One of the problems with smartphone apps is that one has no control over where often sensitive permissions and personal content is stored. While we’re allowed a certain amount of input when it comes to downloading the app and installing it: agree to the permissions or else, we have no control over where or how all the data is stored.
We know that it’s probably in the cloud somewhere, but it could be anywhere, even on the phone itself. And each app developer has its own idea about how to handle the stuff.
That is a problem for security—not the app developers’ but ours. And it doesn’t stop at phones. Anyone know where the password for an IoT oven is located, and how securely? The answer is no and maybe not very.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the things that has always been a bottleneck in electronics has been getting the data in and out of the chip. The silicon semiconductor, within itself, communicates faster than it does with the surrounding system.That may be about to change, though. A laser incorporated onto the semiconductor could be the answer to solving the slowdown, think scientists. And they now believe they know how to do it: Simply grow the laser straight onto the silicon.Faster-than-ever-before communications could be possible with the technique, think the scientists.In the same way that light, delivered by fiber optic, sends data faster than electrons do along a copper wire, the light via laser system would get the ones and zeroes out of the chip quicker and into the surrounding electronics faster. Wires could become obsolete.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Pre-fabricated, shipping container-like stackable modules, containing data center gear are the future, according to Keystone NAP, a startup vendor, who’s recently obtained new funding.
The modular specialist has borrowed $15 million through finance adviser White Oak to complete a property acquisition, and “finance expansion,” the Philadelphia Enquirer says.
Modular data centers are one of the three top trends in data center land, according to Keystone NAP co-founder Shawn R. Carey, writing last year on the Advance Healthcare Network website . The other two fads being outsourcing, and hybrid cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Collecting Wi-Fi data on pedestrians as they move around can provide analysis on infrastructure, to a depth that’s never been seen before, think scientists.Collecting breadcrumb data, as people go about their daily business can be used to discover human motivations, predict how individuals react to change, and where to locate simple resources, such as automated teller machines, the researchers from Swiss university Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) believe.“We have statistics and numbers on people who drive and take the train, but pedestrian behavior is often a mystery,” says Antonin Danalet of the school in a university website article. “Understanding the use of pedestrian infrastructure at music festivals, museums and hospitals” could be useful too, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google, Apple and Facebook were targeted by double the number of phishing sites as financial institutions, like banks and PayPal were in 2015, Webroot says in its latest annual briefing published in February.The reason for the dot-com thrust is so that the hackers can accumulate larger numbers of user IDs and passwords—many people on those sites use the same credentials across the Internet, Webroot explains. Attacking the Facebooks et al, garners “multiple compromised accounts with each phishing victim,” the security outfit says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The writing is on the wall for large-scale, traditional power generation, according to an official energy-industry organization in a major developed nation.Decentralized energy, where power is sourced from rooftop photovoltaic solar panels, battery storage and other technology could supplant classic grid-based power stations in the UK by 2030, according to industry interviews conducted by the trade association Energy UK. Energy UK represents over 80 suppliers there, who serve 26 million customers.British electricity users will increasingly get their energy from small-scale electricity generation and storage, the association thinks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are beginning to show up as a cause of mobile phone outages, according to respondents of a survey.The Spirient-commissioned report surveyed 54 global Mobile Network Operators (MNO), polling them on their experiences with outages and service degradations. It found that DDoS attacks showed up for the first time in this year’s report. For comparison, cyberattacks didn’t surface at all the last time researcher Heavy Reading conducted the survey for Spirient in 2013.Spirient is a test and service management firm for MNOs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Social engineering can be easily used to trick users into confirming authentication codes, says a computer science professor at NYU.Generally thought to be secure, the process whereby a verification code, usually delivered by e-mail or text, is sent to a user who’s lost their password, can in fact be hacked.And the way it’s done? Just ask the user for the officially-sent verification code, says Nasir Memon, professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering.A second, bogus text or e-mail simply asks the user to forward the original, legitimate verification text. And people do it, no questions asked, Memon reckons.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Almost a third (31%) of workplace tech-users said that network outages and poor Internet speeds were the “biggest recurring technology problem” at their company, a new survey has found.Remembering passwords was also a big issue. Close to a quarter (22%) of the respondents thought remembering all of their passwords was the biggest tech difficulty they faced.INSIDER: 5 tricks to improve poor TCP performance
IT service management company Samanage surveyed about 3,000 U.S. adults. Around half of them said they used technology at work. Those respondents were given the study’s questions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers from University College London claim to have reached a data rate of 1.125 terabits per second, the fastest data rate ever recorded between a single optical transmitter and a receiver, according to an article on the university's website.It's quick enough to download the entire high-definition Game of Thrones series in one second, the scientists claim.'Super-channels'
A way of combining carriers into what the scientists call a "super-channel" is key to obtaining the speeds. Super-channels are used for sending bulk data between cities and continents, they explain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers from University College London claim to have reached a data rate of 1.125 terabits per second, the fastest data rate ever recorded between a single optical transmitter and a receiver, according to an article on the university's website.It's quick enough to download the entire high-definition Game of Thrones series in one second, the scientists claim.'Super-channels'
A way of combining carriers into what the scientists call a "super-channel" is key to obtaining the speeds. Super-channels are used for sending bulk data between cities and continents, they explain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A quarter of companies have made their mind up when it comes to a ransomware attack. They're paying the ransom, according to a new study.Twenty-four percent of companies say they would pay. And not only would they cough-up the money, but 14% of the polled would pay $1 million or more to prevent the attack, according to findings by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and Skyhigh, who have compiled the study. The CSA is a non-profit promoting best-practices in cloud use; Skyhigh is a cloud security company.The CSA surveyed 200 IT and security professionals across sectors worldwide. The researchers have been examining cloud take-up along with risk. They think that cyberattacks overall are a concern for enterprises "when it comes to moving their systems of record to the cloud," CSA and Skyhigh say in their report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Federal bosses admit they're falling behind the tech advances being made in the private sector, says a survey. Consequently, they acknowledge that their stakeholder expectations aren't being met.The leaders appear to know there's a problem, yet they're having problems making the transformations and going digital, according to researchers from the National Academy of Public Administration and ICF International, the two organizations that jointly released the report earlier this month.Problems
Money, security and privacy concerns, and lumbering acquisition procedures are among the issues the "federal leaders" who responded to the survey say are preventing them from making progress.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What many of us likely suspected, but possibly hadn't gone to the trouble—or had the inclination—of finding out for ourselves is that the dark web is full of illegal and dubious stuff, researchers have found.
The researchers, who have been studying and writing about encryption policy, sniffed around with a Tor browser and found 1,547 out of 5,205 total websites live on the dark web engaging in illegal activity.
Those illicit destinations, uncovered in early 2015, covered subjects relating to illegal drugs, money laundering, and "illegitimate" pornography, the Kings College London scientists write in their Cryptopolitik and the Darknet paper abstracted in Survival: Global Policy and Strategy, a journal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Six botnets have been discovered and traced back to their perpetrators by an algorithm produced by researchers at Israel's Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev. The scientists who built the formula say it will allow law enforcement to trace administrators responsible for future attacks.The key to the work is analyzing data produced by previous attacks, the cybersecurity researchers say.Malicious botnets are groups of Internet-connected computers that have been secretly compromised to forward traffic to other computers. Payloads can include spam and viruses. The PCs can become remote controlled and also proffer private information.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Criminals leave forensic evidence behind at crime scenes that's not being collected by police investigators, says a law enforcement expert.MAC addresses and router log-in attempts are recorded by routers. That information can tie a smartphone owner to a time and location, which can be valuable when trying to charge or prosecute suspects in criminal cases, reckons a police technical advisor.Routers
"These devices could hold a lot of information, but we're not capturing it," Dan Blackman, a Western Australia police advisor and Edith Cowan University PhD student, said in a Science Network Western Australia article.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Underwater communications networks are excruciatingly slow, and that's hampering oil and gas exploration and scuba communications, among other businesses.The communications technology needs upgrading to more closely match high-speed, through-air radio networks, say experts.One answer may be to adapt software-defined radios and couple them with special underwater acoustic modems, according to electrical engineers at the University of Buffalo.Radio too slow
Sound-waves—like those used by whales and dolphins—as opposed to radio-waves, are the best media for communicating underwater, the scientists say.Traditional radio methods don't work properly. The problem is that radio doesn't function well underwater. Commercial underwater modems are slow, and voice solutions are limited by distance and clarity, the scientists say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Employee bank records are among the sensitive details that companies are failing to protect adequately through encryption, a recent study has uncovered.
While enterprises now take customer data protection seriously, in many cases they're ignoring their workers' needs for security, according to encryption product vendor Sophos.Not always doing it
Sophos says that it found almost half (47%) of the companies it surveyed had owned-up to not always encrypting employee healthcare information when it stored that data.
And close to that number (43%) failed to always encrypt workers' Human Resources employee files.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Data theft is a very real and growing threat for companies that increasingly use cloud services, says a security firm.Workers who widely share documents stored in the cloud with clients, independent contractors, or even others within the company are creating a Swiss-cheese of security holes, a study by Blue Coat Systems has found.In some cases, cloud documents were publicly discoverable through Google searches, the researchers say of their analysis.'Broadly shared'
The study found that 26% of documents stored in cloud apps are shared so widely that they pose a security risk. Compounding the issue is that many organizations aren't even aware of it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Think housing your servers in a data center rather than squeezing them under your desk is a bulletproof solution?Well, they might be safer in a data center, but believe it or not, some of the same pitfalls that can create trouble in the office can affect those secure data centers too. Namely UPS failure, human error, and cybercrime.'Unplanned'
UPS system failure is still the principal cause of "unplanned data center outages," according to a new report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Nelson