David Choffnes

289 Followers
313 Following
66 Posts
Professor in Computer Science at @Northeastern. I work on privacy, IoT, networking, security, and mobile. Avid cyclist and amateur coffee roaster. He/him
Websitehttps://david.choffnes.com

RE: https://discuss.systems/@acm_imc/116283975958230734

Students and other early-career researchers! Being on a shadow TPC is a great way to learn what actually happens when you submit a paper, and @acm_imc is a great conference!

Super interesting work from my graduated PhD student Talha. Ends up GenAI hallucinations are good for *something*!

https://bsky.app/profile/talhaparacha.com/post/3ma4vqqczps2d

paraacha (@talhaparacha.com)

Super excited to share that I'll present our latest research at ICSE 2026. Our work (co-authors Kyle Posluns, @kevin.borgolte.me, @lindorfer.in, and @proffnes.discuss.systems.ap.brid.gy) explores the use of language models for software testing in TLS certificate validation logic. 1/n

Bluesky Social

PSA from 404 Media: you can opt-out of a data broker selling your flight travel data to the government to be searched without a warrant. Here's how I did it. This is ARC, the data broker owned by major U.S. airlines like United, Delta, American, etc

https://www.404media.co/how-to-opt-out-of-airlines-selling-your-travel-data-to-the-government/

How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government

The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), owned by major U.S. airlines, collects billions of ticketing records and sells them to the government to be searched without a warrant. I managed to opt-out of that data selling.

404 Media

Are airlines moving toward individualized pricing? We have reasons to be skeptical about their responses so far.

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/tech-institute/insights/tech-brief-airplane-response/

Tech Brief: Airplane Response

Kicking off our workshop on Policy-Relevant Privacy Reseach (PR2), colocated with @PET_Symposium
2025 in DC: https://pr2.technologypolicyworkshop.org

With Athina Markopoulou and Zubair Shafiq

šŸ˜ž

Exclusive: #NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions | Science | AAAS
https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-nsf-faces-radical-shake-officials-abolish-its-37-divisions

a student interrupted the start of my lecture today to say goodbye bc their visa was revoked and they needed to leave the country immediately. great job we’ve done everyone
I wrote a postmortem of the University of Washington harassment investigation. I don’t get into details but I do explain my perspective and name the men involved, plus some lessons learned at the end. https://irenezhang.net/blog/2025/03/04/uw-harassment.html
Irene Y. Zhang: The Moral Implications of Being a Moderately Successful Computer Scientist and a Woman

So here’s a simple request to Apple. Apple iMessage needs to enable ā€œdisappearing messages.ā€ And they need to do it soon. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2025/03/01/dear-apple-add-disappearing-messages-to-imessage-right-now/
Dear Apple: add ā€œDisappearing Messagesā€ to iMessage right now

This is a cryptography blog and I always feel the need to apologize for any post that isn’t ā€œstraight cryptography.ā€ I’m actually getting a little tired of apologizing for i…

A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering
Net neutrality is fundamental to user choice, access to information, and free expression online. Now, more than ever, individual states must pass their own net neutrality laws, or defend the ones they have on the books. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/sixth-circuit-rules-against-net-neutrality-eff-will-continue-fight
Sixth Circuit Rules Against Net Neutrality; EFF Will Continue to Fight

Last week, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the FCC, rejecting its authority to classify broadband as a Title II ā€œtelecommunications service.ā€ In doing so, the court removed net neutrality protections for all Americans and took away the FCC’s ability to meaningfully regulate...

Electronic Frontier Foundation