Computer Science | Grinnell College

This week's discussion topic was suggested by an alumna, who writes:

Recently an NPM package author handed over control of his open source project to a stranger who promised to maintain the package for future users. The stranger added malicious code to the package, which was then downloaded by millions of users. This raises questions about responsibility in the open source world. What responsibilities does the owner of an open source project hold? What responsibilities are up to the user? What can developers do to utilize open source projects in a safe and secure manner?

There are two recommended readings for the CS Table discussion; the first is an account of the recent event we’ll discuss, and the second is a perspective on security and open source from Bruce Schneier, written in 1999.

• Check your repos... Crypto-coin-stealing code sneaks into fairly popular NPM lib. Thomas Claburn. The Register. 26 Nov 2018.
• Open Source and Security. Bruce Schneier. Counterplane Security and schneier.com. 15 Sept 1999.

You may also find these resources helpful or informative as you prepare for our discussion:

• Core Infrastructure Initiative. The Linux Foundation.
• What is NPM and why do I need it? Stack Overflow thread.
• The GitHub issue for the exploit that was discovered.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:50pm in JRC 224C (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

Thursday, November 15, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 3821
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Science 3817)

Professors Anya Vostinar and Charlie Curtsinger will discuss what graduate school in computer science is like, why you might consider it, and how to choose and apply to graduate programs. There will be ample time for discussion, so come prepared with questions.

This week at CS Table we will have an informal discussion led by the Computer Science SEPC.

• The structure of the major
• Classes at Grinnell (in and out of the department)
• What does all this mean for pre-registration?

We can also answer other basic questions related to declaring or advising.

No faculty will be present in order to ensure students are comfortable asking questions. Come to hear or share student perspectives and take time out of your week to plan ahead!

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:50pm in JRC 224C (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

This week we’ll look at an interesting article that compares the situations for janitors at two tech companies in two different eras: Kodak in the 1980s, and Apple in 2017. The article paints an interesting picture of how employment at tech companies has changed over the last four decades. In addition to the specifics in the article, I hope we’ll have an opportunity to discuss the role that tech companies (or any employer) might play in economic inequality, the availability of blue-collar jobs, and the changing landscape of career opportunities.

To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now. Neil Irwin. The New York Times. 3 Sept 2017.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:50pm in JRC 224C (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

In light of the upcoming midterm elections we’ll look at some of the challenges in conducting a secure and verifiable elections with electronic voting systems.

• The Crisis of Election Security. Kim Zetter. New York Times Magazine. 26 Sept 2018.
• For the Next Election, Don’t Recount the Vote. Encrypt it. Andy Greenberg. Wired. 27 Jan 2017.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:50pm in JRC 224C (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

Thursday, October 18, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 3821
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Science 3817)

Myra B. Cohen, Lanh and Oanh Nguyen Endowed Chair of Software Engineering at Iowa State University, presents this Thursday Extra.

Software testing researchers have developed many sophisticated techniques to model and test complex and highly configurable systems. These techniques need to be automated and scalable to work on modern software applications, which has led researchers to use bio-inspired approaches that mimic nature, such as evolutionary algorithms. While this research continues to advance the state of the art in software testing, there is a bigger opportunity to leverage what has been learned outside of the boundaries of software testing.

Cohen will discuss some of her research on software testing and then show how they have used techniques built for software testing on living systems. Her recent work flips the nature-inspired paradigm for assurance and prediction of both natural and synthetically engineered biological organisms.

We will discuss two articles that describe the experiences of two blind software engineers. My hope is that our discussion will wander into a broader consideration of accessibility, the challenges that people with disabilities face when they work in the computing industry, and the responsibilities of all software developers to consider accessibility.

• Software Development at 450 Words per Minute. Tuukka Ojala. Vincit Blog. 28 Aug 2017.
• What It’s Like to be a Blind Software Engineer at Amazon. Lydia Dishman. Fast Company. 11 April 2018.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:50pm in JRC 224C (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

On Thursday, October 11, Mattori Birnbaum, Linh Bui, Zoe Grubbs, Hadley Luker, and Xinya Yang will give a talk on their summer 2018 Mentored Advanced Project:

Identifying performance problems in code is crucial for software developers. Even small inefficiencies can incur large costs in complex, long-running systems. While programmers can tune their programs by using efficient algorithms and data structures, hardware resources such as caches and branch predictors can still be a major source of inefficiency. Such inefficient uses of hardware resources are rarely obvious in the program's source code.

During summer 2018, we developed a tool called AnaLysis of EXecution (ALEX) to help developers diagnose performance problems. ALEX gathers and displays performance data from unmodified programs run on GNU/Linux. Our visualization helps developers quickly find patterns of poor performance, and the accompanying analysis leads developers to the relevant source code. In our talk, we will demonstrate how ALEX can help developers, explain how it works, and discuss our summer research experience.

At 4:00 p.m., refreshments will be served in the Computer Science Commons. The talk, "Finding Performance Problems with ALEX," will begin at 4:15 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

We will discuss a recent report from Bloomberg about a security breach in the hardware supply chain for servers used by almost 30 major US-based companies. Bloomberg’s reporting suggests that a group within the Chinese government’s intelligence agency were able to add a small chip to motherboards manufactured for SuperMicro, a major server hardware supplier in the US. These chips apparently inject malicious code into the server’s operating system, allowing hackers to remotely access compromised servers and bypass security controls within the operating system. We will discuss the mechanisms used to carry out these attacks, the differences between hardware- and software-based exploits, consider the impacts of such an attack, and discuss possible ways to mitigate attacks like this one in the future.

Readings include Bloomberg's original reporting (The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies, J. Robertson and M. Riley, Bloomberg Businessweek, 4 Oct 2018) and two articles providing some additional perspective on this story, which has not yet been independently confirmed (The China SuperMicro Hack: About That Bloomberg Report, N. Weaver, Lawfare, 4 Oct 2018, and Decoding the Chinese SuperMicro super spy-chip scandal: What do we know – and who is telling the truth? K. McCarthy, The Register, 4 Oct 2018.)

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:45pm in JRC 224C (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

Thursday, October 4, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 2022 (note the room is different than usual)

Careers in Computer Science and Informal Talk by Grinnell CS Alumni
Cassie Koomjian '05, Ian Young '08, Terian Koscik '12, and Alex Leach '06 talk about their careers and experiences in the software design and development field.