In this paper we show that, paradoxically, what looks like a “universal improvement” or a “straight-forward improvement” which enables better security and better reliability on a theoretical level, may in fact, within certain operational contexts, introduce new exposures and attacks, resulting in a weaker operational cryptosystem. We demonstrate a number of such dangerous “improvements”. This i...

Studies of the dark side of Information Systems are encountered with increasing frequency. In this paper, we investigate how selected hotel employees in China deliberately subvert IT Policy in order to gain access to the IT applications that they believe essential to work. Following a review of the literature on IT Governance, resistance and subversion, we engage in an interpretive case study o...

Steeped among the items on the dark side of information technology are personal technology interruptions. Past research has examined the negative impact of technology interruptions; however, the factors that are responsible for the increasing rate of interruptions are rarely discussed. In this study, by adapting the criminology theory of Routine Activity Theory (RAT), we propose three factors t...

Bounds on information combining” are entropic inequalities that determine how the information (entropy) of a set of random variables can change when these are combined in certain prescribed ways. Such bounds play an important role in classical information theory, particularly in coding and Shannon theory; entropy power inequalities are special instances of them. The arguably most elementary kin...

In this paper we show that, paradoxically, what looks like a “universal improvement” or a “straight-forward improvement” which enables better security and better reliability on a theoretical level, may in fact, within certain operational contexts, introduce new exposures and attacks, resulting in a weaker operational cryptosystem. We demonstrate a number of such dangerous “improvements”. This i...

The problem of private information retrieval with private side information (PIR-PSI) is recently introduced by Kadhe et al. In this problem, N replicated databases each store K messages, of which M are known to the user as side-information. The identity of these M messages is unknown to the databases. The user wishes to retrieve, as efficiently as possible, a new desired message without reveali...

We consider the problem of private information retrieval (PIR) of a single message out of K messages from N replicated and non-colluding databases where a cache-enabled user of cache-size M messages possesses side information in the form of full messages that are partially known to the databases. In this model, the user and the databases engage in a two-phase scheme, namely, the prefetching pha...