• Two R&D Projects to Enhance Mobile Network Traffic Security

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are jointly announcing the final two research and development (R&D) awards for the newly launched Secure and Resilient Mobile Network Infrastructure (SRMNI) project.

  • How Biden’s Cyber Strategy Echoes Trump’s

    On March 3, the Biden administration released its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Herb Lin writes that the interim guidance document is, by definition, a work in progress, and one would expect a final guidance document to be roughly consistent with the interim guidance but also to contain a more substantial elaboration on the interim guidance. With two exceptions — emphasizing diversity in the national talent base and strongly implies government investment in cybersecurity –”all other areas addressed in the Biden interim guidance, I believe the statements are substantially the same. If this is true, it suggests great continuity in cyber policy and strategy between administrations as different as Biden’s and Trump’s. Of course, the Trump National Cyber Strategy wasn’t all that different from Obama’s cyber strategy, either.”

  • Sea-Level Rise up to Four Times Global Average for Coastal Communities

    Coastal populations are experiencing relative sea-level rise up to four times faster than the global average – according to new research. is the first to analyze global sea-level rise combined with measurements of sinking land.

  • The Microsoft Exchange Hack and the Great Email Robbery

    The world is probably days away from the “Great Email Robbery,” in which a large number of threat actors around the globe are going to pillage and ransom the email servers of tens of thousands of businesses and local governments, Nicholas Weaver writes. Or at least pillage those that the purported Chinese actors haven’t already pillaged.” And now the Biden administration has a real hard policy problem: What now? The SolarWinds hack may have been significant, but [the Exchange attack] will affect far more institutions,” Weaver writes. “The Exchange attack showed complete disregard for possible consequences on behalf of those responsible for the breach,” but “without consequences, such broad attacks will simply continue.”

  • Cyber Threat Looms Large over German Election

    Whether hacking attacks or disinformation campaigns, online meddling could sway public opinion and influence the outcome of the September vote, experts warn. Recent incidents suggest that the threat is real.

  • Was SolarWinds a Different Type of Cyber Espionage?

    The Biden administration announced that it will impose sanctions and other measures against Russia in response to the SolarWinds incident. The cybersecurity firm FireEye disclosed the compromise of numerous government and private-sector networks in December 2020. SolarWinds is among the top cybersecurity breaches the U.S. government has ever confronted and has raised critical questions about the integrity of federal networks and Russia’s ultimate intentions. “Given the incident’s significance, it is understandable that the Biden administration is grappling with how to appropriately address it,” Erica D. Borghard writes. But setting aside important limitations of economic sanctions as a policy tool to address malign cyber behavior, “there is a gap between how administration officials are framing the nature of the SolarWinds incident and what the available evidence indicates about it,” she adds.

  • A Framework for Secure Cyber-Physical Systems

    Cyber-physical systems (CPS), which combine modern networking with physical actuators, can be vulnerable against hackers. Recently, researchers at DGIST developed a new framework for CPSs that is resilient to a sophisticated kind of cyberattack. Unlike existing solutions, the proposed approach allows for real-time detection and recovery from the attack while ensuring stable operation. This paves the way for secure and reliable CPSs across various application domains, such as smart cities and unmanned public transportation.

  • SolarWinds Hack Bigger, More Dangerous than Previously Thought, Tech Execs Warn

    Executives with technology companies impacted by the massive cybersecurity breach known as the SolarWinds hack are giving U.S. lawmakers more reason to worry, warning the intrusion is both bigger and more dangerous than first realized.

  • Cyber Workforce Protecting U.S. National Security

    The Defense Department’s cyber workforce is tasked with defending virtually every system that the department relies on to protect national security.

  • Biden Orders Review to Bolster Supply Chain Resiliency

    President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to formally order a 100-day government review of global supply chains and potential U.S. vulnerabilities in key industries including computer chips, electric vehicle batteries, pharmaceuticals and critical minerals used in electronics. On top of the 100-day review of these four key industries, Biden’s order also directs yearlong reviews for six sectors: defense, public health, information technology, transportation, energy and food production.

  • The Infrastructure of Hate: Epik Hosts Extremist Groups

    Social media platforms have received the lion’s share of attention for enabling users to spread hate and disinformation and plan and incite violence and terrorist acts. Flying under the radar are infrastructure providers like Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company that works with nearly 750,000 websites and is ranked among the 50 largest web hosts. While some companies at the infrastructure level have acknowledged a level of responsibility for addressing abuse of their services—for example, this framework by domain registrars signed by leading companies such as GoDaddy, Tucows and Amazon—Epik is not among them.

  • How Shared Partisanship Leads to Social Media Connections

    It is no secret that U.S. politics is polarized. An experiment conducted by MIT researchers now shows just how deeply political partisanship directly influences people’s behavior within online social networks. The Twitter experiment shows clear self-selection into social media “echo chambers” due to political preferences.

  • Facebook Restores News to Australian Users

    Facebook is restoring news content to its users in Australia after resolving a dispute with the government. Last week, Facebook blocked Australians from sharing and reading news stories on its platform in a dispute with the government in Canberra.   

  • Inoculating against the Spread of Radical-Islamist and Islamophobic Disinformation

    Misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda are core components of radicalization and extremism and apply equally to Islamist radicalization and the generation of Islamophobia. One method of countering disinformation is to inoculate the information consumer.

  • 46,218 News Transcripts Show Ideologically Extreme Politicians Get More Airtime

    We research how changes in the media have shifted the incentives of elected officials and the considerations of voters, and what that means for American democracy. In recent work, we showed that extremely conservative and extremely liberal legislators receive far more airtime on cable and broadcast news than their moderate counterparts. Robust local news outlets once held legislators to account by covering whether they delivered for their districts. But as local news has declined, voters are turning to national media outlets for their political news. There, ideological outliers now set the tone of the debate, distorting perceptions of the important issues and warping Americans’ views of their political options.