Ross Anderson on the History of the Crypto Wars in the UK

Ross Anderson gave a talk on the history of the Crypto Wars in the UK. I am intimately familiar with the US story, but didn't know as much about Britain's verson. Hour-long video. Summary...

Commentary on US Election Security

Good commentaries from Ed Felten and Matt Blaze. Both make a point that I have also been saying: hacks can undermine the legitimacy of an election, even if there is no actual voter or vote manipulation. Felten: The second lesson is that we should be paying more attention to attacks that aim to...

FBI Extracts Deleted Signal Messages from iPhone Notification Database

404 Media reports alternate site: The FBI was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database…. The news shows how forensic...

Phishing Attacks Against People Seeking Programming Jobs

This is new. North Korean hackers are posing as company recruiters, enticing job candidates to participate in coding challenges. When they run the code they are supposed to work on, it installs malware on their system. News article...

National Security Risks of Late-Stage Capitalism

Early in 2020, cyberspace attackers apparently working for the Russian government compromised a piece of widely used network management software made by a company called SolarWinds. The hack gave the attackers access to the computer networks of some 18,000 of SolarWinds’s customers, including US...

Cloning Google Titan 2FA keys

This is a clever side-channel attack: The cloning works by using a hot air gun and a scalpel to remove the plastic key casing and expose the NXP A700X chip, which acts as a secure element that stores the cryptographic secrets. Next, an attacker connects the chip to hardware and software that take...

Military Cryptanalytics, Part III

The NSA has just declassified and released a redacted version of Military Cryptanalytics, Part III, by Lambros D. Callimahos, October 1977. Parts I and II, by Lambros D. Callimahos and William F. Friedman, were released decades ago -- I believe repeatedly, in increasingly unredacted form -- and...

Friday Squid Blogging: Bigfin Squid Found in Australian Waters

A bigfin squid has been found -- and filmed -- in Australian waters for the first time. 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...

Becoming a Tech Policy Activist

Carolyn McCarthy gave an excellent TEDx talk about becoming a tech policy activist. It's a powerful call for public-interest technologists...

NotPetya

Wired has a long article on NotPetya. EDITED TO ADD 9/12: Another good article on NotPetya...

Chip Cards Fail to Reduce Credit Card Fraud in the US

A new study finds that credit card fraud has not declined since the introduction of chip cards in the US. The majority of stolen card information comes from hacked point-of-sale terminals. The reasons seem to be twofold. One, the US uses chip-and-signature instead of chip-and-PIN, obviating the...

Security Vulnerabilities in VingCard Electronic Locks

Researchers have disclosed a massive vulnerability in the VingCard eletronic lock system, used in hotel rooms around the world: With a $300 Proxmark RFID card reading and writing tool, any expired keycard pulled from the trash of a target hotel, and a set of cryptographic tricks developed over...

Russia is Banning Telegram

Russia has banned the secure messaging app Telegram. It's making an absolute mess of the ban -- blocking 16 million IP addresses, many belonging to the Amazon and Google clouds -- and it's not even clear that it's working. But, more importantly, I'm not convinced Telegram is secure in the first...

Intimate Partner Threat

Princeton's Karen Levy has a good article computer security and the intimate partner threat: When you learn that your privacy has been compromised, the common advice is to prevent additional access -- delete your insecure account, open a new one, change your password. This advice is such standard...

Malware from Space

Since you don't have enough to worry about, here's a paper postulating that space aliens could send us malware capable of destroying humanity. Abstract: A complex message from space may require the use of computers to display, analyze and understand. Such a message cannot be decontaminated with...

Tourist Scams

A comprehensive list. Most are old and obvious, but there are some clever variants...

Heart Size: Yet Another Biometric

Turns out that heart size doesn't change throughout your adult life, and you can use low-level Doppler radar to scan the size -- even at a distance -- as a biometric. Research paper to be available soon...

Turning an Amazon Echo into an Eavesdropping Device

For once, the real story isn't as bad as it seems. A researcher has figured out how to install malware onto an Echo that causes it to stream audio back to a remote controller, but: The technique requires gaining physical access to the target Echo, and it works only on devices sold before 2017. Bu...

More on the Vulnerabilities Equities Process

Richard Ledgett -- a former Deputy Director of the NSA -- argues against the US government disclosing all vulnerabilities: Proponents argue that this would allow patches to be developed, which in turn would help ensure that networks are secure. On its face, this argument might seem to make sense ...

Most of 2023’s Top Exploited Vulnerabilities Were Zero-Days

Zero-day vulnerabilities are more commonly used, according to the Five Eyes: Key Findings In 2023, malicious cyber actors exploited more zero-day vulnerabilities to compromise enterprise networks compared to 2022, allowing them to conduct cyber operations against higher-priority targets. In 2023,...

Breaking RSA with a Quantum Computer

A group of Chinese researchers have just published a paper claiming that they can--although they have not yet done so--break 2048-bit RSA. This is something to take seriously. It might not be correct, but its not obviously wrong. We have long known from Shors algorithm that factoring with a quant...

Zoom Lied about End-to-End Encryption

The facts arent news, but Zoom will pay $85M -- to the class-action attorneys, and to users -- for lying to users about end-to-end encryption, and for giving user data to Facebook and Google without consent. The proposed settlement would generally give Zoom users $15 or $25 each and was filed...

Disrupting Ransomware by Disrupting Bitcoin

Ransomware isnt new; the idea dates back to 1986 with the "Brain" computer virus. Now, its become the criminal business model of the internet for two reasons. The first is the realization that no one values data more than its original owner, and it makes more sense to ransom it back to them --...

Insurance and Ransomware

As ransomware becomes more common, Im seeing more discussions about the ethics of paying the ransom. Heres one more contribution to that issue: a research paper that the insurance industry is hurting more than its helping. However, the most pressing challenge currently facing the industry is...

Mollitiam Industries is the Newest Cyberweapons Arms Manufacturer

Wired is reporting on a company called Mollitiam Industries: Marketing materials left exposed online by a third-party claim Mollitiams interception products, dubbed "Invisible Man" and "Night Crawler," are capable of remotely accessing a targets files, location, and covertly turning on a devices...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: Ill be part of a European Internet Forum virtual debate on June 17, 2021. The topic is "Decrypting the encryption debate: How to ensure public safety with a privacy-preserving and secure Internet?" I’m speaking at the all-online...

NSA Discloses Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange

Amongst the 100+ vulnerabilities patch in this months Patch Tuesday, there are four in Microsoft Exchange that were disclosed by the NSA...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: Im speaking online as part of Western Washington Universitys Internet Studies Lecture Series on January 20, 2021. Im speaking online at ITU Denmark on February 2, 2021. Details to come. Im being interviewed by Keith Cronin as part ...

On That Dusseldorf Hospital Ransomware Attack and the Resultant Death

Wired has a detailed story about the ransomware attack on a Dusseldorf hospital, the one that resulted in an ambulance being redirected to a more distant hospital and the patient dying. The police wanted to prosecute the ransomware attackers for negligent homicide, but the details were more...

New Report on Police Decryption Capabilities

There is a new report on police decryption capabilities: specifically, mobile device forensic tools MDFTs. Short summary: its not just the FBI that can do it. This report documents the widespread adoption of MDFTs by law enforcement in the United States. Based on 110 public records requests to...

Microsoft Buys Corp.com

A few months ago, Brian Krebs told the story of the domain corp.com, and how it is basically a security nightmare: At issue is a problem known as "namespace collision," a situation where domain names intended to be used exclusively on an internal company network end up overlapping with domains th...

NSA Security Awareness Posters

From a FOIA request, over a hundred old NSA security awareness posters. Here are the BBC's favorites. Here are Motherboard's favorites. I have a related personal story. Back in 1993, during the first Crypto Wars, I and a handful of other academic cryptographers visited the NSA for some meeting or...

Police Surveillance Tools from Special Services Group

Special Services Group, a company that sells surveillance tools to the FBI, DEA, ICE, and other US government agencies, has had its secret sales brochure published. Motherboard received the brochure as part of a FOIA request to the Irvine Police Department in California. "The Tombstone Cam is our...

Identifying and Arresting Ransomware Criminals

The Wall Street Journal has a story about how two people were identified as the perpetrators of a ransomware scheme. They were found because -- as generally happens -- they made mistakes covering their tracks. They were investigated because they had the bad luck of locking up Washington, DC's vid...

Illegal Data Center Hidden in Former NATO Bunker

Interesting: German investigators said Friday they have shut down a data processing center installed in a former NATO bunker that hosted sites dealing in drugs and other illegal activities. Seven people were arrested. ... Thirteen people aged 20 to 59 are under investigation in all, including thr...

Phone Pharming for Ad Fraud

Interesting article on people using banks of smartphones to commit ad fraud for profit. No one knows how prevalent ad fraud is on the Internet. I believe it is surprisingly high -- here's an article that places losses between $6.5 and $19 billion annually -- and something companies like Google an...

Hey Secret Service: Don't Plug Suspect USB Sticks into Random Computers

I just noticed this bit from the incredibly weird story of the Chinese woman arrested at Mar-a-Lago: Secret Service agent Samuel Ivanovich, who interviewed Zhang on the day of her arrest, testified at the hearing. He stated that when another agent put Zhang's thumb drive into his computer, it...

Damaging Hard Drives with an Ultrasonic Attack

Playing a sound over the speakers can cause computers to crash and possibly even physically damage the hard drive. Academic paper...

Estimating the Cost of Internet Insecurity

It's really hard to estimate the cost of an insecure Internet. Studies are all over the map. A methodical study by RAND is the best work I've seen at trying to put a number on this. The results are, well, all over the map: "Estimating the Global Cost of Cyber Risk: Methodology and Examples":...

NSA Morale

The Washington Post is reporting that poor morale at the NSA is causing a significant talent shortage. A November New York Times article said much the same thing. The articles point to many factors: the recent reorganization, low pay, and the various leaks. I have been saying for a while that the...

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" Parody

Funny...

Hacking a Fingerprint Biometric

Embedded in this story about infidelity and a mid-flight altercation, there's an interesting security tidbit: The woman had unlocked her husband's phone using his thumb impression when he was sleeping...

Attack on Old ANSI Random Number Generator

Almost 20 years ago, I wrote a paper that pointed to a potential flaw in the ANSI X9.17 RNG standard. Now, new research has found that the flaw exists in some implementations of the RNG standard. Here's the research paper, the website -- complete with cute logo -- for the attack, and Matthew...

Deloitte Hacked

The large accountancy firm Deloitte was hacked, losing client e-mails and files. The hackers had access inside the company's networks for months. Deloitte is doing its best to downplay the severity of this hack, but Brian Krebs reports that the hack "involves the compromise of all administrator...

The Future of Forgeries

This article argues that AI technologies will make image, audio, and video forgeries much easier in the future. Combined, the trajectory of cheap, high-quality media forgeries is worrying. At the current pace of progress, it may be as little as two or three years before realistic audio forgeries...

Dubai Deploying Autonomous Robotic Police Cars

It's hard to tell how much of this story is real and how much is aspirational, but it really is only a matter of time: About the size of a child's electric toy car, the driverless vehicles will patrol different areas of the city to boost security and hunt for unusual activity, all the while...

Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley

Interesting paper: Abstract: With entrepreneurial fraud cases on the rise, we investigate how entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception , employing deceptive means to defraud audiences. Analyzing court data from Silicon Valley ventures and their founders prosecuted for fraud between 2000 and 202...

More Incidents of AIs Going Rogue in Cybersecurity Challenges

The AI Security Institute has a new report of AI systems engaging in "unsanctioned behavior"--what I have been calling "genie behavior--while being tested on their cybersecurity capabilities. The incident stemmed from a single evaluation where agents were given a task of solving a cyber security...

Police Are Hiding Their Use of Flock Surveillance Cameras

A usage policy for Flock license plate reader cameras tells police not to talk about the cameras: When cops use Flock to arrest someone in Wapello County, Iowa, they don't want them to know. A usage policy for the automated license plate reader cameras in the county tells police, in no uncertain...

Adversarial Clothing Designed to Fool Facial Recognition Systems

There are many companies manufacturing adversarial clothing designed to confuse facial recognition systems. It's a cool idea, but I worry that it's mostly security theater: "Our patterns play with that chaos, confuse algorithms and make it way harder to pin you down," he said. Bell, however, said...