We could lose the internet, warns security researcher Dan Kaminsky

By Michael Kassner | October 31, 2016, 9:30 AM PST

Well-known security researcher Dan Kaminsky suggests how to save the internet by modeling cybersecurity after the NIH.


"The internet is not a safe place right now, and, more importantly, the tools we're using to interact with it are relatively broken," warns Dan Kaminsky in a podcast with O'Reilly's Courtney Nash. As evidence, a large percentage of Americans are starting to back away from the internet due to security and privacy fears. "We shouldn't be surprised," adds Kaminsky in this CyberScoop column. "At this point, who hasn't gotten a disclosure notice, a replacement credit card, or dealt with something worse?"

More to the point, Kaminsky adds, "We could lose this internet."

If you are wondering why you should even pay attention to Dan Kaminsky—cofounder and chief scientist of WhiteOps, a security consultancy—he has a track record of uncovering fundamental flaws with the internet and the technology behind it. For example, Kaminsky discovered a vulnerability in the Domain Name System (DNS) that allowed attackers to redirect unsuspecting internet users to alternative malicious web servers.

Use the National Institutes of Health as a model

However, there is good news. Kaminsky believes if we work together, it is possible to save the internet. As to how, Kaminsky writes, "I firmly believe we need something akin to

Researchers develop soft, shock-absorbing material to make 3-D printed robots safer

Representational Image. Image: 3D Systems (Twitter page

  06 Oct 2016 , 15:11

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new method for 3-D printing soft materials that make robots safer and more precise in their movements. The material could be used to improve the durability of drones, phones, shoes, helmets, and more, according to the researchers. The team’s “programmable viscoelastic material” (PVM) technique allows users to programme every single part of a 3D-printed object to the exact levels of stiffness and elasticity they want, depending on the task they need for it.

For example, after 3-D printing a cube robot that moves by bouncing, the researchers outfitted it with shock-absorbing “skins” that use only a fraction of the energy it transfers to the ground. “That reduction makes all the difference for preventing a rotor from breaking off of a drone or a sensor from cracking when it hits the floor,” said Daniela Rus from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory who oversaw the project.

“These materials allow us to 3-D print robots with visco-elastic properties that can be inputted by the user at print-time as part of the fabrication process,” Rus noted in a statement released by MIT. The skins also allow the robot to land nearly four times more precisely, suggesting that similar shock absorbers could be used to