Researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), a unit of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, are addressing the issue of practical quantum computers breaking classical encryption before it becomes an actual problem. They presented a paper titled  "Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Network Instrument: Measuring PQC Adoption Rates and Identifying Migration Pathways" that proposes the design of a novel PQC network instrument housed at NCSA and the University of Illinois, and incorporated as a part of the FABRIC testbed.

Researchers at Charles Darwin University (CDU) hacked into an oximeter, a smartwatch, and a smart peak flow meter to explore the potential risks and vulnerabilities of these Internet-connected medical devices. According to the study's co-author, Dr. Bharanidharan Shanmugam, the team attacked each device using three different techniques. This article continues to discuss the study on the vulnerability of health monitoring devices to hacking.

Georgia Tech developed a postmortem cybersecurity forensic tool named "AI Psychiatry" (AiP) that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to recover the original Deep Learning (DL) models a compromised machine, such as a self-driving car, runs on and determine where the fatal error emerged. Using AiP, cyber investigators can immediately see the whole picture. This article continues to discuss the goals and capabilities of the AiP tool.

Georgia Tech reports "The Sherlock Holmes of AI"

Researchers at the University of Waterloo's Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI) will receive over $1.5 million in funding from the National Cybersecurity Consortium (NCC) to advance digital security in Canada.

The student-led program "CodeHoppers," sponsored by Augusta University's (AU) School of Computer and Cyber Sciences, is returning. CodeHoppers, founded in 2017 by AU's chapter of "Girls Who Code," aims to provide a fun, friendly, and inclusive environment for girls in sixth through 12th grades. The program covers basic coding concepts, webpage principles, hacking ethics, cybersecurity, and more. This article continues to discuss the success and goals of the CodeHoppers program.

Selections by dgoff

​Pub Crawl summarizes sets of publications that have been peer-reviewed and presented at Science of Security (SoS) conferences or referenced in current work. The topics are chosen for their usefulness for current researchers. Select the topic name to view the corresponding list of publications. Submissions and suggestions are welcome.

According to security researchers at Veracode, security debt, flaws that remain unfixed for longer than a year, exists in 76% of organizations in the financial services sector, with 50% of organizations carrying critical security debt.  During the study, researchers found that 40% of all applications in the financial sector have security debt, which is slightly better than the cross-industry average of 42%.  In addition, just 5.5% of financial sector applications are flaw-free, compared to 5.9% across other industries.

LottieFiles has recently confirmed that its Lottie-Player software has been compromised in a supply chain attack aimed at stealing cryptocurrency from victims. LottieFiles’ Lottie-Player is widely used for embedding and playing Lottie animations on websites. Recently, users of Lottie-Player complained that their websites had been displaying a pop-up prompting visitors to connect their cryptocurrency wallet.  The goal was apparently to get users to connect their crypto wallets in an attempt to drain them.

The Dstat.cc DDoS review platform has recently been seized by law enforcement, and two suspects have been arrested after the service helped fuel distributed denial-of-service attacks for years.  According to authorities, the seizure and arrests were conducted as part of "Operation PowerOFF," an ongoing international law enforcement operation that targets DDoS-for-hire platforms, aka "booters" or "stressors," to seize infrastructure and arrest the operators.

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security recently announced that at least 20 Canadian government networks have been compromised by Chinese state-sponsored threat actors, who have maintained access over the past four years to steal valuable data.  It was noted that in addition to espionage, the data gathered is likely used to support the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) malign influence and interference activities against Canada’s democratic processes and institutions.  It is believed the attackers dedicated significant time and resources to learn about the target networks.