Security

Shalini Kesar, a computer scientist at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, has devised an antifraud strategy for business. Writing in the International Journal of Business Information Systems from Inderscience Publishers, he suggests that managers should be made aware of security issues and send out cues to junior staff that they have this knowledge.
Combating digital […]

New spray-on films developed by UC San Diego chemists will be the basis of portable devices that can quickly reveal trace amounts of nitrogen-based explosives.
Contaminated fingerprints leave dark shadows on the films, which glow blue under ultraviolet light. One of the films can distinguish between different classes of explosive chemicals, a property that could provide […]

In January, Skyhook Wireless Inc. announced that Apple would use Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) for its popular Map applications. The WPS database contains information on access points throughout the world. Skyhook itself provides most of the data in the database, with users contributing via direct entries to the database, and requests for localization. ETH […]

Yong Guan had scribbled 12 arrows across his office whiteboard, each black line going from one little box he had drawn to another little box. He had written five long formulas up there, too.
And that was bad news for cyber criminals.
Guan, the Litton Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University, and […]

When Javier Rodriguez Molina visited the Atocha Train Station Memorial in Madrid last summer, the Barcelona native felt a great sadness for the victims of the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings. But he also felt some hope that his advanced emergency technology work at University of California, San Diego can some day save lives […]

Early on the morning of Nov. 16, Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh and showed no mercy. The death toll continues to rise even today. Hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless. But, nearly 24 hours in advance of the storm, Hassan Mashriqui, assistant extension professor of coastal engineering with LSU, the LSU AgCenter and the […]

Disasters are getting worse it seems but the federal government’s preparedness has been limited to helping after a disaster has occurred. On the other hand, local organizations often do not have the resources or the training to effectively react. Federal and state support must now be given to programs that enable local governments to work […]

A group of researchers headed by Dr. Benny Pinkas from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa succeeded in finding a security vulnerability in Microsoft’s "Windows 2000" operating system. The significance of the loophole: emails, passwords, credit card numbers, if they were typed into the computer, and actually all correspondence that emanated […]

Using an SMS password as an added security measure for internet banking is no guarantee your money is safe, according to a new Queensland University of Technology study which reveals online customers are not protecting their accounts.
Mohammed AlZomai, from QUT’s Information Security Institute, said one in five online transactions was vulnerable to obvious attacks despite […]

A new chemical spray detector developed by Prof. Joseph Almog of the Hebrew University’s Casali Institute of Applied Chemistry detects the home-made explosive urea nitrate. When sprayed on cotton swabs taken from the hands of a suspect, if they have had recent contact with urea nitrate, the chemical will turn a blood red hue.
Urea nitrate […]

Early findings by Carnegie Mellon University researchers suggest that people who are suckered by a spoof email into visiting a counterfeit Web site are also people who are ready to learn their lesson about "phishing" attacks.
Phishing attacks have become a common method for stealing personal identification information, such as bank account numbers and passwords. Lorrie […]

Trying to remember dozens of personal identification numbers (PIN), passwords, and credit card numbers may not be necessary for much longer, thanks to a University of Houston professor and his team.
Taking a radically new approach, UH Eckhard Pfeiffer Professor Ioannis Kakadiaris and his Computational Biomedicine Lab (CBL) developed the URxD face recognition software that uses […]

Credit card firms and life insurance companies are the least trusted of all financial bodies in the UK, according to a unique new ‘Trust Index’ developed at The University of Nottingham by the Financial Services Research Forum.
The index, a wholly new approach to the measurement of trust among the general public, shows that brokers and […]

PKware Inc. began giving away fully licensed copies of SecureZIP Standard v11 today. The package, which runs on Windows, supports passphrase — and digital signature-based encryption, or both, simultaneously. The application also integrates with popular e-mail clients, such as Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook, to let users encrypt and digitally sign both the message body and any […]

Peter Lewis at University of Washington writes:
If Phil Howard’s calculations prove true, by year’s end the 2 billionth personal record - some American’s social-security or credit-card number, academic grades or medical history - will become compromised, and it’s corporate America, not rogue hackers, who are primarily to blame. By his reckoning, electronic records in the […]

zReturn, the leading lost and found recovery service, announced today the launch of zReturn for Travelers. Following the recent news from the US Department of Transportation of a 39% increase in complaints about lost luggage filed with US airlines, zReturn will be giving away trial labels to the first 500 attendees carrying luggage or portable […]

A Sandia National Laboratories researcher has developed a simulation program designed to track the illicit trade in fissile and nonfissile radiological material well enough to predict who is building the next nuclear weapon and where they are doing it.
“By using a cluster analysis algorithm coded into a program,” says Sandia researcher David York. “I evaluated […]

CyberDefender Corporation, the developer with the Internet’s most advanced early detection and Internet security tools, has identified the following dangerous category 9.9 extremely high risk computer virus for November 14, 2006:
Virus Filename: smss.exe.up11~
CyberDefender Threat Level: 9.9 VERY HIGH
Date Discovered: 11/14/2006 09:10:00
For real-time observation of this virus and other threats, go here.
CyberDefender issues its CyberDefender AntiVirus […]

An update for those of us following the Ohio University security breach situation:
The August firings of two IT workers at Ohio University after a series of data security breaches have been upheld by the schools provost. The move, made public today, comes despite a recommendation last month by a grievance committee that the workers be […]