PK on Security & Privacy

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Book review: "Why Privacy Matters"

Neil Richards' book "Why Privacy Matters" has been published in 2021.
He opens his book by explaining how privacy is treated nowadays. The notion of "data as the new oil" hinges on the idea that just as oil was the driving factor behind the industrial revolution, data is the driver behind our current information age. That means that data is the fuel which makes all the innovations of today run. Also, data is very valuable, just like oil was (and still is) for "traditional" industries.

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k-anonymity

Today's blog post is about an important concept regarding database anonymization called k-anonymity.
Before I can explain what k-anonymity means, I need to explain what quasi identifiers are.
A person has several personally identifiable information about themselves, such as age, address, and IP.

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Book review: "Privacy as Trust"

Ari Ezra Waldman's book "Privacy as Trust" has been released in 2018.
He starts the book by explaining a little bit about the history of privacy. Ari explains that the first notions of privacy come from the philosophers John Locke in the 17th century and, about 100 years later, Immanuel Kant.

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Setting PATH for Linux, Mac, and Windows

Since I was tired of looking it up anew everytime I need to manipulate the PATH variable, I decided to write a guide for all operating systems on how to add a folder to the PATH environment variable. Here is a concise list of how to add directories to path for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

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The Privacy Paradox

The privacy paradox states that users' behavior is not in line with their stated privacy preferences.
For example, users might say that they are very concerned about their privacy; however, they willingly give away their personal data in exchange for perceived benefits.
In this blog post I will go through the history of the paradox, studies that have confirmed it, and finally present counter arguments to its validity.

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Right-to-left override attack

A right-to-left override (RTLO) attack can mask filtypes by seemingly changing the file extension of an executable file to, e.g., a pdf-file.
Right-to-left is the unicode character U+202E. The intention of this character is to change the direction of a text. This is used, e.g., for languages that are written from right-to-left. This character can however also be used to disguise file extensions. In this post I will detail the attack and how to mitigate it.

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