The role of communication technology in adolescent relationships and identity development

Text messaging, e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking sites are changing the way people interact with each other. The popularity of these communication technologies among emerging adults in particular has grown exponentially, with little accompanying research to understand their influences on psychosocial development. This study explores the relationship between communication technology usage (text messaging, e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking) and adolescent adjustment among 268 high school students. It was hypothesized that use of communication technology would be related to psychological adjustment, including identity development, relationship attachment and peer conflict. Participants were recruited from three public high schools in central Florida (69% female, 81.9% White). Time spent using communication technology was significantly correlated with psychological symptom severity (i.e. anxiety and depression), identity distress, peer aggression, and existential anxiety. It was also significantly but negatively correlated with relationship avoidance. Degree of usage of communication technology for interpersonal communication was significantly correlated with peer aggression, relationship anxiety, and existential anxiety. Those with a preoccupied style (high in relationship anxiety, low in relationship avoidance) spent significantly more time using communication technology than those in the dismissive (high in avoidance, low in anxiety), fearful (high in both), and secure (low in both) styles. Further analyses and their implications for adolescent development will be discussed

Attribute-based secure messaging in the public cloud

Messaging systems operating within the public cloud are gaining popularity. To protect message confidentiality from the public cloud including the public messaging servers, we propose to encrypt messages in messaging systems using Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE). ABE is an one-to-many public key encryption system in which data are encrypted with access policies and only users with attributes that satisfy the access policies can decrypt the ciphertexts, and hence is considered as a promising solution for realizing expressive and fine-grained access control of encrypted data in public servers. Our proposed system, called Attribute- Based Secure Messaging System with Outsourced Decryption (ABSM-OD), has three key features: enabling expressive and fine-grained access control of encrypted messages by users, supporting outsourced decryption to the cloud while without compromising confidentiality of decrypted messages, and allowing server-aided revocation to provide effective and instant user revocations

More is Less: On the End-to-End Security of Group Chats in Signal, WhatsApp, and Threema

Secure instant messaging is utilized in two variants: one-to-one communication and group communication. While the first variant has received much attention lately (Frosch et al., EuroS&P16; Cohn-Gordon et al., EuroS&P17; Kobeissi et al., EuroS&P17), little is known about the cryptographic mechanisms and security guarantees of secure group communication in instant messaging. To approach an investigation of group instant messaging protocols, we first provide a comprehensive and realistic security model. This model combines security and reliability goals from various related literature to capture relevant properties for communication in dynamic groups. Thereby the definitions consider their satisfiability with respect to the instant delivery of messages. To show its applicability, we analyze three widely used real-world protocols: Signal, WhatsApp, and Threema. Since these protocols and their implementations are mostly undocumented for the public and two out of three applications among them are closed source, we describe the group protocols employed in Signal, WhatsApp, and Threema. By applying our model, we reveal several shortcomings with respect to the security definition. Therefore we propose generic countermeasures to enhance the protocols regarding the required security and reliability goals. Our systematic analysis reveals that (1) the communications\u27 integrity – represented by the integrity of all exchanged messages – and(2) the groups\u27 closeness – represented by the members\u27 ability of managing the group – are not end-to-end protected. We additionally show that strong security properties, such as Future Secrecy which is a core part of the one-to-one communication in the Signal protocol, do not hold for its group communication

Secure Instant Messaging : the Jabber protocol

Instant Messaging (IM) has grown rapidly among network users. It has even become a very important tool for the industry around the world. It is used in scheduling meetings, exchanging business information and clients information, and so on. Instant Messaging has been developed by private sectors or providers such as America Online Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN, and Yahoo; however, in 1998 a new protocol has seen the light as an open source Instant Messaging protocol and had the name of Jabber and thanks to Jeremie Miller the founder of the Jabber protocol. The project gathered wide public attention when it was discussed on the popular developer discussion website Slashdot in January 1999. In May 2000, the core Jabber protocols were released as open source reference server and it have not been changed to this day. Jabber uses client-server architecture, not a direct peer-to-peer architecture as some other messaging systems do. It is actually an Extensible Markup Language (XML) messaging protocol. It relies on XML document format in every aspect of the communication. [1] Jabber Protocol have gone a long way to be one of the most attractive protocol because of its open source and extensibility. Anyone can build or extend the jabber protocol functionality without actually modifying the core protocol and still maintain interoperability with other IM clients such as Yahoo and MSN. Moreover, as the usage of Jabber Instant Messaging technology increases, the need for information protection in the Jabber messaging medium also increases. This thesis will explore the Jabber protocol and the ability to secure a Jabber based communication over the network using third party cryptographic libraries

Digital and Mobile Security for Mexican Journalists and Bloggers

A new survey of 102 journalists and bloggers in 20 Mexican states shows nearly 70 percent have been threatened or have suffered attacks because of their work. In addition, 96 percent say they know of colleagues who have been attacked. Respondents to the survey also say they view cyber-espionage and email-account cracking as the most serious digital risks they face. And while nearly all have access to and rely on the Internet, social networks, mobile phones and blogging platforms for their work, they also admit that they have little or no command of digital security tools such as encryption, use of virtual private networks (VPNs), anonymous Internet navigation and secure file removal. The results of this survey show the urgent need to introduce Mexican journalists and bloggers to new technologies and protocols and help newsrooms develop a culture of digital-security awareness to counter increasingly sophisticated threats and attacks from both governmental agencies and criminal organizations