A new software development technique promises to end destructive exploits from hackers. The concept is to continually, and repeatedly, rearrange the program’s code while it’s running—and do it very quickly. Doing that shuts down the hacker’s “window of opportunity” because he doesn’t know where to find bugs to hit with his poisonous attack. The scrambling occurs over milliseconds.Code reuse attacks are the kind of harmful exploits that can be stopped dead in their tracks, researchers say in an article on Columbia University’s website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new software development technique promises to end destructive exploits from hackers. The concept is to continually, and repeatedly, rearrange the program’s code while it’s running—and do it very quickly. Doing that shuts down the hacker’s “window of opportunity” because he doesn’t know where to find bugs to hit with his poisonous attack. The scrambling occurs over milliseconds.Code reuse attacks are the kind of harmful exploits that can be stopped dead in their tracks, researchers say in an article on Columbia University’s website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tricky network upgrades are causing many enterprises to throw up their hands and simply not do any upgrading at all, according to Cato Networks.Nearly half of the organizations the company recently surveyed (40 percent) say they have “no plans to upgrade their network” at all in 2017. If that’s true, security will likely suffer.The Israel-based firm, which offers security solutions that function in the cloud rather than locally, says although enterprises know there are security threats out there, such as a rise in ransomware, many are simply not going to do anything about it next year—at all.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tricky network upgrades are causing many enterprises to throw up their hands and simply not do any upgrading at all, according to Cato Networks.Nearly half of the organizations the company recently surveyed (40 percent) say they have “no plans to upgrade their network” at all in 2017. If that’s true, security will likely suffer.The Israel-based firm, which offers security solutions that function in the cloud rather than locally, says although enterprises know there are security threats out there, such as a rise in ransomware, many are simply not going to do anything about it next year—at all.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Put that smartphone away or limit your use of it if you want to get a decent night’s sleep and stay healthy.Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco say they have confirmed that sleep deprivation is magnified by exposure to a kind of blue light emitted by the devices. And missing sleep can instigate deadly diseases, such as obesity and depression.“Longer average screen-time was associated with shorter sleep duration and worse sleep-efficiency,” the journal PLOS ONE says of the research on its website.Sleep took longer to come on and quality was generally poor, according to the researchers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloud repositories are actively supplying malware, according to computer experts. And problematically, it’s insidious and hard to find.Hundreds of buckets have been undermined, says Xiaojing Liao, a graduate student at Georgia Tech who’s the lead author on a study that’s looking into the problem. Buckets are chunks of storage used in cloud operations.It’s “challenging to find,” Georgia Tech writes in an article on its website. The problem being that the resulting malware is quick to “assemble from stored components that individually may not appear to be malicious.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloud repositories are actively supplying malware, according to computer experts. And problematically, it’s insidious and hard to find.Hundreds of buckets have been undermined, says Xiaojing Liao, a graduate student at Georgia Tech who’s the lead author on a study that’s looking into the problem. Buckets are chunks of storage used in cloud operations.It’s “challenging to find,” Georgia Tech writes in an article on its website. The problem being that the resulting malware is quick to “assemble from stored components that individually may not appear to be malicious.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Seventy-five percent of internet use will be on mobile devices next year, according to a new study published by ad forecaster Zenith.The firm says that’s just the beginning. It reckons that some places, such as Hong Kong, will have 89 percent of total internet use being performed on mobile by 2018. The United States will marginally trail that at 83 percent in that year.+ Also on Network World: Desktop use off 11% in past year. Winner: smartphones +
Smartphone penetration is the cause. Those devices have proliferated rapidly. In 2012, only 23 percent of individuals in Zenith’s 60-studied countries possessed smartphones. That number is now 56 percent and will be 63 percent globally by 2018. Some countries have adopted the devices more spectacularly; for example, Ireland is at 92 percent smartphone penetration.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Online services and workers choosing the tools they want to work with, rather than employees being dictated to by in-house IT experts, means the IT department’s functions are now primarily redundant, says Japan-based Brother.The printer maker refers to IT departments’ control over technology as “dark days” in its web-based advertorial feature in the British national newspaper the Telegraph in September.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Online services and workers choosing the tools they want to work with, rather than employees being dictated to by in-house IT experts, means the IT department’s functions are now primarily redundant, says Japan-based Brother.The printer maker refers to IT departments’ control over technology as “dark days” in its web-based advertorial feature in the British national newspaper the Telegraph in September.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The infamous “admin” user ID and hackable, weak passwords are prevalent on large numbers of home routers, says a security firm. That’s despite the public's increasing awareness of vulnerabilities and associated hacking.Researchers at ESET recently tested more than 12,000 home routers and found that many of the devices are insecure. Firmware was flawed in some cases.+ Also on Network World: Answers to ‘Is the internet broken?’ and other Dyn DDoS questions +“Approximately 7 percent of the routers tested show vulnerabilities of high or medium severity,” ESET says in an article on its Welivesecurity editorial website. “Fifteen percent of the tested routers used weak passwords, with ‘admin’ left as the username in most cases.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Future self-driving cars and up-and-coming commercial drone aviation are behind a mad scramble to find a better solution for location services than the satellite Global Positioning System (GPS).Advances in Signals of Opportunity (SOP), along with software-defined radios, could be the solution.GPS isn’t ideal. Firstly, it’s a free service made available by the U.S. government out of the kindness of its heart, and the civilian element could conceivably be switched off in times of national crisis—there are no contracts with smartphone makers, for example.Secondly, GPS wasn’t really designed for non-military applications such as civilian automobile navigation—it’s a weak signal and prone to interference, including that from space weather. It’s also not secure at the civilian level. It’s completely unencrypted and open to spoofing, in fact. Further, GPS jamming could bring existing satellite-based systems to a standstill.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Future self-driving cars and up-and-coming commercial drone aviation are behind a mad scramble to find a better solution for location services than the satellite Global Positioning System (GPS).Advances in Signals of Opportunity (SOP), along with software-defined radios, could be the solution.GPS isn’t ideal. Firstly, it’s a free service made available by the U.S. government out of the kindness of its heart, and the civilian element could conceivably be switched off in times of national crisis—there are no contracts with smartphone makers, for example.Secondly, GPS wasn’t really designed for non-military applications such as civilian automobile navigation—it’s a weak signal and prone to interference, including that from space weather. It’s also not secure at the civilian level. It’s completely unencrypted and open to spoofing, in fact. Further, GPS jamming could bring existing satellite-based systems to a standstill.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Visible Light Communications (VLC), or Li-Fi, is a new optical wireless communications technology that promises spectacular amounts of new bandwidth for data transmissions. It uses visible light spectrum. Common lights could, indeed, be used to create the networked communications.However, there’s a drawback to this optimistically regarded tech, say scientists. The receivers need to see the light bulbs. That means the space in which this technology is used can’t be dark, and that's a problem if someone wants to sleep in the room. A solution is to dim LEDs or switch them on and off at high speeds, so the eye can’t see it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Visible Light Communications (VLC), or Li-Fi, is a new optical wireless communications technology that promises spectacular amounts of new bandwidth for data transmissions. It uses visible light spectrum. Common lights could, indeed, be used to create the networked communications.However, there’s a drawback to this optimistically regarded tech, say scientists. The receivers need to see the light bulbs. That means the space in which this technology is used can’t be dark, and that's a problem if someone wants to sleep in the room. A solution is to dim LEDs or switch them on and off at high speeds, so the eye can’t see it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An assemblage of technological breakthroughs are rapidly morphing to create massive changes in how businesses operate.Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) are just three of eight crucial “megatrends” that strategy consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) says is going to significantly distort business.Those new forces should clearly be planned for. And although the consulting firm's advice is aimed at generalized CEOs, it's IT and technical teams that will have to lay the groundwork.Robots, augmented reality (AR), 3D printing, drones and virtual reality (VR) are also among PwC’s pick of “essential eight technologies” that the firm says in its report (PDF) (released during the summer) need to be considered by company chiefs to move their operations forward.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than a year ago, an eye-opening RAND study on cybersecurity comprehensively explored just how vulnerable the Internet of Things (IoT) is and was going to be.
Afterthought-style patch-on-patch security, as well as significant vulnerability risks involved with slapping internet connectivity on previously non-connected objects, were among the startling findings and predictions in that report.
Since then, questions have arisen as to just how one should approach the security needs of the soon-to-be billions of networked, smart, cheap sensors expanding around the globe like popcorn.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than a year ago, an eye-opening RAND study on cybersecurity comprehensively explored just how vulnerable the Internet of Things (IoT) is and was going to be.
Afterthought-style patch-on-patch security, as well as significant vulnerability risks involved with slapping internet connectivity on previously non-connected objects, were among the startling findings and predictions in that report.
Since then, questions have arisen as to just how one should approach the security needs of the soon-to-be billions of networked, smart, cheap sensors expanding around the globe like popcorn.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
People are sick and tired of being told to be more secure in their use of computers and when participating in online activities. So much so that they’re simply ignoring the blitz of annoying demands and are carrying on as imprudently as they’ve always done, according to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers.The U.S. Department of Commerce-operated lab recently published a report (subscription) on the subject in IEEE’s IT Professional Journal.The study’s participants “expressed a sense of resignation and loss of control” when the scientists asked them about their online activity, such as shopping and banking.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
People are sick and tired of being told to be more secure in their use of computers and when participating in online activities. So much so that they’re simply ignoring the blitz of annoying demands and are carrying on as imprudently as they’ve always done, according to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers.The U.S. Department of Commerce-operated lab recently published a report (subscription) on the subject in IEEE’s IT Professional Journal.The study’s participants “expressed a sense of resignation and loss of control” when the scientists asked them about their online activity, such as shopping and banking.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Nelson