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Digital networking now permeates almost all areas of life. Developing protective mechanisms is an urgent task.
Apple and Android implement a number of measures to protect their users’ devices. An international team of IT security experts has investigated how useful they are.
They can thus start a subscription at the expense of others or publish secret company documents under someone else’s identity.
An attack against speech recognition systems with manipulated audio files used to work only via a data interface. Now, all it takes is playing the secret messages via loudspeakers.
Encryption is supposed to protect confidential documents such as medical records or industrial correspondence. Attackers can, however, leak the content of encrypted documents.
High-profile victims include the corporations Thyssen-Krupp and Bayer. In collaboration with researchers from Bochum, the broadcasting companies Bayerischer Rundfunk and NDR have now exposed “Winnti’s” tactics.
Travellers entering China from Kyrgyzstan have to install an app on their phones, as was unearthed by investigative journalists. IT experts from Bochum have analysed the application’s function.
Digital signatures are supposed to prevent forgeries of invoices and government documents. Researchers from Bochum bypassed this mechanism and went unnoticed by most PDF applications.
Ruhr-Universität Bochum and TU Dortmund University are delighted to announce the upcoming foundation of the Max Planck Institute for Cyber Security and Privacy in Bochum.
Lights out, doors open, online orders out: in a networked home, everything is controlled by voice or by pressing a smartphone button. But so far little thought has been given to who should be able to press which buttons.
Major success in Bochum: two Clusters of Excellence go to Ruhr-Universität.
Researchers can hide secret commands for voice assistants in spoken sentences, birds’ twittering, or music. They are not audible to the human ear. The machine recognises them precisely.
Most notably, the number of cookie notices has skyrocketed. However, they often do not meet the legal requirements.
Anyone who needs to access data on the workplace server from their home office, for example, has to rely on a secure connection that “IPsec” is supposed to ensure.
In IT security, users play a pivotal role. Angela Sasse was among the first researchers to hold this view.
Security gaps in the standard encryptions enable attackers to read confidential emails.
In future, this technology might help verify if countries abide by disarmament treaties.
It takes more than technological innovation to develop functional mechanisms for IT security and privacy.
Mobile phone networks can be used to control wind power stations. This carries risks.
