Security news

Security

Each year, landmines kill residents of war-torn countries. This innovative tool could save lives

As he grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, Mateo Dulce Rubio would hear a familiar news story every few days—someone had stepped on another landmine. The explosion had killed or injured them. Though the capital city was far from ...

Security

US seizes internet domains allegedly used by Russian hackers

The United States announced the seizure on Thursday of 41 internet domains allegedly used by Russian intelligence agents to try to gain access to the computers and email accounts of Pentagon, State Department and other US ...

Business

California enacts law to protect brain data

A new California law extends consumer privacy protection to brainwave data gathered by implants or wearable devices.

Security

Police are probing apparent cyber vandalism on Wi-Fi networks at UK train stations

U.K. transport officials and police said Thursday they are investigating a "cyber-security incident" after users of public Wi-Fi networks at the country's biggest railway stations reported being shown anti-Muslim messages.

Security

AI model beats CAPTCHA every time

A trio of AI researchers at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, has modified an AI-based, picture-processing model to solve Google's reCAPTCHAv2 human-testing system.

Security

Encrypted 'Ghost' app: What we know

Police revealed Tuesday they had infiltrated and taken down an encrypted chat app called Ghost used by criminals across the world.

Security

'Good complexity' can make hospital networks more cybersecure

In May, a major cyberattack disabled clinical operations for nearly a month at Ascension, a health care provider that includes 140 hospitals across the U.S. Investigators tracked the problem to malicious ransomware that had ...

Security

New tools use AI 'fingerprints' to detect altered photos, videos

As artificial intelligence networks become more skilled and easier to access, digitally manipulated "deepfake" photos and videos are increasingly difficult to detect. New research led by Binghamton University, State University ...

Security

Your 'anonmyized' web browsing history may not be anonymous

Raising further questions about privacy on the internet, researchers from Princeton and Stanford universities have released a study showing that a specific person's online behavior can be identified by linking anonymous web ...

Security

Study shows how phishing scams thrive on overconfidence

A new study by H.R. Rao, AT&T Distinguished Chair in Infrastructure Assurance and Security at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), examines overconfidence in detecting phishing e-mails. According to Rao, most people ...

Security

How do we keep GPS safe from sabotage?

Aerial drones are already being used to televise football games, produce 3-D maps and tend farm fields. Uber, the giant ride-sharing company, is now testing a service with self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. China deploys unmanned ...

Security

Cybersecurity's next phase—cyber-deterrence

Cyberattackers pose many threats to a wide range of targets. Russia, for example, was accused of hacking Democratic Party computers throughout the year, interfering with the U.S. presidential election. Then there was the ...

Security

How it takes just six seconds to hack a credit card

Working out the card number, expiry date and security code of any Visa credit or debit card can take as little as six seconds and uses nothing more than guesswork, new research has shown.

Security

New software continuously scrambles code to foil cyber attacks

As long as humans are writing software, there will be coding mistakes for malicious hackers to exploit. A single bug can open the door to attackers deleting files, copying credit card numbers or carrying out political mischief.

Security

New tool detects malicious websites before they cause harm

Malicious websites promoting scams, distributing malware and collecting phished credentials pervade the web. As quickly as we block or blacklist them, criminals set up new domain names to support their activities. Now a research ...

Security

Could your kettle bring down the internet?

How could a webcam help bring down some of the world's most popular websites? It seems unlikely but that's what happened recently when hackers attacked the internet infrastructure run by US firm Dyn, knocking out services ...

Security

Researchers describe technique to bypass ASLR schemes

(Tech Xplore)—Technology watching sites were abuzz this week with news about a CPU flaw regarding Intel Haswell powered devices. Researchers participating in the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture in ...

Security

Study finds 'lurking malice' in cloud hosting services

A study of 20 major cloud hosting services has found that as many as 10 percent of the repositories hosted by them had been compromised - with several hundred of the "buckets" actively providing malware. Such bad content ...

Security

Blockchain-type tech could play a defense system role

(Tech Xplore)—Blockchain technology is no longer in the sole confines of digital currency. NewsBTC, a Bitcoin news service, said that the US Defense Department is to explore blockchain technology to help secure nuclear ...

Security

The Internet of Things could spark a new wave of cyber attacks

The past few weeks have seen a remarkable and somewhat alarming development in cyber security. It comes in the wake of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that has forced a rethink of how we can deal with attacks ...