• Banning TikTok Could Weaken Personal Cybersecurity

    TikTok is not be the first app to be scrutinized over the potential exposure of U.S. user data, but it is the first widely used app that the U.S. government has proposed banning over privacy and security concerns. As a cybersecurity researcher, I see potential risks if the U.S. attempts to ban TikTok. The type of risk depends on the type of ban.

  • Anti-Zionism as Antisemitism: How Anti-Zionist Language from the Left and Right Vilifies Jews

    Seven decades after Israel’s founding, some criticism of the country continues to promote age-old antisemitic tropes. Even before Israel was founded, conversations about the Zionist movement and the creation of the State of Israel at times included explicit anti-Jewish animus or espoused ideas historically wielded against Jewish communities. Today, many anti-Zionist activists continue to perpetuate this language.

  • Study Links Hard-Right Social Media with Incidents of Civil Unrest

    An increase in social media activity on “hard-right” platforms — those that purport to represent viewpoints not welcome on “mainstream” platforms — contributes to rightwing civil unrest in the United States, according to a new study. A new Yale-led study finds evidence that social media activity on hard-right platforms contributes to political unrest offline. “The magnitude of the effect we found is modest but two characteristics of social media and civil unrest caution against dismissing it,” said Yale sociologist Daniel Karell.

  • Democracies Must Regulate Digital Agents of Influence

    It would be a mistake to limit the public policy debate to traditional state-on-state espionage or major power rivalry. Such platforms and the advent of the eerily relatable artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT are society-changing technologies that cannot be dismissed as benign or treated as a public good closed to any regulatory or governance process.

  • China and Russia Sharing Tactics on Internet Control, Censorship

    Beijing and Moscow have been sharing methods and tactics for monitoring dissent and controlling the Internet. For a few years now. The two countries have been deepening their ties for the past decade, and controlling the flow of information online has been a focal point of that cooperation since 2013. Since then, that cooperation expanded through a number of agreements and high-level meetings in China and Russia between top officials driven by a shared vision for a tightly controlled Internet.

  • New and Secure Encryption: A Fresh Approach

    Cryptography, i.e. the encryption of information, keeps us safe in our daily lives and yet we barely know it’s there. As digitalization progresses, the amount of data that needs to be protected is growing exponentially. This calls for exceptionally robust cryptographic solutions that are both fast and efficient in practice and, at the same time, absolutely secure.

  • Detecting Manipulations in Microchips

    Attackers have the ability not only to manipulate software, but also to tamper with the hardware. A team from Bochum is devising methods to detect such tampering.

  • How Russia Turned America’s Helping Hand to Ukraine into a Vast Lie

    Russia’s sustained disinformation campaign about a fictional U.S. bioweapons program in Ukraine is an example of how, “In a world that connects billions of people at a flash, the truth may have only a fighting chance against organized lying,” the Washington Post writes. “Disinformation is not just “fake news” or propaganda but an insidious contamination of the world’s conversations. And it is exploding.”

  • Antisemitism, False Information, and Hate Speech Find a Home on Substack

    Substack continues to attract extremists and conspiracy theorists who routinely use the site to profit from spreading antisemitism, misinformation, disinformation and hate speech. Platforms with more lenient content moderation policies, like Substack, provide fertile ground for the spread of hateful rhetoric and false information – a known catalyst for offline harm and violence.

  • China Accused of Meddling in Canada’s Elections

    Allegations are mounting that China may have interfered in Canada’s most recent federal elections to favor Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party. Chinese information campaign appeared to have influenced votes in districts with large ethnic Chinese population.

  • Education and Awareness Are Key to Stopping Online Radicalization

    The current battlefield for terrorism is not a faraway country but the computers and phones right next to us. Terrorists have taken advantage of this technology to allow conflict to transcend its geographic borders. They know that reaching one sympathetic viewer can create catastrophic consequences in support of their agenda. The social network is now an environment where everyone is vulnerable to encountering propaganda or misinformation online, making everyone susceptible to radicalization.

  • What Is the National Cybersecurity Strategy? What the Biden Administration Has Changed

    On 2 March 2023 the Biden administration released its first National Cybersecurity Strategy. Some of the key provisions in the Strategy relate to the private sector, both in terms of product liability and cybersecurity insurance. It also aims to reduce the cybersecurity burden on individuals and smaller organizations. It provides some innovative ideas that could strengthen U.S. cybersecurity in meaningful ways and help modernize America’s technology industry, both now and into the future.

  • Is Your Cybersecurity Strategy Undermined by These Six Common Pitfalls?

    Many security specialists harbor misconceptions about lay users of information technology, and these misconceptions can increase an organization’s risk of cybersecurity breaches. These issues include ineffective communications to lay users and inadequately incorporating user feedback on security system usability.

  • Hard-Right Social Media Activities Lead to Civil Unrest: Study

    Does activity on hard-right social media lead to civil unrest? With the emergence and persistent popularity of hard-right social media platforms such as Gab, Parler, and Truth Social, it is important to understand the impact they are having on society and politics.

  • Perfectly Secure Digital Communications

    Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in secure communications by developing an algorithm that conceals sensitive information so effectively that it is impossible to detect that anything has been hidden.