• Complex Passwords Aren't Always Best

    Research shows increasingly complex website password restrictions often leave users frustrated and lead to poor password security. “Our results confirm that the tougher the constraints of creating the passwords the safer users feel with their information,” said one expert. “However, the results show that a large number of restrictions can frustrate users.”

  • An Uncrackable Combination of Invisible Ink and Artificial Intelligence

    Coded messages in invisible ink sound like something only found in espionage books, but in real life, they can have important security purposes. Yet, they can be cracked if their encryption is predictable. Now, researchers have printed complexly encoded data with normal ink and a carbon nanoparticle-based invisible ink, requiring both UV light and a computer that has been taught the code to reveal the correct messages.

  • Accelerating Use of Fully Homomorphic Encryption

    Protecting and preserving personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, intelligence insights, and other forms of sensitive information has never been more critical. A steady cadence of data breaches and attacks are reported seemingly daily. As the use of cloud computing and virtual networks becomes increasingly pervasive for storing, processing, and moving information, concerns around data vulnerability, access, and privacy are similarly on the rise. Four research teams take on development of novel hardware accelerator to enable new levels of data and privacy protection.

  • Randomness Theory could Be Key to Internet Security

    Is there an unbreakable code? The question has been central to cryptography for thousands of years, and lies at the heart of efforts to secure private information on the internet. In a new paper, researchers identified a problem that holds the key to whether all encryption can be broken – as well as a surprising connection to a mathematical concept that aims to define and measure randomness.

  • Blueprint for Quantum Internet Unveiled

    Around the world, consensus is building that a system to communicate using quantum mechanics represents one of the most important technological frontiers of the twenty-first century. Scientists now believe that the construction of a prototype will be within reach over the next decade.

  • Post-Quantum Cryptography Program Enters “Selection Round”

    The race to protect sensitive electronic information against the threat of quantum computers has entered the home stretch. NIST has winnowed the 69 submissions it initially received down to a final group of 15, and the chosen algorithms will become part of first standard devised to counter quantum decryption threat.

  • “Threshold Cryptography” Bolsters Protection of Sensitive Data

    A new publication by NIST cryptography experts proposes the direction the technical agency will take to develop a more secure approach to encryption. This approach, called threshold cryptography, could overcome some of the limitations of conventional methods for protecting sensitive transactions and data.

  • China’s Quantum Satellite Enables First Totally Secure Long-Range Messages

    In the middle of the night, invisible to anyone but special telescopes in two Chinese observatories, satellite Micius sends particles of light to Earth to establish the world’s most secure communication link. Micius is the world’s first quantum communications satellite and has, for several years, been at the forefront of quantum encryption. Scientists have now reported using this technology to reach a major milestone: long-range secure communication you could trust even without trusting the satellite it runs through.

  • Beyond Encryption: Protecting Privacy While Keeping Survey Results Accurate

    Consumer data is continuously being collected by various organizations, including local governments, marketing agencies and social media companies. These organizations assure anonymity and confidentiality when collecting this data, however, existing data privacy laws don’t guarantee that data breaches won’t occur. Data privacy laws require encryption and, in some cases, transforming the original data to “protected data” before it’s released to external parties, but experts say this is inadequate.

  • Toward an Unhackable Quantum Internet

    A quantum internet could be used to send un-hackable messages, improve the accuracy of GPS, and enable cloud-based quantum computing. For more than twenty years, dreams of creating such a quantum network have remained out of reach in large part because of the difficulty to send quantum signals across large distances without loss. Researchers have found a way to correct for signal loss.

  • Quantum Computers Will Break the Internet, but Only If We Let Them

    Tomorrow’s quantum computers are expected to be millions of times faster than the device you’re using right now. Whenever these powerful computers take hold, it will be like going from a Ford Model T to the Starship Enterprise. Hackers may soon be able to expose all digital communications by using advanced quantum computers. A new form of cryptography would stop them, but it needs to be put into place now.

  • Bolstering Internet Security

    An innovative protection against website counterfeiting developed by Princeton researchers went live on the internet two months ago, on 19 February, boosting security for hundreds of millions of websites. The rollout was the culmination of over two years of close collaboration between research groups at Princeton and Let’s Encrypt, the world’s largest certificate authority serving 200 million websites.

  • Preventing Quantum Cyberattacks

    From defense and health information to social networking and banking transactions, communications increasingly rely on cryptographic security amid growing fears of cyberattacks. However, can such sensitive data be unhackable?

  • How Secure Are 4- and 6-Digit Mobile Phone PINs

    Apple and Android implement a number of measures to protect their users’ devices. An international team of IT security experts has investigated how useful they are. They found that six-digit PINs actually provide little more security than four-digit ones. They also showed that the blacklist used by Apple to prevent particularly frequent PINs could be optimized and that it would make even greater sense to implement one on Android devices.

  • If We Build It (They Will Break In)

    Attorney General William Barr has staked his ground in the long-running debate over law enforcement access to encrypted communications. Last fall, Barr criticized end-to-end encryption as “enabling dangerous criminals to cloak their communications and activities behind an essentially impenetrable digital shield.” As the debate continues, commentators and policymakers often overlook a historical example of the problems with law enforcement access.