• Sandia Helps Develop Digital Tool to Track Cloud Hackers

    Sandia programmers are helping the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) through an innovative program that enlists Microsoft cloud users everywhere to track down hackers and cyberterrorists.

  • Hateful Usernames in Online Multiplayer Games

    The online games industry continues to fall short in protecting players from hate and extremist content in games. Usernames are a basic part of any online experience. A new report focuses on hateful usernames, which should be the easiest content for companies to moderate.

  • China’s Cyber Interference and Transnational Crime Groups in Southeast Asia

    The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of engagement with criminal organizations and proxies to achieve its strategic objectives. This activity involves the Chinese government’s spreading of influence and disinformation campaigns using fake personas and inauthentic accounts on social media that are linked to transnational criminal organizations.

  • Can You Trust AI? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t

    Across the internet, devices and services that seem to work for you already secretly work against you. Smart TVs spy on you. Phone apps collect and sell your data. Many apps and websites manipulate you through dark patterns, design elements that deliberately mislead, coerce or deceive website visitors. This is surveillance capitalism, and AI is shaping up to be part of it.

  • The Promise—and Pitfalls—of Researching Extremism Online

    While online spaces are key enablers for extremist movements, social media research hasn’t provided many answers to fundamental questions. How big of a problem is extremism, in the United States or around the world? Is it getting worse? Are social media platforms responsible, or did the internet simply reveal existing trends? Why do some people become violent?

  • Bolstering Cyber Safety on Roads and Highways

    A new research center is helping prevent potential cyberattacks that could threaten to impede the safe and efficient movement of people and goods in the United States and throughout the world.

  • A New Way to Look at Data Privacy

    Researchers create a privacy technique that protects sensitive data while maintaining a machine-learning model’s performance. The researchers created a new privacy metric, which they call Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) Privacy, and built a framework based on this metric that can automatically determine the minimal amount of noise that needs to be added.

  • Satellite Security Lags Decades Behind the State of the Art

    Thousands of satellites are currently orbiting the Earth, and there will be many more in the future. Researchers analyzed three current low-earth orbit satellites and found that, from a technical point of view, hardly any modern security concepts were implemented. Various security mechanisms that are standard in modern mobile phones and laptops were not to be found.

  • Preparing for Great Power Conflict

    How has the military experience gained by both the U.S. military and the PLA since 2001 shaped the way both militaries train? What effect do these experiences and training trends have on readiness for major power conflict?

  • Six Things to Watch Following Meta's Threads Launch

    Meta’s ‘Twitter killer,’ Threads, launched on July 6 to media fanfare. With another already politically charged U.S. election on the horizon, online hate and harassment at record highs, and a rise in antisemitism and extremist incidents both on- and offline, a new social media product of this scale will present serious challenges.

  • Chinese Intelligence-Linked Hackers Targeted U.S. Government Agencies in Microsoft Hack

    Hackers linked to China’s intelligence agencies, are behind a monthlong campaign that breached some unclassified U.S. email systems, allowing them to access to a small number of accounts at the U.S. State Department and a handful of other organizations.

  • Fact Check: Why Do we Believe Fake News?

    Fake news has become a real threat to society. Some internet users are more likely to accept misinformation and fake news as true information than others. How do psychological and social factors influence whether we fall for them or not? And what can we do against it?

  • Preliminary Injunction Limiting Government Communications with Platforms Tackles Illegal “Jawboning,” but Fails to Provide Guidance on What’s Unconstitutional

    A July 4 preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in Louisiana limiting government contacts with social media platforms deals with government “jawboning” is a serious issue deserving serious attention and judicial scrutiny. The court order is notable as the first to hold the government accountable for unconstitutional jawboning of social media platforms, but it is not the serious examination of jawboning issues that is sorely needed. The court did not distinguish between unconstitutional and constitutional interactions or provide guideposts for distinguishing between them in the future.

  • Muting Trump’s “Megaphone” Easier Said Than Done

    How do you cover Donald Trump? He’s going to do a lot of speeches, and parts of his message will be provably false, reflect intolerance, and promote anti-democratic ideas. Political experts suggest ways media can blunt the former president’s skillful manipulation of coverage to disseminate falsehoods and spread messages which are often sharply divisive and periodically dangerous.

  • Stressed for a Bit? Then Don’t Click It, Cybersecurity Experts Advise

    Workers feeling a specific form of stress are more likely than others to become the victims of a phishing attack. Phishing psychology study explores what makes workers vulnerable.