KIRCCS News

The latest video of a masked Islamic State jihadist apparently speaking with a British accent led to him being tentatively identified as Muslim convert Siddhartha Dhar from East London. Voice recognition experts were reportedly working with UK intelligence services using voice analysis. But how does this technology work and what is it capable of? Most of us can, when we hear a voice we know well, recognise who is speaking after just a few words, w...

Dr Eerke Boiten warns Investigatory Powers bill will remove Internet Service Providers’ right to protect your privacy. Eerke Boiten, School of Computing and Director of the Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, writes in The Conversation : 'We should seriously debate the role of our internet service providers, or ISPs, telecoms firms and increasingly, web and smartphon...

A new automated data mining system researched at the University could lead to the detection of potentially illegal eBay sales of elephant ivory. Law enforcement agencies and conservationist are expected to make use of the system – developed by researchers from the University's Centre for Cyber Security – in their ongoing battle against illegal ivory sales. At the moment, identifying illegal ele...

The School of Computing has hosted two film crews in an afternoon, both interested in the cyber security work of the School. Lecturer Julio Hernandez-Castro was asked his opinion on a new Kent County Council campaign to help fight cybercrime for a KM online video. He was also interviewed about his research for a programme called Inside UK Education which will be shown in Thailand as part of its long-running World 360 degree documentary series. ...

Eighty top academics including Eerke Boiten from the School of Computing and Alan Mckenna from Kent Law School have signed an open letter to Google, arguing for more public scrutiny over its handling of ‘right to be forgotten’ requests. The letter was featured in the Guardian and stated that since The European Court of Justice ruled that Google is responsible for removing links to outdat...

The internationally leading research activity at the University of Kent’s Cybersecurity centre has been recognised by GCHQ and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the award of the title of  Academic Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security Research (ACEs-CSR). This recognition is in the first instance for a two year period from July 2015, and comes with funding for promotion...

Cybersecurity experts Julio Hernandez-Castro and Eerke Boiten respond to the European survey on cybersecurity. The European Commission's annual Eurobarometer Cyber Security Survey, the third edition of which was recently released, is a substantial survey of more than 27,000 respondents from 28 countries. It contains interesting and, more often than not, disappointing revelations about the state of Europe's security. As specialists in the field...

An article published on the BBC news website reports that two banks are allowing their customers to access accounts on their smartphones using fingerprint recognition technology. The School of Computing's Eerke Boiten responds to the use of this technology: ‘If users “must activate the feature with their security information, but would only need to use Apple’s Touch ID thereafter”, then there is some scope for...

Dr Julio Hernandez-Castro has secured funding for three projects starting in 2015. The first, Improving cyber security using realistic synthetic face generation, has secured funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This project will be looking at the applications of facial recognition to cyber security, in particular authentications and captchas based on face generation and recognition. The project leads are Stuart Gibson ...

Jan Vitek (Northeastern University, formerly Purdue University) has been appointed as an Honorary Professor at the University of Kent starting from November 2014 until October 2019. The title of Honorary Professor is conferred upon distinguished individuals from related fields of academic research. Jan is very well known for his research in programming languages. His work has included type theory (ownership types, confined types); dynamic languages...