• Pentagon to bolster U.S cyberwar capabilities

    The Department of Defense is planning an expansion of the U.S. Cyber Command, and the Pentagon plans on recruiting thousands of code crackers, online security professionals, and hackers in order to assemble the nation’s largest cyber army ever.

  • DoD to use connections to stay ahead of cyber threats

    The Department of Defense (DoD) maintains one of the largest computer networks in the world. The network follows DoD personnel across the globe collecting, transferring, and processing information in forms as diverse as data warehouses, in-the-field mobile devices, and mission computers on board F-18’s. New program looks at how information is connected and moves to uncover and prevent targeted attacks.

  • Grammar rules undermine security of long computer passwords

    When writing or speaking, good grammar helps people make themselves understood. When used to concoct a long computer password, however, grammar — good or bad — provides important hints that can help someone crack that password, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated by devising grammar-aware password cracker.

  • SSA 2013 will attract 600 exhibitors and more than 10,000 attendees

    Safety & Security Asia (SSA) 2013 is back for its 24th biennial presentation in Singapore on 7-9 May 2013 at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. The Safety & Security Asia series is the most established event of Southeast Asia’s security market in the last twenty-four years, making it the a valuable platform for security technology companies to showcase their products and solutions to the region’s market, especially in the cyberspace arena. SSA 2013 will attract 600 exhibitors from thirty countries and more than 10,000 attendeesfrom forty countries.

  • Thwarting facial-recognition, photo-tagging software

    Information about when and where photographed subjects were when their pictures were taken is readily disclosed through photos taken, and the information is disclosed and distributed without their permission. The problem has become even worse due to the popularization of portable terminals with built-in cameras and developments in SNS and image search technologies. Japanese researchers offer a solution: goggles or glasses which, when equipped with near-infrared LED emitter. :

  • Personal genetic information vulnerable to hacking

    Using only a computer, an Internet connection, and publicly accessible online resources, a team of researchers has been able to identify nearly fifty individuals who had submitted personal genetic material as participants in genomic studies.

  • DHS: Industrial control systems subject to 200 attacks in 2012

    A DHS report released last week revealed that industrial control systems, which are used to monitor and control critical infrastructure facilities, were hit with 198 documented cyberattacks in 2012, and that many of these attacks were serious.

  • Promoting mistrust: thwarting spear phishing cyber threats

    Information security experts say that the most challenging threat facing corporate networks today is “spear phishing”; generic e-mails asking employees to open malicious attachments, provide confidential information, or follow links to infected Web sites have been around for a long time; what is new today is that the authors of these e-mails are now targeting their attacks using specific knowledge about employees and the organizations they work for; the inside knowledge used in these spear phishing attacks gains the trust of recipients

  • Smartphones turned into secure and versatile keys

    It is already possible to open doors using an app — but we are a long way from seeing widespread acceptance of this in the market; now, researchers have developed a piece of software that will make the technology even more secure and versatile

  • Secure communication technology overcomes lack of trust between communicating parties

    Many scenarios in business and communication require that two parties share information without either being sure whether they can trust the other; examples include secure auctions and identification at ATM machines; researchers say that exploiting the strange properties of the quantum world could be the answer to dealing with such distrust

  • Louisiana parishes to encrypt police radio communication

    First-responder agencies in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines parishes in Louisiana will soon be encrypting all emergency radios,  keeping emergency response chatter out of the ears of the public; the police says the   encrypted communication is needed  in order to keep criminals from gaining information on police by listening to scanners, but a police union and crime-prevention groups are worried that the encrypted system would prevent the media from monitoring police activity, and hobble neighborhood watch organizations from keeping their neighborhoods safe

  • Social networks helping during disasters

    In 2005, when Katrina hit New Orleans, social networking Web sites were not as popular or as informative as they are today. Facebook was only up for a year at that point and was still restricted to college students only; Twitter was not started until 2006, and most local governments did not use the Internet for daily updates and information; advancements in social networking Web sites and in technology made a big difference for victims of Sandy

  • Cybersecurity company using hackers own devices against them

    A California cybersecurity start-up, marketing itself as a private cyber intelligence agency, works to identify foreign attackers who are attempting to steal corporate secrets; it does so by  using the attackers’ own techniques and vulnerabilities against them; the company also collects data on hackers and tricks intruders into stealing false information

  • Expert show how to crack every common password in under six hours

    GPU computing has improved considerably in recent years, and Jeremi Gosney, founder and CEO of Stricture Consulting Group, used a 25-GPU cluster that can run through 350 billion guesses per second to show how easy it would be to crack practically any password out there (easy, that is, if you can use a 25-GPU cluster )

  • New NIST report offers guidance in cryptographic key generation

    Protecting sensitive electronic information in different situations requires different types of cryptographic algorithms, but ultimately they all depend on keys, the cryptographic equivalent of a password; a new publication from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) aims to help people secure their data with good keys no matter which algorithm they choose