• Bolstering Cybersecurity for Systems Linking Solar Power to Grid

    DOE has awarded researchers $3.6 million to advance technologies that integrate solar power systems to the national power grid. “As U.S. energy policy shifts toward more diverse sources, particularly solar, the Energy Department understands the critical importance of protecting these systems and technologies,” said Alan Mantooth, U Arkansas Professor of electrical engineering and principal investigator for the project.

  • Strengthening Mobile Device Email Security and Privacy

    Large and small organizations alike now rely heavily on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets to enable their workers, customers and management to connect and collaborate, even when some or all of them are working remotely. But device users may prioritize convenience over strong security, accidently share sensitive information with unintended audiences, or use their corporate- or government-owned devices in contexts in which sensitive business information should not be shared.

  • Deepfakes 2.0: The New Era of “Truth Decay”

    Deepfake technology has exploded in the last few years. Deepfakes use artificial intelligence (AI) “to generate, alter or manipulate digital content in a manner that is not easily perceptible by humans.” The goal is to create digital video and audio that appears “real.” Brig. Gen. R. Patrick Huston and Lt. Col. M. Eric Bahm write that a picture used to be worth a thousand words – and a video worth a million – but deepfake technology means that “seeing” is no longer “believing.”  “From fake evidence to election interference, deepfakes threaten local and global stability,” they write.

  • Cybersecurity Requires International Cooperation, Trust

    Most experts agree that state-sponsored hackers in Russia are trying to use the internet to infiltrate the U.S. electrical grid and sabotage elections. And yet internet security teams in the U.S. and Europe actively seek to cooperate with their Russian counterparts, setting aside some of their differences and focusing on the issues where they can establish mutual trust.

  • Quantum Computers Will Break the Internet, but Only If We Let Them

    Tomorrow’s quantum computers are expected to be millions of times faster than the device you’re using right now. Whenever these powerful computers take hold, it will be like going from a Ford Model T to the Starship Enterprise. Hackers may soon be able to expose all digital communications by using advanced quantum computers. A new form of cryptography would stop them, but it needs to be put into place now.

  • Putin’s Long War Against American Science

    A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses. The Putin regime mandates vaccination at home, but has launched a broad and sophisticated disinformation campaign in an effort to lower vaccine rates in Western countries, with two goals in mind: discredit Western science and medicine, and weaken Western societies by facilitating the re-emergence of diseases such as measles, long thought to have been eradicated. The COPVID-19 epidemic has not escaped the notice of the Kremlin’s disinformation and propaganda specialists. “As the pandemic has swept the globe, it has been accompanied by a dangerous surge of false information,” William Broad writes. “Analysts say that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has played a principal role in the spread of false information as part of his wider effort to discredit the West and destroy his enemies from within.”

  • Social Media Has Positive Possibilities in Pandemic

    Social media has the power to both inform and deceive – and do both at speeds we have never experienced. That fact has, once again, been on display as the COVID-19 epidemic has dominated social media platforms for weeks.

  • Spreading Dangerous News spreads: Why Twitter Users Retweet Risk-Related Information

    In an Internet-driven world, social media has become the go-to source of all kinds of information. This is especially relevant in crisis-like situations, when warnings and risk-related information are actively circulated on social media. But currently, there is no way of determining the accuracy of the information. This has resulted in the spread of misinformation.

  • Bolstering Internet Security

    An innovative protection against website counterfeiting developed by Princeton researchers went live on the internet two months ago, on 19 February, boosting security for hundreds of millions of websites. The rollout was the culmination of over two years of close collaboration between research groups at Princeton and Let’s Encrypt, the world’s largest certificate authority serving 200 million websites.

  • U.S. Military, Government Workers Still Use Zoom Despite FBI Warning

    U.S. military and government employees continue to use the popular videoconferencing application Zoom for official business, despite FBI warnings about privacy and security issues, an action experts fear is increasing the risk of government data breaches.  

  • Huawei and the Third Offset

    In order to effectively mitigate the security risks posed by Huawei, the U.S. Department of Defense needs to fund and integrate cutting-edge technologies from the private sector. Offset strategies are intended to counterbalance an adversary’s military advantages by developing asymmetric technological strengths.

  • Why China's Coronavirus Lies Don't Matter If It Plays the Long Information Game

    The world will never be the same after COVID-19 –but Mark Payumo writes that this will not be because people sheltered in place and reacquainted themselves with traditional family bonding, but because China opened a new front in information warfare. “This front is global in scale and one that Beijing has laid the groundwork for a decade prior to the pandemic,” he writes. “As it unravels, it underscores one fact that we already know: that the world, especially truly-functioning West democracies, continues to fail in responding to Chinese global statecraft that may threaten civil liberties as we know it.”

  • COVID-19 Misinformation Attributed to Johns Hopkins Circulates Widely Online

    Misinformation about COVID-19 purporting to come from Johns Hopkins is circulating widely online, including one particular message described as an “excellent summary” that has been shared extensively worldwide in the past few weeks. The message has no identifiable connection to Johns Hopkins. “Rumors and misinformation like this can easily circulate in communities during a crisis. The rumors that we have seen in greater volumes are those citing a Johns Hopkins immunologist and infectious disease expert. We do not know the origin of these rumors and they lack credibility,” Johns Hopkins said.

  • “CoronaCheck” Website Combats Spread of Misinformation

    Researchers have developed an automated system that uses machine learning, data analysis, and human feedback to automatically verify statistical claims about the new coronavirus. “CoronaCheck,” based on ongoing research from Cornell University’s Immanuel Trummer, launched internationally in March and has already been used more than 9,600 times. The database – now available in English, French, and Italian – checks claims on COVID-19’s spread based on reliable sources such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Saving the IoT from Botnets

    The advent of the Internet of Thing, essentially smart devices with connectivity to the internet has wrought many benefits, but with it comes the problem of how to cope with third party users with malicious or criminal intent.