Nicholas Weaver on Cryptocurrencies

This is well-worth reading non-paywalled version. Here's the opening: Cryptocurrencies, although a seemingly interesting idea, are simply not fit for purpose. They do not work as currencies, they are grossly inefficient, and they are not meaningfully distributed in terms of trust. Risks involving...

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...

Greyshift Sells Phone Unlocking Services

Here's another company that claims to unlock phones for a price...

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...

Cellebrite Unlocks iPhones for the US Government

Forbes reports that the Israeli company Cellebrite can probably unlock all iPhone models: Cellebrite, a Petah Tikva, Israel-based vendor that's become the U.S. government's company of choice when it comes to unlocking mobile devices, is this month telling customers its engineers currently have th...

WhatsApp Vulnerability

A new vulnerability in WhatsApp has been discovered: ...the researchers unearthed far more significant gaps in WhatsApp's security: They say that anyone who controls WhatsApp's servers could effortlessly insert new people into an otherwise private group, even without the permission of the...

Tourist Scams

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

The Science of Interrogation

Fascinating article about two psychologists who are studying interrogation techniques. Now, two British researchers are quietly revolutionising the study and practice of interrogation. Earlier this year, in a meeting room at the University of Liverpool, I watched a video of the Diola interview...

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...

Detailed Timeline of OpenAI’s Cyberattack on Hugging Face

OpenAI presented details of its AI's model's cyberattack on Hugging Face at Black Hat last week. Simon Willison details the timeline. It's really interesting to read through--and really impressive cyberoffense work...

LastPass Breach

Last August, LastPass reported a security breach, saying that no customer information--or passwords--were compromised. Turns out the full story is worse: While no customer data was accessed during the August 2022 incident, some source code and technical information were stolen from our developmen...

Paragon: Yet Another Cyberweapons Arms Manufacturer

Forbes has the story: Paragons product will also likely get spyware critics and surveillance experts alike rubbernecking: It claims to give police the power to remotely break into encrypted instant messaging communications, whether thats WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger or Gmail, the industry...

Analysis of the FBI’s Anom Phone

Motherboard got its hands on one of those Anom phones that were really FBI honeypots. The details are interesting...

AI Security Risk Assessment Tool

Microsoft researchers just released an open-source automation tool for security testing AI systems: "Counterfit." Details on their blog...

Friday Squid Blogging: COVID Relief Funds

A town in Japan built a giant squid statue with its COVID relief grant. One local told the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper that while the statue may be effective in the long run, the money could have been used for "urgent support," such as for medical staff and long-term care facilities. But a...

Security Vulnerabilities in Cellebrite

Moxie Marlinspike has an intriguing blog post about Cellebrite, a tool used by police and others to break into smartphones. Moxie got his hands on one of the devices, which seems to be a pair of Windows software packages and a whole lot of connecting cables. According to Moxie, the software is...

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...

Accellion Supply Chain Hack

A vulnerability in the Accellion file-transfer program is being used by criminal groups to hack networks worldwide. Theres much in the article about when Accellion knew about the vulnerability, when it alerted its customers, and when it patched its software. The governor of New Zealands central...

On the Insecurity of ES&S Voting Machines’ Hash Code

Andrew Appel and Susan Greenhalgh have a blog post on the insecurity of ES&Ss software authentication system: It turns out that ES&S has bugs in their hash-code checker: if the "reference hashcode" is completely missing, then itll say "yes, boss, everything is fine" instead of reporting an error...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at the Australian Cyber Conference 2021 on March 17 and 18, 2021. I’m keynoting the all-virtual RSA Conference 2021, May 17-20, 2021. I’ll be speaking at an Informa event on September 14, 2021. Details to come. The lis...

Hacking Digitally Signed PDF Files

Interesting paper: "Shadow Attacks: Hiding and Replacing Content in Signed PDFs": Abstract: Digitally signed PDFs are used in contracts and invoices to guarantee the authenticity and integrity of their content. A user opening a signed PDF expects to see a warning in case of any modification. In...

Cell Phone Location Privacy

We all know that our cell phones constantly give our location away to our mobile network operators; that’s how they work. A group of researchers has figured out a way to fix that. “Pretty Good Phone Privacy” PGPP protects both user identity and user location using the existing cellular networks. ...

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...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at the ISC² Security Congress 2020, November 16, 2020. I’ll be on a panel at the OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum 2020 on November 17, 2020. The panel is called "Deep Dive: Digital Security and Distributed Ledger...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Found on Provincetown Sandbar

Headline: "Dozens of squid found on Provincetown sandbar." Slow news day. 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...

Phishing Attacks against Trump and Biden Campaigns

Google's threat analysts have identified state-level attacks from China. I hope both campaigns are working under the assumption that everything they say and do will be dumped on the Internet before the election. That feels like the most likely outcome...

Chinese COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign

The New York Times is reporting on state-sponsored disinformation campaigns coming out of China: Since that wave of panic, United States intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives helped push the messages across platforms, according to six American officials, who spoke on the...

Facebook's Download-Your-Data Tool Is Incomplete

Privacy International has the details: Key facts: Despite Facebook claim, "Download Your Information" doesn't provide users with a list of all advertisers who uploaded a list with their personal data. As a user this means you can't exercise your rights under GDPR because you don't know which...

Tree Code

Artist Katie Holten has developed a tree code basically, a font in trees, and New York City is using it to plant secret messages in parks...

Lousy IoT Security

DTEN makes smart screens and whiteboards for videoconferencing systems. Forescout found that their security is terrible: In total, our researchers discovered five vulnerabilities of four different kinds: Data exposure: PDF files of shared whiteboards e.g. meeting notes and other sensitive files...

Iranian Attacks on Industrial Control Systems

New details: At the CyberwarCon conference in Arlington, Virginia, on Thursday, Microsoft security researcher Ned Moran plans to present new findings from the company's threat intelligence group that show a shift in the activity of the Iranian hacker group APT33, also known by the names Holmium,...

Extracting Data from Smartphones

Privacy International has published a detailed, technical examination of how data is extracted from smartphones...

Dark Web Site Taken Down without Breaking Encryption

The US Department of Justice unraveled a dark web child-porn website, leading to the arrest of 337 people in at least 18 countries. This was all accomplished not through any backdoors in communications systems, but by analyzing the bitcoin transactions and following the money: Welcome to Video ma...

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...

How the Anonymous Artist Banksy Authenticates His or Her Work

Interesting scheme: It all starts off with a fairly bog standard gallery style certificate. Details of the work, the authenticating agency, a bit of embossing and a large impressive signature at the bottom. Exactly the sort of things that can be easily copied by someone on a mission to create the...

The PCLOB Needs a Director

The US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is looking for a director. Among other things, this board has some oversight role over the NSA. More precisely, it can examine what any executive-branch agency is doing about counterterrorism. So it can examine the program of TSA watchlists, NSA...

Government Perspective on Supply Chain Security

This is an interesting interview with a former NSA employee about supply chain security. I consider this to be an insurmountable problem right now...

On Financial Fraud

There are some good lessons in this article on financial fraud: That's how we got it so wrong. We were looking for incidental breaches of technical regulations, not systematic crime. And the thing is, that's normal. The nature of fraud is that it works outside your field of vision, subverting the...

Friday Squid Blogging: Dead Squid on Prince Edward Island

A beach on Prince Edward Island is littered with dead squid. No one knows why. 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...

Russian Censorship of Telegram

Internet censors have a new strategy in their bid to block applications and websites: pressuring the large cloud providers that host them. These providers have concerns that are much broader than the targets of censorship efforts, so they have the choice of either standing up to the censors or...

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...

Apple to Store Encryption Keys in China

Apple is bowing to pressure from the Chinese government and storing encryption keys in China. While I would prefer it if it would take a stand against China, I really can't blame it for putting its business model ahead of its desires for customer privacy. Two more articles...

Fighting Ransomware

No More Ransom is a central repository of keys and applications for ransomware, so people can recover their data without paying. It's not complete, of course, but is pretty good against older strains of ransomware. The site is a joint effort by Europol, the Dutch police, Kaspersky, and McAfee...

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" Parody

Funny...

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...

Prompt Injection Attacks on Large Language Models

This is a good survey on prompt injection attacks on large language models like ChatGPT. Abstract: We are currently witnessing dramatic advances in the capabilities of Large Language Models LLMs. They are already being adopted in practice and integrated into many systems, including integrated...

New US Executive Order on Cybersecurity

President Biden signed an executive order to improve government cybersecurity, setting new security standards for software sold to the federal government. For the first time, the United States will require all software purchased by the federal government to meet, within six months, a series of ne...

Extracting Personal Information from Large Language Models Like GPT-2

Researchers have been able to find all sorts of personal information within GPT-2. This information was part of the training data, and can be extracted with the right sorts of queries. Paper: "Extracting Training Data from Large Language Models." Abstract: It has become common to publish large...

Cyber Public Health

In a lecture, Adam Shostack makes the case for a discipline of cyber public health. It would relate to cybersecurity in a similar way that public health relates to medicine...

The US Military Buys Commercial Location Data

Vice has a long article about how the US military buys commercial location data worldwide. The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed...