Tab Watch
Sporting history was made last Wednesday night when Jess Hudson became the first woman to box for Cambridge University. The 23-year-old PhD student knocked out her opponent, an officer cadet from Sandhurst, in two rounds.
"Everyone was expecting it to be a girl scrap," Hudson said, "but it was a proper orthodox fight." Despite this emphatic personal vistory, however, the Cambridge team were defeated 7-3 by their military opponents.
Hudson said she would relish the chance of a Varsity match, but that this prospect seemed unlikely at the moment. "We're leagues ahead of Oxford," she said, "They won't even let girls train because it's 'unfeminine."
Two Cambridge students have discovered a major flaw in the security systems used by banks to protect customers' PIN numbers.
Richard Clayton and Michael Bond, who are conducting research at a computer lab in the University, are hoping that their findings will warn banks of the need to modernise their security software.
The data typed into a cash machine is scrambled using devices called cryptoprocessors so that it cannot be intercepted by hackers. The design of these cryptoprocessors was thought to be completely inaccessible because of the vast number of possible combinations, taking 70 years to crack an encryption key. However, the pair identified weaknesses in the IBM 4578 cryptoprocessor which enabled them to reduce the time taken to one day.
Exploiting flaws in the system could only be done by a bank employee, yet a recent survey carried out by Ernst and Young revealed that 82% of fraud last year was committed by companies' own employees.
Cambridge dons this week objected to "a politically correct culture sweeping through the University", after a decision to admit more academics from minority groups.
The Director of Personnel, stated, "selection criteria should be based on the needs of the institution concerned, rather than simply a search for excellence. "
Positive action policy faces stiff opposition, however, with the fiercest criticism this week coming from Lord St. John of Fawsley, former Master of Emmanuel College. Positive action was "positive discrimination by a different name," he said. John Casey, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius, added that the move "goes against all my instincts".
22nd Nov 2001