• New Research Projects to Shed New Light on the Intentions of Violent Extremists

    New research project aims to shed new light on the intentions of violent extremists. The “Disguised Compliance in Terrorist Offending” project will provide frontline staff across U.K. security agencies with the best tools and approaches to assess the true intention of people motivated to acts of violence by ideologies.

  • Scientists: No Credible Evidence of Computer Fraud in the 2020 Election Outcome

    “Anyone asserting that a U.S. election was ‘rigged’ is making an extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and verifiable evidence. Merely citing the existence of technical flaws does not establish that an attack occurred, much less that it altered an election outcome. It is simply speculation,” 59 top U.S. computer scientists and election security experts write in an open letter. “We are aware of alarming assertions being made that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ by exploiting technical vulnerabilities. However, in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent. To our collective knowledge, no credible evidence has been put forth that supports a conclusion that the 2020 election outcome in any state has been altered through technical compromise.”

  • Trump Fires Security Chief Who Said 2020 Vote Was “Most Secure” in U.S. History

    Barely two weeks after the polls closed in an election he is now projected to lose, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to fire CISA’s director Christopher Krebs, the official responsible for spearheading efforts to secure the vote. Since the 3 November election, Trump, his campaign, and some of his supporters have issued a continuous stream of allegations about the integrity of the election, but evidence of massive voter fraud or other irregularities on a scale necessary to swing the election in Trump’s favor has not materialized. Late last Thursday, a coalition of federal and state officials, including CISA, further rejected the allegations as baseless. Krebs himself had also taken an active role in debunking rumors and unfounded allegations in the days and weeks following the election, taking to Twitter to dismiss some conspiracy theories as “nonsense.”

  • The China Initiative: Year-in-Review

    On the two-year anniversary of the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, the Department said it continues its focus on the Initiative’s goals, and announced progress during the past year in disrupting and deterring the wide range of national security threats posed by the policies and practices of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government.

  • An AI Tool Can Distinguish Between a Conspiracy Theory and a True Conspiracy – It Comes Down to How Easily the Story Falls Apart

    Conspiracy theories, which have the potential to cause significant harm, have found a welcome home on social media, where forums free from moderation allow like-minded individuals to converse. There they can develop their theories and propose actions to counteract the threats they “uncover.” But how can you tell if an emerging narrative on social media is an unfounded conspiracy theory? It turns out that it’s possible to distinguish between conspiracy theories and true conspiracies by using machine learning tools to graph the elements and connections of a narrative.

  • Your Smart Watch May Be Sharing Your Data

    You may not realize it, but your internet-connected household devices such as the Ring doorbell, Peloton exercise bike and Nest thermostat are all exchanging data with other devices and systems over the network. These physical objects, all part of the Internet of Things (IoT), come with sensors and software, and they often use cloud computing. Most people would consider the information contained in these household items as highly private.

  • When to Worry, When to Not, and the Takeaway from Antrim County, Michigan

    Everyone wants an election that is secure and reliable. With technology in the mix, making sure that the technology supports this is critical. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has long-warned against blindly adopting technologies that can be easily manipulated or fail without having systems in place to test, secure, and catch problems, including through risk limiting audits. At the same time, not every problem is worth pulling the fire alarm about—we have to look at the bigger story and context.  And we have to stand down when our worst fears turn out to be unfounded.

  • Cyberattacks and the Constitution

    The United States has one of the world’s strongest and most sophisticated capabilities to launch cyberattacks against adversaries. How does the U.S. Constitution allocate power to use that capability? And, Matthew Waxman asks, what does that allocation tell us about appropriate executive-legislative branch arrangements for setting and implementing cyber strategy?

  • New Tool Detects Unsafe Security Practices in Android Apps

    Computer scientists have shown for the first time that it is possible to analyze how thousands of Android apps use cryptography without needing to have the apps’ actual codes. Open-source CRYLOGGER is the first tool that detects cryptographic misuses by running the Android app instead of analyzing its code.

  • Election Security 2020: Why Did Things Go Right This Time?

    In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, the U.S. government and technology companies took several steps to safeguard election security in cyberspace, focusing their efforts on disinformation and cyberattacks. Although there were a handful of incidents, none compromised the integrity of the election, and Election Day passed without any major disruption. Why did things go right this time? A combination of government and private sector action motivated by the lessons of the 2016 and 2018 elections. Still, as the vote count continues, disinformation remains a real threat.

  • Extremism Gab Remains Extremists' Online Destination of Choice

    Two years ago, white supremacist Robert Bowers killed eleven people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh after posting antisemitic, anti-immigrant rants on Gab. Today, supported by a founder who encourages hate speech, the social media site appears to be gaining traction among far-right extremists, including white supremacists: Sixty percent of the 47 far-right extremist groups currently on Gab were created this year.

  • World's Fastest Open-Source Intrusion Detection Is Here

    Intrusion detection systems are the invisible intelligence agencies in computer networks. They scan every packet of data that is passed through the network, looking for signs of any one of the tens of thousands of different types of cyberattacks they’re aware of. A newly developed intrusion detection system achieves speeds of 100 gigabits per second using a single server.

  • Tricking Fake News Detectors with Malicious User Comments

    Fake news detectors, which have been deployed by social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to add warnings to misleading posts, have traditionally flagged online articles as false based on the story’s headline or content. However, recent approaches have considered other signals, such as network features and user engagements, in addition to the story’s content to boost their accuracies.

  • Plenty More Phish: Why Employees Fall for Scams and What Companies Can Do about It

    Preventive countermeasures to phishing emails may actually increase the likelihood of employees falling for such scams, a new academic study reveals. Protective controls, such as email proxy, anti-malware and anti-phishing technologies, can give employees a false sense of security, causing them to drop their vigilance because they incorrectly assume such measures intercept all phishing emails before they reach their inbox.

  • Six Disinformation Threats in the Post-Election Period

    The problem of disinformation in the run-up to the 2020 election is well covered in the news media. Justin Hendrix writes that what hasn’t been as widely covered is the disinformation campaigns that will likely come right after Americans vote on 3 November.