Security News

ESA missions back doing science after precautionary pandemic plug pull: We talk to space boffins about Mars Express emergency command line
2020-04-03 16:59

ESA's mission operations centre in Germany has got back to doing interplanetary science after a short stand-down due to COVID-19. At least as normal as operations get for Cluster, now over 20 years into a two-year mission, and the veteran Mars Express spacecraft.

AMD, boffins clash over chip data-leak claims: New side-channel holes in decades of cores, CPU maker disagrees
2020-03-09 21:10

AMD processors sold between 2011 and 2019 are vulnerable to two side-channel attacks that can extract kernel data and secrets, according to a new research paper. In a paper [PDF] titled, "Take A Way: Exploring the Security Implications of AMD's Cache Way Predictors," six boffins - Moritz Lipp, Vedad Hadžić, Michael Schwarz, and Daniel Gruss, Clémentine Maurice, and Arthur Perais - explain how they reverse-engineered AMD's L1D cache way predictor to expose sensitive data in memory.

Voatz of no confidence: MIT boffins eviscerate US election app, claim fiends could exploit flaws to derail democracy
2020-02-13 21:58

Only a week after the mobile app meltdown in Iowa's Democratic Caucus, computer scientists at MIT have revealed their analysis of the Voatz app used in West Virginia's 2018 midterm election. They claim the Android app is vulnerable to attacks that could undermine election integrity in the US state.

It's time you were T0RTT a lesson: Here's how you could build a better Tor, say boffins
2019-12-12 11:16

Uni brains pitch smart math for speeding up establishment of circuits in anonymizing onion network Academics in Germany say they've found a way to make Tor and similar onion networks more...

Infosec boffins pour cold water on claims Home Office Brexit app can be easily hacked
2019-11-14 13:07

'Unnecessary scaremongering' but still some work to be done Reports that the Home Office's Brexit app contains "serious vulnerabilities" that could expose the phone numbers, addresses and passport...

Just say the 'magic password': Boffins turn up potential backdoor in SQL Server 2012, 2014
2019-10-22 08:15

Admin rights needed to fire up the malware and – hey presto! Security researchers at ESET have published details of a backdoor into Microsoft's SQL Server via hooks and the splendidly named "magic...

Remember the Democratic National Committee email leak? Same hackers now targeting EU countries, say malware boffins
2019-10-17 13:55

Researchers say they've cracked a Washington embassy and more The hacker crew behind the US Democratic National Committee breach are still at it and have infiltrated an EU country's embassy in...

A trio of boffins scoop the Nobel Prize in Physics for the first exoplanet discovery and big bang model
2019-10-08 21:25

James Peebles will get half the prize, whilst Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz share a quarter Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of how the early universe...

Let's recap reCAPTCHA gotcha: Our cunning AI can defeat Google's anti-bot tech, say uni boffins
2019-09-04 18:56

Machine-learning code developed to solve image puzzles just like us netizens Video US-based academics have developed a machine-learning system to beat Google's bot-detecting reCAPTCHA system.…

Brilliant Boston boffins blow big borehole in Bluetooth's ballyhooed barricades: MAC addy randomization broken
2019-07-12 20:31

Scrambling addresses can't always hide you from stalkers, say eggheads A team of US academics have proposed a simple method to defeat the Bluetooth LE standard's anti-tracking measures.…