• The Complicated Truth of Countering Disinformation

    Social media’s unprecedented ability to spread disinformation succeeds in part because of vulnerabilities in the way people process and evaluate information. In an information environment characterized by an oversaturation of content and algorithms designed to increase views and shares, narratives (true or not) can quickly go viral by appealing to our biases. This new, decentralized world of content creation and consumption is ripe for exploitation by nefarious actors who seek to spread doubt and untruths. To counter modern disinformation, then, we cannot focus solely on social media platforms or current technologies — we should also understand the psychological factors that underpin our identities and perceptions of the truth.

  • I Researched Uighur Society in China for 8 Years and Watched How Technology Opened New Opportunities – Then Became a Trap

    The Uighurs, a Muslim minority ethnic group of around 12 million in northwest China, are required by the police to carry their smartphones and IDs listing their ethnicity. As they pass through one of the thousands of newly built digital media and face surveillance checkpoints located at jurisdictional boundaries, entrances to religious spaces and transportation hubs, the image on their ID is matched to their face. If they try to pass without these items, a digital device scanner alerts the police. The Chinese state authorities described the intrusive surveillance as a necessary tool against the “extremification” of the Uighur population. Through this surveillance process, around 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslims were determined “untrustworthy” and have forcibly been sent to detention and reeducation in a massive internment camp system. Since more than 10 percent of the adult population has been removed to these camps, hundreds of thousands of children have been separated from their parents. Many children throughout the region are now held in boarding schools or orphanages which are run by non-Muslim state workers.

  • Determining the Who, Why, and How Behind Manipulated Media

    The threat of manipulated multi-modal media – which includes audio, images, video, and text – is increasing as automated manipulation technologies become more accessible, and social media continues to provide a ripe environment for viral content sharing. The creators of convincing media manipulations are no longer limited to groups with significant resources and expertise. Today, an individual content creator has access to capabilities that could enable the development of an altered media asset that creates a believable, but falsified, interaction or scene. A new program seeks to develop technologies capable of automating the detection, attribution, and characterization of falsified media assets.

  • Countering Coercion in Cyberspace

    What is cyber coercion, and how have states used cyber operations to coerce others? Based on unclassified, open-source material, the authors of a new RAND report explore how four states — Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea — have used cyber operations, and whether that use constitutes cyber coercion.

  • AI Startups to Fight Against Online Disinformation

    On both sides of the Atlantic, governments, foundations, and companies are looking at how to solve the problem of online dis/misinformation. Some emphasize the demand side of the problem, believing it important to focus on consumer behavior and the use of media literacy and fact-checking. Some focus on legal remedies such as platform-liability and hate-speech laws as well as privacy protections. Others try to raise the quality of journalism in the hope that creating more reliable content. There is another kind of fix, offered by small companies in the information ecosystem: Using natural language processing as well as human intelligence to identify and, in some cases, block false or inflammatory content online.

  • Cybersecurity of Connected Autonomous Vehicles

    In the near future connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are expected to become widely used across the world. Researchers have been working to improve the security, privacy and safety of CAVs by testing four innovations in the IoT-enabled Transport and Mobility Demonstrator. They were able to connect CAVs to other CAVs and roadside infrastructure more securely and privately.CAVs can now connect to each other, roadside infrastructure, and roadside infrastructure to each other more securely.

  • Tests Find 125 Vulnerabilities in 13 Network Attached Storage Devices

    In a new, follow-up cybersecurity study of network attached storage (NAS) systems and routers since 2013, consulting and research firm Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) found 125 vulnerabilities in 13 IoT devices, reaffirming an industrywide problem of a lack of basic security diligence.

  • Sensitive Personal and Financial Data of What’s Likely an Entire Country Leaked Online

    A chilling data leak on an unsecured server in Miami divulged sensitive personal and financial information of what appears to be the entire population of Ecuador. The discovery came from the internet security firm VpnMentor, which discovered the database containing more than 20 million individuals’ data—including as many as 7 million minors—on an exposed Florida-based server belonging to the Ecuadorian data and analytics company Novaestrat.

  • Fearing “Spy Trains,” Congress May Ban a Chinese Maker of Subway Cars

    A Chinese state-owned company called CRRC Corporation, the world’s largest train maker, completed the $100 million facility this year in the hopes of winning contracts to build subway cars and other passenger trains for American cities like Chicago and Washington. But growing fears about China’s economic ambitions and its potential to track and spy on Americans are about to quash those plans. Lawmakers — along with CRRC’s competitors — say they are concerned that subway cars made by a Chinese company might make it easier for Beijing to spy on Americans and could pose a sabotage threat to American infrastructure. Critics of the deal speculate that the Chinese firm could incorporate technology into the cars that would allow CRRC — and the Chinese government — to track the faces, movement, conversations or phone calls of passengers through the train’s cameras or Wi-Fi.

  • How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Cyber Security Landscape and Preventing Cyber Attacks

    With the genuinely significant potentials of Artificial Intelligence, the probability of attackers weaponizing it and using it to boost and expand their attacks is a huge threat. One of the biggest concerns is that hackers can use AI to automate cyberattacks on a massive scale. Now, our adversaries are relying on human resources to craft and coordinate their attacks. Cybercrime and cybersecurity landscape are going to change –not for the better – if and when they learn to use AI and machine learning to do the dirty work. So, the three main implications of Artificial Intelligence to the threat landscape are the augmentation of today’s threats and attacks, the development of new threats, and the variation of the nature of existing threats.

  • North Korean Hacking Groups Hit with Treasury Sanctions

    The Department of the Treasury hit three North Korean groups with new sanctions Sept. 13 for conducting cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, including the infamous WannaCry ransomware attacks. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control announced that Lazarus Group, an advanced persistent threat believed to be working at the behest of the North Korean government and two of its subgroups, dubbed Bluenoroff and Andariel, was responsible for unleashing WannaCry, which wrought havoc across hospital and health care organizations in as well as other sectors in the United Kingdom and other industrial sectors in 2017, as well as the 2014 Sony hack.

  • West Needs to Be Ready for Terrorist “Dirty” Cyber Bomb

    The West must take necessary precautions to prevent terrorists from launching a “dirty” cyber bomb, Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Vincent Stewart, who stepped down a few months ago from his post as deputy head of the US Cyber Command. Stewart that while the West took cyberattacks from nation-states seriously, it is vastly underestimating the danger of a massive ISIS or al-Qaeda cyberattack which could cripple a country’s entire infrastructure. While drawing attention to cyber terrorism, Stewart acknowledged that a nation state like Russia was still the most dangerous cyber adversary with “Russia viewing itself as a global power” and Russian President Vladimir “Putin believing he is almost the czar.”

  • New Clues Show How Russia’s Grid Hackers Aimed for Physical Destruction

    For nearly three years, the December 2016 cyberattack on the Ukrainian power grid has presented a menacing puzzle. Two days before Christmas that year, Russian hackers planted a unique specimen of malware in the network of Ukraine’s national grid operator, Ukrenergo. Just before midnight, they used it to open every circuit breaker in a transmission station north of Kyiv. The result was one of the most dramatic attacks in Russia’s , an unprecedented, automated blackout across a broad swath of Ukraine’s capital. In an insidious twist in the Ukrenergo case, Russia’s hackers apparently intended to trigger that destruction not at the time of the blackout itself but when grid operators turned the power back on, using the utility’s own recovery efforts against them.

  • How to Act against Domestic Terrorists — and Their Foreign Supporters

    The United States faces a surging domestic terrorism threat in the homeland. In the aftermath of the El Paso and Dayton shootings in the first weekend of August, more than 40 people were   arrested for threats to commit mass attacks by the end of that month. GW Program on Extremism suggests two ways to achieve a more effective and coordinated multisector response to the domestic terrorism threat. First, specific criminal statutes for domestic terrorism offenses need to be enacted that penalize the commission of specific violent crimes. Acknowledging concerns that new criminal statutes related to property damage may stifle legitimate protest, new criminal statutes could be limited to violence against persons and providing material support to terrorists. Second, the list of proscribed foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) should include far-right actors outside of the United States.

  • Israel Planted Eavesdropping Devices to Spy on Trump, WH officials: U.S. Intelligence Officials

    The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Israel was behind the placement of cellphone surveillance equipment near the White House and at other locations in Washington, D.C. Politico reports that a former senior U.S. official with first-hand knowledge of the issue said that the U.S. intelligence community believes the devices were installed to spy on President Donald Trump and top administration officials.