This book explores the genesis of ransomware and how the parallel emergence of encryption technologies has elevated ransomware to become the most prodigious cyber threat that enterprises are confronting. It also investigates the driving forces behind what has been dubbed the 'ransomware revolution' after a series of major attacks beginning in 2013, and how the advent of cryptocurrencies provided the catalyst for the development and increased profitability of ransomware, sparking a phenomenal rise in the number and complexity of ransomware attacks. This book analyzes why the speed of technology adoption has been a fundamental factor in the continued success of financially motivated cybercrime, and how the ease of public access to advanced encryption techniques has allowed malicious actors to continue to operate with increased anonymity across the internet. This anonymity has enabled increased collaboration between attackers, which has aided the development of new ransomware attacks, and led to an increasing level of technical complexity in ransomware attacks. This book highlights that the continuous expansion and early adoption of emerging technologies may be beyond the capacity of conventional risk managers and risk management frameworks. Researchers and advanced level students studying or working in computer science, business or criminology will find this book useful as a reference or secondary text. Professionals working in cybersecurity, cryptography, information technology, financial crime (and other related topics) will also welcome this book as a reference.

In the mid-1970s, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman invented public key cryptography, an innovation that ultimately changed the world. Today public key cryptography provides the primary basis for secure communication over the internet, enabling online work, socializing, shopping, government services, and much more. While other books have documented the development of public key cryptography, this is the first to provide a comprehensive insiders' perspective on the full impacts of public key cryptography, including six original chapters by nine distinguished scholars. The book begins with an original joint biography of the lives and careers of Diffie and Hellman, highlighting parallels and intersections, and contextualizing their work. Subsequent chapters show how public key cryptography helped establish an open cryptography community and made lasting impacts on computer and network security, theoretical computer science, mathematics, public policy, and society. The volume includes particularly influential articles by Diffie and Hellman, as well as newly transcribed interviews and Turing Award Lectures by both Diffie and Hellman. The contributed chapters provide new insights that are accessible to a wide range of readers, from computer science students and computer security professionals, to historians of technology and members of the general public. The chapters can be readily integrated into undergraduate and graduate courses on a range of topics, including computer security, theoretical computer science and mathematics, the history of computing, and science and technology policy.

Take advantage of Bitcoin's underlying technology, the blockchain, to build massively scalable, decentralized applications known as dapps. In this practical guide, author Siraj Raval explains why dapps will become more widely used-and profitable-than today's most popular web apps. You'll learn how the blockchain's cryptographically stored ledger, scarce-asset model, and peer-to-peer (P2P) technology provide a more flexible, better-incentivized structure than current software models. Once you understand the theory behind dapps and what a thriving dapp ecosystem looks like, Raval shows you how to use existing tools to create a working dapp. You'll then take a deep dive into the OpenBazaar decentralized market, and examine two case studies of successful dapps currently in use. Learn advances in distributed-system technology that make distributed data, wealth, identity, computing, and bandwidth possible Build a Twitter clone with the Go language, distributed architecture, decentralized messaging app, and peer-to-peer data store Learn about OpenBazaar's decentralized market and its structure for supporting transactions Explore Lighthouse, a decentralized crowdfunding project that rivals sites such as Kickstarter and IndieGogo Take an in-depth look at La'Zooz, a P2P ridesharing app that transmits data directly between riders and drivers

In the mid-1970s, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman invented public key cryptography, an innovation that ultimately changed the world. Today public key cryptography provides the primary basis for secure communication over the internet, enabling online work, socializing, shopping, government services, and much more. While other books have documented the development of public key cryptography, this is the first to provide a comprehensive insiders' perspective on the full impacts of public key cryptography, including six original chapters by nine distinguished scholars. The book begins with an original joint biography of the lives and careers of Diffie and Hellman, highlighting parallels and intersections, and contextualizing their work. Subsequent chapters show how public key cryptography helped establish an open cryptography community and made lasting impacts on computer and network security, theoretical computer science, mathematics, public policy, and society. The volume includes particularly influential articles by Diffie and Hellman, as well as newly transcribed interviews and Turing Award Lectures by both Diffie and Hellman. The contributed chapters provide new insights that are accessible to a wide range of readers, from computer science students and computer security professionals, to historians of technology and members of the general public. The chapters can be readily integrated into undergraduate and graduate courses on a range of topics, including computer security, theoretical computer science and mathematics, the history of computing, and science and technology policy.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of four workshops colocated with NETWORKING 2011, held in Valencia, Spain, in May 2011: the Workshop on Performance Evaluation of Cognitive Radio Networks: From Theory to Reality, PE-CRN 2011, the Network Coding Applications and Protocols Workshop, NC-Pro 2011, the Workshop on Wireless Cooperative Network Security, WCNS 2011, and the Workshop on Sustainable Networking, SUNSET 2011. The 28 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics addressing the main research efforts in the fields of network coding, sustainable networking, security in wireless cooperative networks, and performance evaluation of cognitive radio networks.

Being highly flexible in building dynamic, database-driven web applications makes the PHP programming language one of the most popular web development tools in use today. It also works beautifully with other open source tools, such as the MySQL database and the Apache web server. However, as more web sites are developed in PHP, they become targets for malicious attackers, and developers need to prepare for the attacks. Security is an issue that demands attention, given the growing frequency of attacks on web sites. Essential PHP Security explains the most common types of attacks and how to write code that isn't susceptible to them. By examining specific attacks and the techniques used to protect against them, you will have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the safeguards you are about to learn in this book. In the much-needed (and highly-requested) Essential PHP Security, each chapter covers an aspect of a web application (such as form processing, database programming, session management, and authentication). Chapters describe potential attacks with examples and then explain techniques to help you prevent those attacks. Topics covered include: * Preventing cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities * Protecting against SQL injection attacks * Complicating session hijacking attempts You are in good hands with author Chris Shiflett, an internationally-recognized expert in the field of PHP security. Shiflett is also the founder and President of Brain Bulb, a PHP consultancy that offers a variety of services to clients around the world.

Discover how to take advantage of common cryptographic operations to build safer apps that respect users' privacy with the help of examples in JavaScript for Node.js and browsers Key Features Understand how to implement common cryptographic operations in your code with practical examples Learn about picking modern safe algorithms, which libraries you should rely on, and how to use them correctly Build modern and secure applications that respect your users' privacy with cryptography Book DescriptionIf you're a software developer, this book will give you an introduction to cryptography, helping you understand how to make the most of it for your applications. The book contains extensive code samples in JavaScript, both for Node.js and for frontend apps running in a web browser, although the core concepts can be used by developers working with any programming language and framework. With a purely hands-on approach that is focused on sharing actionable knowledge, you'll learn about the common categories of cryptographic operations that you can leverage in all apps you're developing, including hashing, encryption with symmetric, asymmetric and hybrid ciphers, and digital signatures. You'll learn when to use these operations and how to choose and implement the most popular algorithms to perform them, including SHA-2, Argon2, AES, ChaCha20-Poly1305, RSA, and Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Later, you'll learn how to deal with password and key management. All code in this book is written in JavaScript and designed to run in Node.js or as part of frontend apps for web browsers. By the end of this book, you'll be able to build solutions that leverage cryptography to protect user privacy, offer better security against an expanding and more complex threat landscape, help meet data protection requirements, and unlock new opportunities. What you will learn Write JavaScript code that uses cryptography running within a Node.js environment for the server-side or in frontend applications for web browsers Use modern, safe hashing functions for calculating digests and key derivation, including SHA-2 and Argon2 Practice encrypting messages and files with a symmetric key using AES and ChaCha20-Poly1305 Use asymmetric and hybrid encryption, leveraging RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography with ECDH and ECIES Calculate and verify digital signatures using RSA and ECDSA/EdDSA Manage passwords and encryption keys safely Who this book is forThis cryptography book is an introductory guide for software developers who don't necessarily have a background in cryptography but are interested in learning how to integrate it in their solutions, correctly and safely. You'll need to have at least intermediate-level knowledge of building apps with JavaScript and familiarity with Node.js to make the most of this book.

The concept of quantum computing is based on two fundamental principles of quantum mechanics: superposition and entanglement. Instead of using bits, qubits are used in quantum computing, which is a key indicator in the high level of safety and security this type of cryptography ensures. If interfered with or eavesdropped in, qubits will delete or refuse to send, which keeps the information safe. This is vital in the current era where sensitive and important personal information can be digitally shared online. In computer networks, a large amount of data is transferred worldwide daily, including anything from military plans to a country's sensitive information, and data breaches can be disastrous. This is where quantum cryptography comes into play. By not being dependent on computational power, it can easily replace classical cryptography. Limitations and Future Applications of Quantum Cryptography is a critical reference that provides knowledge on the basics of IoT infrastructure using quantum cryptography, the differences between classical and quantum cryptography, and the future aspects and developments in this field. The chapters cover themes that span from the usage of quantum cryptography in healthcare, to forensics, and more. While highlighting topics such as 5G networks, image processing, algorithms, and quantum machine learning, this book is ideally intended for security professionals, IoT developers, computer scientists, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the most recent research on quantum computing.

Blockchain is an emerging technology platform for developing decentralized applications and data storage, over and beyond its role as the technology underlying the cryptocurrencies. The basic tenet of this platform is that it allows one to create a distributed and replicated ledger of events, transactions, and data generated through various IT processes with strong cryptographic guarantees of tamper resistance, immutability, and verifiability. Public blockchain platforms allow us to guarantee these properties with overwhelming probabilities even when untrusted users are participants of distributed applications with the ability to transact on the platform. Even though, blockchain technology has become popularly known because of its use in the implementation of cryptocurrencies such as BitCoin, Ethereum, etc.; the technology itself holds much more promise in various areas such as time stamping, logging of critical events in a system, recording of transactions, trustworthy e-governance, etc. It introduces theoretical and practical aspects of blockchain technology. The book includes an in-depth insight into the need for decentralization, smart contracts, consensus both permissioned and permissionless, and various blockchain development frameworks, tools, and platforms. It can be used as a learning resource for various examinations and certifications related to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. This book explained the nuts and bolts of blockchain technology in lucid language to make students more familiar with the implementation perspective of this much-needed technology.

Doing Science With Python introduces readers to the most popular coding tools for scientific research, such as Anaconda, Spyder, Jupyter Notebooks, and JupyterLab, as well as dozens of important Python libraries for working with data, including NumPy, matplotlib, and pandas. No prior programming experience is required! You'll be guided through setting up a professional coding environment, then get a crash course on programming with Python, and explore the many tools and libraries ideal for working with data, designing visualisations, simulating natural events, and more.