Cipher Issue 157, September 21, 2020, Editor's Letter

Dear Readers,

As we continue to hear mostly upbeat news about the prospects for a COVID-19 vaccine, Cipher can mirror this with news about progress in building tools and systems for white hat use and about progress in understanding the complex nature of Spectre-type attacks when combined with code reuse. Sven Dietrich's book review shows that reverse engineering with the Ghidra tool brings the black art of understanding binaries ever more firmly within the grasp of good practitioners.

The US presidential election is careening into the dire possibility of security and reliability problems. Will the absentee ballots run the gauntlet of the US Postal Service? Are the computer systems used for voting and tabulator secure? Are the voter registration rolls securely maintained? And how can we tell a conspiracy theory from a legitimate news story? These are interesting research questions, but the voting process has already begun, and we are urged to vote as though as lives depend on it. Two months from now, the next Cipher issue may be rife with news of unresolved problems stemming from these questions.

Due to pandemic disruption, most technical conferences are trying to be flexible about planning events in 2021. Gatherings in person might happen, but preparations for virtual-only are a necessity through at least next summer. First wave, second wave, third wave, ... who knows how many waves will sweep around the globe before a cough in a public place ceases to cause alarm?

It has been a year of calamity, and this has led me to my closing piece of literature, this time without any snide parody:

The burden of four seasons. Rain in spring,
   White rain and wind among the tender trees;
A summer of green sorrows gathering,
   Rank autumn in a mist of miseries,
With sad face set towards the year, that sees
   The charred ash drop out of the dropping pyre,
And winter wan with many maladies;
   This is the end of every man's desire.

  From "A Ballad of Burdens" by Algernon Charles Swinburne

      Hilarie Orman