• Full Impact of Russian Ransomware Attack Hard to Estimate

    Hackers associated with the REvil gang, a major Russian ransomware syndicate have demanded $70 million in Bitcoin in exchange for a decryption tool to free the data of companies targeted, but also indicated they were willing to negotiate.

  • Ransomware Cyberattack Hits Hundreds of U.S. Businesses

    U.S. IT company Kaseya urged its customers to shut down their servers after hackers smuggled ransomware onto its network. Such attacks infiltrate widely used software and demand ransom to regain access. The REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attack.

  • With Cyberattacks Growing More Frequent and Disruptive, a Unified Approach Is Essential

    Coordinated cyberattacks can create massive disruptions to infrastructure and supply chains. New treaties are needed to prevent cyberwarfare, but it’s challenging to predict technological advances.

  • The Ideal Responses to Ransomware Attacks

    A ransomware attack is like a cyber hijacking, with criminals infiltrating and seizing an organization’s data or computer systems and demanding a payment or ransom to restore access.What is the best strategy to decrease the risk of digital extortion?

  • Building a Better “Canary Trap”

    A new artificial intelligence system generates fake documents to fool adversaries. The system automatically creates false documents to protect intellectual property such as drug design and military technology.

  • Matt Hancock and the Problem with China’s Surveillance Tech

    Matt Hancock, Britain’s Health Secretary, resigned last week – and informed his wife that he was divorcing her – after CCTV footage emerged of him snogging his assistant outside his office. Ian Williams writes that the Hancock affair raises serious questions involving surveillance and national security: The cameras involved were made by the Chinese company Hikvision, one of the 1.3 million Hikvision cameras installed across the U.K. Hikvision has close links to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s intelligence services. Even if the Chinese intelligence services were not involved in leaking the compromising Hancock video to the press, the episode is one more indication, if one were needed, of the security risks involved in allowing an unregulated access by Chinese technology companies access unfettered and unregulated access to Western markets.

  • Supply Chains Have a Cyber Problem

    If it wasn’t clear before the cyberattacks on, JBS S.A. and Colonial Pipeline, it’s now painfully clear that the intersection of cyberattacks and supply chains creates a wicked new form of risk—and the stakes are as much about national security as they are economics.

  • Holding the Line: Chinese Cyber Influence Campaigns After the Pandemic

    While the American public became more aware of Chinese cyber influence campaigns during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, they did not start there – and they will not end there, either. Maggie Baughman writes that as the world’s attention returns to the origins of the global pandemic and recommits to its containment, the United States must prepare for inevitable shifts in Chinese methods and goals in its cyber influence activities – “likely beyond what Western countries have previously experienced in dealing with China”

  • Social Media Use One of Four Factors Related to Higher COVID-19 Spread Rates Early On

    Researchers showed that, in the early stages of the pandemic, there was a correlation between social media use and a higher rate of COVID spread. The researchers compared 58 countries and found that higher social media use was among the four factors driving a faster and broader spread. Accounting for pre-existing, intrinsic differences among countries and regions would help facilitate better management strategies going forward.

  • Making Our Computers More Secure

    Corporations and governments rely on computers and the internet to run everything, but security hacks just this past month —  including the Colonial Pipeline security breach and the JBS Foods ransomware attacks  — demonstrated, yet again, how vulnerable these systems are. Researchers presented new systems to make computers safer.

  • Path Forward for FAA’s Cybersecurity Workforce

    A new report offers path forward for creating and maintaining a cybersecurity workforce at FAA that can meet the challenges of a highly competitive cybersecurity labor market and a wave of future retirements.

  • How Will We Protect American Infrastructure from Cyberattacks

    As the Colonial Pipeline hack and subsequent shutdown reminded us so recently, our infrastructure’s digital connectedness — while bringing benefits like convenience, better monitoring and remote problem-solving — leaves it vulnerable to cyberattacks.

  • How America Turned the Tables on Huawei

    The United States started warning allies and partners in 2019 that having the Chinese telecom firm Huawei build their 5G telecom infrastructure risked exposing their citizens’ and their official data to Chinese state surveillance. The Trump administration argued that countries should keep Huawei out, both for their own sake and for the sake of collective security among democratic allies.

  • Digital Forensics Student on Pace to Be on 1st U.S. Cyber Team

    UCF graduate student Cameron Whitehead is on track to become a member of the first U.S Cyber Team to represent the nation in the inaugural International Cyber Security Challenge later this year in Athens, Greece. Whitehead, who is studying for his master’s degree in digital forensics, recently placed second out of 688 competitors in the U.S. Cyber Open, the first qualifying step to join the team.

  • Developing Research Model to Fight Deepfakes

    Detecting “deepfakes,” or when an existing image or video of a person is manipulated and replaced with someone else’s likeness, presents a massive cybersecurity challenge: What could happen when deepfakes are created with malicious intent? Artificial intelligence experts are working on a new reverse-engineering research method to detect and attribute deepfakes.