• NIST Updates Guidance for Health Care Cybersecurity

    In an effort to help health care organizations protect patients’ personal health information, NIST has updated its cybersecurity guidance for the health care industry. The revised draft publication aims to help organizations comply with HIPAA Security Rule.

  • Solution to Encrypted Messages Being Hacked Before Sending or After Receipt

    Message applications must do more to keep user data safe from undetected malware or over-the-shoulder eavesdropping that bypasses encryption before a message has been sent. Researchers have created a new end-to-end encryption mechanism that protects users’ communications at a far higher level than currently experienced on popular applications.

  • NIST chooses Kyber, Dilithium and SPHINCS+ as Standards for Post-Quantum Cryptography

    NIST has selected CRYSTALS-KYBER, CRYSTALS-Dilithium and SPHINCS+, three security algorithms, as one the new standards for post-quantum cryptography. The underlying technology must ensure that the encryption of sensitive communication will continue to be secure in the coming decades.

  • During Pandemic: More News, More Worry

    Anxiety and fear went hand in hand with trying to learn more about COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic in the United States — and the most distressed people were turning on the television and scrolling through social media.

  • Google/Apple's Contact-Tracing Apps Susceptible to Digital Attacks

    Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and health authorities have relied on contact-tracing technologies to help manage the spread of the virus. Yet there’s a major flaw in a framework that many of these mobile apps utilize – one that attackers could exploit to ramp up false positive notifications.

  • Confronting Reality in Cyberspace: Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet

    By Adam Segal and Gordon M. Goldstein

    The global internet—a vast matrix of telecommunications, fiber optics, and satellite networks—is in large part a creation of the United States. Moreover, U.S. strategic, economic, political, and foreign policy interests were served by the global, open internet. The United States now confronts a starkly different reality. The utopian vision of an open, reliable, and secure global network has not been achieved and is unlikely ever to be realized. Today, the internet is less free, more fragmented, and less secure.

  • Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories May Not Be Increasing

    A new analysis contradicts popular thinking about beliefs in conspiracy theories, suggesting that such beliefs may not have actually increased over time. The new findings challenge widespread perceptions by the public, scholars, journalists, and policymakers.

  • U.S. Disrupts North Korea Ransomware Group, Recovers Nearly Half a Million

    By Masood Farivar

    U.S. law enforcement authorities have disrupted a group of North Korean hackers, recovering nearly half a million dollars in ransom payments it received from a Kansas hospital, a Colorado health care provider and other victims. The North Korea state-sponsored cybercriminals encrypted the Kansas hospital’s servers in May 2021, demanding ransom in exchange for regaining access to its critical computer networks.

  • New Computing Security Architecture Protects Sensitive Private Data

    Protecting sensitive information on the internet has become an essential feature for computing architectures. Applications that process such data must trust the system software they rely on, such as operating systems and hypervisors, but such system software is complex and often has vulnerabilities that can risk data confidentiality and integrity.

  • Safer Web Surfing with a New Method for Detecting Malicious Code Patterns

    With the ever-increasing importance of the Internet in our lives, there are growing attempts to exploit software vulnerabilities in our PCs for personal benefit. One way to do so is by infecting the victim’s PC with a malicious code injected through a website. A fast and reliable detection approach can analyze distribution patterns of malicious codes in websites.

  • Protecting Computer Vision from Adversarial Attacks

    Advances in computer vision and machine learning have made it possible for a wide range of technologies to perform sophisticated tasks with little or no human supervision — from autonomous drones and self-driving cars to medical imaging and product manufacturing. Engineers are developing methods to keep these autonomous machines and devices from being hacked.

  • These Red Flags Can Let You Know When You’re in an Online Echo Chamber

    Online echo chambers are virtual spaces that gather like-minded individuals. Research has shown that people are more likely to believe and share information they encounter in these spaces, because it confirms their existing beliefs. Somesocial media users who routinely engage in this style of communication also spread disinformation.

  • The Chinese Military’s Access to AI Chips

    The Chinese military has made rapid progress in artificial intelligence. This progress largely depends on continued access to high-end semiconductors designed by American companies and produced in Taiwan and South Korea. The aggressive moves by the Trump and Biden administrations to limit technology exports to the Chinese military notwithstanding, China continues to order large quantities of American-designed advanced semiconductors from manufacturers in Taiwan and South Korea.

  • Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Divide, Weaken Western Coalition

    A new report reviews ongoing Russian influence efforts aimed at undermining and dividing the Western defensive coalition supporting Ukraine, as well as influencing public opinion of Russia’s war against Ukraine favorably toward Russia.

  • NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic Algorithms

    NIST has chosen the first group of encryption tools that are designed to withstand the assault of a future quantum computer, which could potentially crack the security used to protect privacy in the digital systems we rely on every day — such as online banking and email software.