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Heartbleed and other cyber threats

Concordia professor Jeremy Clark and guest speaker Yuval Elovici share web security concerns at alumni breakfast
May 14, 2014
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By James Gibbons

Source: Advancement and Alumni Relations

Heartbleed, identity theft — threats are rife on the information superhighway.

Cyber security experts at Concordia’s Institute of Information Systems Engineering (IISE) work to better understand and curtail those risks. They research how to protect web users.

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Yuval Elovici, of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, addresses the crowd | Photo credit: Leslie Schachter

Jeremy Clark, associate professor at Concordia, was joined by cyber security expert Yuval Elovici, of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, at a breakfast talk on May 6.

The two discussed a number of cyber security threats at the gathering organized by Concordia’s Advancement and Alumni Relations.

“The timing and venue for this discussion are perfect,” said Christopher Trueman, interim dean, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, to the crowd of over two dozen. 

Trueman gestured toward the headline grabbing security vulnerability known as “Heartbleed.” 

Your smartphone. “There is a tendency to attack mobile devices because people use them both personally and for business,” said Elovici.

Concordia’s Jeremy Clark shares his research findings | Photo credit: Leslie Schachter

Harmful software picked up on a smartphone with personal use is brought into the professional environment on the same device, explained Elovici.

“My team was able to plant malicious software on devices through Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store,” said Elovici.

Social networks. How can we ensure that personal information placed online doesn’t fall into the wrong hands?

“Social networking companies create fake accounts. They monitor these fake accounts to see if there is unusual activity,” said Elovici, who referred to the bogus accounts as “honeypots.”

Digital elections. One of Clark’s research interests at IISE is the digitization of elections. “The City of Toronto recently announced that it will offer online polling in the next municipal election,” said Clark.

“If there’s malicious software on the computer being used to vote, the vote can be changed,” said Clark. 

The professor also noted other considerations: “Because it isn’t a supervised environment, it could be possible to sell votes, or manipulate people into voting.” 

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