Why have we trusted our lives to zeros and ones? Prof. Goldberg featured in BU 2016 Annual Report
Professor Sharon Goldberg and her team’s research was featured in the 2016 Boston University Annual Report, looking at some of the big questions the University sought to tackle in 2016. Below is an excerpt from the article:
At a cybersecurity briefing on Capitol Hill last spring hosted by Boston University Provost and Chief Academic Officer Jean Morrison and the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, Goldberg detailed for congressional staff members how that innocent trust among early users has led to a system now highly vulnerable to attackers. Not only can cyber outlaws eavesdrop undetected, but they can also intercept, manipulate, and change internet traffic with users none the wiser. We’re not just talking online shopping, either, but the potential for significant damage to vital global systems such as industrial control systems or utility and power systems.
At BU, Goldberg, winner of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, spends her waking hours figuring out ways to identify and correct those weaknesses. Recently, she and several of her students discovered a potential vulnerability in the Network Time Protocol (NTP), the software that synchronizes clocks on computers. Applications ranging from bank website encryption schemes to Bitcoin systems to website authentications could have been breached. “If NTP breaks, many other computing applications break as well,” says Goldberg.
The entire article is available here.