Perils of Social Networking

Many of us use social networking sites. Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram and more. Often fun sites, also great way to stay in touch with friends and family.

But of course there is a downside. These sites are a treasure trove of information about legitimate users. Their backgrounds, politics, interests, and even passwords.  As a result it is no surprise that big money is being put into ways this information can be stolen.

This is an article from ThreatPost about the threat. They claim that almost half of all social media logins are fraudulent. Automated attacks (bots) are the most popular form of attack.

https://threatpost.com/half-social-media-logins-fraud/147688/

Quantum entanglement and what it could mean to Cybersecurity

Chinese scientists have succeeded in sending a photon to a device in Earth orbit. The big deal is that they used quantum entanglement, what Einstein called 'spooky motion at a distance' to do it.

Entanglement is a cool property of the universe in which two 'objects' (a photon is an object) can be linked in such a way that a change in one results in a change in the other, regardless of how far they are separated. What is spooky about this is that there is no media. The change simply happens!

What is actually teleported is 'quantum information' - and this is where cybersecurity comes in.  One of the more common attacks is the 'man-in-the-middle' attack, where an attacker is able to eavesdrop on a communication. If full control of quantum entanglement can be achieved, there will be no 'middle' to attack.

However, much still needs to be understood. It is still not clear whether the change happens immediately, or somehow propagates with the speed of light.  An experiment called Bell's Inequality tries to solve this but the matter is still being debated. So far there is no evidence that the speed of light is violated. But the possibility exists. If there is no 'between' the issue of speed could become mute.

https://time.com/4854718/quantum-entanglement-teleport-space/?fbclid=IwAR3RCF7AGy-wo9qP4Lo_u2CQStO25XJEnPCVdfwI9DX2WFkqCiYwLTXpgwI

The Cyber-Threat to Universities

This is an article from the National Cyber-Security Center in the UK.  It specifically addresses the threat of cyber-espionage to universities and colleges in the UK. However, everything in this article also applies to the US.

I started work at Pitts Computer Center in 1977, and later went to the Penn State Information Technology Services in 1983. The emphasis was always on capability and accessibility. Security, if ever considered, was really an after thought.

This all changed as networks were introduced. Security measures had to be applied, especially at the network level. However, faculty balked at this. How dare the IT staff take away their complete and total control? I became the poster-boy for least-privilege access among the faculty to show that it would not negatively affect our work.

Two-factor authentication has been slowly adopted by many academic institutions, and is one way that  they are starting to address this issue. Read on to learn more.


https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/report/the-cyber-threat-to-universities