03.26.08
Posted in The Oscar Show at 12:52 pm by Jacob Canon
In last week’s show we examined the work of Maurie McInnis and her perspective of class politics, social structures and hierarchies of antebellum South through the examination 19th century art and material objects.
Security Wake Up Call [6:43m]:
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In today’s show, adapted from an article published this month on the Oscar Web site written by Brevy Cannon, we look at the work of UVa graduate student Karsten Nohl whose research has demonstrated that the encryption used by the now ubiquitous smart card is much easier to break than previously thought.
If you hold a credit card issued in the past 18 months, or use a touchless keycard to open doors at your office, or ride the subway with a reusable fare card, chances are good that you have used a card or ticket with a tiny wireless security chip embedded in it.
A trio of young computer experts, including UVa graduate student Karsten Nohl and colleague Henryk Plötz presented research in December at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, that demonstrated that the encryption used by over a billion such “smart cards” is much easier to break than previously thought.
Their research shows that a tech-savvy thief with only a personal computer and about $1,000 worth of readily available equipment could make fake high-security access cards, mass-transit fare cards, and could even gain entry to cars by cloning certain wireless car keys that can open or lock the car from 20 feet away by clicking a button.
Nohl said, “security experts knew that it was feasible to break the encryption of this type of wireless chip, but most assumed that it was difficult enough to do so that the chips were unprofitable to attack. Companies that do so for legitimate purposes would charge from $100,000 to $500,000 and use research laboratory equipment, a high threshold to steal information from a wireless computer chip that is about the size of a grain of sand and costs less than a dollar.
The miniscule computer chips at issue are called RFIDs, short for “radio-frequency identification.” They send and receive information over short distances via very low-power radio waves. Their use has grown exponentially since 2000, and experts predict it will continue in the future. One sign of that trend is Wal-Mart has mandated their suppliers use them within a few years to identify all items. RFIDs may one day replace the ubiquitous bar code. In such uses, the information held on the RFID is often unencrypted.
But in other more demanding applications — including credit cards, car keys, high-dollar event tickets, subway fare cards and high-security building access control keycards — the RFID’s information is encrypted to prevent it from being read and potentially exploited by anyone with an RFID reader device.
Nohl and his collaborators broke the encryption on one particular RFID chip — the MiFare Classic, purportedly the most popular single RFID chip for security applications in the world, with over a billion sold world wide.
The first barrier to breaking the encryption of RFID chips like the MiFare Classic was being able to “listen” to the information that such chips broadcast. The advent in 2006 of affordable, available RFID readers was the beginning of a new era of vulnerability for RFIDs. The door thrown open, experts in sophisticated security techniques used in modern computers could easily study the primitive encryption used by many low-cost RFIDs. Nohl said, “you can’t consider the RFID world separate from the world of computers anymore, as manufacturers have in the past.”
Breaking the encryption involved several technical challenges. The team dissected the MiFare chip to reveal each layer of circuitry that make up the chip and produce the encryption. To do so, they looked at the chip under a conventional microscope, and used micro-polishing sandpaper to remove a few microns of material at a time to reveal each layer of circuitry, which then was digitally photographed.
Nohl then wrote optical recognition software that combined the pictures from each layer to produce a 3-D picture of the entire circuit, much like an MRI. Viewing the details of the circuit, Nohl deduced the algorithm which defined the narrow range of keys that could unlock the encryption, allowing him to find the right key in a matter of hours. Having done that once or twice, he could pre-compute the possible keys and break the encryption on other examples of the MiFare chip in a matter of minutes.
The team’s revelations come at an interesting time. The Netherlands are rolling out a new $3 billion national transit fare system that relies on the MiFare Classic chip. In the wake of the group’s research, the Dutch media reported extensively on the vulnerability of the system’s smart card that stores fares and can even be linked, on request, to a customer’s bank account in order to automatically reload the fare balance when it drops under a certain threshold.
As a result, most security professionals espouse Kerckhoff’s Principle, the idea that the design of all security systems should be fully public, with the security dependent only on a secret key. Public review of security designs also tends to catch flaws during the design process, rather than after the flaws are inherent in expensive systems, such as in the Netherlands transit system, noted Nohl and Evans.
For the millions of MiFare Classic-powered smart cards used in thousands of applications, this research from Nohl’s group proves that little stands in the way of future security breaks. Just how many malicious hackers have done so already, or will do so in the future, is anybody’s guess.
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when our topic will be the research of University of Virginia politics professor Paul Freedman which suggests that the ever-growing barrage of political ads actually contributes to citizen education and engagement, and only rarely have negative impacts.
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03.19.08
Posted in 19th Century, Art, Relationships, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, Uncategorized, University of Virginia, slavery at 12:04 pm by Jacob Canon
In last week’s show we examined a recent study by University of Virginia Sociologist Elizabeth Gorman which said, no matter how the data was sliced or certain variables controlled: women say they have to work harder than men. In today’s show, adapted from an article published this month on the Oscar Web site written by Jane Ford we look at the work of Maurie McInnis and her perspective of class politics, social structures and hierarchies of the antebellum South through the examination 19th century art and material objects.
Myth & Memory [6:12m]:
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Objects and ideas inform both history and contemporary thought and are the basis of the study of material culture. For Maurie McInnis, associate professor of American art and material culture and director of American Studies, understanding the antebellum South in the 19th century encompasses understanding art and objects from the perspective of class politics, social structures and hierarchies.
Working with Angela D. Mack, curator of the traveling show that originated at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., McInnis has spent the last four years creating Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art, an exhibition on view through April 20 at the University of Virginia Art Museum. The exhibition focuses on themes of race, slavery and the plantation from the 19th century to today.
McInnis said, this “is an exhibition about ideas rather than an art history exhibit that traces the development of an artist or a stylistic movement. Race, slavery and the plantation do not have a fixed meaning through time.” Working on the exhibit and the companion catalog, McInnis said she was struck by “how much cultural currency the word ‘plantation’ has. The mythology of the South as a place of gentility and refinement is still held by many today.”
For African Americans, however, the meaning revolves around an imbalance of power. According to McInnis, “The two are fundamentally different ideas of what ‘plantation’ means. The reality is that beauty and brutality lived beside each other. The artifacts explore the widely varying ideas of what ‘plantation’ meant then and today.” The themes of protest, politics, nostalgia and identity run through the artists’ works, which represent a wide variety of viewpoints within these topics.
To help clarify the ideas for both the exhibit and catalog, McInnis began by using her research to develop courses. That, coupled with insight from students in her classes, “The ‘Old South’ in Myth and Memory” and “Arts and Cultures of the Slave South,” which she co-teaches with Assistant Professor of Architectural History Louis Nelson — proved invaluable for defining questions about culture and race.
The exhibit includes works by a slave potter named Dave, who worked in Edgefield, S.C., in the 1840s and 50s. He decorated the large storage vessels he made with poetry and signed them. Both the poetry and signing the pots are acts of political protest, since it was unlawful for slaves to read. McInnis said, “His poetry was sometimes funny, spiritual, ironic or obliquely political. Dave is important. His work is an excellent example of an African-American artisan, of which the South was filled, but many are anonymous to us. His work was integral to the economic foundation of the South and at the same time reveals much about slave life.”
Contemporary artist Juan Logan also deals with issues of slavery. His “Foundations,” a sculptural installation, is composed of a series of iron, brick-like structures symbolizing the part African Americans played in building the South. McInnis said, “They not only provided the economic foundation, but also literally built it,” adding that Logan is engaged in an “ongoing conversation and dialogue with the past.”
Both artists show that the heart of understanding the 19th century antebellum South is the understanding of race and slavery. Over time we construct “narratives to serve contemporary concerns and change surrounding these topics. Memories and ideas are not fixed, but changing.” McInnis will explore these shifts in her upcoming book, Remembering the Revolution: Pictures, Politics and Memory. Her interest in the divergent ways in which the North and South remember the American Revolution, especially with the approach of the Civil War, grew directly out of her research for the exhibition. Perceptions of iconic images and representations have changed over time, in terms of how both the image and the event itself are viewed. McInnis said, “that change helps us understand how contemporary cultural politics shaped the evolution of our key American myths.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when our topic will be the work of Karstin Hohl whose research has demonstrated that the encryption used by the now ubiquitous smart card is much easier to break than previously thought.
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03.05.08
Posted in Business, Jacob Canon, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, Uncategorized, University of Virginia, ethics, happiness at 12:04 pm by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, adapted from an article published this month on the Oscar Web site written by Anne Bromley, a senior editor/writer for UVa Media Relations, we look at a recent study by University of Virginia Sociologist Elizabeth Gorman which said, no matter how the data was sliced or certain variables controlled: women say they have to work harder than men.
The statement, “Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good,” may not be totally off the mark in the workplace states a recent study by University of Virginia Sociologist Elizabeth Gorman and Julie Kmec of Washington State University.
The study analyzed five surveys of men and women in Britain and the US, given in 1977, 1992, two in 1997, and 2001. They concentrated their analysis on the two surveys conducted in 1997, both comprising cross-sectional interviews of about 3,500 workers in the US and almost 2,500 in the UK. To yield comparable answers, they evaluated results from the following survey question: “My job requires that I work very hard.” And, according to the results, a gender gap persisted in ratings of the statement. Women were significantly more likely to say they strongly agreed or agreed, than men.
Gorman noted, “The statement in the survey about required work effort is not one in which employees are comparing themselves to the opposite sex, it’s also not asking for a perception of how hard the work is or how much effort they actually exerted. Our focus is on required work effort, the effort that an employee is expected to exert in order to perform her or his job at a level that is satisfactory to the employer. It is important to distinguish required effort from an employee’s actual exerted effort.”
The researchers analyzed the survey data to see if, in fact, women did have more difficult jobs, but that was not the case. Even when the jobs were almost identical, women still were significantly more likely to say they had to work very hard. And, while controlling for physical and mental demands of a particular job, Gorman and Kmec found that neither group of factors explained the different findings about work effort.
Looking for other potential reasons, the sociologists considered domestic responsibilities outside of work. They stated, “Marriage and parenthood had the same effect on reports of required effort for women and men. In the U.S. sample, the researchers matched the number of hours spent on childcare and housework. Between men and women who performed the same amount of time on these tasks, women were still more likely to say their jobs required them to work very hard.”
So what explains the difference between genders and perceived required effort in the work place?
In their paper, “We (Have to) Try Harder: Gender and Required Work Effort in Britain and the United States,” released in the December issue of the journal “Gender and Society” the researchers said, “We argue that the association between sex and reported required work effort is best interpreted as reflecting stricter performance standards imposed on women, even when women and men hold the same jobs.”
Gorman said, “A lot of experimental research has shown that people rate the same performance as better when told it was done by a man. People give lower marks to an essay, a painting or a résumé when it has a woman’s name on it. And when a man and a woman work together on a project, people assume the man contributed more than the woman did. Even when a woman’s work is indisputably excellent, people don’t believe she’s good — they think she got lucky.” It follows then, that women have to do better than a man in order to get the same evaluation.
Gorman then added, “This is what women are up against. They have to work harder… And in light of this previous research, it makes sense to conclude that women have to work harder to win their bosses’ approval.”
Some possible consequences of this “effort gap” in the workplace include: the quality of women’s work experience is likely to be lower than men’s; this difference in required effort could also have consequences for women’s careers, making it harder for them to be recognized and promoted. Also, the physical and emotional effects could, in turn, have negative repercussions for families.
Gorman went on to say, “It wouldn’t be fair to use this research to reinforce stereotypes.”
Kmec added, “Instead, employers should take into account women’s hard work when considering who to promote and reward. We do not want to insist that female workers shirk their job responsibilities to make this gap go away. Rather, we hope employers make job performance standards more transparent and be held accountable for their evaluations of women at work.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will look at the work of Maurie McInnis and her perspective of class politics, social structures and hierarchies of antebellum South through the examination 19th century art and material objects.
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