• Pompeo: U.S. Will Take Action on Chinese Software in “Coming Days

    Chinese software companies operating in the United States assiduously collect customers’ personal date, browsing habits, facial images, and other information and deliver it to China’s intelligence agencies for possible use by China when it would serve China’s interests to do so. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the fact the Chinese software companies serve as information collectors for China’s intelligence agencies poses a serious national security threat to the United States, and that the administration, in the coming days, will soon announce a series of measures aiming to restrict the ability of Chinese software companies to operate in this way, and ban some companies from operating in the United States altogether.

  • Election Cyber Surge Initiative Launches

    On Friday, the University of Chicago’s Cyber Policy Initiative (CPI) announced the launch of the Election Cyber Surge initiative to help address the urgent need to connect state and local election offices with volunteer technologists. The initiative will create a database which will allow officials to search for potential volunteers in their state or city by skillset, subject matter expertise, or cybersecurity experience.

  • Research on Voting by Mail Says It’s Safe – from Fraud and Disease

    As millions of Americans prepare to vote in November – and in many cases, primaries and state and local elections through the summer as well – lots of people are talking about voting by mail. Some critics – including President Donald Trump on several occasions – have cast doubt on the integrity of mail-in voting, even though some of them have voted by mail in the past. The evidence shows that voting by mail is rarely subject to fraud, does not give an advantage to one political party over another and can in fact inspire public confidence in the voting process, if done properly.

  • New Partnership Aims to Detect, Mitigate Attempts to Subvert, Delegitimize November Election

    Four of the U.S. leading institutions focused on analysis of mis- and disinformation in the social media landscape have created a new partnership — the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) – which aims to detect and mitigate the impact of attempts to prevent or deter people from voting or to delegitimize election results.

  • “Knock Codes” for Smartphone Security Are Easily Predicted

      Smartphone owners who unlock their devices with knock codes aren’t as safe as they think, according to new research. Knock codes work by letting people select patterns to tap on a phone’s locked screen. LG popularized the method in 2014, and now there are approximately 700,000 people using this method in the U.S. alone, along with one million downloads worldwide of clone applications for Google Android devices generally.

  • Huawei and TikTok Are at the Forefront of a New Drift to Regionalism – Many Others Will Follow

    Huawei and TikTok were two of the most successful examples of globalization. Both of these Chinese companies are now at the mercy of a widening geopolitical divide. The U.S. has led an increasingly successful campaign to eliminate Huawei from the global market over alleged security fears, and is threatening to ban TikTok too. These developments are signs of attempts by the U.S. to decouple from China’s economy and concentrate on alliances within its own political and economic sphere. It chimes with the wider drift away from globalization towards a more regional approach to trade.

  • This Year’s CyberForce Competition to Be Held Virtually

    Last week the Department of Energy (DOE) opened registration for the 2020 CyberForce Competition, the sixth iteration of the Department’s collegiate-level cyber defense competition designed to inspire and develop the next generation of energy sector cybersecurity professionals. Because of the pandemic, the 2020 CyberForce Competition will be held on 14 November completely in a virtual environment, with individual competitors rather than teams representing their respective academic institutions.

  • Chinese Government Hackers Charged with IP, COVID-19 Research Theft

    U.S. DOJ accused China on Tuesday of sponsoring criminal hackers to target biotech firms around the world working on coronavirus vaccines and treatments, as the FBI said the Chinese government was acting like “an organized criminal syndicate.”

  • U.K. Government, Intel. Took "Eye Off the Ball” Regarding Russia’s Direct Threat to U.K.: Report

    A report on Russian interference in British politics concluded on Tuesday that the Kremlin tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum and the British government’s ignorance of potential meddling was “astonishing.” The report also found similar evidence for Russian interference in the Scottish independence referendum of 2014.

  • Russia Report: Intelligence Expert Explains How U.K. Ignored Growing Threat

    The new report on Russia from parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) is damning. The document certainly isn’t a page-turner, and nor does it provide all the answers some had expected. But contrary to most ISC reports, it’s striking and blunt, and the message couldn’t be clearer: Russia’s intelligence agencies pose a direct threat to the U.K., but successive governments and the U.K. agencies have taken their eye off the ball.

  • DHS, NSA Name Binghamton a Cyber Research Center

    In June, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security named Binghamton a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research (CAE-R) through 2025. “The main goals,” said Professor Ping Yang, who is the director of the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity (CIAC), “are to reduce the vulnerability in the information infrastructure of the United States by promoting higher education and research in cyber-defense and producing professionals with cyber-defense expertise.”

  • Twitter Hack Exposes Broader Threat to Democracy and Society

    In case 2020 wasn’t dystopian enough, hackers on July 15 hijacked the Twitter accounts of former President Barack Obama, presidential hopeful Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian and Apple, among others. The hack on the surface may appear to be a run-of-the-mill financial scam. But the breach has chilling implications for democracy. What happened is not about financial crime. It is a serious threat to us all.

  • Personal Data Can Easily Be Extracted from Zoom, Other Video Conference Screenshots

    Video conference users should not post screen images of Zoom and other video conference sessions on social media, according to BGU researchers, who easily identified people from public screenshots of video meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.

  • Russian Government Hackers Trying to Steal COVID-19 Research Information from Western Labs

    Russian government hackers are targeting organizations involved in coronavirus vaccine development, U.K. security officials have revealed. The APT29 hacking group, also named “the Dukes” or “Cozy Bear,” is staffed by GRU (Russian military intelligence branch) hackers, and the GRU subcontracts Kremlin-ordered cyber operations to APT29. In 2016, the APT29 hackers stole emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. 

  • Germany Urges EU to Impose Cyber Sanctions on Russia for Bundestag Hacking

    The German government has made an official proposal to the European Union to impose sanctions on Russian individuals behind a broad hacking of the Bundestag five years ago. If the EU accepts the German proposal, it would be the first use of an EU cyber sanctions regime which was adopted by the organization in 2017, but which is yet to be used.