From media and communications to banking, an increasing number of our daily activities is performed online. While this transformation has raised the curtain on exciting new frontiers, it also opens doors to security threats undreamed of by previous generations. In Scientific American’s newest eBook, Cyber Hacking: Wars in Virtual Space, we peer behind the scenes [...]

A pair of security researchers in the U.K. have released a paper [PDF] documenting what they describe as the “first real world detection of a backdoor” in a microchip—an opening that could allow a malicious actor to monitor or change the information on the chip. The researchers, Sergei Skorobogatov of the University of Cambridge and [...]

The choice between felt up or blown up seems like a no-brainer. So does the choice between the low-dose radiation exposure of a backscatter x-ray exam at the airport or getting on the plane and spending a couple hours high enough in a thinner atmosphere that you’ll get far more exposure to cosmic radiation. So [...]

Soon after the investigation into Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings began, law enforcement urged the public to e-mail any video, images or other information that might lead them to the guilty party. “No piece of information or detail is too small,” states the F.B.I.’s Web site. Picking through all of this footage in search of clues [...]

The cyber attacks against several South Korean television stations, banks and insurance firms on Wednesday may not have been crippling or widespread, but their timing further fuels concerns over who is launching such attacks, what constitutes “cyber warfare” and how should countries react to such online aggression. The malicious software—or malware—used in the attack interferes [...]

This afternoon, President Barack Obama will ask Congress to direct our cars, trucks and buses to a realm that doesn’t include gas stations. During a visit to Argonne National Laboratory, he will call for $2-billion energy security trust fund dedicated to research to boost automobile efficiency, enhance battery technology and expand the use of biofuels, [...]

Last week, I and some 200 other attendees of the Global Trends 2030: U.S. Leadership in a Post-Western World conference got a thought-provoking look at the current “megatrends” leading to four possible futures for the world some 10 to 15 years from now. Cutting across all of them is the disruptive influence of emerging technologies—which [...]

Storm-ravaged New Jersey could set off a tempest of its own on Election Day if the state lets constituents vote via e-mail and fax, cautioned a group of legal, technology and election experts during a press conference on Monday. These experts are challenging N.J. Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno’s executive order issued late last week that [...]

Quick Response (QR) codes—those grainy, black-and-white squares increasingly found on advertisements and packaging—can quickly deliver encoded data to mobile gadgets, whether the info is a Web address for a promotional video or details about a package’s shipment. Could this same technology effectively barcode currency, to crack down on counterfeiters? A team of researchers from the [...]

The first boots on the ground in the explosives-rigged apartment of Aurora, Colo., shooting suspect James Holmes were actually robot tracks. Fortunately for police, military and emergency responders, bots are showing their mettle in this and other dangerous situations and helping keep their human handlers out of harm’s way. Holmes, a former Ph.D. neuroscience student [...]

Even as Iran’s nuclear program raises the likelihood of yet another conflict in the Middle East, the bigger threat is a potential food crisis in the making, says Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute. “When I ask myself, what are the threats for out security today, foreign aggression doesn’t make top five,” Brown [...]

Mark Gasson had caught a bad bug. Though he was not in pain, he was keenly aware of the infection raging in his left hand, knowing he could put others at risk by simply coming too close. But his virus wasn’t a risk for humans. Gasson, a cybernetics scientist at the University of Reading, was [...]

The computers that control large industrial control systems—the sewage plants, power stations, and assembly lines that keep civilization running—aren’t supposed to be online. Computers online tend to get hacked, of course, and you wouldn’t want your local power plant under rogue control. But a graduate student was able to locate and map more than 10,000 [...]

Octopuses possess camouflage abilities that put some of our military’s best high-tech efforts to shame. And their flexible, intelligent arms are the envy of roboticists and artificial intelligence engineers worldwide. But these animals, which have evolved over hundreds of millions of years, can teach us even more about security in the 21st century than camo [...]

The legacy of Wikileaks—the outing of secret government information—is all the vogue. It won’t stop with PRISM and the government contractor who fed The Guardian and The Washington Post the skinny on the U.S. surveillance program. The question is what comes next—and the only given is that there most certainly will be a “next.” This [...]

Will the masses at NFL events do “the wave” only in the watchful sights of a police sharpshooter’s high-powered rifle? Is tailgating before the game all but nostalgic history? Will major marathons be relegated to a dull repetition of 105 or so loops around a stadium track? These are some of the questions that immediately [...]