Researchers have come to realise that data can be intercepted based on what was sent, whom it was sent to, when the message was sent and where the message was sent from and to. They are also considering the level of integrity of the system in terms of the actions of the intruders to insert, delete and/or change the message that was sent. Robert Schifreen, a former hacker turned security consultant, recently told the BBC’s Jon Sopel that criminals are conscious that we are more and more “living our lives online” and they are using that as a kind of advantage to cause interfere with your network. You can watch the BBc interview video HERE
Repeated cyber attacks on foreign administrations, companies and organizations have been traced to China over the past few years, and increasingly in 2012, and the Chinese government has often been accused of backing them, either directly or by allowing them to go ahead.. Beijing routinely denies state-backed hacking and says it is more a victim of hacking than the culprit. The truth also lies that many other countries are also believed to use cyber espionage.
In another development, Data captured by smartphone sensors could help Intruders deduce codes used to lock your gadgets. Dr Adam J Aviv, a visiting professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, whose Ph.D. research covered side channels on smartphones that are enabled by smartphones’ handheld and touch oriented user interfaces. A side channel is the unintended leakage of information via a side-effect of a security or input procedure. He specifically carried out a research that involves using smartphone sensors to gathered information by its accelerometer on a smartphone.
He said that by analyzing data gathered by accelerometers they were able to get a good idea of the Pin or pattern used to protect a phone. The data was useable because sensors can gather information with more freedom than apps loaded on the device. That means that several different smartphone sensors could be sabotaged. In general this sensor logs phone movements in three dimensions: side-to-side, forward-and-back and up-and-down.
Dr Aviv said that typically users did not have to give consent for a sensor to gather data even if the information it grabbed had nothing to do with the application they were using.
The area of this research has attracted other researchers who are looking at ways to subvert data gathered by gyroscopes, accelerometers and other orientation sensors to work out passwords, said Dr Aviv. One group even analyzed smears on touch screens to get clues about Pins and patterns. “We are starting to realise that the way we interact with these devices affects the security of these devices,” he said. “The fact that we hold them in our hands makes it like handing your life over cheaply to the intruders is kind of different to the way we use our desktop computers and that actually can leak information to sensors in the device.