• Time for Regulators to Take Cyber Insurance Seriously

    In April 1997, Steven Haase and some of his colleagues in the insurance industry hosted a “Breach on the Beach” party at the International Risk Insurance Management Society’s annual convention in Honolulu to launch the first ever cyber-insurance policy. Josephine Wolff writes that it would be years, still, before cyber insurance would generate sufficiently significant sales numbers to attract the interest of most major insurers and their customers. More than two decades later, cyber insurance has expanded into a multibillion-dollar global business, with 528 U.S. insurance firms reporting that they offered cyber-specific policies in 2018.

  • Experts: Russia Using Virus Crisis to Sow Discord in West

    Experts say that Kremlin’s disinformation specialists are behind a disinformation campaign in the Western media on coronavirus, intended to fuel panic and discord among allies, deepen the crisis, exacerbate its consequences, and hamper the ability of Western democracies to respond to it effectively. The European Union has accused Moscow of pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, using “contradictory, confusing and malicious reports” to make it harder for the bloc leaders to communicate its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Truth Decay in the Coronavirus Moment: Q&A with Jennifer Kavanagh

    The COVID-19 crisis “is the type of environment in which false and misleading information thrives and spreads quickly. People are vulnerable. People are afraid. People don’t know what to believe. Trust in basically every organization or position that we would turn to is pretty low. There’s higher trust in the medical community than in, say, media or government, but it’s still not all that high. The combination of low trust and high volume of information coming from people who are not experts—but purport to be experts—creates the perfect storm for the average person,” says Jennifer Kavanagh, author of Truth Decay.

  • Cyberexperts Step in As Criminals Seek to Exploit Coronavirus Fears

    Experts from the National Cyber Security Center have revealed a range of attacks being perpetrated online as cyber criminals seek to exploit COVID-19. Techniques seen since the start of the year include bogus emails with links claiming to have important updates, which once clicked on lead to devices being infected.

  • Vulnerabilities of Password Managers

    Security experts recommend using a complex, random and unique password for every online account, but remembering them all would be a challenging task. That’s where password managers come in handy. Some commercial password managers, however, may be vulnerable to cyber-attack by fake apps, new research suggests.

  • Tackling 5G-Based Mobile, Cloud Computing Security Concerns

    The sheer number and wide variety of devices connected via 5G mobile networks demand differentiated security solutions. SMU Professor Robert Deng points to the need to ask the right questions, and a multiparty approach to create effective solutions.

  • The Catch to Putting Warning Labels on Fake News

    After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook began putting warning tags on news stories fact-checkers judged to be false. But there’s a catch: Tagging some stories as false makes readers more willing to believe other stories and share them with friends, even if those additional, untagged stories also turn out to be false.

  • Facebook, Twitter Remove Russia-Linked Fake Accounts Targeting Americans

    Social-media giants Facebook and Twitter say they have removed a number of Russia-linked fake accounts that targeted U.S. users from their operations in Ghana and Nigeria. Facebook on 12 March said the accounts it removed were in the “early stages” of building an audience on behalf of individuals in Russia, posting on topics such as black history, celebrity gossip, and fashion.

  • Extremists Use Coronavirus to Advance Racist, Conspiratorial Agendas

    As the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus surges globally, extremists continue to use the virus  to advance their bigotry and anti-Semitism, while also promoting conspiracy theories and even boogaloo (the white supremacist term for civil war). As usual, extremists are relying primarily on fringe social media platforms to disseminate their views, but as the virus spreads, it has gotten easier to find xenophobia, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories on mainstream social media platforms.

  • “Speed and Agility,” “Layered Cyber Deterrence” to Bolster American Cyber Defenses

    The Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) the other day released its report on how to best protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from a cyberattack of significant consequence. In the report, the CSC lays out a comprehensive strategy to restore deterrence in cyberspace and provides extensive policy and legislative actions to enable this strategy. The report lays out more than 75 recommendations to improve the cybersecurity of U.S. critical infrastructure and recommends a strategy of “layered cyber deterrence” that seeks to shape behavior in cyberspace, deny benefits to adversaries who would seek to exploit cyberspace to their advantage, and impose costs against those who would nonetheless choose to target America in and through cyberspace.

  • Next Generation 911 Services Vulnerable to Cyberattacks

    Despite a previous warning by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, who exposed vulnerabilities in 911 systems due to distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), the next generation of 911 systems that now accommodate text, images and video still have the same or more severe issues.

  • U.K.: Tory MPs Rebel against Government’s Huawei’s Plan

    The U.K. government has launched an all-hands-on-deck effort to contain a growing rebellion by Tory MPs who want to ban the use of Huawei’s equipment in the U.K. 5G telecoms network, arguing that allowing the Chinese company, with its close ties to China’s intelligence and military establishments, any access to the country’s communication infrastructure would be like inviting a fox to guard the hen house.

  • Chinese and Russian State-Owned Media on the Coronavirus: United Against the West?

    Beginning in late January, when news emerged of a “novel coronavirus” spreading through China, Beijing’s propaganda apparatus shifted into overdrive. The epidemic has also been heavily covered in externally directed Russian state-backed media outlets, offering an opportunity to compare and contrast the approaches of both countries’ propaganda apparatuses.

  • Better Math to Help Stop Spread of False Rumors about COVID-19

    Think of all the false rumors that went viral about COVID-19—it got so bad, the World Health Organization called it an “infodemic.” Whether it is in hoaxes or a viral conspiracy theory, information travels fast these days. Just how fast and far information moves depends on who shares it, and where, from discussions on social media to  conversations with fellow commuters on your way to work. So, how can our interactions and their infrastructures affect the spread of rumors and information? That’s a question that researchers are beginning to answer with complex math models of social contagion, the concept that social behavior and ideas spread like a pathogen.

  • Novel Cybersecurity Approach to Protect Army Systems

    Networked devices and infrastructure are becoming increasingly complex, making it nearly impossible to verify an entire system, and new attacks are continuously being developed. Researchers have identified an approach to network security that will enhance the effectiveness and timeliness of protection against adversarial intrusion and evasion strategies.