Tag: Computer Security
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Computer Security: Kids at the keyboard
Last weekend, while the sun was shining brightly, nature was flourishing in all its colours, flavours and scents and hundreds of birds were chirping their favourite tunes, I decided to go for a stroll with my dog. A nice two-hour walk in the vineyards around CERN, hiking up the Jura, enjoying the view and returning
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Computer Security: Hot Review Summer, Cool Deployment Autumn
This summer has seen a plethora of different assessments of the Organization’s security posture and stance. While an external vulnerability scan of CERN’s Internet presence and a red-teaming penetration test are still ongoing, the Computer Security Office, in collaboration with the IT Department, is continuing to mitigate the findings of the 2023 cybersecurity audit, the
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Computer Security: AI – Game over, mankind?
With the more and more prevalent use of agentic AI, i.e. programmed agents acting and working on our behalf, and in a fully interconnected world, i.e. us living in symbiosis with the Internet, smartphones and control systems, how far-fetched is it that humans can actually become a threat to an AI system such that it
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Computer Security: One click to many
More senior colleagues might still recall the regular “clicking” campaigns that were intended to raise security awareness within the Organization among staff and users. With the roll-out of two-factor authentication, such campaigns were dropped. However, the world continues to turn and novel functionality and novel attack vectors try to circumvent our protections. And they have
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Computer Security: Welcome, summer students!
A warm welcome to the summer-student class of 2026! We’re glad that you made it to CERN! We offer a packed agenda for the next two months: challenging lectures; interesting projects to tackle with your team; and lots of time to take a great big gulp of CERN’s academic freedom, spirit and creativity! In order
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Computer Security: Copied, committed, KO
The old world of reusable IT components has been under threat for a while. While it was appreciated, efficient and effective to reuse software components written by others, attacks abusing this kind of “supply chain” are on the rise. For instance, rest-client in 2019, plutov-slack-client in 2020, atomicwrites in 2022, xzutils in 2024, chalk, “Shai-Hulud”
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Computer Security: Wipe no tears
Remember that feeling where your heart skips a beat? Or two? Or many? Where your breath gets caught in your throat? “Époustouflant” as the French say, but not in a good way? The moment when you can’t find your smartphone, even after looking everywhere? The moment on the tram when you recall that you didn’t
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Computer Security: Agentic loss of control
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) brings many opportunities but also comes with risks (see our last-but-one Bulletin article). Writing better software and code (or not). Having better answers (or just better lies). Creating a fancier and more beautiful CV (which might not be you anymore). Producing cool videos of your last vacation for your
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Computer Security: Tigers and cats against crawling mAIce
IT has for some time been transitioning into a new era where artificial intelligence (AI) takes over more and more tasks and, eventually, responsibility. There are few of us left who don’t use the plethora of ChatGPT, Mistral, Claude and the like. Performance gain and increased efficiency are announced to be everywhere and might lead
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Computer Security: Food for your brain
“Food for your brain” is therefore the greatest nutrition for your intellect besides a good morning coffee and an Italian-native Hawaiian pizza. Here is the menu provided by the Computer Security Office