• Nation’s elite cybersecurity talent participate in U.S. Cyber Challenge program

    A week from today, Illinois’ top cybersecurity talent will descend upon Moraine Valley Community College outside of Chicago to participate in the annual U.S. Cyber Challenge (USCC) Cyber Camp. During the week-long camp, individuals will participate in a variety of classes that cover such subjects as packet crafting and pen testing, and compete in a virtual Capture the Flag competition to demonstrate their cybersecurity abilities in a free-form environment in hopes of winning one of the limited (ISC)2 scholarship vouchers.

  • NIST to refine Cybersecurity Framework after comments from stakeholders

    NIST is developing a minor update of its Cybersecurity Framework based on feedback from its users. In the just-released Cybersecurity Framework Feedback: What We Heard and Next Steps, NIST is announcing that a draft of the update will be published for comment in early 2017.

  • Terrorists gaining cyber capability to bring major cities to a standstill: U.K. intelligence chief

    Robert Hannigan, the director of GCHQ, the British equivalent of the U.S. NSA, has warned that terrorists and rogue states are gaining the technical capability to bring a major city to a standstill with the click of a button. He said that the risk to cities like London would significantly increase as more physical objects – cars, household appliances — are connected online in what is called the Internet of Things.

  • Weak spots in Europe’s “Right to be Forgotten” data privacy law

    Under Europe’s “Right to be Forgotten” law, citizens there can petition Internet search providers such as Google to remove search results linked to personal information that is negative or defamatory. In many cases, these links lead to information about accusations of criminal activity or financial difficulties, which may be “delisted” if the information is erroneous or no longer relevant. But “gone” doesn’t always mean “forgotten,” according to a new study.

  • Closing security gaps in the Internet of Things

    Cars, fridges, household appliances – in the future, many everyday items will be online. This opens up numerous new targets for attacks. IT experts are developing protection mechanisms. The experts are developing a new method for detecting and fixing vulnerabilities in the applications run on different devices — regardless of the processor integrated in the respective device.

  • Electronic anti-theft systems pose a threat to cardiac device patients

    Researchers say that electronic anti-theft systems still post a threat to cardiac device patients. Experts say that even though reported events are rare, prolonged exposure to electronic anti-theft systems, also called electronic article surveillance (EAS) systems, can cause pacing therapy to drop beats or in the worst case leave pacemaker dependent patients with no heartbeat, and cause ICDs to deliver inappropriate shocks.

  • Hackers could easily cause drones to ignore human controllers, or crash

    Sales of drones — small flying machines equipped with cameras — are soaring. But new research by a computer security team has raised concerns about how easily hackers could cause these robotic devices to ignore their human controllers and land or, more drastically, crash. The researchers say that more secure flying devices are needed for aerial deliveries and photography.

  • You are not as anonymous online as you may think

    Hiding online is harder than you would have thought. You may not be anonymous as you think you are online, reveals a new study. Your browsing behavior can indicate your personality and provide a unique digital signature which can identify you, sometimes after just 30-minutes of browsing.

  • HIPAA audits and what you need to consider to keep your organization compliant

    HIPAA has long been a regulation which has been confusing, in many aspects requiring a legal degree to understand the complexity and exactly how to become and remain complaint.HIPAA was enacted in 1996, and it has taken twenty years for it to become the elephant in the room it is today.The regulation has become more sophisticated based on the overwhelming increase in data breaches with the medical industry experiencing the greatest impact.

  • Security risks in the age of smart homes

    Smart homes, an aspect of the Internet of Things, offer the promise of improved energy efficiency and control over home security. Integrating various devices together can offer users easy programming of many devices around the home, including appliances, cameras and alarm sensors. There are great benefits to gain from smart homes, and the Internet of Things in general, that ultimately lead to an improved quality of living. However, given the security weaknesses in today’s systems, caution is appropriate.

  • It’s easier to defend against ransomware than you might think

    Ransomware – malicious software that sneaks onto your computer, encrypts your data so you can’t access it and demands payment for unlocking the information – has become an emerging cyberthreat. Several reports in the past few years document the diversity of ransomware attacks and their increasingly sophisticated methods. Unfortunately, the use of advanced cryptosystems in modern ransomware families has made recovering victims’ files almost impossible without paying the ransom. However, it is easier to defend against ransomware than to fight off other types of cyberthreats, such as hackers gaining unauthorized entry to company data and stealing secret information.

  • What Machiavelli can teach us about cybercrime and e-commerce security

    Online poker offers new insights into the mind-set of scheming Machiavellians, researchers have found. The researchers show that the card betting game can be used as a novel way to better understand the psychology of strategic deception. The research is part of a broader project looking at break-through research on deception, a basic problem at the heart of cybercrime affecting sectors such as e-commerce and financial services, to deepen our fundamental understanding of how deception works particularly in online settings.

  • Maritime vessels at risk of cyberattack because of outdated systems

    Maritime vessels are under significant threat of cyber-attack because many are carrying outdated software and were not designed with cyber security in mind, according to new research. But operators could easily mitigate against such dangers by updating security systems, improving ship design and providing better training for crews.

  • Presidential campaigns spied on by foreign hackers with “a variety of motivations”

    National Intelligence Director James Clapper said that the campaigns of all the candidates for president are being spied on by foreign hackers with “a variety of motivations.” Clapper said that the acts of espionage against the campaigns may only just be getting started. “As the campaigns intensify we’ll probably have more of it,” Clapper noted.

     

  • We know where you live

    Researchers have shown that the location stamps on just a handful of Twitter posts — as few as eight over the course of a single day — can be enough to disclose the addresses of the poster’s home and workplace to a relatively low-tech snooper. The tweets themselves might be otherwise innocuous — the location information comes from geographic coordinates automatically associated with the tweets.