INTERVIEW WITH NYU-POLY’S PROFESSOR JUSTIN CAPPOS: SECURITY LESSONS FROM RETAIL BREACHES


I had the chance to talk with cyber security expert Justin Cappos last month about the recent breaches in the retail sector. Cappos is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering. He’s well known for his work on Stork, a software installation utility for cloud environments.

In our discussion, Professor Cappos has a lot to say about weaknesses with our current approach to password-based security as well as new technologies that can be applied to credit card transactions. He’s worked on his own password hash protection algorithm, known as PolyPasswordHasher, which would it make it very difficultfor hackers to perform dictionary-style attacks. Cappos offers some very practical advice on securing systems.

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