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Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems

TLDR
In almost 600 pages of riveting detail, Ross Anderson warns us not to be seduced by the latest defensive technologies, never to underestimate human ingenuity, and always use common sense in defending valuables.
Abstract
Gigantically comprehensive and carefully researched, Security Engineering makes it clear just how difficult it is to protect information systems from corruption, eavesdropping, unauthorized use, and general malice. Better, Ross Anderson offers a lot of thoughts on how information can be made more secure (though probably not absolutely secure, at least not forever) with the help of both technologies and management strategies. His work makes fascinating reading and will no doubt inspire considerable doubt--fear is probably a better choice of words--in anyone with information to gather, protect, or make decisions about. Be aware: This is absolutely not a book solely about computers, with yet another explanation of Alice and Bob and how they exchange public keys in order to exchange messages in secret. Anderson explores, for example, the ingenious ways in which European truck drivers defeat their vehicles' speed-logging equipment. In another section, he shows how the end of the cold war brought on a decline in defenses against radio-frequency monitoring (radio frequencies can be used to determine, at a distance, what's going on in systems--bank teller machines, say), and how similar technology can be used to reverse-engineer the calculations that go on inside smart cards. In almost 600 pages of riveting detail, Anderson warns us not to be seduced by the latest defensive technologies, never to underestimate human ingenuity, and always use common sense in defending valuables. A terrific read for security professionals and general readers alike. --David Wall Topics covered: How some people go about protecting valuable things (particularly, but not exclusively, information) and how other people go about getting it anyway. Mostly, this takes the form of essays (about, for example, how the U.S. Air Force keeps its nukes out of the wrong hands) and stories (one of which tells of an art thief who defeated the latest technology by hiding in a closet). Sections deal with technologies, policies, psychology, and legal matters.

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Citations
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A survey of peer-to-peer content distribution technologies

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI

New Directions in Cryptography

TL;DR: This paper suggests ways to solve currently open problems in cryptography, and discusses how the theories of communication and computation are beginning to provide the tools to solve cryptographic problems of long standing.
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How to share a secret

TL;DR: This technique enables the construction of robust key management schemes for cryptographic systems that can function securely and reliably even when misfortunes destroy half the pieces and security breaches expose all but one of the remaining pieces.
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Communication theory of secrecy systems

TL;DR: A theory of secrecy systems is developed on a theoretical level and is intended to complement the treatment found in standard works on cryptography.
Book ChapterDOI

Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system

TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of one event happening before another in a distributed system is examined, and a distributed algorithm is given for synchronizing a system of logical clocks which can be used to totally order the events.
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Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach

TL;DR: Software Engineering A Practitioner's Approach recognizes the dramatic growth in the field of software engineering and emphasizes new and important methods and tools used in the industry.