SPOOKY

It's Halloween!! In honor of this spooky holiday, I'm writing an article about how motion detection technology can be used to make automated haunted houses. Currently, for good haunted houses, you need actors that will jump out at you as you pass by. With motion detection and robotics, there could be (spooky) jump scares without the need for human actors. But how does motion detection work? Let's find out!
A basic form of motion detection is called a "radar-based motion detector". This device sends and receives ultrasonic sound waves. If the waves that are received are different than the waves that were sent out, motion has been detected. A more advanced kind of motion detector is called a "passive infared (PIR)" motion detector. When a human walks in front of the sensor, it detects a sharp increase in infared energy.

That's great and all, but how does it relate to computer science? When browsing the web for information about motion detection and haunted houses, I found an example of a short piece of code you could use to activate your special effects! Everything needs to be digital, so codes and programs are needed to take the information from the motion detectors and create some special effects. The haunted house would also use robots in place of the human actors to scare the customers. The signals from the motion detectors would be sent to the robots, which are coded to do a specific action, like jump out into the room. Sounds and lighting would also work similarly, and would require the use of computer science and coding in order to work properly. Another kind of technology being used in haunted houses is virtual reality and augmented reality. People would wear the virtual reality goggles as they walk through a physical house. So in the near future, all haunted houses may be completely run by technology and computing. Spooky!
_________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.aforgenet.com/framework/samples/computer_vision.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/blog/2016/08/universal-orlandos-halloween-horror-nights-to.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_detector
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWum0VRc6MI

Drone hacking

Drones are becoming widely popular in society today, mainly to take cool aerial videos or pictures. Eventually these drones could deliver packages much faster than current delivery systems! The downside of these drones, however, is that people have begun to develop software that can hack into and take them over. Although this might not be a huge problem with just the drones that take fun pictures, these problems can be seen on a much larger scale.

The ability that some people have to hack into these drones is so concerning because by using an adaptation of the same software, they can hack into the large unmanned aerial vehicles used in the military.

So how do they do it? Essentially, these drones can be seen as flying computers so they can be hacked into just like any other computer can. The software used is a type of malware called Maldrone. Using this program, the hackers can acquire the data from the drone or take over physical control of the machine. The malware is programmed into other drones to fly around and hack into whatever drones it can find using GPS.

Another method to hack into and essentially disable drones is by messing with their GPS. They start by breaking the lines of communication with the drone and whoever is flying it. The drone will then switch to autopilot mode and look to GPS to find where to fly. By hacking into the computer on the drone and changing the coordinates of the destination, people can get these drones to fly wherever they want.

example of a drone GPS controlled by an iPhone

The good thing is that people are aware of this hacking and are working to make drones less vulnerable to attack by changing the location of GPS receivers or changing the programming language completely. This is obviously a problem, so hopefully the security on these devices can be improved!
_______________________________________________________________________________
http://techgadgetcentral.com/2015/10/11/top-5-drone-models-in-2015/
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/hack-drone.htm
http://blog.al.com/huntsville-times-business/2010/11/army_unmanned_aircraft_systems.html
http://www.droneexperienceid.com/drone/important-details-gps-drone.html

Data Encryption

For those people who like to online shop, like me, you need to give important and secret information like addresses and credit card numbers to websites. But how are websites able to protect this information from hackers? Keep reading and I'll tell you!

This is done through a process called "data encryption", which converts the information into a code that can only be deciphered by the computer or person with a key. Although the idea of using secret codes dates all the way back to 1900 B.C., data encryption to protect information on computers became popularized around 1976. Computers use algorithms as a guide for encryption, and the means by which the information is actually converted into the code. There are two main ways this is done: symmetric-key encryption and public-key encryption.

Symmetric-key encryption requires that you know where the information will be sent so that the receiving computer can be prepared with the key to decipher the code. The first computer creates a unique key, translates the information into an unreadable message, sends the message to another computer, and the other computer uses the key to translate the message back to the original information. Today, most computers use the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) which creates keys that are either 128-, 192-, or 256-bits which, in its most basic form, can have more than 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 key combinations. 

Public-key encryption is more secure because it requires the use of two different keys to crack the code, the public key, like in symmetric-key encryption, and also a private-key, specific to every computer. The private key is based on prime numbers which makes it extremely secure, considering there is an infinite amount of prime numbers. The key itself is encrypted into a different message so that only computers' private keys can decode it. Then using the decoded key, the original information is also deciphered. 

These codes can get extremely extremely complex to decode, basically impossible. I'm thankful for it so now I can order as many shoes as I want online and not have my credit card information stolen! Neat!
______________________________________________________________________________
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/nextavenue/files/2013/01/7_steps_to_protect_your_online_security_148650499.jpg
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/encryption5.htm
https://www.digicert.com/ssl-cryptography.htm

Facial recognition in airports

Seeing as it is fall break and many people are traveling, I thought I would try and write a relevant blog post this week. As a plan to increase airport security, facial recognition will be used in order to crack down on identity fraud. People using fake passports will no longer fly under the radar. People traveling from visa waiver countries will be required to have photos taken. This process will allow Customs and Border Protection to quickly identify legitimate travelers and protect them. But how does facial recognition work to protect these people?


Facial recognition, like many other things that the human brain does easily, is difficult to program into computers. It is a complex process to get the computers to recognize a face and differentiate the one face from all other faces in its memory. The computer will scan the face and identify landmarks such as the distance between your eyes, or the tip of your nose. It tries to identify more rigid parts of the face, such as eye sockets or the bridge of the nose, because these parts of the face will not change over time. Once it scans the face, it aligns the landmarks to make sense of the face as a whole. The image of the face is converted into a unique code of numbers to represent the features on the face being studied. This code is compared to all other codes in the database and provides matches. Facial recognition, though not very accurate or reliable in the past, is making huge strides. For example, a new method of facial recognition is called Surface Texture Analysis. It looks at how unique a person's skin is to determine the identity. It takes a picture of a patch of skin and by breaking it up into easily processed pieces, can identify lines, pores, or other differences in the skin. This new process can identify differences even between identical twins that the current facial recognition technology can't.

Facial recognition technology was implemented in a few major airports in January with plans to expand across the country.
____________________________________________________________________________
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/21/us-airports-roll-out-facial-recognition-software/
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/facial-recognition3.htm
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2837886/images/o-DENVER-AIRPORT-SECURITY-facebook.jpg
http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/facial-recognition-markers-640x353.jpg