Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: Im speaking twice at RSA Conference 2024 in San Francisco. Ill be on a panel on software liability on May 6, 2024 at 8:30 AM, and Im giving a keynote on AI and democracy on May 7, 2024 at 2:25 PM. The list is maintained on this pag...

Enter the substitute teacher

Welcome to this weeks threat source newsletter with Jon out, youve got me as your substitute teacher. Im taking you back to those halcyon days of youth and that moment when you found out that you had a sub that day, will I be the teacher that just rolls in the TV cart and delivers the single...

Russia Hackers Using TinyTurla-NG to Breach European NGO's Systems

The Russia-linked threat actor known as Turla infected several systems belonging to an unnamed European non-governmental organization NGO in order to deploy a backdoor called TinyTurla-NG TTNG. "The attackers compromised the first system, established persistence and added exclusions to antivirus...

Essays from the Second IWORD

The Ash Center has posted a series of twelve essays stemming from the Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy IWORD 2023. Aviv Ovadya, Democracy as Approximation: A Primer for “AI for Democracy” Innovators Kathryn Peters, Permission and Participation Claudia Chwalisz, Moving...

CVE-2023-47634

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework. Starting in version 0.10.0 and prior to versions 0.26.9, 0.27.5, and 0.28.0, a race condition in the endorsement of resources for instance, a proposal allows a user to make more than once endorsement. To exploit this vulnerability, the request to se...

CVE-2023-47635

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework. Starting in version 0.23.0 and prior to versions 0.27.5 and 0.28.0, the CSRF authenticity token check is disabled for the questionnaire templates preview. The issue does not imply a serious security thread as you need to have access also to the...

CVE-2023-51447

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework. Starting in version 0.27.0 and prior to versions 0.27.5 and 0.28.0, the dynamic file upload feature is subject to potential cross-site scripting attacks in case the attacker manages to modify the file names of the records being uploaded to the serve...

CVE-2023-48220

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework. Starting in version 0.4.rc3 and prior to version 2.0.9 of the deviseinvitable gem, the invites feature allows users to accept the invitation for an unlimited amount of time through the password reset functionality. This issue creates vulnerable...

Cross site request forgery (csrf)

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework. Starting in version 0.23.0 and prior to versions 0.27.5 and 0.28.0, the CSRF authenticity token check is disabled for the questionnaire templates preview. The issue does not imply a serious security thread as you need to have access also to the...

CVE-2023-48220 Decidim's devise_invitable gem vulnerable to circumvention of invitation token expiry period

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework. Starting in version 0.4.rc3 and prior to version 2.0.9 of the deviseinvitable gem, the invites feature allows users to accept the invitation for an unlimited amount of time through the password reset functionality. This issue creates vulnerable...

CVE-2023-47635

CVE-2023-47635 concerns Decidim (Ruby on Rails) where the CSRF authenticity token check is disabled for the questionnaire templates preview in versions ≤ 0.27.4 and 0.28.0 before the fix. The risk is limited by the requirement that an attacker must also access the user session cookie to view the ...

CVE-2023-47634

CVE-2023-47634 affects Decidim, a Ruby on Rails participatory democracy framework. The vulnerability is a race condition in the endorsement of resources (e.g., proposals) that can allow a user to submit more than one endorsement when multiple endorsement requests are sent in parallel. Affected ve...

CVE-2023-47634 Decidim has race condition in Endorsements

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework. Starting in version 0.10.0 and prior to versions 0.26.9, 0.27.5, and 0.28.0, a race condition in the endorsement of resources for instance, a proposal allows a user to make more than once endorsement. To exploit this vulnerability, the request to se...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at the Munich Security Conference MSC 2024 in Munich, Germany, on Friday, February 16, 2024. I’m giving a keynote on “AI and Trust” at Generative AI, Free Speech, & Public Discourse. The symposium will be held at...

Ten Ways AI Will Change Democracy

Artificial intelligence will change so many aspects of society, largely in ways that we cannot conceive of yet. Democracy, and the systems of governance that surround it, will be no exception. In this short essay, I want to move beyond the "AI-generated disinformation" trope and speculate on some...

CVE-2023-36465

Decidim (Ruby on Rails) has a broken access control in the templates module, allowing any logged-in user to access template management in the admin panel and to change, create, or delete survey templates. The issue is confirmed across multiple sources and has been patched in versions 0.26.8 and 0...

CVE-2023-36465 Decidim has broken access control in templates

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework, written in Ruby on Rails, originally developed for the Barcelona City government online and offline participation website. The templates module doesn't enforce the correct permissions, allowing any logged-in user to access to this functionality in t...

Trump’s Prosecution Is America’s Last Hope

Social norms—not laws—are the underlying fabric of democracy. The Georgia indictment against Donald Trump is the last tool remaining to repair that which he’s torn apart...

December’s Reimagining Democracy Workshop

Imagine that weve all--all of us, all of society--landed on some alien planet, and we have to form a government: clean slate. We dont have any legacy systems from the US or any other country. We dont have any special or unique interests to perturb our thinking. How would we govern ourselves? Its...

CVE-2023-34089

Decidim is a participatory democracy framework, written in Ruby on Rails, originally developed for the Barcelona City government online and offline participation website. The processes filter feature is susceptible to Cross-site scripting. This allows a remote attacker to execute JavaScript code ...