Timothy Revell writes for New Scientist about a new report by MIT researchers that calls for securing critical U.S. infrastructure against cyberattacks. Joel Brenner, former NSA inspector general and a research fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies, explains that “we know how to fix the vulnerabilities, but there’s no market incentive for companies to do so.”
CNN reporter Selena Larson writes that MIT researchers have released a new report calling for an overhaul of the nation’s cybersecurity for critical infrastructure, like the electric grid. “For infrastructure to be protected against cyberattacks, companies and the government have to collaborate,” Larson explains. She adds that the report suggests, “incentivizing companies to mandate security upgrades.
MIT researchers have developed a new system for protecting patient privacy in genomic databases, reports Anna Nowogrodzki for Nature. The system “masks the donor's identity by adding a small amount of noise, or random variation, to the results it returns on a user’s query,” Nowogrodzki explains.
MIT researchers have developed an artificial intelligence platform that uses input from human analysts to predict cyber-attacks, reports Brian Mastroianni for CBS News. “We realized, finding the actual attacks involved a mix of supervised and unsupervised machine-learning,” explains research scientist Kalyan Veeramachaneni.
Wired reporter Brian Barrett writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system to help detect cyber-attacks. Barrett explains that the system, “reviews data…and pinpoints anything suspicious. A human takes it from there, checking for signs of a breach. The one-two punch identifies 86 percent of attacks while sparing analysts the tedium of chasing bogus leads.”
Boston Globe reporter Curt Woodward writes about Attorney General Maura Healey’s remarks at MIT about the importance of consumer privacy. “We are witnessing in our own backyard the growth of an exciting, forward-looking industry fueled by consumer data,” Healey said. “But its full potential cannot be achieved if consumers are not protected and respected.”
During a forum at MIT, Attorney General Maura Healey spoke about the need for protections for online consumers, reports Zeninjor Enwemeka for WBUR. “We just need to make sure that big data isn’t being used to give certain consumers an unfair deal based on who they are, where they are or what they do online,” Healey said.
Reuters reporter Dustin Volz writes that during an MIT event, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced that the U.S. will begin sending digital trade experts to foreign markets. Pritzker also “discussed the Privacy Shield and other issues facing the transatlantic digital economy with Andrus Ansip, vice president of the European Commission's digital single market.”
Christian Science Monitor reporter Jack Detsch writes about the “Cambridge 2 Cambridge” hackathon, which brought together students from MIT and Cambridge University to hack websites and discover built-in vulnerabilities. “It’s not a law of nature that machines are insecure,” says CSAIL’s Howard Shrobe. This hackathon “is the first step of piquing curiosity to fix it.”
Curt Nickisch reports for WBUR on the remarks Robert Hannigan, director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, made at MIT on encryption and privacy. CSAIL’s Daniel Weitzner says that he feels that the fact that both Hannigan and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter spoke out against mandatory backdoors, is “a really significant shift in the debate.”
In an article for The Washington Post, Daniel Weitzner writes that the U.S. government should respond to greater calls for access to communication and data in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks by “strengthening the public policy framework that governs surveillance, both domestically and globally.”
Larry Greenemeier writes for Scientific American about why government agencies want access to encrypted data, highlighting a report co-authored by MIT researchers that warns against providing special access. The researchers argue that providing access would “make software and devices much more complex, difficult to secure and expensive for tech companies to maintain."
Network World reporter Tim Greene writes that a committee of security experts state in a new report that allowing government agencies access to secure data could increase data breaches. MIT Principal Research Scientist Daniel Weitzner, who led the preparation of the report, explains that allowing special access creates “vulnerabilities to infrastructure being used in the commercial sector.”
Cat Zakrzewski writes for TechCrunch that a new report co-authored by MIT researchers details how giving law enforcement agencies access to encrypted communications could pose security risks. The report, “tells us that a backdoor for the government and law enforcement also provides an opening that could be exploited by hackers.”
Danny Yadron, Damian Paletta and Jennifer Valentino-Devries write for The Wall Street Journal that in a new report MIT cybersecurity experts argue that allowing governments access to encrypted data is “technically impractical and would expose consumers and business to a greater risk of data breaches.”