• Does Free Speech Protect COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation?

    “The Supreme Court has held that many kinds of false statements are protected speech under the First Amendment,” says Stanford University’s Michelle Mello. “The Supreme Court’s general finding is that false statements can often be valuable in terms of allowing people to challenge widely held beliefs without fear of repercussions, and that things could go pretty wrong if the government had a wider berth to regulate them.”

  • Cybersecurity Guidance for Supply Chain Risk Management

    A new update to the NIST’s cybersecurity supply chain risk management (C-SCRM) guidance aims to help organizations protect themselves as they acquire and use technology products and services.

  • Research Exposes Long-Term Failure of Russian Propaganda in Ukraine's Donbas Region

    A study of the propaganda that flooded Donbas for years reveals a failure to build pro-Russian “in-group” identities in the region, despite Putin’s claims of support.

  • What Research Reveals About Disinformation and How to Address It

    Stanford scholars from across the social sciences are studying the threats disinformation poses to democracy. Here is some of their research.

  • Trump Appointee Twice Delayed Report on Russian Election Interference, Federal Watchdog Says

    A just-published DHS IG report says that a senior Trump appointee twice delayed the release of a report detailing Russia’s interference in the 2020 election, interference aimed to help the Trump campaign. Moreover, in order to dilute the significance of the information about Russia’s interference, other DHS officials added a so-called “tone box” describing efforts by Chinese and Iranian influence actors to promote unsubstantiated narratives questioning the mental health of then-President Donald Trump. With the exception of the added tone box itself, China and Iran are not mentioned in the report.

  • Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine

    Microsoft last week released a report which details a broad cyberattacks campaign by Russia in Ukraine, a campaign conducted in concert with kinetic military action. At least six Russian Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors and other unattributed threats, have conducted destructive attacks, espionage operations, or both, while Russian military forces attack the country by land, air, and sea.

  • A Cyber Security Intrusion Detection System for Industrial Control Systems

    Researchers have developed technology to help government and industry detect cyber threats to industrial networks used in critical infrastructure and manufacturing systems.

  • Why Public Trust in Elections Is Being Undermined by Global Disinformation Campaigns

    Public trust in elections is being targeted around the world by a series of disinformation campaigns from a range of international players. There are often similar campaigns run by domestic political players, as has been the case, for example, in the United States, Brazil, and Mexico. These campaigns are giving rise to an increasing lack of trust in how votes are counted. The overall purpose is to create mistrust of the core institutions of liberal democracy, including parliaments, mainstream media, elections, and the judiciary.

  • Holocaust Analogies Frequently Used as Fodder for Social and Political Commentary

    The Holocaust stands out as a preeminent example of modern-day state-sponsored mass murder. Despite the Holocaust’s distinctive status, or perhaps because of it, politicians, activists, and other public figures often invoke inappropriate Holocaust comparisons to highlight the ostensible “danger” of a social or political act.

  • New Tool in the Fight Against Hackers

    A new form of security identification could soon see the light of day and help us protect our data from hackers and cybercriminals. Quantum mathematicians have solved a mathematical riddle that allows for a person’s geographical location to be used as a personal ID that is secure against even the most advanced cyberattacks.

  • A Peak at the Nation’s Future Cybersecurity Workforce

    Hack the Port 22, hosted jointly by USCYBERCOM and the Maryland Innovation and Security Institute, brought together subject matter experts from government, industry, and academia to highlight the nation’s critical infrastructure and cyber defense priorities.

  • Russian Trolls Tried to Distract American Voters with Entertainment

    In a finding that has implications for the 2022 midterm elections, Cornell researchers found Russia tried to distract liberal voters during the 2016 presidential campaign with a seemingly innocent weapon – tweets about music and videos – taking a page from its domestic disinformation playbook.

  • AI, Machine Learning to Help Defend Against Cyberattacks

    Two new tools are helping cybersecurity professionals fight the vast volume of threats and attacks— artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. AI and machine learning can detect novel malicious code, catch fraudulent charges on a credit card or fraudulent network login attempts, block phishing messages on an email service and assist companies with cloud management in spotting anomalies that traditional cyber defense technologies may not pick up.

  • Illinois Tech's CyberHawks Win National Cybersecurity Championship

    A team of students from Illinois Institute of Technology’s cybersecurity student organization CyberHawks won the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity Cyber Games National Championship last week. Sixty-five teams from 55 colleges competed in the competition overall.

  • Cloud Server Leasing Can Leave Sensitive Data Up for Grabs

    Renting space and IP addresses on a public server has become standard business practice, but according to computer scientists, current industry practices can lead to “cloud squatting,” which can create a security risk, endangering sensitive customer and organization data intended to remain private. New research provides solutions for companies, cloud-service providers to help minimize security risks.