Andrea Matwyshyn

Professor, law and engineering, Penn State; Founding Director, PILOT lab & @manglonalab

Last Notes

2025-07-19 10:57:08 GMT

"Discussions about technology for its own sake, without considering its societal consequences, are impossible." CCC, April 6, 2025 https://www.ccc.de/en/club/unvereinbarkeitserklaerung-des-ccc

2024-11-27 13:58:53 GMT

"The Department [of Justice] has not yet announced its goals for the next 2-year period covering FYs 2024-2025. However, we believe...existing metrics for ransomware do not capture the effectiveness of its disruptive activities against malicious actors. Regardless of whether the Department maintains ransomware as a priority goal, it should determine which metrics are most impactful to ensure they capture the effectiveness of its actions to combat the ransomware threat" https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/24-107.pdf

2024-09-10 22:28:31 GMT

"During a scorching, relentless wildfire season, Facebook has been flagging and removing dozens of posts containing links and screenshots from Watch Duty, a widely relied-upon wildfire alert app, as well as from federal and state agencies, according to interviews and Facebook conversations with nearly 20 residents, Facebook users and moderators, as well as employees from disaster response organizations. " https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/10/facebook-is-blocking-emergency-warnings-wildfires-roar-through-west/

2024-09-06 10:42:17 GMT

"The heart of what Four Thieves has built is called Chemhacktica, a forked version of an MIT-DARPA project called ASKOS that uses machine learning to map out chemical pathways for molecule synthesis, and to suggest potential chemical reactions that would yield the molecule that you want to make." https://www.404media.co/right-to-repair-for-your-body-the-rise-of-diy-pirated-medicine/

2024-07-30 19:03:59 GMT

Are you really into technology competition policy or stories about 50 year old dust on dot matrix printouts? If so, you may enjoy this very nerdy conversation about my archival research on the U.S. v. IBM trial transcripts at the Hagley Museum (and how merging better data science into Hart-Scott-Rodino analysis offers a path that we have not yet adequately explored). https://soundcloud.com/hagley_library/techno-redux-technology-competition-policy-lessons-from-the-us-vs-ibm-trial-with-andrea-matwyshyn

2024-07-22 20:04:39 GMT

Looking to have policy impact in tech? Consider a Congressional Innovation Fellowship https://www.techcongress.io/apply

2024-07-20 02:05:33 GMT

RIGHT QUESTION: "According to your statement, it was a single content update that has managed to shut down air travel, credit card payment systems, banks, broadcasts, streetlights, 911 emergency around the globe. Why is there not some sort of redundancy or some sort of backup? How is it that one single software bug can have such a profound and immediate impact?" https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/crowdstrike-ceo-we-know-what-the-issue-is-and-are-resolving-it/vi-BB1qgUZ5?ocid=socialshare

2024-07-20 00:32:34 GMT

"Falcon requires permission to update itself automatically and regularly, since CrowdStrike is constantly adding detections to the system to defend against new and evolving threats. The downside of this arrangement, though, is the risk that this system, which is meant to enhance security and stability, could end up undermining it instead." https://www.wired.com/story/crowdstrike-outage-update-windows/

2024-07-19 17:45:35 GMT

Security bootloop you say? I'm just going to leave this here...
"In order to escape the computer security bootloop, Congress can create a new technology safety regulator of last resort—the Bureau of Technology Safety (BoTS)."
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/it-s-morning-again-in-pennsylvania-rebooting-computer-security-through-a-bureau-of-technology-safety

2024-07-19 17:39:28 GMT

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/814/371/078/792/996/original/79057a1630dfaa50.png

2024-05-20 14:27:00 GMT

"The amendments require covered institutions to develop, implement, and maintain written policies and procedures for an incident response program ...[and] to provide notice...not later than 30 days, after becoming aware that an incident... The notice must include details about the incident, the breached data, and how affected individuals can respond to the breach to protect themselves." https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2024-58?ref=news.risky.biz

2024-05-05 04:32:22 GMT

"Carl Hunter was driving his Tesla Model S home on a highway northeast of Seattle last month. The Autopilot system was turned on and he was looking at his phone, Hunter later told police. He heard a bang as the vehicle lurched forward, ramming into a motorbike...Police took Hunter, the Tesla driver into custody, jailing him on a vehicular homicide charge under existing distracted driving laws." https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2024/05/04/tesla-autopilot-recall-crashes-deaths-nhtsa/

2024-03-30 21:24:55 GMT

Thank you to ONCD for inviting me to participate in a workshop on software liability earlier this week. The read out is here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/03/27/readout-software-liability-symposium/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/186/698/729/538/972/original/fc02b28cf04a468c.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/186/701/822/532/106/original/ed18046cced2ec2d.jpeg

2024-03-12 20:44:43 GMT

First the beer, now THE COFFEE!? What's next? Critical frites, chocolate, and waffle infrastructure? https://therecord.media/koffie-beyers-cyberattack-coffee-roaster-duvel-belgium

2023-06-26 23:15:41 GMT

"Bloomberg used Stable Diffusion to generate thousands of images related to job titles...Women made up a tiny fraction of the images generated for the keyword “judge” — about 3% — when in reality 34% of US judges are women...Because it simultaneously amplifies both gender and racial stereotypes, Stable Diffusion tends to produce its most skewed representations of reality when it comes to women with darker skin" https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-generative-ai-bias/?sref=xuVirdpv&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business