RSA-250 Factored

RSA-250 has been factored. This computation was performed with the Number Field Sieve algorithm, using the open-source CADO-NFS software. The total computation time was roughly 2700 core-years, using Intel Xeon Gold 6130 CPUs as a reference 2.1GHz: RSA-250 sieving: 2450 physical core-years RSA-25...

Cybersecurity During COVID-19

Three weeks ago could it possibly be that long already?, I wrote about the increased risks of working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. One, employees are working from their home networks and sometimes from their home computers. These systems are more likely to be out of date, unpatched, and...

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...

DNSSEC Keysigning Ceremony Postponed Because of Locked Safe

Interesting collision of real-world and Internet security: The ceremony sees several trusted internet engineers a minimum of three and up to seven from across the world descend on one of two secure locations -- one in El Segundo, California, just south of Los Angeles, and the other in Culpeper,...

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...

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...

Public Voice Launches Petition for an International Moratorium on Using Facial Recognition for Mass Surveillance

Coming out of the Privacy Commissioners' Conference in Albania, Public Voice is launching a petition for an international moratorium on using facial recognition software for mass surveillance. You can sign on as an individual or an organization. I did. You should as well. No, I don't think that...

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...

Fabricated Voice Used in Financial Fraud

This seems to be an identity theft first: Criminals used artificial intelligence-based software to impersonate a chief executive's voice and demand a fraudulent transfer of €220,000 $243,000 in March in what cybercrime experts described as an unusual case of artificial intelligence being used in...

NotPetya

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

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...

Judging Facebook's Privacy Shift

Facebook is making a new and stronger commitment to privacy. Last month, the company hired three of its most vociferous critics and installed them in senior technical positions. And on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the company will pivot to focus on private conversations over the public...

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...

Friday Squid Blogging: Australian Fisherman Gets Inked

Pretty good video. 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...

Evidence for the Security of PKCS #1 Digital Signatures

This is interesting research: "On the Security of the PKCS1 v1.5 Signature Scheme": Abstract: The RSA PKCS1 v1.5 signature algorithm is the most widely used digital signature scheme in practice. Its two main strengths are its extreme simplicity, which makes it very easy to implement, and that...

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...

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...

Public Hearing on IoT Risks

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission is holding hearings on IoT risks: The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission CPSC, Commission, or we will conduct a public hearing to receive information from all interested parties about potential safety issues and hazards associated with...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Textbook Rental Scam

Heres a story of someone who, with three compatriots, rented textbooks from Amazon and then sold them instead of returning them. They used gift cards and prepaid credit cards to buy the books, so there was no available balance when Amazon tried to charge them the buyout price for non-returned...

Banning Surveillance-Based Advertising

The Norwegian Consumer Council just published a fantastic new report: "Time to Ban Surveillance-Based Advertising." From the Introduction: The challenges caused and entrenched by surveillance-based advertising include, but are not limited to: privacy and data protection infringements opaque...

Security Vulnerability in Apple’s Silicon “M1” Chip

The website for the M1racles security vulnerability is an excellent demonstration that not all vulnerabilities are exploitable. Be sure to read the FAQ through to the end. EDITED TO ADD: Wired article...

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...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squids Don’t Like Pile-Driving Noises

New research: Pile driving occurs during construction of marine platforms, including offshore windfarms, producing intense sounds that can adversely affect marine animals. We quantified how a commercially and economically important squid Doryteuthis pealeii: Lesueur 1821 responded to pile driving...

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...

Marriott Was Hacked -- Again

Marriott announced another data breach, this one affecting 5.2 million people: At this point, we believe that the following information may have been involved, although not all of this information was present for every guest involved: Contact Details e.g., name, mailing address, email address, an...

Clearview AI and Facial Recognition

The New York Times has a long story about Clearview AI, a small company that scrapes identified photos of people from pretty much everywhere, and then uses unstated magical AI technology to identify people in other photos. His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognitio...

Mysterious Drones Are Flying over Colorado

No one knows who they belong to. Well, of course someone knows. And my guess is that it's likely that we will know soon. EDITED TO ADD 1/3: Another article...

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...

xHelper Malware for Android

xHelper is not interesting because of its infection mechanism; the user has to side-load an app onto his phone. It's not interesting because of its payload; it seems to do nothing more than show unwanted ads. it's interesting because of its persistence: Furthermore, even if users spot the xHelper...

A Broken Random Number Generator in AMD Microcode

Interesting story. I always recommend using a random number generator like Fortuna, even if you're using a hardware random source. It's just safer...

Measuring the Security of IoT Devices

In August, CyberITL completed a large-scale survey of software security practices in the IoT environment, by looking at the compiled software. Data Collected: 22 Vendors 1,294 Products 4,956 Firmware versions 3,333,411 Binaries analyzed Date range of data: 2003-03-24 to 2019-01-24 varies by vendo...

New Book Announcement: Click Here to Kill Everybody

I am pleased to announce the publication of my latest book: Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World. In it, I examine how our new immersive world of physically capable computers affects our security. I argue that this changes everything about security. Attac...

Friday Squid Blogging: US Army Developing 3D-Printable Battlefield Robot Squid

The next major war will be super weird. 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...

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...

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...

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...

Paul van Oorschot’s Computer Security and the Internet

Paul van Oorschots webpage contains a complete copy of his book: Computer Security and the Internet: Tools and Jewels. Its worth reading...

Friday Squid Blogging: Far Side Squid Comic

A classic. 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...

Tesla Remotely Hacked from a Drone

This is an impressive hack: Security researchers Ralf-Philipp Weinmann of Kunnamon, Inc. and Benedikt Schmotzle of Comsecuris GmbH have found remote zero-click security vulnerabilities in an open-source software component ConnMan used in Tesla automobiles that allowed them to compromise parked ca...

Hiding Malware in Social Media Buttons

Clever tactic: This new malware was discovered by researchers at Dutch cyber-security company Sansec that focuses on defending e-commerce websites from digital skimming also known as Magecart attacks. The payment skimmer malware pulls its sleight of hand trick with the help of a double payload...

Enigma Machine Recovered from the Baltic Sea

Neat story: German divers searching the Baltic Sea for discarded fishing nets have stumbled upon a rare Enigma cipher machine used by the Nazi military during World War Two which they believe was thrown overboard from a scuttled submarine. Thinking they had discovered a typewriter entangled in a...

Inrupt’s Solid Announcement

Earlier this year, I announced that I had joined Inrupt, the company commercializing Tim Berners-Lees Solid specification: The idea behind Solid is both simple and extraordinarily powerful. Your data lives in a pod that is controlled by you. Data generated by your things -- your computer, your...

Criminals and the Normalization of Masks

I was wondering about this: Masks that have made criminals stand apart long before bandanna-wearing robbers knocked over stagecoaches in the Old West and ski-masked bandits held up banks now allow them to blend in like concerned accountants, nurses and store clerks trying to avoid a deadly virus...