Friday Squid Blogging: Shark vs. Squid

National Geographic has a photo of a 7-foot long shark that fought a giant squid and lived to tell the tale. Or, at least, lived to show off the suction marks on his skin. 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 blo...

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...

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...

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...

Brazilian Cell Phone Hack

I know there's a lot of politics associated with this story, but concentrate on the cybersecurity aspect for a moment. The cell phones of a thousand Brazilians, including senior government officials, were hacked -- seemingly by actors much less sophisticated than rival governments. Brazil's...

TajMahal Spyware

Kaspersky has released details about a sophisticated nation-state spyware it calls TajMahal: The TajMahal framework's 80 modules, Shulmin says, comprise not only the typical keylogging and screengrabbing features of spyware, but also never-before-seen and obscure tricks. It can intercept document...

Programmers Who Don't Understand Security Are Poor at Security

A university study confirmed the obvious: if you pay a random bunch of freelance programmers a small amount of money to write security software, they're not going to do a very good job at it. In an experiment that involved 43 programmers hired via the Freelancer.com platform, University of Bonn...

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...

"Insider Threat" Detection Software

Notice this bit from an article on the arrest of Christopher Hasson: It was only after Hasson's arrest last Friday at his workplace that the chilling plans prosecutors assert he was crafting became apparent, detected by an internal Coast Guard program that watches for any "insider threat." The...

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...

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...

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...

Detecting Drone Surveillance with Traffic Analysis

This is clever: Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel have built a proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones that demonstrates a clever, if not exactly simple, way to determine whether a certain person or object is under aerial surveillance. They fir...

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...

Robot Safecracking

Robots can crack safes faster than humans -- and differently: So Seidle started looking for shortcuts. First he found that, like many safes, his SentrySafe had some tolerance for error. If the combination includes a 12, for instance, 11 or 13 would work, too. That simple convenience measure meant...

Many of My E-Books for Cheap

Humble Bundle is selling a bunch of cybersecurity books very cheaply. You can get copies of Applied Cryptography, Secrets and Lies, and Cryptography Engineering -- and also Ross Anderson's Security Engineering, Adam Shostack's Threat Modeling, and many others. This is the cheapest you'll ever see...

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...

XZ Utils Backdoor

The cybersecurity world got really lucky last week. An intentionally placed backdoor in XZ Utils, an open-source compression utility, was pretty much accidentally discovered by a Microsoft engineer--weeks before it would have been incorporated into both Debian and Red Hat Linux. From ArsTehnica:...

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...

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...

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...

Metadata Left in Security Agency PDFs

Really interesting research: "Exploitation and Sanitization of Hidden Data in PDF Files" Abstract: Organizations publish and share more and more electronic documents like PDF files. Unfortunately, most organizations are unaware that these documents can compromise sensitive information like author...

Friday Squid Blogging: China Launches Six New Squid Jigging Vessels

From Pingtan Marine Enterprise: The 6 large-scale squid jigging vessels are normally operating vessels that returned to China earlier this year from the waters of Southwest Atlantic Ocean for maintenance and repair. These vessels left the port of Mawei on December 17, 2020 and are sailing to the...

Friday Squid Blogging: Humboldt Squid Backlight Themselves to Communicate More Clearly

This is neat: Deep in the Pacific Ocean, six-foot-long Humboldt squid are known for being aggressive, cannibalistic and, according to new research, good communicators. Known as "red devils," the squid can rapidly change the color of their skin, making different patterns to communicate, something...

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...

Customer Tracking at Ralphs Grocery Store

To comply with California's new data privacy law, companies that collect information on consumers and users are forced to be more transparent about it. Sometimes the results are creepy. Here's an article about Ralphs, a California supermarket chain owned by Kroger: ...the form proceeds to state...

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...

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...

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...

The Digital Security Exchange Is Live

Last year I wrote about the Digital Security Exchange. The project is live: The DSX works to strengthen the digital resilience of U.S. civil society groups by improving their understanding and mitigation of online threats. We do this by pairing civil society and social sector organizations with...

On the Security of Walls

Interesting history of the security of walls: Dún Aonghasa presents early evidence of the same principles of redundant security measures at work in 13th century castles, 17th century star-shaped artillery fortifications, and even "defense in depth" security architecture promoted today by the...

Student Cracks Inca Knot Code

Interesting...

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...

Research on What Motivates ISIS -- and Other -- Fighters

Interesting research from Nature Human Behaviour: "The devoted actor's will to fight and the spiritual dimension of human conflict": Abstract: Frontline investigations with fighters against the Islamic State ISIL or ISIS, combined with multiple online studies, address willingness to fight and die...

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 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...

De-anonymization Story

This is important: Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill was general secretary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops USCCB, effectively the highest-ranking priest in the US who is not a bishop, before records of Grindr usage obtained from data brokers was correlated with his apartment, place of work,...

On North Korea’s Cyberattack Capabilities

Excellent New Yorker article on North Koreas offensive cyber capabilities...

APT Horoscope

This delightful essay matches APT hacker groups up with astrological signs. This is me: Capricorn is renowned for its discipline, skilled navigation, and steadfastness. Just like Capricorn, Helix Kitten also known as APT 35 or OilRig is a skilled navigator of vast online networks, maneuvering...

Friday Squid Blogging: Small Giant Squid Washes Ashore in Japan

A ten-foot giant squid has washed ashore on the Western coast of Japan. 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...

Attacker Causes Epileptic Seizure over the Internet

This isn't a first, but I think it will be the first conviction: The GIF set off a highly unusual court battle that is expected to equip those in similar circumstances with a new tool for battling threatening trolls and cyberbullies. On Monday, the man who sent Eichenwald the moving image, John...

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...

Supply-Chain Security and Trust

The United States government's continuing disagreement with the Chinese company Huawei underscores a much larger problem with computer technologies in general: We have no choice but to trust them completely, and it's impossible to verify that they're trustworthy. Solving this problem ­ which is...

The Myth of Consumer-Grade Security

The Department of Justice wants access to encrypted consumer devices but promises not to infiltrate business products or affect critical infrastructure. Yet that's not possible, because there is no longer any difference between those categories of devices. Consumer devices are critical...

Surveillance as a Condition for Humanitarian Aid

Excellent op-ed on the growing trend to tie humanitarian aid to surveillance. Despite the best intentions, the decision to deploy technology like biometrics is built on a number of unproven assumptions, such as, technology solutions can fix deeply embedded political problems. And that auditing fo...

Adversarial Machine Learning against Tesla's Autopilot

Researchers have been able to fool Tesla's autopilot in a variety of ways, including convincing it to drive into oncoming traffic. It requires the placement of stickers on the road. Abstract: Keen Security Lab has maintained the security research work on Tesla vehicle and shared our research...