The National Security Agency's top information security official disclosed plans this week for a government-funded research center devoted to improving the security of commercial software, calling the initiative a modern-day Manhattan Project.
Researchers uncovered a serious flaw in the underlying technology for nearly all Internet traffic, a discovery that led to an urgent and secretive international effort to prevent global disruptions of Web surfing, e-mails and instant messages.
Software engineers have developed an intrusion-detection program capable of recognizing attack patterns before hackers have even developed them.
A new device that quarantines different portions of a computer network could stop worms and viruses infecting an entire company once they have breached its perimeter defences.
The authors argue that the U.S. should pay more attention to cyberterrorism because as the recent blackout showed, attacks on our computer networks can "dramatically affect millions of our citizens and undermine core institutions of our society just as effectively as a weapon of mass destruction."
New research holds promise for controlling the spread of internet viruses by reducing infected machine's ability to inflict damage.
The author proposes that the United Nations should require nations to enact strict "cyber auditing" and security measures to protect the interconnected global network.
New computer-monitoring software designed to second-guess the intentions of individual system users could be close to perfect at preventing security breaches, say researchers. [ Direct link to paper, PDF ]
Scientists concerned about the vulnerability of the Internet to failure or hacking envision a next-generation system that would use the collective power of users' computers to become more secure.
Researchers at the U.S. Air Force Information Warfare Battlelab successfully demonstrated "the military value of creating virtual networks (false computer units) designed to decoy attacks and exploits."