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...

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...

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...

Mail Fishing

Not email, paper mail: Thieves, often at night, use string to lower glue-covered rodent traps or bottles coated with an adhesive down the chute of a sidewalk mailbox. This bait attaches to the envelopes inside, and the fish in this case -- mail containing gift cards, money orders or checks, which...

"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...

Detecting Phishing Sites with Machine Learning

Really interesting article: A trained eye or even a not-so-trained one can discern when something phishy is going on with a domain or subdomain name. There are search tools, such as Censys.io, that allow humans to specifically search through the massive pile of certificate log entries for sites...

Another Spectre-Like CPU Vulnerability

Google and Microsoft researchers have disclosed another Spectre-like CPU side-channel vulnerability, called "Speculative Store Bypass." Like the others, the fix will slow the CPU down. The German tech site Heise reports that more are coming. I'm not surprised. Writing about Spectre and Meltdown i...

Breaking the Anonymity in the Cryptocurrency Monero

Researchers have exploited a flaw in the cryptocurrency Monero to break the anonymity of transactions. Research paper. BoingBoing post...

Facebook Will Verify the Physical Location of Ad Buyers with Paper Postcards

It's not a great solution, but it's something: The process of using postcards containing a specific code will be required for advertising that mentions a specific candidate running for a federal office, Katie Harbath, Facebook's global director of policy programs, said. The requirement will not...

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...

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...

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...

The grugq on Reality Winner, the Intercept, and OPSEC

Good commentary...

NSO Group Hacked

NSO Group, the Israeli cyberweapons arms manufacturer behind the Pegasus spyware -- used by authoritarian regimes around the world to spy on dissidents, journalists, human rights workers, and others -- was hacked. Or, at least, an enormous trove of documents was leaked to journalists. Theres a lo...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Related Game

Its called "Squid Fishering." 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...

FBI/AFP-Run Encrypted Phone

For three years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Australian Federal Police owned and operated a commercial encrypted phone app, called AN0M, that was used by organized crime around the world. Of course, the police were able to read everything -- I dont even know if this qualifies as a...

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: 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...

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...

Malware Hidden in Call of Duty Cheating Software

News article: Most troublingly, Activision says that the "cheat" tool has been advertised multiple times on a popular cheating forum under the title "new COD hack." Gamers looking to flout the rules will typically go to such forums to find new ways to do so. While the report doesnt mention which...

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...

Threat Model Humor

At a hospital...

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: 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...

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...

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...

On Surveillance in the Workplace

Data & Society just published a report entitled "Workplace Monitoring & Surveillance": This explainer highlights four broad trends in employee monitoring and surveillance technologies: Prediction and flagging tools that aim to predict characteristics or behaviors of employees or that are designed...

Glitter Bomb against Package Thieves

Stealing packages from unattended porches is a rapidly rising crime, as more of us order more things by mail. One person hid a glitter bomb and a video recorder in a package, posting the results when thieves opened the box. At least, that's what might have happened. At least some of the video was...

New Shamoon Variant

A new variant of the Shamoon malware has destroyed significant amounts of data at a UAE "heavy engineering company" and the Italian oil and gas contractor Saipem. Shamoon is the Iranian malware that was targeted against the Saudi Arabian oil company, Saudi Aramco, in 2012 and 2016. We have no ide...

FBI Takes Down a Massive Advertising Fraud Ring

The FBI announced that it dismantled a large Internet advertising fraud network, and arrested eight people: A 13-count indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Aleksandr Zhukov, Boris Timokhin, Mikhail Andreev, Denis Avdeev, Dmitry Novikov, Sergey Ovsyannikov, Aleksandr...

How Surveillance Inhibits Freedom of Expression

In my book Data and Goliath, I write about the value of privacy. I talk about how it is essential for political liberty and justice, and for commercial fairness and equality. I talk about how it increases personal freedom and individual autonomy, and how the lack of it makes us all less secure. B...

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...

Friday Squid Blogging: Calamari Squid Catching Prey

The calamari squid grabs prey three feet away with its fast tentacles. 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...

GreyKey iPhone Unlocker

Some details about the iPhone unlocker from the US company Greyshift, with photos. Little is known about Grayshift or its sales model at this point. We don't know whether sales are limited to US law enforcement, or if it is also selling in other parts of the world. Regardless of that, it's highly...

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...

Who Are the Shadow Brokers?

In 2013, a mysterious group of hackers that calls itself the Shadow Brokers stole a few disks full of NSA secrets. Since last summer, they've been dumping these secrets on the Internet. They have publicly embarrassed the NSA and damaged its intelligence-gathering capabilities, while at the same...

Mythos and Cybersecurity

Last week, Anthropic pulled back the curtain on Claude Mythos Preview, an AI model so capable at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities that the company decided it was too dangerous to release to the public. Instead, access has been restricted to roughly 50 organizations--Microsoft, Appl...

Defeating Microsoft’s Trusted Platform Module

This is a really interesting story explaining how to defeat Microsofts TPM in 30 minutes -- without having to solder anything to the motherboard. Researchers at the security consultancy Dolos Group, hired to test the security of one clients network, received a new Lenovo computer preconfigured to...

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,...

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...

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...

On Chinese-Owned Technology Platforms

I am a co-author on a report published by the Hoover Institution: "Chinese Technology Platforms Operating in the United States." From a blog post: The report suggests a comprehensive framework for understanding and assessing the risks posed by Chinese technology platforms in the United States and...

Brexit Deal Mandates Old Insecure Crypto Algorithms

In what is surely an unthinking cut-and-paste issue, page 921 of the Brexit deal mandates the use of SHA-1 and 1024-bit RSA: The open standard s/MIME as extension to de facto e-mail standard SMTP will be deployed to encrypt messages containing DNA profile information. The protocol s/MIME V3 allow...

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...

The EARN-IT Act

Prepare for another attack on encryption in the U.S. The EARN-IT Act purports to be about protecting children from predation, but it's really about forcing the tech companies to break their encryption schemes: The EARN IT Act would create a "National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation...