Russell Ira Crowe is an Academy Award-, BAFTA-, Golden Globe-, and Screen Actors Guild Award- winning New Zealand and Australian actor. His acting career began in the early 1990s with roles in Australian TV series such as Police Rescue and films such as Romper Stomper. In the late 1990s, he began appearing in US films such as the 1997 movie L.A. Confidential. In the 2000s, he has been nominated for three Oscars, and in 2000, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his starring role in the film Gladiator. Crowe is also co-owner of National Rugby League team the South Sydney Rabbitohs. All three films were also nominated for best picture, and both Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind won the award. Within the six year stretch from 1997-2003, he also starred in two other best picture nominees, L.A. Confidential and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, though he was nominated for neither. In 2005 he re-teamed with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for Cinderella Man. In 2006 he re-teamed with Gladiator director Ridley Scott for A Good Year, the first of two consecutive collaborations (the second being American Gangster co-starring again with Denzel Washington, released in late 2007). While the light romantic comedy of A Good Year was not greatly received, Crowe seemed pleased with the film, telling STV in an interview that he thought it would be enjoyed by fans of his other films.

Secure by Design

Secure by design, in software engineering, means that the software has been designed from the ground up to be secure. Malicious practices are taken for granted and care is taken to minimize impact when a security vulnerability is discovered or on invalid user input.

Generally, designs that work well do not rely on being secret. It is not mandatory, but proper security usually means that everyone is allowed to know and understand the design because it is secure. This has the advantage that many people are looking at the code, and this improves the odds that any flaws will be found sooner. Of course, attackers can also obtain the code, which makes it easier for them to find vulnerabilities as well.

Also, it is very important that everything works with the least amount of privileges possible (principle of least privilege). For example a Web server that runs as the administrative user (root or admin) can have the privilege to remove files and users that do not belong to it. Thus, a flaw in that program could put the entire system at risk. On the other hand, a Web server that runs inside an isolated environment and only has the privileges for required network and file system functions, cannot compromise the system it runs on unless the security around it is in itself also flawed.

Often the easiest way to break the security of a client/server system is not to go head on to the security mechanisms but instead to go around them. A man in the middle attack is a simple example of this, because you can use it to collect details to impersonate a user. Which is why it is important to consider encryption, hashing, and other security mechanisms in your design to ensure that information collected from a potential attacker won't allow access.

Another key feature to client-server security design is general good-coding practices. For example, following a known software design structure such as client and broker can help in designing a well built structure with a solid foundation. Furthermore that if the software is modified in the future it is even more important that it follows a logical foundation of separation between the client and server. This is because if a programmer comes in and cannot clearly understand the dynamics of the program they may end up adding or changing something that can add a security flaw. Even with the best design this is always a possibility, but the better standardized the design the less chance there is of this occurring.