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...

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...

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: Cephalopod Week on Science Friday

It's Cephalopod Week! "Three hearts, eight arms, can't lose." 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Injecting a Backdoor into SolarWinds Orion

Crowdstrike is reporting on a sophisticated piece of malware that was able to inject malware into the SolarWinds build process: Key Points SUNSPOT is StellarParticles malware used to insert the SUNBURST backdoor into software builds of the SolarWinds Orion IT management product. SUNSPOT monitors...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Chrome Extension Stealing Cryptocurrency Keys and Passwords

A malicious Chrome extension surreptitiously steals Ethereum keys and passwords: According to Denley, the extension is dangerous to users in two ways. First, any funds ETH coins and ERC0-based tokens managed directly inside the extension are at risk. Denley says that the extension sends the priva...

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...

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...

Stealing Ethereum by Guessing Weak Private Keys

Someone is stealing millions of dollars worth of Ethereum by guessing users' private keys. Normally this should be impossible, but lots of keys seem to be very weak. Researchers are unsure how those weak keys are being generated and used. Their paper is here...

Interview of Me in Taiwan

Business Weekly in Taiwan interviewed me. Here's a translation courtesy of Google. It was a surprisingly intimate interview. I hope the Chinese reads better than the translation...

Can Everybody Read the US Terrorist Watch List?

After years of claiming that the Terrorist Screening Database is kept secret within the government, we have now learned that the DHS shares it "with more than 1,400 private entities, including hospitals and universities...." Critics say that the watchlist is wildly overbroad and mismanaged, and...

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...

Google Tracks its Users Even if They Opt-Out of Tracking

Google is tracking you, even if you turn off tracking: Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you've been. Google's support page on the subject states: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored." Tha...

Hacking a Robot Vacuum

The Diqee 360 robotic vacuum cleaner can be turned into a surveillance device. The attack requires physical access to the device, so in the scheme of things it's not a big deal. But why in the world is the vacuum equipped with a microphone?...

Russians Hacked the Olympics

Two weeks ago, I blogged about the myriad of hacking threats against the Olympics. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Russia hacked the Olympics network and tried to cast the blame on North Korea. Of course, the evidence is classified, so there's no way to verify this claim. And while t...

New Malware Hijacks Cryptocurrency Mining

This is a clever attack. After gaining control of the coin-mining software, the malware replaces the wallet address the computer owner uses to collect newly minted currency with an address controlled by the attacker. From then on, the attacker receives all coins generated, and owners are none the...

Hacking Back

Hacking back is a terrible idea that just will not die. Josephine Wolff takes apart the new hacking back bill that was introduced in the House recently...

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...

Cobalt Strike Vulnerability Affects Botnet Servers

Cobalt Strike is a security tool, used by penetration testers to simulate network attackers. But its also used by attackers -- from criminals to governments -- to automate their own attacks. Researchers have found a vulnerability in the product. The main components of the security tool are the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Easy SMS Hijacking

Vice is reporting on a cell phone vulnerability caused by commercial SMS services. One of the things these services permit is text message forwarding. It turns out that with a little bit of anonymous money -- in this case, $16 off an anonymous prepaid credit card -- and a few lies, you can forwar...

Four Microsoft Exchange Zero-Days Exploited by China

Microsoft has issued an emergency Microsoft Exchange patch to fix four zero-day vulnerabilities currently being exploited by China. EDITED TO ADD 3/12: Exchange Online is not affected...

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...

Friday Squid Blogging: Linguine allo Scoglio Recipe

Delicious seafood pasta dish -- includes squid -- from Americas Test Kitchen. 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...

NSA on Authentication Hacks (Related to SolarWinds Breach)

The NSA has published an advisory outlining how "malicious cyber actors" are "are manipulating trust in federated authentication environments to access protected data in the cloud." This is related to the SolarWinds hack I have previously written about, and represents one of the techniques the SV...

Friday Squid Blogging: Newly Identified Ichthyosaur Species Probably Ate Squid

This is a deep-diving species that "fed on small prey items such as squid." Academic paper. 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Privacy vs. Surveillance in the Age of COVID-19

The trade-offs are changing: As countries around the world race to contain the pandemic, many are deploying digital surveillance tools as a means to exert social control, even turning security agency technologies on their own civilians. Health and law enforcement authorities are understandably...

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...