• Malware Detection for Androids

    Conventional antivirus and malware detection often fails to detect malware where the software signature may well be only marginally different from the original virus. Researchers have developed a new approach that can detect malicious activity at the source code level.

  • Combating Foreign Disinformation on Social Media

    How are other nations using disinformation on social media to advance their interests? What is the U.S. response to these campaigns, and how has it evolved? What does the Joint Force—and the U.S. Air Force in particular—need to be prepared to do in response?

  • France Accuses China of “Vast” Cyberattacks Campaign against French Organizations, Companies

    The director-general of ANSSI, France’s cyber defense agency, said France has been under a sustained and sever cyberattacks by Chinese government hackers since the beginning of the year. France has so far abstained from publicly attributing cyberattacks on its infrastructure or on French companies.

  • Pegasus Project Shows the Need for Real Device Security, Accountability and Redress for those Facing State-Sponsored Malware

    It is no surprise that people around the world are angry to learn that surveillance software sold by NSO Group to governments has been found on cellphones worldwide. People all around the world deserve the right to have a private conversation. Communication privacy is a human right, a civil liberty, and one of the centerpieces of a free society. And while we all deserve basic communications privacy, the journalists, NGO workers, and human rights and democracy activists among us are especially at risk, since they are often at odds with powerful governments.

  • Spyware: Why the Booming Surveillance Tech Industry Is Vulnerable to Corruption and Abuse

    The latest revelations about NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware are the latest indication that the spyware industry is out of control, with licensed customers free to spy on political and civilian targets as well as suspected criminals. We may be heading to a world in which no phone is safe from such attacks.

  • Growing Unease in Israel over Pegasus Case

    Israel is worried that the Pegasus spyware revelations may turn a PR black eye into a diplomatic crisis. Israel never exhibited any qualms about dealing with and selling arms to pretty unsavory regimes, but such deals were typically kept secret. The fact that the Israeli Ministry of Defense authorized the NSO Group to sell the Pegasus spyware to regimes which then used it to spy on opposition figures, civil society activists, and journalists – and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, to track Jamal Khashoggi and kill him — has raised questions about what did the government know and when did it know it.

  • On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog – or a Fake Russian Twitter Account

    Legacy media outlets played an unwitting role in the growth of the four most successful fake Twitter accounts hosted by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) which were created to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

  • Detecting, Blocking Grid Cyberattacks

    Researchers have designed and demonstrated a technology that can block cyberattacks from impacting the nation’s electric power grid.

  • Macron’s Secure Mobile Phone Compromised by Pegasus Spyware

    The secure smartphone of French president Emmanuel Macron was compromised by the Pegasus surveillance malware. It was surreptitiously installed by Moroccan intelligence operatives, who introduced the virus into the phones of former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and fourteen other current and former French cabinet ministers.

  • CyberForce Program Now offering Year-Round Cyber Defense Events

    The cybersecurity field is facing a shortfall of 1.8 million professionals by 2022. To fill that skills gap, Argonne, in partnership with DOE, launched CyberForce in 2016 as an annual competition that has challenged college teams to build and defend a simulated energy infrastructure from cyber attacks. DOE is now expanding its CyberForce program and offers more ways for students to test their cybersecurity skills.

  • Journalists, Activists among 50,000 Targets of Israeli Spyware: Reports

    Israeli cyber firm NSO Group claims that its Pegasus surveillance malware is sold to governments so they can better track terrorists and criminals, but many of the 45 governments deploying the surveillance software use it to track journalists, opposition politicians, and civil society activists. Some of these governments are authoritarian (for example, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, UAE, Saudi Arabia). Other are democracies (for example, India, Mexico, South Africa). The only EU member country to deploy the surveillance malware is Hungary, which places it in violation of the EU’s strict privacy and surveillance regulations.

  • China Spy Agency Using Contract Hackers to Extort, Destabilize Western Companies

    The United States and its allies in Europe and Asia have charged that China’s Ministry of State Security is employing criminal contract hackers to conduct cyber operations globally, from which the hackers personally profit. The activities include ransomware operations against private companies which are forced to pay millions in ransom demands to regain access to their data.

  • The Storywrangler: Exploring Social Media Messages for Signs of Coming Turmoil

    Scientists have invented an instrument to peer deeply into the billions and billions of posts made on Twitter since 2008, and have begun to uncover the vast galaxy of stories that they contain looking for patterns which would help predict political and financial turmoil.

  • Will China Retaliate Against U.S. Chip Sanctions?

    In response to a series of Chinese trade infractions (intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, cyber espionage, and WTO violations), the U.S. government implemented a sanctions regime which has inflicted increasing pain on China’s semiconductor industry. The Biden administration has doubled down on the Trump’s sanction strategy against China’s high-tech sector. Terry Daly and Jordan Schneider write that China has so far abstained from taking major retaliatory measures against the United States, but this is not likely to last. “The prudent course in a period of uncertainty is risk mitigation. This applies to countries and companies alike,” Daly and Schneider write.

  • Cryptographic Vulnerabilities on Popular Messaging Platform, Telegram

    Researchers have completed a substantial security analysis of the encryption protocol used by the popular messaging platform, Telegram, with over half a billion monthly active users. The researchers found several cryptographic weaknesses in the protocol that ranged from technically trivial and easy to exploit, to more advanced.