From the Editor’s Desk: Security, signal and noise
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Perhaps users would be wise never to type out sensitive information like passwords when they’re on a Skype call.
David Bisson reports.
Even the noise from your PC’s fans could be used to steal the data inside. Researchers in Israel have found a way to do just that by hijacking the fans and manipulating the sounds they create.
The research from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev shows how data could be stolen from “air-gapped” computers, which are not connected to the Internet.
These air-gapped computers are isolated and often used for sensitive information. To hack them, attackers typically need to gain physical access and install malware, possibly through a USB stick.
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As privacy of The Onion Router (Tor) network comes into question, MIT researchers say they have devised a secure system called Vuvuzela that makes text messaging sent through it untraceable and that could be more secure than Tor when it comes to hiding who is talking to whom.
While it’s not ready for prime time, the messaging system makes it extremely difficult for attackers to find out which connected users are communicating with which others or whether they are sending or receiving messages at all, the researchers say in “Vuvuzela: Scalable Private Messaging Resistant to Traffic Analysis”.
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