News by Subject Technology & Engineering

A multi-pronged data analysis approach that can strengthen the security of Internet of Things (IoT) devices -- such as smart TVs, home video cameras and baby monitors -- against current risks and threats has been created by a team of Penn State World Campus students.

Researchers from HSE University and Nizhny Novgorod State Linguistic University (LUNN) have developed a new method for ensuring quality in automatic voice recording. Resistant to background noise of 10dB and higher, the new algorithm can operate in real-time, making it possible to use the software to collect voice biometrics for a wide variety of purposes. The article was published in the journal Measurement Techniques. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11018-019-01617-x

A team led by a chemist at the University of California, Riverside, has fabricated for the first time plasmonic color-switchable films of silver nanoparticles. Until now, such color changing of nanoparticles was mainly achieved in liquids, limiting their potential for practical applications. The technology has a number of applications: product authentication, color displays, signage, sensors, and information encryption.

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is limited by its astronomical electricity consumption and outsized carbon footprint. A nearly zero-energy alternative sounds too good to be true, but as School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) Professor Rachid Guerraoui explains, it all comes down to our understanding of what makes transactions secure.

A University at Buffalo-led research team is developing EarEcho, a biometric tool that uses modified wireless earbuds to authenticate smartphone users via the unique geometry of their ear canal. A prototype of the system, described in this month's Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, a journal published quarterly by the Association for Computing Machinery, proved roughly 95% effective.

Bots or fake accounts enabled by artificial intelligence on social media have evolved and are now better able to copy human behaviors in order to avoid detection.

Scientists at Linköping University have shown how a quantum computer really works and have managed to simulate quantum computer properties in a classical computer. 'Our results should be highly significant in determining how to build quantum computers', says Professor Jan-Åke Larsson.

According to Adar Ovadya, a master's student in BGU's Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, 'all of the routers we surveyed regardless of brand or price point were vulnerable to at least some cross-network communication once we used specially crafted network packets. A hardware-based solution seems to be the safest approach to guaranteeing isolation between secure and non-secure network devices.'