• Oversight Revealed in AI Image Recognition Tools

    Artificial intelligence can help people process and comprehend large amounts of data with precision, but the image recognition platforms and computer vision models that are built into AI frequently overlook an important back-end feature called the alpha channel. Researchers developed a proprietary attack called AlphaDog to study how hackers can exploit this oversight.

  • 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment

    DHS has issued its 2025 threat assessment, focusing on the most direct, pressing threats to the U.S. homeland during the next year. The assessment is organized around DHS missions that most closely align or apply to these threats—public safety, border and immigration, critical infrastructure, and economic security.

  • Election Security: When to Worry, When to Not

    Everyone wants an election that is secure and reliable and that will ensure that the voters’ actual choices are reflected in the results. At the same time, not every problem in voting technology or systems is worth pulling the fire alarm —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.

  • U.S. Warns Voters of Disinformation Deluge

    American voters are likely about to be swamped by a flood of misinformation and influence campaigns engineered by U.S. adversaries aiming, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials, to sway the results of the upcoming presidential election and cast doubt on the process itself.

  • You’d Never Fall for an Online Scam, Right?

    Wrong, says cybersecurity expert. Con artists use time-tested tricks that can work on anyone regardless of age, IQ — what’s changed is scale.

  • New Security Protocol Shields Data from Attackers During Cloud-Based Computation

    The technique leverages quantum properties of light to guarantee security while preserving the accuracy of a deep-learning model.

  • DHS Awards $279.9 million in Grant Funding for State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program

    DHS announced the availability of $279.9 million in grant funding for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP). Now in its third year, this program provides funding to state, local, and territorial (SLT) governments to help reduce cyber risk and build resilience against evolving cybersecurity threats.

  • Intelligence Suggests Iran Sought to Ensnare Trump, Biden in Hack-and-Leak

    Iran’s efforts to upend U.S. politics ahead of November’s presidential election by targeting the campaign of former President Donald Trump went well beyond a standard hack-and-leak operation. According to U.S. intelligence officials, Tehran sought to ensnare the campaign of Trump’s then-opponent, incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden.

  • Cybersecurity Suite Now on Duty Defending the Nation

    For the better part of a decade, dozens of Sandia engineers, each working on pieces of a new national security tool alongside federal partners, have revolutionized cybersecurity forensics with the Thorium platform and tool suite.

  • Let’s Take a Close Look at How We Protect Our Undersea Cables

    We rely ever more heavily on the connectivity that cables provide and, with capacity-hungry 6G on the horizon, the need will only grow. Yet, little has been done to protect undersea cales from accidental or deliberate disruption.

  • Four Fallacies of AI Cybersecurity

    To date, the majority of AI cybersecurity efforts do not reflect the accumulated knowledge and modern approaches within cybersecurity, instead tending toward concepts that have been demonstrated time and again not to support desired cybersecurity outcomes. 

  • How Smart Toys May e Spying on Kids: What Parents Need to Know

    Toniebox, Tiptoi, and Tamagotchi are smart toys, offering interactive play through software and internet access. However, many of these toys raise privacy concerns, and some even collect extensive behavioral data about children.

  • Vulnerabilities in a Popular Security Protocol

    A widely used security protocol that dates back to the days of dial-up Internet has vulnerabilities that could expose large numbers of networked devices to an attack and allow an attacker to gain control of traffic on an organization’s network.

  • The Hacking of the Trump Campaign Is 2016 All Over Again

    Hackers affiliated with the intelligence service of a foreign county hack the campaign of a candidate for the U.S. presidency, scoop damaging material, and disseminate it to reporters. This describes both the 2016 hacking of the Clinton campaign by Russian hackers, and the 2024 hacking of the Trump campaign by Iranian hackers. But there are differences: In 2016, “The press seized on the hacked emails,” Quinta Jurecic writes, “and the Trump campaign capitalized exuberantly on Russia’s involvement in the election.” Trump called on Russia to do even more. Now, the press has behaved more responsibly, and “Kamala Harris has not yet weighed in on the campaign trail with any winking suggestions that Iran might want to continue rummaging around in the Trump campaign’s systems.”

  • Foreign Actors Could Sow 'Chaos' in the 2024 Presidential Election, Cybersecurity Expert Says

    In a tightly contested election, a “hack and leak” campaigns can be hugely “consequential” at the margins, says an expert.