Security

PITTSBURGH — Web services companies, such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft, all make promises about how they will use personal information they gather. But ensuring that millions of lines of code in their systems operate in ways consistent with privacy promises is labor-intensive and difficult. A team from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research, however,…

A revolutionary new method of encrypting confidential information has been patented by scientists who were inspired by discoveries from human biology, which model how the heart and lungs coordinate their rhythms by passing information between each other. A mathematical model based on the complex interaction between these organs has now been transferred to the world…

NEW YORK, NY – The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Leslie Lamport, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, as the recipient of the 2013 ACM A.M. Turing Award for imposing clear, well-defined coherence on the seemingly chaotic behavior of distributed computing systems, in which several autonomous computers communicate with each other by passing…

LONDON (AP) — The British inventor of the World Wide Web wants a digital bill of rights to protect Internet users from surveillance. Speaking on the 25th anniversary of his creation, Tim Berners-Lee says he hopes to spark a global conversation about the need to defend principles that have made the Web successful. He told…

The way we secure digital transactions could soon change. An international team has demonstrated a form of quantum cryptography that can protect people doing business with others they may not know or trust —  a situation encountered often on the internet and in everyday life, for example at a bank’s ATM. “Having quantum cryptography to hand…

ARMONK, NY – IBM announced a new service offering to help critical infrastructure organizations utilize a new Cybersecurity Framework announced by the Administration at the White House.  The new Cybersecurity Framework is the product of a year-long collaboration between the U.S. government and industry, coordinated and led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology…

SEATTLE – Boeing has identified “green diesel,” a renewable fuel used in ground transportation, as a significant new source of sustainable aviation biofuel that emits at least 50 percent less carbon dioxide than fossil fuel over its lifecycle. The company is working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other stakeholders to gain approval for…

Computer security systems may one day get a boost from quantum physics, as a result of recent research from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Computer scientist Yi-Kai Liu has devised a way to make a security device that has proved notoriously difficult to build — a “one-shot” memory unit, whose contents can…

It is one the oldest mathematical problems in the world. Several centuries ago, the twin primes conjecture was formulated. As its name indicates, this hypothesis, which many science historians have attributed to the Greek mathematician Euclid, deals with prime numbers, those divisible only by themselves and by one (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc.). Under…

SAN DIEGO — Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy have completed nine initial flight tests of the Triton unmanned aircraft system (UAS), marking the half-way point in a process called envelope expansion. During envelope expansion, the test team validates the aircraft’s ability to operate at a range of altitudes, speeds and weights. The flights are…

The new HITS research group “Data Mining and Uncertainty Quantification” analyzes large amounts of data and calculates uncertainties in technical systems. With Prof. Vincent Heuveline as their group leader, the group of mathematicians and computer scientists especially focuses on increasing the security of technology in operating rooms. Natural sciences continuously produce larger and more complex…

LONDON (AP) — A German magazine lifted the lid on the operations of the National Security Agency’s hacking unit on December 29, 2013, reporting that American spies intercept computer deliveries, exploit hardware vulnerabilities, and even hijack Microsoft’s internal reporting system to spy on their targets. Der Spiegel‘s revelations relate to a division of the NSA…

The 2014 Cybersecurity Innovation Forum, to be held January 28-30, 2014, at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, MD, will focus on the existing threat landscape and provide presentations and keynotes on current and emerging practices, technologies and standards to protect the nation’s infrastructure, citizens and economic interests from cyberattack. The goal of the forum—sponsored…

Willis Ware, a RAND Corporation engineer who in the 1960s predicted the ubiquity of the personal computer, the ways it would propel people into lives of perpetual change, and the perils it would pose for personal privacy, has died. He was 93. Much of Ware’s research focused on the use of computer technology by both…

Researchers at the Experimental Economics Laboratory in the Universitat Jaume I, coordinated by the lecturer Gerardo Sabater from the Area of Foundations of Economic Analysis, have developed the first Spanish software that leverages the collective intelligence of employees and customers to improve decision-making in the company. The Agora Market platform can implement prediction markets in…

In an advance that could dramatically shrink particle accelerators for science and medicine, researchers used a laser to accelerate electrons at a rate 10 times higher than conventional technology in a nanostructured glass chip smaller than a grain of rice. The achievement was reported in Nature by a team including scientists from the U.S. Department…