Category: System Designs
DNS over HTTPS: One problem solved, but a bunch of new ones created…
In the course of attending the lecture “Secure Systems” I became aware of a blog post by Geoff Huston on how the Domain Name System (DNS) handles “no such domain name” (NXDOMAIN) responses and which possible attack vectors could result from this. His analysis showed how little effort is necessary to perform a Denial of…
Supply chain on Ethereum Network
600 million people – almost every tenth in the world – fall ill every year with contaminated food, 420,000 of them die (cf. World Health Organization 2019). The main reason for this are supply chains that can not be properly traced back to the source of the contamination (cf. Yiannas 2018). Experts say that the…
How to build fault-tolerant software systems
A brief introduction to the fundamental concepts of Erlang and Elixir Ever since the first electronic systems have been created, engineers and developers have strived to provide solutions to guarantee their robustness and fault-tolerance. Thereof arose the understanding that developing and building a fault-tolerant system is not an easy task, because it requires a deep…
Spy Gadgets that the most people don’t know
From time to time there are reports in the media about spy cameras in hotels rooms or in Airbnb apartments. These cameras are used to spy the gusts. But there are other spy gadgets then cameras, there are gadgets to attack wireless connections or to collect all keystrokes of a system. In this article is…
Are Passwords for Web Authentication Obsolete? Leakage of Passwords and API-Keys and Possible Solutions
Hardly any service today works without an API that allows users to log in and then use features that are not available to unregistered users. To do this, the user can create an account that is password protected. Services such as the Google Maps API also provide access interfaces to allow application developers to easily…
Social Bots – An Attack on Democracy?
Election campaigns are increasingly carried out in social networks to influence voters. Social bots are being used for this purpose, which raises the question of how much influence they have on voters and whether they can even endanger a democracy. Furthermore, the question arises as to who can be held responsible for this and how…
Cryptomining Malware – How criminals use your devices to get wealthy!
Has your computer ever been slow and you couldn’t tell what the problem was? Nowadays, illicit cryptomining can cause those performance problems. It dethroned ransomware as the top cybersecurity threat in 2018. (Webroot Threat Report 2018) A simple website visit can start the mining process as a javascript running in the background of the browser…
The (in)security about speaker legitimacy detection
For the most of us, voices are a crucial part in our every-day communication. Whether we talk to other people over the phone or in real life, through different voices we’re able to distinguish our counterparts, convey different meanings with the same words, and – maybe most importantly – connect the voice we hear to…
Security and Usability: How to design secure systems people can use.
Security hit a high level of importance due to rising technological standards. Unfortunately it leads to a conflict with Usability as Security makes operations harder whereas Usability is supposed to make it easier. Many people are convinced that there is a tradeoff between them. This results in either secure systems that are not usable or…