Are law enforcement officials justified in hacking thousands of computers if the end result is a patch that corrects a critical vulnerability? In an editorial in JustSecurity posted on April 30, two faculty members from NYU’s Center for Cybersecurity (CCS) argue that, in a recent case when the FBI engaged in a “hack to patch,”...
Author: Lois Anne DeLong (Lois Anne DeLong)
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A.I. can write code, but should it?
Writing code can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, so it is not surprising that research is underway to automate the process using artificial intelligence (A.I.). But, while machine-based code can make things easier, it also opens the possibility of perpetuating bugs and other flaws that were never fixed in the original source code. As...
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Cappos describes the evolution of cyber attackers in Radio Spectrum interview
Anyone who might underestimate the skills and resources of today’s cyber attackers does so at their own risk. That was one of the takeaways from a recent appearance on IEEE Radio Spectrum by Dr. Justin Cappos, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Describing malware as, “something that...
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Tandon research team reveals GANs cannot completely protect identity
Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are machine-learning (ML) systems used to “scrub” images of any traces of personal identity. But, after exploring the machine-learning frameworks behind these tools, a team of researchers at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering suggest that these scrubbed images leave a lot of “residue” behind. The...
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Political Ad Initiative Broadens its Focus, Changes its Name
For the past few years, NYU Tandon Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Dr. Damon McCoy and Ph.D. candidate Laura Edelson have been peering behind the curtain of social media to reveal the sources behind political ads and content, and to use data analysis to expose possible disinformation campaigns. Through the Online Political Advertising...
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As Bitcoin value soars, look for cryptocrime to follow suit
Fame has a price and so does fortune. As Bitcoin was reaching $1 trillion in value, the U.S. Department of Justice was indicting three North Korean military hackers for stealing and extorting more than $1.3 billion in money and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies. That indictment spurred a warning from the FBI and Department of Homeland...
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Zhu research paper quoted in article about risks to IIoT: “There is no control over upstream supply chain…”
A February 1, 2021 article in IoT World, pointed to a glaring flaw in efforts to secure the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT)—the secondary supply chains introduced by components manufactured apart from the main supply chain. As the article’s author Rich Castagna writes, “The purchaser of those devices is at the end of the supply...
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Memon joins international group of experts calling out serious flaws in Indian voting machines
According to a report published at the end of January in the National Herald of India, the electronic voting machines designated for use in that country “cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof and there is no way to guarantee that the vote cast by a voter has been recorded in the EVM as intended by...
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As DoD takes on deepfakes, Tandon Professor Memon puts the risk in context
As reported in Newsy.com, an independent online news service, the U.S. Department of Defense has targeted a particularly insidious new enemy: “deepfake” technology that can subtly alter still photos and video. And, the video report, posted on January 28, suggests that the opposition is getting better at this form The report includes a quote from...
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Are WHO efforts to fight false COVID info behind the curve?
From the earliest days of the COVID 19 pandemic, the World Health Organization has tried to eliminate the widespread influx of misinformation through a variety of media. Yet, in a February 9th article on National Public Radio’s Goats and Soda blog, a number of cybersecurity experts, including Dr. Nasir Memon, cofounder of the Center for...