel 2007 multiplication bug: September 2007 –850 * 77.1 should be but displays as
Friends of Switzerland7 Program Organization cross-cutting concerns the tyranny of the primary decomposition –organize software into modules group functionality that lives in several modules
Friends of Switzerland8 Law of Demeter Organization principle for objects –“talk only to your friends” –“each object talks only to a limited number of other objects” –avoids information overload for the programmer –from Northeastern Leads to objects that are easier to change
Friends of Switzerland9 Extreme Programming Planning around User Stories Small Releases of Functionality Simple Design –build what is asked for, no design for the future Continuous testing
Friends of Switzerland10 Extreme Programming Pair Programming Collective Product (Code) Ownership –Design, Coding Standards Continuous integration On-site Customer Representative
Friends of Switzerland11 SAT Solvers a fundamental topic in computer science express your “wishes” computer satisfies as many as possible used for software and hardware verification based on learning from mistakes (non- chronological backtracking) can solve systems with over parameters (variables)
Friends of Switzerland12 Social Phishing friendly message tempts recipients to reveal more online than they otherwise would. impersonating a trustworthy entity
Friends of Switzerland13 class project at Johns Hopkins find publicly available information from social networks: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn. how can a phisher exploit social network data? very easily and effectively over four times as likely to become a victim if they are solicited by someone appearing to be a known acquaintance
Friends of Switzerland14 Observations 77% females, 65% males But trick males by sending them a spoofed message appearing to come from a female (68% if message from female versus 53% if from another male) somewhat reassuringly: computer science students were the least vulnerable
Friends of Switzerland15 Observations: observed reactions after debriefing message Anger –significant social cost to victims Denial –we find it difficult to admit our own vulnerability: many successful phishing attacks go unreported
Friends of Switzerland16 Conclusions Still a very exciting time in computer and information science. Computer science students have excellent job prospects, despite outsourcing.