Attackers have a time advantage over static computer networks because the bad guys can simply hover around the network for long periods, study it and look for an advantage. The computer network is usually just sitting there, dawdling like unfortunate prey silhouetted in a hunter’s rifle scope.The observing hackers can even disappear for a while, return and find nothing’s changed. The vulnerabilities are still in place. Bang! The perp hits when it’s convenient, and it’s all over.The best solution to this time-advantage problem are computer defenses that sense malevolent investigations of the network and then squirt the attack over to a fake network that proffers no intelligence about the genuine network, according to some. They were written about as long ago as 2004 in the International Journal of Digital Evidence (PDF).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wi-Fi signals can be used to unobtrusively identify different people at a location, such as home. It promises to replace other forms of identification in those domestic environments, Chinese scientists say.The system works by identifying body shapes along with the unique way that individuals move in a room. Those characteristics influence Wi-Fi propagation, researchers from Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an claim. The Wi-Fi is affected by the people in the room, and that impact on the wireless access point can be detected and interpreted, they say.INSIDER: 5 ways to prepare for Internet of Things security threats
“Each person has specific influence patterns to the surrounding Wi-Fi signal while moving indoors, regarding their body shape characteristics and motion patterns,” the team writes in an abstract to their paper, published in August.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Low-frequency transmissions created by off-the-shelf biometric devices, such as fingerprint sensors, can be diverted through the body and can securely transmit password-like authentication.The off-the-shelf biometric sensors, such as touchpads, are “re-purposed to send out information,” says Shyam Gollakota, University of Washington assistant professor of computer science and engineering and senior author on the research paper, in a University of Washington article. The secret passphrases and such are confined to the human body, so they can’t be eavesdropped on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
High-speed wireless internet could soon be delivered over power lines, according to a major mobile network operator that announced positive test results of a proposed system.AT&T says its project, called AirGig, will deliver multiple gigabit-speed wireless internet by creating broadband signals that will emanate from the power lines crossing the country and beyond.The company says it won’t actually connect its equipment directly to the powerline cables but will simply use the wires as way to send modulated radio signals to individuals’ homes, smartphones, tablets and so on. The equipment sits atop the utility poles and uses the existing wires for transmitting and receiving.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A smartphone’s built-in sensors can be used to swipe important intellectual property, such as product models and prototypes, by reading a combination of acoustic traces and electromagnetic energy as a 3D printer’s print head moves across a platen.New research discovered that it’s not just the sounds that the nozzle makes as it prints the model that gives the game away, as was previously thought. A new study indicates that by combining the collection of sounds with electromagnetic readings, hackers can obtain a powerful facsimile of what’s being made.+ Also on Network World: 3D printers wide-open to hacking +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you’re in the Wi-Fi network installation business in Europe, you might be about to get extremely busy. The head of the politico-economic union said its member states will be investing dramatically in Wi-Fi connectivity. The reason: to “empower” its subjects.“Every European village and every city” will be equipped with a total of an equivalent of 134 million dollars-worth of non-payment, free wireless Internet by 2020.” The installs will occur around the “main centers of public life,” Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Union’s executive body, said in a state of the union address a few days ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Co-workers peering at their smartphones more than ever isn’t an optical illusion, and you’re not imagining seeing a bunch of shiny bald pates or lustrous weaves of hair where there were once friendly faces. Smartphone use increased more over the past year compared to tablets and PCs.That’s among the tidbits in a new comScore study on application use.Other revelations from the report corroborate why audible alerts from smartphones are less common and it's become unusual to hear the beeps of text messages in some places—such as commuter railway cars: Large numbers of people are rejecting notifications, comScore suggests in research it published this month. “Push notification fatigue” is to blame, it says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The miniscule slivers of plastic known as the SIM card are on their way out, at least in the machine-to-machine (M2M) space. The adoption of an embedded specification by the wireless industry is behind the change, explains Juniper Research in a press release about its recent report (subscription) on M2M for the Mobile Network Operator (MNO) vertical.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Surreptitious smartphone services quietly tracking us as we move around have gotten privacy fiends up in arms. However, academics reveal that location tracking is not all about finding ways to sell us stuff. Researchers and scientists are altruistically using the data, too.In one case, they're using mobile device-based mobility patterns to track exposure to pollution with more accuracy, another in metropolitan planning.+ Also on Network World: Wi-Fi-tracing delivers vast insights into behavioral patterns +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Coordinating multiple access points simultaneously, all on the same frequency and without generating interference, is the premise behind a new form of Wi-Fi called MegaMimo 2.0. When released commercially, as its inventors say it soon will be, it will allow data to be shot through at three times the speed that it travels now and twice as far, the researchers claim.The Wi-Fi technology, supposedly immune to bottleneck-causing interference, works by letting a number of distinct transmitters send same- and similar-frequency data “to multiple independent receivers without interfering with each other,” the computer scientists, led by Professor Dian Katabi from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), say in their news release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In somewhat of a kick in the teeth for law enforcement and spy agencies, a science institute says smartphones will soon be able to take advantage of some of the most spectacular encryption ever known.The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) says random number generators (RNGs) will soon be able to function without ever repeating the random number and that the quantum-based chips will soon be small enough to fit in a smartphone’s form factor. It would create the fastest and smallest encryption functionality ever.+ Also on Network World: Why smartphone encryption has law enforcement feathers ruffled +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In somewhat of a kick in the teeth for law enforcement and spy agencies, a science institute says smartphones will soon be able to take advantage of some of the most spectacular encryption ever known.The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) says random number generators (RNGs) will soon be able to function without ever repeating the random number and that the quantum-based chips will soon be small enough to fit in a smartphone’s form factor. It would create the fastest and smallest encryption functionality ever.+ Also on Network World: Why smartphone encryption has law enforcement feathers ruffled +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Not enough is being done to protect networks from solar storms that could wipe out electric power grids and destroy satellites. The end game in a catastrophic solar storm would be the internet’s time synchronization not working anymore. That would stop the internet altogether.“An impending calamitous solar storm” is how Joseph N. Pelton, the former dean of the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, describes the perceived event in his press release.Pelton, who is also a current executive board member of the International Association of Space Safety (IAASS), has published an article in Room: The Space Journal (subscription) on the subject.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Not enough is being done to protect networks from solar storms that could wipe out electric power grids and destroy satellites. The end game in a catastrophic solar storm would be the internet’s time synchronization not working anymore. That would stop the internet altogether.“An impending calamitous solar storm” is how Joseph N. Pelton, the former dean of the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, describes the perceived event in his press release.Pelton, who is also a current executive board member of the International Association of Space Safety (IAASS), has published an article in Room: The Space Journal (subscription) on the subject.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Blatant nosiness is the reason why email users click on the links embedded within electronic messages, according to university researchers.This new evidence, discovered in a study, throws into question the basic premise behind phishing. That presumption is that when an iffy email looks like it comes from a legitimate organization, but contains a link to a bogus website where financial details are guzzled by bad guys, that gullible people are being bamboozled by the apparent legitimacy of the email.+ Also on Network World: 10 companies that can help you fight phishing +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Malware infection rates on smartphones have been rapidly escalating, says an endpoint security solutions provider.Over 1.06 percent of devices in April, were infected by some variant of malware. That’s an all-time high. Nokia’s twice-a-year report, released last week says it’s found that infections doubled in the first half of 2016, compared with the second half of 2015.The Nokia Threat Intelligence lab includes “ransomware, spy-phone applications, SMS Trojans, personal information theft and aggressive adware” in its malware definition.Android got pummeled. Three-fourths of all infections were discovered on the Android mobile OS. For comparison “Windows/PC Systems” attracted 22 percent and Apple’s iOS only 4 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“If anyone tells you they know the details of what 5G will deliver, walk the other way,” FCC chairman Tom Wheeler is now famously reported as saying in a June presentation made to the National Press Club. He meant, of course, that 5G is up in the air. No one knows for sure what it will end up being when it appears.Bets are on extremely high frequencies—pretty much what’s vacant in the spectrum—and the Internet of Things (IoT) will play a part in driving 5G.+ Also on Network World: 5 things you need to know about 5G +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As holiday gadget season kicks in, we are about to be inundated with gift ideas. And for those used to seeing, or indeed flying quadcopter drones, looking as one would imagine aerial food mixers to appear with four motors and props at the end of four arms, there’s a new form-factor—tailless, single-wing drones.At hobbyist flying fields, more of the fuselage-lacking wing-style drones, reminiscent of Northrop’s B2 stealth bomber, are appearing. And while multi-rotors are by no means off the field, some of the more experienced flyers have taken to piloting and/or building flying wings.Existing model aircraft designers include TBS and Zeta.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marketers have always enjoyed using a smattering of emotive words to describe their products and services. Traditional idioms over the years have included "super" and "extra."Now there’s a new come-on out there tumbling from the copywriters’ keyboards. And that word is "now," as in Amazon Prime Now, HBO Now, PlayStation Now and Google Now, points out market research firm Dscout.This declaration of "now" is about “instant information, instant credit, instant connection, instant stuff on my doorstep,” and it is what consumers are starting to expect, say researchers at Dscout, which has been studying what it thinks is a shift in consumer expectation to instant everything.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Pop-up alerts on computer screens don’t work because they arrive at the wrong times, scientists say.Despite the popular belief—cultivated perhaps mainly by bosses—that humans can multitask, many believe they can’t. And that hypothesis may be proven, in part, by the discovery that on-screen alerts generally don’t achieve action if one is busy doing something else. The result is an increase in security vulnerabilities.Computer users are engrossed in tasks when the randomly timed alerts arrive, and it makes them less likely to respond.+ Also on Network World: How to craft a security awareness program that works +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Nelson