The U.S. government is exploring ways to combat and deter cyberattacks from abroad. After a recent Pentagon simulated cyberattack, it became clear that the enemy had all the advantages–stealth, anonymity, and unpredictability. The situation has led some in the government to compare it to that of the Cold War era, and there is intense debate inside and outside the government about what the United States can realistically threaten. Diplomatic demarche, formal protest, economic retaliation, and criminal prosecution have all been suggested as possible responses to increased cyberattacks. “We are now in the phase that we found ourselves in during the early 1950s, after the Soviets got the bomb,” says Harvard University professor Joseph Nye. The Internet has blurred the line between military and civilian targets because an enemy can cripple a target without ever aiming at the government or military, which hinders the U.S. Department of Defense’s authority to intervene. The U.S. government has responded to increasing cyberattacks by creating a new United States Cyber Command, run though the Defense Department.

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A swarm robot demonstrator has been successfully tested by a European collaboration that brought together nine research and industry partners from seven countries. Part of the ROBOSWARM project, the demonstrator consisted of 10 to 15 devices that enabled the swarm of simple robots to carry out cleaning tasks. Fixed radio frequency identification (RFID) tags facilitated the positioning and navigation of the swarms, enabling project partners to coordinate the robots for sharing tasks. The project sought to develop swarms that would be robust, self-configurable, and inexpensive. The partners say the ROBOSWARM technology provides a level of communication that would enable robots to learn from other members of the swarm, and split tasks to allow for scalability of the swarm. The Department of Computer Science at Estonia’s Tallinn University of Technology led the project, coordinating with teams from Estonia, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Finland, and Sweden.

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The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) will award $30 million across two to four projects to redesign the Internet via new security, reliability, and collaborative applications, under the aegis of its Future Internet Architectures (FIA) program. “Proposals should not focus on making the existing Internet better through incremental changes, but rather should focus on designing comprehensive architectures that can meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century,” NSF says. The proposals should seek out transformative research that could potentially facilitate the generation of architectures that extend outside of current core networking components, mechanisms, and application requirements. The NSF also wants researchers to develop more efficient ways to disseminate information and manage users’ identities while accounting for emerging wireless and optical technologies. The NSF says FIA proposals must feature prototype plans, and may mandate the employment of research networks such as Global Environment for Network Innovations or the National Cyber Range.

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University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory researchers Steven J. Murdoch and Ross Anderson contend in a paper that the 3D Secure (3DS) credit card authentication system branded as the MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa schemes is deeply flawed. The researchers call attention to a number of vulnerabilities. For instance, the mechanism used to display the 3DS form is incorporated within an iframe or pop-up with no address bar, leaving no clue as to the form’s origin. This conflicts with banks’ recommendation to customers to avoid phishing sites by only entering bank passwords into sites they can identify as the bank’s own site. The initial password entry process that takes place the first time a cardholder uses a 3DS-enabled card to shop online also is a point of criticism, as the user is asked to enter a new password as part of the process of facilitating the purchase. Murdoch and Anderson argue that the timing of this request is wrong, as the shopper is probably more interested in the transaction than security and is more likely to select a weak password. The paper cites the single sign-on model that the 3DS system deploys as inappropriate, and says that it should be supplanted by a transaction authentication system in which a user receives a SMS message asking for an authorization code from the shopper.

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The revolution in texting, social networking, and crowdsourcing has enabled innovations such as the 4636 texting service, which is aiding the disaster relief efforts in Haiti by recruiting scores of volunteers to help translate messages that could mean the difference between life and death. Another crowdsourcing initiative is CrisisCommons, which has organized thousands of volunteers to enhance the map of Haiti available on the open source OpenStreetMap site. Other projects CrisisCommons is spearheading include one to build a Craigslist-style “we need, we have” Web site to connect people offering resources to those that need them. The proliferation of mobile communications infrastructure to the developing world has supported the emergence of new tools for using text messaging, run by relatively small organizations that can work fast using limited resources in difficult conditions. This places them in a pivotal position as facilitators of disaster relief. Individuals and organizations have been galvanized to collaborate via social networking media by the realization that large-scale activities can be coordinated through online networks.

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