The article I found this week was written by two individuals working for Nokia Networks. They were involved in training product development staff in agile practices. Vodde and Koskela (2007) discussed Nokia’s environment for the past decades and their experiences in introducing test-driven development into the organization. The implication in the article is that because of the size and amount of retraining necessary to move toward agile development, Nokia is adopting agile practices a piece at a time (small bites) versus dropping the waterfall approach entirely and throwing the development teams into a completely new and unfamiliar situation. Vodde and Koskela also point out the benefit they found in using hands-on instruction for TDD versus lecture-based education. The authors make a few observations during the time they were teaching TDD to experienced software developers. One important observation was, “TDD is a great way to develop software and can change the way you think about software and software development, but the developer’s skill and confidence still play a big role in ensuring the outcome’s quality.” The exercise the authors used in their course was to develop a program to count lines of code in source files and tests to verify the program’s operation. Each session would add a new requirement in the form of a new type of source file. The students were forced into an evolutionary/emergent situation in which the design had to change a little as the current and new problems of each requirement were solved. What the students’ speculated as a design at the beginning and what they actually ended with were different. The authors conclude with some recommendations for successful TDD adoption with other agile practices or as an isolated practice in a legacy environment: Removing external dependencies helps improve testabilityReflective thinking promotes emergent designA well-factored design and good test coverage also help new designs emerge Reference Vodde, B., Koskela, L. (2007). Learning Test-Driven Development by Counting Lines. IEEE Software. 0740-7459/07.

Many of us in the IT industry aspire to create a Software Engineering discipline. We work continually to mature our understanding of what it is and should become, and work to increase the external trust of the profession. Are we there yet in relation to other engineering disciplines? Probably not. Whether or not it is there today does not matter as much to me. What matters to me is that at this time we are trying to take it there. My feeling is that Software Engineering is a pursuit, not an endpoint. I also believe software craftsmanship exists, but there is a place for it. I do not want a craftsman designing my antilock brakes, getting creative with my future (hopefully distant) artificial heart, liver or whatever code, or the algorithm for measuring the carbon monoxide levels in my home. I would like an engineer knowledgeable in precedence and predictability to create these things. Denning and Riehle (2009) point out some interesting areas where Software Engineering is weak compared to other disciplines: Predictable outcomes (principle of least surprise)Design metrics, including design to tolerancesFailure tolerancesSeparation of design from implementationReconciliation of conflicting forces and constraintsAdapting to changing environments I think an additional challenge we deal with in developing a Software Engineering discipline is that software - code - is unlike any material previously available to us. Add to this the various forms and structures the material can take changes every five to ten years - Java, C#, client/server, web services, hosted, distributed, etc. We are trying to build a stable practice around an unstable material. For example, our environment is beginning an architectural shift toward large multi-core processors. (Merritt, 2008). Our tools, thinking and education may require a refresh to adapt our software design approaches to deal with this change. (See http://clojure.org/state). In short, I believe in Software Engineering. It is out there and we are chasing it down. We make some right and wrong turns along the way. Each time we get a little closer to it, our world of technology changes dramatically and it just slips out of our grasp. The longer we hunt for it, the more mature, disciplined and predictable our profession becomes. References Denning, P., & Riehle, R. (2009). The Profession of IT: Is Software Engineering Engineering?. Communications of the ACM, 52(3), 24-26. Merritt, R. (2008). CPU designers debate multi-core future. EE Times. Retrieved 24 October 2009 from http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206105179

I recently developed and installed a creation called Short Attention Span Collaborative Imagery in the Annex at Core New Art Space in Denver. Some people have called it art, while I call it a tool for generating art. The SASCI piece runs on two Internet-connected computers in the gallery. It uses Twitter trends and specific search terms to drive the continuous creation of collages of images and text on two wall-facing projectors. Input from Twitter, specifically the current and daily trends and a search for the words Denver and Art is the source of the imagery. It uses the Stanford Natural Language Parser, Creative Common-licensed images from Flickr and text from Wikipedia. I wrote the programs in Java and JavaFX. About every 30 minutes, background tasks collect the latest terms and matching messages from Twitter. A different program using the Stanford NLP parses the messages looking for interesting nouns, and collects images and text associated with the source words from Flickr and Wikipedia. Each collage takes anywhere from 2-5 minutes to build in front of the audience. It is never the same. The collages abstractly reflect people’s conversations on Twitter as recent as the last 30 minutes. If you are in the area, please check it out. Core New Art Space is located at 900 Santa Fe Drive in Denver. Call or browse the web site for gallery hours. 303-297-8428. http://corenewartspace.com.

Rock solid, fast, affordable, get it if you can. I had VDSL2 installed by Qwest this past August 3rd. I am a work-at-home IT Specialist. This means I live and die by my Internet connection to communicate with co-workers, gain access to the corporate network, design software and deploy it to servers in different parts of the country. Since the VDSL2 installation almost two weeks ago, the service has been used for web browsing, email, connecting to work through my employer’s VPN service, screen sharing with co-workers, backing up computers via Jungle Disk and Tivoli Storage Manager, listening to Pandora Radio, watching some TV through our Roku player and playing a couple of games of BZFlag. To recap, we are getting 20 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream. Our residence is in the 80205 zip code and less than 0.5 km from the fiber node. We are qualified for 40 Mbps downstream in this location. The connection has been up continuously since installation and we have yet to experience any network congestion during the day or evening. Here are some metrics from the Q1000: From Jim’s Software Engineering Blog Today I performed a new speed test from Denver to Dallas:

This research paper details some recent concerns regarding DNS services and consumer privacy. This paper summarizes the concepts of DNS. IT discusses how DNS is used on the Internet. It discusses how DNS services are provided to consumers and what types of entities provide the service for daily use. This paper continues with a discussion of how DNS has been and is currently being used as a mechanism to collect and profile the behavior of users on the Internet and how these mechanisms can be abused. The alternatives available to consumers for DNS are presented in closing and suggestions for methods for finding a balance to privacy and utility Internet service are made. DNS is an acronym for Domain Name System. It is one of the most fundamental and important services provided throughout the Internet. Nearly every networked client that uses a symbolic name to access a web server, email server or any other service depends on DNS. The domain name system translates symbolic names like www.ibm.com or mail.google.com into 32-bit Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. DNS also translates IP addresses back into domain names. The translations process from a name to an address is called forward lookup. The translation process from an address back into a symbolic name is called reverse lookup. Forward lookup is used more often than reverse lookup. The DNS concept dates back to 1987. RFC 1034 and RFC 1035 define the concepts, specification and implementation of the domain name system and protocol we use today on the Internet. According to (RFC1034, 2009) the DNS has three major components: domain name space and resource records, which are specifications for a tree structured name space and data associated with the names,name servers are server programs which hold information about the domain tree’s structure and set information and resolvers are programs that extract information from name servers in response to client requests In the simplest form, the servers providing resolution of domain names and addresses are organized into a hierarchy. Resolving a name to an IP address may take many queries across several domain name servers located in different places on the Internet to complete the process. Resolving a domain name to an IP address happens from right to left. For a name such as www.gap.com, the server or servers handling the root domain for .com are queried first. They are queries for the servers of the next component to the left. The .com root servers are queried for the .gap name. The .com servers will return one or more servers that handle the sub-domains for the gap.com domain. The gap.com servers are queried for an address of www within the domain. Through recursive querying of servers from root domain to specific sub-domain, the IP address of www.gap.com is found. Some details have been left out in this example, but this is in essence what happens. Performing this query each time a client asks for the IP of www.gap.com would place too much burden on the communications infrastructure of the Internet, so caching of DNS information happens as well. Domain resolution includes the amount of time from a few seconds to days for that information to remain current. Clients and servers can retain this resolution data in memory until it expires, and then query for it again from the source servers. Caching allows repeated queries for the same domain name to resolve almost instantaneously. Caching of DNS information can happen at several levels of scale, starting at the workstation, the local network and up to the Internet service provider. As mentioned above there are nameservers and resolvers. Nameservers are queried that provide translation from name to address or from address to name. Resolvers are built into our workstations and other Internet-capable devices. A resolver knows the client-side of the DNS protocol that can ask a nameserver to perform a translation. Caching nameservers are a hybrid server that includes both the ability to provide services to resolvers - DNS clients - and act as resolvers to query servers upstream from them to perform forward or reverse resolution. Caching nameservers can be found in consumer firewall devices we use in our homes. They are very often used by large organizations, including Internet service providers as a convenience to their subscribers. The main purpose of caching nameservers is to provide a resolution service closer to the client and reduce the number of queries traveling across the Internet. Caching nameservers are a performance optimization. Internet service providers are the most common providers of caching DNS services that consumers use to query and resolve domain names to IP addresses. You employer, if they have a large enough IT department, may elect to run their own caching DNS system for performance reasons. Your workstation or notebook at the office may be using a DNS server that runs on the local area network. That server queries other servers on the Internet as needed to perform forward and reverse resolution. Recently, several alternative, value-added DNS providers have increased their presence. One of the more popular services is called OpenDNS. In addition to providing name and address resolution services for free, they maintain a system that prevents name resolution of sites known to distribute malware and viruses. They also allow a customer of OpenDNS to tailor what categories of sites on the Internet they will resolve. For example, a parent of a family with young children can elect to prevent OpenDNS from resolving sites with violent or sexually explicit content. Instead of providing an address for the objectionable site, the user’s browser is redirected to page within OpenDNS’ network explaining why they have arrived there. What is important to note here is that a consumer must elect to use OpenDNS and it is implied they understand how the service will behave. Not all consumers are informed or understand how their provider’s DNS service will perform for them. Most consumer DSL and cable routers will pull their configuration from the service provider. That configuration will include one or more addresses of DNS servers. DSL and cable routers will also act as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol servers for internal networks. The router will provide IP addresses to each client. The router will also do one of two things: provide the DNS addresses to each client that it was provided, or the router will act as a caching nameserver and provide its address to each client as the DNS server. Unless you have taken action to use a different DNS server, there is a good chance you are using the DNS servers supplied by your Internet service provider. The privacy issues for DNS are different depending on whose services are used. Let us assume in a consumer is at home and their default configuration for their Internet connection uses the DNS servers provided by their ISP. The ISP may also be the telephone company and television company of this user. The ISP issues the IP address to the consumer’s cable or DSL router. When queries are made to the ISP’s DNS servers, the source IP address will be that of the customer’s router. Using relational database technology, the sites queried from the home router can be stored and analyzed to form a behavioral profile of this customer’s interests. That information can be used to market new telecommunications products to them, or it can be sold to other businesses or potentially provided to government entities to help understand this family’s patterns of Internet usage. This is possible because of the ability to relate key elements of information - DNS queries, router address, and existing personal data on file - back to a customer and others in the customer’s home. Recently Internet service providers have tried a new approach in using DNS to help generate revenue streams. “Several consumer ISPs such as Cablevision’s Optimum Online, Comcast, Time Warner, Rogers, and Bell Sympatico have also started the practice of DNS hijacking on non-existent domain names, for the purpose of making money by displaying advertisements. This practice violates the RFC standard for DNS (NXDOMAIN) responses, and can potentially open users to cross-site scripting attacks.” (HIJACK, 2009). This technique redirects a user’s browser from an error page to a search page or advertisement page when a non-existent domain name is requested through DNS. There have been documented cases of redirecting legitimate addresses to an alternate web site as well. Most of these approaches require the manipulation of established Internet protocols such as DNS. Not surprisingly, they are met with consumer hostility. According to Kirk (2009), “ISPs are trying to find revenue streams other than simply providing Internet access to subscribers for a monthly fee. Some have investigated behavioral advertising systems, which monitor a person’s Web surfing in order to deliver targeted ads. Those systems have largely failed to take hold due to privacy concerns.” Because the deployments of these DNS and web-based redirection systems require the manipulation of Internet protocols on several levels, some have been found to be vulnerable to manipulation for client exploit and attack. “Kaminsky demonstrated [a] vulnerability by finding a way to insert a YouTube video from 80s pop star Rick Astley into Facebook and PayPal domains. But a black hat hacker could instead embed a password-stealing Trojan. The attack might also allow hackers to pretend to be a logged-in user, or to send e-mails and add friends to a Facebook account.” (Singel, 2008). The unfortunate reality is that there are not many alternatives for DNS available to consumers. The most complicated and method of least disclosure is to run a professional caching DNS server on your local area network and have it query root domains directly. Software such as BIND under UNIX, Linux or BSD, or Microsoft’s domain name server as part of IIS on Windows Server can provide this solution. This approach would eliminate all third-party DNS services from the hierarchy of queries. The next alternative is to research and find the least offensive DNS provider for your needs. This may in fact be your Internet service provider. Research their privacy policy. Test your ISP’s DNS resolution behavior. If you enter a bad domain name in your browser and you are redirected to a “suggestion” page, be suspicious and find out more details. As mentioned above, OpenDNS generates revenue from the profile data it collects from its customers’ use. Their privacy policy (OPENDNS, 2009) is documented on the web site. Additionally, they provide customizable filtering services to protect your network from malware or offensive content. This paper detailed some recent concerns regarding DNS and privacy. In addition to discussing the concepts of DNS, it detailed how and who provides DNS services to consumers. A discussion of how DNS can be leveraged as a mechanism to collect and profile consumer behavior followed with alternatives available to consumers to limit the collection of their behavioral data. Internet service providers are under pressure to increase and discover new avenues of income. Consumers are likewise under constant pressure to maintain their guard against subtle privacy violations. Consumers maintain the ability for now to limit manipulation of Internet standards to prevent unknowingly leaking personal and behavioral information to a wider audience. As discussed in this paper, methods are available to reduce the risk of privacy invasion of consumers without their complete knowledge. References HIJACK. (2009). DNS hijacking. Retrieved August 9, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_hijacking. Kirk, J. (2009). Comcast Redirects Bad URLs to Pages With Advertising. PC World, Business Center. Retrieved August 8, 2009 from http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/169723/comcast_redirects_bad_urls_to_pages_with_advertising.html RFC1034. (2009). Request for Comments: 1034, DOMAIN NAMES - CONCEPTS AND FACILITIES. Retrieved August 8, 2009 from http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1035.txt. RFC1035. (2009). Request for Comments: 1035, DOMAIN NAMES - IMPLEMENTATION AND SPECIFICATION. Retrieved August 8, 2009 from http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1035.txt. OPENDNS. (2009). OpenDNS Privacy Policy. Retrieve August 7, 2009 from http://www.opendns.com/privacy/. Singel, R. (2008). ISPs’ Error Page Ads Let Hackers Hijack Entire Web, Researcher Discloses. Privacy, Crime and Security Online. Wired. April 19, 2008. Retrieved August 7, 2009 from http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/04/isps-error-page/.

This research paper explores the issues related to defining and quantifying risk and return for capital investments in security solutions for information technology. This work begins by defining some of the most common types of attacks and breaches occurring against commercial and institutional information technology systems. It follows with a discussion of approaches to analyze and estimate the level of financial, legal and reputation risk around IT security events. Finally, the paper concludes by providing guidelines for estimating a budget for IT security initiatives, reporting results and relating the security initiatives to the strategic goals of the organization. There are several types of common security breaches and events in commercial and institutional IT systems. Defacement of web sites involves the compromise of servers responsible for providing web pages. This breach can be caused from improperly configured web server software or flaws in the software responsible for generating dynamic web pages. Web page defacement is often in response to a corporate or political policy. A denial of service attack does not cause of breach in systems, but floods the resources of the target organization. The result of a denial of service attack is to prevent legitimate users from accessing the target’s network and services. A denial of service attack can occur against the networking infrastructure, web servers, database servers or any other finite resource of the organization. A distributed denial of service attack is a network attack that floods the target organization’s network with packets. Like web page defacement, this attack is often in response to a corporate or political policy. Systemic malware attacks involve the spreading of a virus, worm or other malware throughout the workstation resources of an organization. This type of attack is less likely to be directly targeted at a specific organization. It may occur because of a “zero day” vulnerability in workstation software that has not yet been patched by the vendor or blocked by the security software provider. Corruption of information, theft or accidental release of information has the potential for the most attention and the most liability for an organization. This type of breach may involve the release intellectual property, private information about individuals working for the organization, or customers of the organization. Several factors contribute to the decision or requirement for publicizing a security breach. If personal information of employees or clients was released, the organization may be legally required to notify the individuals affected by the breach. In the case of a denial of service attack, customers or business partners of the organization may not be able interact with the IT systems as expected. “[…] unless there is some publicly observable consequence such as shutdown of a Web site or litigation, the press may not become aware of a breach. Thus, some breaches with the most potentially severe economic consequences (such as employee initiated breaches that may compromise proprietary information) may not be reported in a timely fashion.” (Campbell, 2003). There is no established formula and process of determining in advance the amount of risk potential or financial exposure for a security breach. Braithwaite (2002) contrasts the traditional loss estimate model for replacement or recovery of resources with that of today. There is much higher dependence on information technology systems today. In many cases, those systems are the business. The loss from downtime or breach is much larger than the just replacement cost of the physical systems and their corresponding software. It was estimated in 2002 that losses to an online brokerage system could be as high as $6.5 million (US) per hour. A credit-card service bureau could lose as much as $2.5 million per hour. Garg (2003) estimates financial losses to a publicly traded company through decreased trust could be from 0.5 to as much as 1.0% of annual revenues. Based on this simple formula, a company with $1 billion (US) in annual revenues could experience as much as $10 million in loss from a single incident. The cost of a security-related event is far reaching. Repair of the organization’s reputation, legal responsibilities and hardening of IT systems addresses only the issues at the surface. Garg’s estimate includes the cost of the breach plus the resulting impact to the perception of trust by partners, investors and customers. The additional risk to publicly traded companies is the spillover effect to the company’s stock price and long-term investment outlook. Cavusaglu (2004) estimates that an organization can lose as much as 2.1% of its market value on average within two days of reporting a breach to the public. For example, a company with a market capitalization of $100 billion (US) could lose as much as $2 billion in value within a few days after reporting the theft of customer personal information. This amount does not include follow-on investment in technology and process development to remedy the problem, legal costs and investments to repair damage to the organization’s reputation. “These potential costs include: (1) lost business (both immediate and long term as a consequence of negative reputation effects), (2) activities associated with detecting and correcting the breaches, and (3) potential legal liability.” (Campbell, 2003). Publicly reporting a breach in general is not something that negatively influences the view of the company or institution. There is a significant negative response from consumers, partners and investors when the security event is related to the release of confidential information. The estimation of risk related to material, legal and market image damage helps scope the problem of determining budget for information security expenditures. There are several areas of investment to reduce security risk. Braithwaite (2002) describes a security investment approach based on a balanced strategy of prevention, detection and response. A recent trend related to prevention and response is the cyber-insurance policy. These policies provide financial relief to an organization following a security breach. Providers of larger policies often require regular security audits by third parties to help establish the level of risk of a future security problem. “According to the 2006 C5I/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey, 29 percent of U.S. companies say they have external insurance policies to manage cyber security risks, up from 25 percent in 2005.” (Brody, 2007). However, John Pescatore of Gartner states, “[…] the price of the policies is too close to the cost of an actual event. You may be better off just spending the money to avoid an incident." In determining a budget for IT security expenditures, it is important to identify and place a value on non-quantifiable assets and processes such as intellectual property and customer data. The executive staff needs to be involved in this process and help adjust and agree on the valuation. The valuation needs to be revisited as the organization changes scope and size. Additionally, it is important to identify and place a value on the company’s reputation from a security and trust standpoint. Braithwaite (2002) recommends two areas for consideration that include the adverse impact of publicized incidents involving the company, and how the organization is judged by its involvement in support of national and industry security concerns. As mentioned earlier, Garg’s (2003) estimate of potential revenue loss to the business can be used as a coarse-grained starting point to gauge financial commitment to IT security initiatives. Brandel (2006) makes several recommendations on how to present and maintain funding levels for an IT security budget. Avoid scare tactics with executives. Use past security incidents as reference points within a business case for funding. Plan the organization’s funding requirements for 12 to 24 months into the future. Avoid repeated tactical requests for each security project as that could give an impression of reactionary versus proactive planning. Explain the investments in terms of the business goals and initiatives versus the technical language of security. Estimating and reporting the results of security initiatives can be difficult to articulate. Benefits from security expenditures are indirect. There are no revenue streams from installing firewalls, compartmentalizing network segments or auditing workstations for compliance to IT policies. Brandel (2006) claims, “Investing in security rarely yields a return on investment, so promising [a] ROl will sound ill-informed to a senior executive. […]It’s possible to discuss other benefits of security spending, such as protecting the company’s ability to generate revenue, keep market share or retain its reputation.” Reporting on benefits from past security investments maintains the attention of executive sponsorship. Consider developing metrics using measurements like attacks stopped at the firewalls, viruses scrubbed from inbound emails, the ratio of an outbreak of malware on the Internet compared to the corporate Intranet. Choose metrics carefully and be sure they reflect the business’ goals and language. Investing in and reporting on IT security does not need to be solely focused on preventing exploits, spread of malware or unintended release of confidential information. It can also include high-availability of IT systems, reliability of communications and ensuring integrity of critical business information for ongoing operations. According to Drugescu (2006) metrics must measure organizationally meaningful things, be reproducible and consistent, be objective and unbiased, and measure some type of progression toward the identified strategic goal. This paper analyzed the issues, recent opinions and research related to estimating and quantifying risk and return for IT security solutions. The most common types of security attacks and breaches against commercial and institutional information technology systems were described. A discussion of approaches to analyze and estimate the level of financial, legal and reputation risk around IT security events was provided. This paper provided guidelines for estimating a budget for IT security initiatives, and recommended regular reporting of security metrics and relating those metrics to the business goals of the organization. Day-to-day industry is becoming more dependent on information technology. As each year passes, the transformation of worldwide business to a platform of high-speed connectivity, data storage and Internet service exchanges expands the need to accurately quantify risk from downtime and loss. It is vital to gauge the level of investment in security prevention, detection and response for an organization’s survival in the online, interconnected world. References Brandel, M. (2006). Avoid spending fatigue. Computerworld. April 17, 2006. Pg. 34. Braithwaite, T. (2002). Executives need to know: The arguments to include in a benefits justification for increased cyber security spending. Security Management Practices. September/October 2002. Pg. 35. Brody, D. (2007). Full coverage: how to hedge your cyber risk. Inc. Magazine. April 2007. Pg. 47. Campbell, K., Gordon, L. A., Loeb, M. P., Zhou, L. (2003). The economic cost of publicly announced information security breaches: empirical evidence from the stock market. Journal of Computer Security. 11 (2003) 431–448. Cavusoglu, H., Mishra, B., Raghunathan, S. (2004). A model for evaluating IT security investments. Communications of the ACM. July 2004/Vol. 47, No. 7. Drugescu, C., Etges, R. (2006). Maximizing the return on investment of information security programs: program governance and metrics. Information Systems Security. December 2006. Pg. 30. Garg, A., Curtis, J., Halper, H. (2003). The financial impact of IT security breaches: What do investors think? Information Systems Security. March/April 2003. Pg. 22. Roberds, W., Schreft, S. L. (2009). Data security, privacy, and identity theft: the economics behind the policy debates. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. 1Q/2009, Economic Perspectives. Pg. 22.

Today our home Internet service was upgraded to VDSL2 from Qwest. We are located in the Whittier neighborhood of Denver - specifically in the 80205 zip code. I was told by Qwest this area is qualified now for up to 40 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream VDSL2 service. I started with ADSL service about 2 months ago at 7 Mbps downstream and 896 Kbps upstream. I chose to move to the 20 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream tier. The ADSL service was cut off this morning while work was performed at the fiber node and before 3 PM the installer came by to hook up the new modem. The Qwest installer said my home was less than three blocks from the cabinet. From Jim's Software Engineering Blog The modem connected at the correct speed immediately. Below is a screen snip of the SNR numbers from the Q1000 modem. These numbers are more than double the SNR reported by the M1000 ADSL modem. The ADSL link had a much longer haul over copper than the VDSL2 link. I was surprised to see the 0 dB attenuation in both directions. I had 20-30 dB attenuation with ADSL. From Jim’s Software Engineering Blog The final step before letting the installer loose was to speed test the link back to Qwest. I would call it a success. From Jim's Software Engineering Blog

This paper provides a broad discussion of the security issues related to virtualization technology, such as the offerings by VMware, Microsoft and IBM. It presents an overview of virtualization, the various types of virtualization, and a detailed discussion of full computer virtualization technology. The benefits of virtualization technology are provided from a position of security, convenience and cost. The paper continues with a discussion of the security liabilities of virtualization. It provides examples of recent attempts by security researchers to design attacks directed at the virtual machine manager also known as the hypervisor. A look at trends in the application of virtualization technology concludes the discussion. Virtualization is a type of abstraction of resources. In computer technology, virtualization can be used to simulate the presence of memory, disk, video or entire computers where they exist partially or not at all. The first virtualization technology dates back into 1960, when IBM and other computing pioneers created operating systems and storage systems that presented an isolated environment to the user that appeared as a single-user system. Today our desktop operating systems use memory virtualization to provide a larger runtime space for applications than there is random access memory. Our operating system uses a combination of solid-state memory and a paging file on disk to move data blocks between to two media depending on their frequency of use. Enterprise storage virtualization, such as solutions provided by IBM, EMC and Sun create an illusion of massive consolidated storage space available from solid-state, magnetic disk and streaming tape into a single logical direct access image. Less frequently accessed data blocks are migrated to slower media while often-accessed data blocks are maintained on faster access media. All storage appears online and ready to access. The recent the popularity of virtual machines for running Java and .NET software allow a common runtime environment regardless of the actual hardware and operating system hosting the virtual machine. This approach reduces the work required by the software provider to create a solution capable of running on a variety of platforms. Cardwell (2007) defines computer virtualization as a computer within a computer. Virtualization software simulates a computer, including the processor and hardware components, and BIOS to the guest operating system. The guest operating system running within the virtualized environment should not know or care that its hardware resources are not physical resources, but instead simulated through software. The two types of computer virtualization are called full virtualization and para-virtualization. Wong (2005) discusses the differences of full virtualization and para-virtualization. Full virtualization does not require changes to the guest operating system. Products such as VMware provide full virtualization. This type of virtualization requires support in the host system’s processor to trap and help emulate privileged instructions executed by the guest operating system. Para-virtualization requires modifications to the guest OS to run on the virtual machine manager. Open source operating systems, such as Linux can be modified to support a para-virtualized environment. This type of virtualization often performs better than full virtualization, but is restricted to guest operating systems that have been modified to run in this specific environment. Today there are many popular, contemporary and affordable virtualization products on the market. VMware is the most widely known, but IBM has the longest history with virtualization technologies. As mentioned previously, virtualization for mainframe systems dates back to 1960. VMware has targeted Intel platform virtualization since the 1990s. Microsoft acquired Virtual PC as the market for virtualization grew from VMware’s popularity. Xen is an open source virtualization solution. Xen supports full and para-virtualized systems. It is popular with Linux distributions, which often provide para-virtualized kernels ready to deploy as guest operating systems. IBM’s two primary virtualization platforms are the System-z mainframe and Power systems. “The latest version of z/VM […] will now support up to 32 processors and offer users 128 GB of memory, which will allow the software to host more than 1,000 virtual […] Linux servers.” (Ferguson, 2007). Virtualization technology, which was originally used on centralized systems to share resources and provide a partitioned view to a single user, is popular on server and workstation platforms running Intel x86 hardware. Cardwell (2007) presents several use cases of virtualization benefits, including consolidation of servers, quick enterprise solutions, software development, and sales demonstrations. Separate physical servers running periodically accessed services can be virtualized and run together on a single physical system. Short-lived server systems, such as those for conferences, could be created as virtual machines without the need for acquiring physical servers to host the solution. Software developers often need multiple systems to develop server-based solutions, or they require several versions tools that may conflict when installed together. Sales demonstrations can be configured and distributed to customer-facing staff as virtual machines. Many different configurations can be created and options demonstrated to customers on demand to see how various solutions can apply to their environment. As processing capability increases on the desktop and virtualization providers offer cost-effective software to create virtualized environments, this is a primary growth area for the technology. Burt (2006) says the benefit of mobility of virtual machines for users is a huge benefit of desktop virtualization. Virtual machines stored on portable media such as USB hard disks or flash storage. They can be paused on a host system at an office, taken on plane to the customer’s location and then resumed on a new host. This can happen while keeping the virtualized operating system completely oblivious to its actual location and host hardware. Testing and quality assurance has had large adoption of virtualization technology. According to Tiller (2006), the benefits of virtualization include the ability to react and test vulnerabilities and patches in a much shorter timeframe. Single virtualized systems can be dedicated to an individual task in a network of systems. Upgrading or relocating any virtualized system can be performed without affecting other parts of the entire solution. There is a large benefit to security and availability with virtualization technology. Virtual machines are separated from the host operating system. Viruses, malware and software defects that affect the virtualized system are restricted and, in most cases cannot spread to the host operating system. Disaster recovery planning has the potential for simplification under a virtualized infrastructure. Virtual machines images, such as those used by VMware, are stored on the host operating system as files. Backing-up or relocating virtual machines from one host to another can be as simple as suspending the running virtual machine, moving the set of files across the network and resuming the virtual machine. Virtual machine images can be shortly suspended and stored to tape or mirrored to a remote location as a disaster recovery process. Duntemann (2005) points out that a virtual machine with the operating system and installed applications are commonly stored as disk files and can be archived, distributed, or restored to an initial state using the virtual machine manager. These files are also subject to attack and potential modification if the host system is compromised. A successful attack against the host system can make the virtual machines vulnerable to modification or other penetration. Virtualization is also known as a system multiplier technology. “It is very likely that IT managers will have to increase the number and expertise of security personnel devoted to security policy creation and maintenance as the percentage of VMs increase in the data center.” (Sturdevant, 2008). Where a virus would previously attack a single operating system running on a physical host, a virus can land on the host or any of its virtualized guests. The potential of creating an army of infected systems is possible now with just a single physical host. A Windows operating system running in a virtual machine is just as vulnerable to flaws and exploits as the same operating system running on a physical host. “At a broad level, virtualized environments require the same physical and network security precautions as any non-virtualized IT resource.” (Peterson, 2007). “[…] because of the rush to adopt virtualization for server consolidation, many security issues are overlooked and best practices are not applied.” There are fundamental problems for IT administrators adopting virtualization technology within their labs and data centers. Products such as VMware have internal virtual networks that exist only within the host system. This network allows the virtualized systems and the host to communicate without having the use the external, physical network. The difficulty is that monitoring the internal, virtual network requires the installation of tools that are designed for virtualized systems. Edwards (2009) points out the need for management tools to monitor communication among virtual machines and their host operating system in detail. Each host would require monitoring tools versus a single installation on a network of only physical systems. Discovery and management of virtualized systems will place more burdens on IT staff according to Tiller (2006). The ease with which virtual machines can be instantiated, relocated and destroyed will require a “quantum shift in security strategy and willingness to adapt." As the popularity of virtualization on a smaller scale has increased, a new class of attack on virtual machines and their host virtual machine managers has received more attention. Virtual machines have unique hardware signatures that can be used to identify them and help an attacker tailor an exploit. “As it is, virtualization vendors have some work to do to protect virtual machine instances from being discovered as virtual.” (Yager, 2006). The CPU model and various device drivers loaded by the operating system can identify a virtualized system. In fact, many virtualization vendors supply device drivers for guest operating systems to take better advantage of the virtualized environment. These device drivers are just as susceptible to flaws and vulnerabilities as their non-virtualized counterparts are. The host virtual machine managers, also known as hypervisors are being targeted as well by new types of attacks. Vijayan (2007) points out that dedicated hypervisors, running directly above the hardware of a computer can be used to attack the operating systems and applications it hosts with little or no possibility of detection. The SubVirt research project by University of Michigan and Microsoft uses virtual machine technology to install a rootkit to take control of multiple virtual machines. Finally, attacks using virtualization technology does not require hypervisor or virtual machine manager software at all. Technology present in today microprocessors that is utilized by hypervisors can also be utilized by malware, such as rootkits and viruses to take over a machine at the lowest level of control possible. “Security researcher Joanna Rutkowska presented a proof of concept attack known as ‘blue pill’ in 2006, that she said virtualized an operating system and was undetectable. […] Rutkowska and other have continued with such research, and this year she posited a new attack focusing on hypervisors.” (Bradbury, 2008). Virtualization is not a new to information technology. It dates back to over four decades to the early mainframes and large storage systems to protect and better utilize available computing resources. As this paper discussed virtualization technology, it detailed the kinds, benefits and security liabilities of the technology. Information about the nature of attacks against hosts and guests in a virtualized infrastructure was presented. New virtualization products for modern powerful servers and desktop hardware are helping satisfy the renewed interest in making better use of resources during tightening budgets. The benefits of this updated technology must be weighed against the challenges of securing and protecting the proliferation of virtual machines. Adaptation and transformation of policies and approach within IT organizations must be proactive to stay ahead of the disruptive change currently taking place with virtualization. References Bradbury, D. (2008). Virtually secure? Engineering & Technology. 8 November - 21 November, 2008. Pg. 54. Burt, J., Spooner, J. G. (2006). Virtualization edges toward PCs. eWeek. February 20, 2006. Pg. 24. Cardwell, T. (2007). Virtualization: an overview of the hottest technology that is changing the way we use computers. www.japaninc.com. November/December, 2007. Pg. 26. Duntemann, J. (2005). Inside the virtual machine. PC Magazine. September 20, 2005. Pg. 66. Edwards, J. (2009). Securing your virtualized environment. Computerworld. March 16, 2009. Pg. 26. Ferguson, S. (2007). IBM launches new virtualization tools. eWeek. February 12/19, 2007. Pg. 18. Peterson, J. (2007). Security rules have changed. Communications News. May, 2007. Pg. 18. PowerVM. (2009). IBM PowerVM: The virtualization platform for UNIX, Linux and IBM i clients. Retrieved July 25, 2009 from http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/virtualization/index.html. Sturdevant, C. (2008). Security in a virtualized world. eWeek. September 22, 2008. Pg. 35. Tiller, J. (2006). Virtual security: the new security tool? Information Systems Security. July/August, 2006. Pg. 2. Wong, W. (2005). Platforms strive for virtual security. Electronic Design. August 4, 2005. Pg. 44. Yager, T. (2006). Virtualization and security. Infoworld. November 20, 2006. Pg. 16. Vijayan, J. (2007). Virtualization increases IT security pressures. Computerworld. August 27, 2007. Pg. 14.

This research paper explores the use of cryptography in database security. It specifically covers applications of encryption in authentication, transmission of data between client and server, and protection of stored content. This paper begins with an overview of encryption techniques, specifically symmetric and asymmetric encryption. It follows with a specific discussion about the use of cryptography in database solutions. The paper concludes with a short summary of commercial solutions intended for increasing the security of database content and client/server transactions. Whitfield Diffie, a cryptographic researcher and Sun Microsystems CSO says, “Cryptography is the most flexible way we know of protecting [data and] communications in channels that we don’t control.” (Carpenter, 2007). Cryptography is “the enciphering [encryption] and deciphering [decryption] of messages in secret code or cipher; the computerized encoding and decoding of information.” (CRYPTO, 2009). There are two primary means of encryption in use today. They are symmetric key encryption and asymmetric key encryption. Symmetric key encryption uses a single key to encrypt and decrypt information. Asymmetric key encryption, also known as public key cryptography uses two keys - one to encrypt information and a second key to decrypt information. In addition to encryption and decryption, public-key cryptography can be used to create and verify digital signatures of blocks of text or binary data without encrypting them. A digital signature is a small block of information cryptographically generated from content, like an email message or an installation program for software. The private key in the asymmetric solution can be used to create a digital signature of data, while the public key verifies the integrity of data and related digital signature that was created using the private key. The main advantage of public key cryptography over the symmetric key system is that the public key can be given away, as the name implies - made public. Anyone with a public key can encrypt a message and only the holder of the matching private key can decrypt that message. In the symmetric system, all parties must hold the same key. Public key cryptography can be used to verify the identity of an individual, application or computer system. As a simple example, let us say I have an asymmetric key pair and provide you with my public key. You can be a human or a software application. As long as I keep my private key protected so that no one else can obtain it, only I can generate a digital signature that you can use with my public key to prove mathematically that the signature only came from me. This approach is much more robust and less susceptible to attack than the traditional username and password approach. Application of cryptography does not come without the overhead of ongoing management of the technology. In a past interview (Carpenter, 2007), Whitfield Diffie, a co-inventor of public key cryptography says the main detractor from widespread adoption of strong encryption within I.T. infrastructures is key management - the small strings of data that keep encrypted data from being deciphered. Proper integration of cryptographic technologies into a database infrastructure can provide protection beyond username and password authentication and authorization. It can absolutely prevent anyone from reading sensitive data during transmission or stored on media. Some U.S. government standards require the use of encryption for stored and transmitted personal information. Grimes (2006) details the recent laws passed in the United States requiring the protection of personal data. These laws include the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for protection of consumer financial data, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act for personal health-related data, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which gives broad legal protection to electronically transmitted data. As discussed above, public key cryptography can be used to authenticate a person, application or computer using digital signature technology. A database management system enhanced to use public keys for authentication would store those keys and associate them with specific users. The client would use their private key to sign a small block of data that was randomly chosen by the server. The client would return a digital signature of that data, which the server could verify using the stored public keys of the various users. A verification match would identify the specific user. The second application of encryption technology in database security is used to protect transmission of data between a client and server. The client may be a web-based application running on a separate server and communicating over a local network, or it may be a fat-client located in another department or at some other location on the Internet. A technology called TLS can be used to provide confidentiality of all communications between the client and server, i.e. the database connection. “Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols that provide security and data integrity for communications over networks such as the Internet.” (TLS, 2009). Web servers and browsers use the TLS protocol to protect data transmissions such as credit card numbers or other personal information. The technology can be used to protect any data transmission for any type of client-server solution, include database systems. TLS also has authentication capability using public key cryptography. This type of authentication would only allow known public keys to make a connection. This approach is not integrated at a higher level in the solution, such as the application level. Finally, cryptography can be used to protect the entire content of database storage, specific tables or columns of table data. Encrypting stored content can protect sensitive data from access within the database management system, through loss of the storage media, and an external process that reads raw data blocks from the media. The extent to which stored content is encrypted must be weighed against the overhead of encrypting and decrypting data for transaction-intense systems. Britt (2006) stresses the importance of selectively encrypting only those portions of the content that are evaluated to be a security risk if released into the public. He says a “[…] misconception is that adding encryption will put a tremendous strain on database performance during queries and loads.” This type of protection often uses symmetric key encryption because it is much faster than the public key solution. Marwitz (2008) describes several levels of database content encryption available in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008. SQL Server 2008 provides the ability to use public key authentication directly in the access control subsystem. Additionally, the entire database server storage, individual databases and table columns can be encrypted using public key encryption. (SQLS, 2009). Table columns, such as those used to store social security numbers, credit card number, or any other sensitive personal information are a good choice for performance sensitive systems. Use of this capability means that the only way to obtain access to the unencrypted data within a column of a database table protected in this manner is to use the private key of an individual who has been granted access. The user’s private key is used to authenticate and gain access to information in the database. Extra protection is gained since the private key is never co-located with the encrypted data. IBM’s DB2 product supports a number of different cryptographic capabilities and attempts to leverage as many of those capabilities that are present in the hosting operating system - Intel-based, minicomputer or mainframe. Authentication to the database from a client can be performed over a variety of encrypted connection types or using Kerberos key exchange. DB2 also supports the concept of authentication plug-ins that can be used with encrypted connections. After authentication has succeeded, DB2 can provide client-server data transmission over a TLS connection and optionally validate the connection using public key cryptography. Like Microsoft SQL Server, the most recent releases of DB2 can encrypt the entire storage area, single databases, or specific columns within the database. (DB2, 2009). This paper provided a broad survey of how cryptographic technologies can raise the security posture of database solutions. Cryptography is becoming a common tool to solve many problems of privacy and protection of sensitive information in growing warehouses of online personal information. This paper described the use of cryptography in database client authentication, transmission of transaction data, and protection of stored content. Two commercial products’ cryptographic capabilities were explored in the concluding discussion. There are more commercial, free and open source solutions for protecting database systems not mentioned in this paper. As citizens and government continue to place pressure on institutions to protect private information, expect to see the landscape of cryptographic technologies for database management systems expand. References Britt, P. (2006). The encryption code. Information Today. March 2006, vol. 23, issue 3. Carpenter, J. (2007). The grill: an interview with Whitfield Diffie. Computerworld. August 27, 2007. Page 24. CRYPTO. (2009). Definition of cryptography. Retrieved 18 July 2009 from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cryptography. DB2. (2009). DB2 Security Model Overview. Retrieved 18 July 2009 from http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9r7/topic/com.ibm.db2.luw.admin.sec.doc/doc/c0021804.html. Grimes, R. A. (2006). End-to-end encryption strategies. Infoworld. September 4, 2006. Page 31. Marwitz, C. (2008). Database encryption solutions: protect your databases - and your company - from attacks and leaks. SQL Server Magazine. September 2008. SQLS. (2009). Cryptography in SQL Server. Retrieved 18 July 2009 from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc837966.aspx. TLS. (2009). Transport layer security. Retrieved 18 July 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security.

This research paper explores the use of formal methods in software engineering to design reliable and secure software systems. Formal methods are mathematically focused languages or visual notations to specify behavior, algorithms or other types of program execution while remaining technology independent. This paper provides a brief overview of formal methods and several of the more popular implementations of formal methods in use today for software and systems development. It presents the benefits and drawbacks to formal methods, including reasons why formal methods are not commonplace for all software development. The precision of formal methods provides some opportunity for automation in the software development lifecycle including code generation and automated testing. An exploration of several problem domains where formal methods are often applied is provided. The paper concludes with discussion on the viability of formal methods as a continuing tool of software engineering. Hinchey (2008) defines formal methods as “[…] a specification notation with formal semantics, along with a deductive apparatus for reasoning, is used to specify, design, analyze, and ultimately implement a hardware or software (or hybrid) system.” Formal methods have a relationship to some of the earliest research in algorithms and automated computation. Pure mathematics and symbolic languages were the sole means of algorithmic expression before general-purpose software languages and microprocessors. One such early incarnation of a language for computation was the Turing machine, conceived by Alan Turing in 1936. Turing machines are “[…] simple abstract computational devices intended to help investigate the extent and limitations of what can be computed.” (TM, 2009). Before automated computation was truly possible, many scientific minds were working on ways to direct a computational machine in precise ways. Traditionally, formal methods are used in the specification and development of systems requiring high dependability, such as communication, flight control and life support. Something is dependable if its performance is constant. Reliability is the degree to which something is accurate, stable, and consistent. Security is a guarantee against loss or harm. Hanmer (2007) discusses the relationship between security and dependability, and the common quality attributes of the two when developing a system. He states that something is dependable if it exhibits reliability, maintainability, availability and integrity. Something is secure if it exhibits availability, integrity and confidentiality. The commonality between the two sets is availability and integrity. In the information technology world, the opposite of these two qualities are downtime and inconsistency - something we often see today resulting from informal software specification and lackluster development processes. As mentioned above, formal methods can be applied in the phases of specification, design, implementation or verification of software systems. There is potential use for formal methods throughout the entire development lifecycle. Requirements for software systems typically come from stakeholders in the domain in which the software is used, such as aerospace or finance. Those requirements are provided in human-readable form and need an initial transformation into a more precise language. Software designers can refine the formal specification through a series of iterations and deliver them to developers for implementation. The architecture, functionality and quality attributes of the software can be checked against the formal specifications during peer reviews with other designers and developers. Finally, the teams responsible for testing and verification of the system’s proper operation can use the formal specifications as scripts in developing test suites for automated or manual execution. The specifications from formal methods can be used for more than documentation of a system’s requirements and behavior. The precision in many formal methods allows the utilization of automation to reduce human error and increase consistency in the delivery of the final product. Translation of some or all of formal method languages into general-purpose computer source languages is possible, freeing the developers to concentrate on interesting refinements and optimization of the code, versus laboriously writing every line by hand. Stotts (2002) describes their project in which JUnit test cases were generated from formal method specifications. The automated approach enabled them “[…] to generate more test methods than a programmer would by following the basic JUnit practice, but our preliminary experiments show this extra work produces test suites that are more thorough and more effective at uncovering defects.” The formal methods research team at NASA Langley Research Center has developed a domain-specific formal method language called Abstract Plan Preparation Language. The research team focus and creation of the language is, “[…] to simplify the formal analysis and specification of planning problems that are intended for safety-critical applications such as power management or automated rendezvous in future manned spacecraft.” (Butler, 2006). There are economic disadvantages of applying formal methods in software development projects. Formal methods are typically more mathematically intensive than flowcharts or other modeling notations. They are also more precise and rigorous which result in more time spent expressing the solution using a formal method notation than a visual modeling language. A developer experienced in application-level design and implementation may have less education in computational mathematics required to work with formal method notation. A primary complaint from designers and developers is that the solution must be specified twice: once in the formal method notation and again in the software language. The same argument persists in the visual modeling community, which does embrace the use of model transformation to source code to reduce the duplication of effort. The availability of formal method transformation tools to generate source code helps eliminate this issue as a recurring reason not to use formal methods. Several formal methods are popular today, including Abstract State Machines, B-Method, Petri Nets and Z (zed) notation. Petri nets date back to 1939, Z was introduced in 1977, abstract state machines in the 1980s and B-Method is the most recent from the 1990s. Petri nets are found in the analysis of workflows, concurrency and process control. The Z formal method language is based on notations from axiomatic set theory, lambda calculus and first-order predicate logic. (Z, 2009). It was standardized by ISO in 2002. Abstract state machines resemble pseudo-code and are easy to translate into software languages. Several tools exist to verify and execute abstract state machine code, including CoreASM available on SourceForge.net. Finally, B-Method is a lower-level specification language with a wide range of tool support. It is popular in the European development community and has been used to develop safety systems for the Paris Metro rail line. (BMETH, 2009). The use of formal methods as a way of increasing software dependability and security remains strong in industries where even partial failure can result in unacceptable loss of money, time and most importantly, life. The choice of applying formal methods in a development project is often an economic, risk-based decision. There will continue to be application programs without the budget or convenience of time to add the extra process and labor required to transform requirements into formal method specifications and then into source code. However, the pattern of formal method use remains consistent in safety and security critical systems. The development and refinement of formal methods continues into this decade, most recently with the standardization of the Z method by ISO. The activity surrounding tooling and automation to support formal methods in during the development lifecycle appears to be growing. Perhaps the software industry is closing on a point of balance among formality in specification, time to market and automation in solution development. References ASM. (2009). Abstract State Machines. Retrieved 11 July 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_State_Machines. BMETH. (2009). B-Method. Retrieved 11 July 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-Method. Butler, R. W. (2006). An Abstract Plan Preparation Language. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. NASA/TM-2006-214518. Retrieved 11 July 2009 from http://shemesh.larc.nasa.gov/fm/papers/Butler-TM-2006-214518-Abstract-Plan.pdf. Hanmer, R. S., McBride, D. T., Mendiratta, V. B. (2007). Comparing Reliability and Security: Concepts, Requirements, and Techniques. Bell Labs Technical Journal 12(3), 65–78 (2007). Hinchey, M., Jackson, M., Cousot, P., Cook, B., Bowen, J. P., Margaria, T. (2008). Software Engineering and Formal Methods. Communications of the ACM, 51(9). September 2008. TM. (2009). Turing machine. Retrieved 11 July 2009 from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/. Stotts, D., Lindsey, M., Antley, A. (2002). An Informal Formal Method for Systematic JUnit Test Case Generation. Technical Report TR02-012. Department of Computer Science, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved 11 July 2009 from http://rockfish.cs.unc.edu/pubs/TR02-012.pdf. Z. (2009). Z notation. Retrieved 11 July 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_notation.