The NSA's Domestic Surveillance Centers

The Intercept has a long story about the NSA's domestic interception points. Includes some new Snowden documents...

History of the US Army Security Agency

Interesting history.pdf of the US Army Security Agency in the early years of Cold War Germany...

New National Academies Report on Crypto Policy

The National Academies has just published "Decrypting the Encryption Debate: A Framework for Decision Makers." It looks really good, although I have not read it yet. Not much news or analysis yet. Please post any links you find in the comments, and I will summarize them here...

Spectre and Meltdown Attacks

After a week or so of rumors, everyone is now reporting about the Spectre and Meltdown attacks against pretty much every modern processor out there. These are side-channel attacks where one process can spy on other processes. They affect computers where an untrusted browser window can execute cod...

Cybercriminals Infiltrating E-Mail Networks to Divert Large Customer Payments

There's a new criminal tactic involving hacking an e-mail account of a company that handles high-value transactions and diverting payments. Here it is in real estate: The scam generally works like this: Hackers find an opening into a title company's or realty agent's email account, track upcoming...

Insider Attack on Lottery Software

Eddie Tipton, a programmer for the Multi-State Lottery Association, secretly installed software that allowed him to predict jackpots. What's surprising to me is how many lotteries don't use real random number generators. What happened to picking golf balls out of wind-blown steel cages on...

Penetrating a Casino's Network through an Internet-Connected Fish Tank

Attackers used a vulnerability in an Internet-connected fish tank to successfully penetrate a casino's network. BoingBoing post...

Cognyte Sells a Mobile Cell Surveillance Van

Yet another Israeli mass surveillance company: Made by Israeli surveillance company Cognyte, the tech simulates a mobile phone tower, which forces nearby phones to connect to it. That enables cops to keep tabs on any phones in the vicinity ­ whether they’re owned by a suspect in a case or not...

AI Risks

There is no shortage of researchers and industry titans willing to warn us about the potential destructive power of artificial intelligence. Reading the headlines, one would hope that the rapid gains in AI technology have also brought forth a unifying realization of the risks--and the steps we ne...

Using “Master Faces” to Bypass Face-Recognition Authenticating Systems

Fascinating research: "Generating Master Faces for Dictionary Attacks with a Network-Assisted Latent Space Evolution." Abstract: A master face is a face image that passes face-based identity-authentication for a large portion of the population. These faces can be used to impersonate, with a high...

Vulnerability in the Kaspersky Password Manager

A vulnerability just patched in the random number generator used in the Kaspersky Password Manager resulted in easily guessable passwords: The password generator included in Kaspersky Password Manager had several problems. The most critical one is that it used a PRNG not suited for cryptographic...

Friday Squid Blogging: On Squid Coloration

Nice excerpt from Martin Wallins book Squid. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

Dependency Confusion: Another Supply-Chain Vulnerability

Alex Birsan writes about being able to install malware into proprietary corporate software by naming the code files to be identical to internal corporate code files. From a ZDNet article: Today, developers at small or large companies use package managers to download and import libraries that are...

On Vulnerability-Adjacent Vulnerabilities

At the virtual Enigma Conference, Googles Project Zeros Maggie Stone gave a talk about zero-day exploits in the wild. In it, she talked about how often vendors fix vulnerabilities only to have the attackers tweak their exploits to work again. From a MIT Technology Review article: Soon after they...

iOS XML Bug

This is a good explanation of an iOS bug that allowed someone to break out of the application sandbox. A summary: What a crazy bug, and Siguza's explanation is very cogent. Basically, it comes down to this: XML is terrible. iOS uses XML for Plists, and Plists are used everywhere in iOS and MacOS...

Policy vs Technology

Sometime around 1993 or 1994, during the first Crypto Wars, I was part of a group of cryptography experts that went to Washington to advocate for strong encryption. Matt Blaze and Ron Rivest were with me; I don't remember who else. We met with then Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey. He didn'...

Homemade TEMPEST Receiver

Tom's Guide writes about home brew TEMPEST receivers: Today, dirt-cheap technology and free software make it possible for ordinary citizens to run their own Tempest programs and listen to what their own -- and their neighbors' -- electronic devices are doing. Elliott, a researcher at Boston-based...

Calculating the Benefits of the Advanced Encryption Standard

NIST has completed a study -- it was published last year, but I just saw it recently -- calculating the costs and benefits of the Advanced Encryption Standard. From the conclusion: The result of performing that operation on the series of cumulated benefits extrapolated for the 169 survey...

Using Machine Learning to Detect IP Hijacking

This is interesting research: In a BGP hijack, a malicious actor convinces nearby networks that the best path to reach a specific IP address is through their network. That's unfortunately not very hard to do, since BGP itself doesn't have any security procedures for validating that a message is...

Cracking the Passwords of Early Internet Pioneers

Lots of them weren't very good: BSD co-inventor Dennis Ritchie, for instance, used "dmac" his middle name was MacAlistair; Stephen R. Bourne, creator of the Bourne shell command line interpreter, chose "bourne"; Eric Schmidt, an early developer of Unix software and now the executive chairman of...

On Cybersecurity Insurance

Good paper on cybersecurity insurance: both the history and the promise for the future. From the conclusion: Policy makers have long held high hopes for cyber insurance as a tool for improving security. Unfortunately, the available evidence so far should give policymakers pause. Cyber insurance...

An Argument that Cybersecurity Is Basically Okay

Andrew Odlyzko's new essay is worth reading -- "Cybersecurity is not very important": Abstract: There is a rising tide of security breaches. There is an even faster rising tide of hysteria over the ostensible reason for these breaches, namely the deficient state of our information infrastructure...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I'm speaking at Kiwicon in Wellington, New Zealand on November 16, 2018. I'm appearing on IBM Resilient's End of Year Review webinar on "The Top Cyber Security Trends in 2018 and Predictions for the Year Ahead," December 6, 2018 at...

Lifting a Fingerprint from a Photo

Police in the UK were able to read a fingerprint from a photo of a hand: Staff from the unit's specialist imaging team were able to enhance a picture of a hand holding a number of tablets, which was taken from a mobile phone, before fingerprint experts were able to positively identify that the ha...

Adding Backdoors at the Chip Level

Interesting research into undetectably adding backdoors into computer chips during manufacture: "Stealthy dopant-level hardware Trojans: extended version," also available here: Abstract: In recent years, hardware Trojans have drawn the attention of governments and industry as well as the scientif...

Israeli Scientists Accidentally Reveal Classified Information

According to this story non-paywall English version here, Israeli scientists released some information to the public they shouldn't have. Defense establishment officials are now trying to erase any trace of the secret information from the web, but they have run into difficulties because the...

Long Article on NSA and the Shadow Brokers

The New York Times just published a long article on the Shadow Brokers and their effects on NSA operations. Summary: it's been an operational disaster, the NSA still doesn't know who did it or how, and NSA morale has suffered considerably. This is me on the Shadow Brokers from last May...

Unfixable Automobile Computer Security Vulnerability

There is an unpatchable vulnerability that affects most modern cars. It's buried in the Controller Area Network CAN: Researchers say this flaw is not a vulnerability in the classic meaning of the word. This is because the flaw is more of a CAN standard design choice that makes it unpatchable...

Password Masking

Slashdot asks if password masking -- replacing password characters with asterisks as you type them -- is on the way out. I don't know if that's true, but I would be happy to see it go. Shoulder surfing, the threat is defends against, is largely nonexistent. And it is becoming harder to type in...

Using Ultrasonic Beacons to Track Users

I've previously written about ad networks using ultrasonic communications to jump from one device to another. The idea is for devices like televisions to play ultrasonic codes in advertisements and for nearby smartphones to detect them. This way the two devices can be linked. Creepy, yes. And als...

AI-Piloted Fighter Jets

News from Georgetowns Center for Security and Emerging Technology: China Claims Its AI Can Beat Human Pilots in Battle: Chinese state media reported that an AI system had successfully defeated human pilots during simulated dogfights. According to the Global Times report, the system had shot down...

The Story of the 2011 RSA Hack

Really good long article about the Chinese hacking of RSA, Inc. They were able to get copies of the seed values to the SecurID authentication token, a harbinger of supply-chain attacks to come...

Friday Squid Blogging: 500-Million-Year-Old Cephalopod

The oldest known cephalopod -- the ancestor of all modern octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and nautiluses -- is 500 million years old. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

Fast Random Bit Generation

Science has a paper and commentary on generating 250 random terabits per second with a laser. I dont know how cryptographically secure they are, but that can be cleaned up with something like Fortuna. EDITED TO ADD 3/12: Here are free versions of the paper and the commentary...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squids Are as Intelligent as Dogs

More news based on the squid brain MRI scan: the complexity of their brains are comparable to dogs. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

Scaring People into Supporting Backdoors

Back in 1998, Tim May warned us of the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse": "terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers." I tended to cast it slightly differently. This is me from 2005: Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, an...

Attacking the Intel Secure Enclave

Interesting paper by Michael Schwarz, Samuel Weiser, Daniel Gruss. The upshot is that both Intel and AMD have assumed that trusted enclaves will run only trustworthy code. Of course, that's not true. And there are no security mechanisms that can deal with malicious enclaves, because the designers...

Vulnerability in French Government Tchap Chat App

A researcher found a vulnerability in the French government WhatsApp replacement app: Tchap. The vulnerability allows anyone to surreptitiously join any conversation. Of course the developers will fix this vulnerability. But it is amusing to point out that this is exactly the backdoor that GCHQ i...

EU Offering Bug Bounties on Critical Open-Source Software

The EU is offering "bug bounties on Free Software projects that the EU institutions rely on." Slashdot thread...

The Pentagon Is Publishing Foreign Nation-State Malware

This is a new thing: The Pentagon has suddenly started uploading malware samples from APTs and other nation-state sources to the website VirusTotal, which is essentially a malware zoo that's used by security pros and antivirus/malware detection engines to gain a better understanding of the threat...

Pegasus Spyware Used in 45 Countries

Citizen Lab has published a new report about the Pegasus spyware. From a ZDNet article: The malware, known as Pegasus or Trident, was created by Israeli cyber-security firm NSO Group and has been around for at least three years -- when it was first detailed in a report over the summer of 2016. Th...

Suing South Carolina Because Its Election Machines Are Insecure

A group called Protect Democracy is suing South Carolina because its insecure voting machines are effectively denying people the right to vote. Note: I am an advisor to Protect Democracy on its work related to election cybersecurity, and submitted a declaration in litigation it filed, challenging...

Motherboard Digital Security Guide

This digital security guide by Motherboard is very good. I put alongside EFF's "Surveillance Self-Defense" and John Scott-Railton's "Digital Security Low Hanging Fruit." There's also "Digital Security and Privacy for Human Rights Defenders." There are too many of these...

Replacing Social Security Numbers

In the wake of the Equifax break, I've heard calls to replace Social Security numbers. Steve Bellovin explains why this is hard...

More on the NSA's Use of Traffic Shaping

"Traffic shaping" -- the practice of tricking data to flow through a particular route on the Internet so it can be more easily surveiled -- is an NSA technique that has gotten much less attention than it deserves. It's a powerful technique that allows an eavesdropper to get access to communicatio...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Skin Is Naturally Anti-microbial

Often it feels like squid just evolved better than us mammals. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

Details of the REvil Ransomware Attack

ArsTechnica has a good story on the REvil ransomware attack of last weekend, with technical details: This weekends attack was carried out with almost surgical precision. According to Cybereason, the REvil affiliates first gained access to targeted environments and then used the zero-day in the...

Detecting Deepfake Picture Editing

"Markpainting" is a clever technique to watermark photos in such a way that makes it easier to detect ML-based manipulation: An image owner can modify their image in subtle ways which are not themselves very visible, but will sabotage any attempt to inpaint it by adding visible information...

Friday Squid Blogging: Picking up Squid on the Beach

Make sure theyre dead. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

Backdoor Added — But Found — in PHP

Unknown hackers attempted to add a backdoor to the PHP source code. It was two malicious commits, with the subject "fix typo" and the names of known PHP developers and maintainers. They were discovered and removed before being pushed out to any users. But since 79% of the Internets websites use...