Saturday, February 4, 2023
SCIENMAG: Latest Science and Health News
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME PAGE
  • BIOLOGY
  • CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
  • MEDICINE
    • Cancer
    • Infectious Emerging Diseases
  • SPACE
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME PAGE
  • BIOLOGY
  • CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
  • MEDICINE
    • Cancer
    • Infectious Emerging Diseases
  • SPACE
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Scienmag - Latest science news from science magazine
No Result
View All Result
Home SCIENCE NEWS Technology and Engineering

How to protect your laptop — even when it’s asleep

November 23, 2016
in Technology and Engineering
0
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Montreal, November 23, 2016 — In the age of WikiLeaks, Russian hacks and increased government surveillance, many computer users are feeling increasingly worried about how best to protect their personal information — even if they aren't guarding state secrets.

Luckily, there's a solution: Hypnoguard, powerful new software developed by Concordia University researchers to safeguard data even when computer is in sleep mode.

Sweet dreams are made of this

"Protecting data is especially difficult when a computer goes to sleep, which happens when a laptop's lid is closed, or after a certain period of user inactivity," explains PhD candidate Lianying Zhao.

He explains that if a computer in this mode falls into the wrong hands, a malicious person can extract the data found in the machine's random-access memory (RAM) in a number of technical ways.

"It's been a known problem for several years, but no one's proposed a viable way to solve it. Until now."

You are getting sleepy …

Zhao developed the Hynoguard system with Mohammad Mannan, an associate professor with the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering.,

It's designed to protect "data-in-sleep." When installed, the system encrypts the computer's RAM before it enters sleep mode, and then decrypts the data upon waking with hardware-backed uncircumventible user re-authentication.

"The entire process is transparent to the user, who simply enters a regular 'unlock' password when the computer wakes up," explains Mannan. "There's almost no impact on usability. For an average computer with eight gigabytes of memory, the process only takes about a second."

He and Zhao designed the system by carefully integrating password-based authentication with widely available hardware security features in modern consumer-grade computers. They unveiled their work at the 2016 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security this October in Vienna.

Coming to a laptop near you

Having just filed a provisional US patent for the system, Mannan and Zhao hope that members of the general population as well as corporate and state users will soon be able to use Hypnoguard to protect critical data.

"Professionals for whom security is paramount — people like government agents, journalists and businessmen — should benefit the most in terms of protecting secrets in RAM. If their computer is lost or stolen, or if they are forced to reveal their password, Hypnoguard will provide that extra layer of protection. And if it's combined with Gracewipe, another of our security systems, both RAM and disk data will be safe against password guessing and coercion attacks."

###

Read the Hypnoguard paper from the ACM Conference proceedings.

Read the Gracewipe paper from the ISOC proceedings.

Related links:
Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering
Mohammad Mannan

Media contact:
Cléa Desjardins
Senior advisor, media relations
University Communications Services
Concordia University
Phone: 514-848-2424, ext. 5068
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://www.concordia.ca/now/media-relations
Twitter: @CleaDesjardins

Media Contact

Cléa Desjardins
[email protected]
514-909-2999
@ConcordiaUnews

http://www.concordia.ca

Share25Tweet16Share4ShareSendShare
  • Face masks cut distance airborne pathogens could travel in half, new study finds

    197 shares
    Share 79 Tweet 49
  • Study presents novel therapeutic target for treatment of sepsis

    114 shares
    Share 46 Tweet 29
  • Looking beyond microplastics, Oregon State researchers find that cotton and synthetic microfibers impact behavior and growth of aquatic organisms

    72 shares
    Share 29 Tweet 18
  • Abandoning wood cook stoves would be great for Africa, if families could afford it

    65 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16
  • Null results research now published by major behavioral medicine journal

    551 shares
    Share 220 Tweet 138
  • Preference for naturally talented over hard workers emerges in childhood, HKUST researchers find

    64 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16
ADVERTISEMENT

About us

We bring you the latest science news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Latest NEWS

New study shows snacking on mixed tree nuts may impact cardiovascular risk factors and increase serotonin

Null results research now published by major behavioral medicine journal

Face masks cut distance airborne pathogens could travel in half, new study finds

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 205 other subscribers

© 2022 Scienmag- Science Magazine: Latest Science News.

No Result
View All Result
  • HOME PAGE
  • BIOLOGY
  • CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
  • MEDICINE
    • Cancer
    • Infectious Emerging Diseases
  • SPACE
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CONTACT US

© 2022 Scienmag- Science Magazine: Latest Science News.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In