Cryptographic Flaw in Libbitcoin Explorer Cryptocurrency Wallet

Cryptographic flaws still matter. Heres a flaw in the random-number generator used to create private keys. The seed has only 32 bits of entropy. Seems like this flaw is being exploited in the wild. EDITED TO ADD 8/14: A good explainer...

Operation Triangulation: Zero-Click iPhone Malware

Kaspersky is reporting a zero-click iOS exploit in the wild: Mobile device backups contain a partial copy of the filesystem, including some of the user data and service databases. The timestamps of the files, folders and the database records allow to roughly reconstruct the events happening to th...

Apple’s NeuralHash Algorithm Has Been Reverse-Engineered

Apples NeuralHash algorithm -- the one its using for client-side scanning on the iPhone -- has been reverse-engineered. Turns out it was already in iOS 14.3, and someone noticed: Early tests show that it can tolerate image resizing and compression, but not cropping or rotations. We also have the...

NFC Flaws in POS Devices and ATMs

Its a series of vulnerabilities: Josep Rodriguez, a researcher and consultant at security firm IOActive, has spent the last year digging up and reporting vulnerabilities in the so-called near-field communications reader chips used in millions of ATMs and point-of-sale systems worldwide. NFC syste...

Peloton Vulnerability Found and Fixed

Researchers have discovered a vulnerability in Peloton stationary bicycles, one that would give the attacker complete control over the device. The attack requires physical access to the Peloton, so its not really a practical attack. President Bidens Peloton was not in danger...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Cartoon

Squid ink. 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...

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...

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...

Impressive iPhone Exploit

This is a scarily impressive vulnerability: Earlier this year, Apple patched one of the most breathtaking iPhone vulnerabilities ever: a memory corruption bug in the iOS kernel that gave attackers remote access to the entire device­ -- over Wi-Fi, with no user interaction required at all. Oh, and...

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...

US Cyber Command and Microsoft Are Both Disrupting TrickBot

Earlier this month, we learned that someone is disrupting the TrickBot botnet network. Over the past 10 days, someone has been launching a series of coordinated attacks designed to disrupt Trickbot, an enormous collection of more than two million malware-infected Windows PCs that are constantly...

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...

RSA-240 Factored

This just in: We are pleased to announce the factorization of RSA-240, from RSA's challenge list, and the computation of a discrete logarithm of the same size 795 bits: RSA-240 = 12462036678171878406583504460810659043482037465167880575481878888328...

Ineffective Package Tracking Facilitates Fraud

This article discusses an e-commerce fraud technique in the UK. Because the Royal Mail only tracks packages to the postcode -- and not to the address - it's possible to commit a variety of different frauds. Tracking systems that rely on signature are not similarly vulnerable...

More on Backdooring (or Not) WhatsApp

Yesterday, I blogged about a Facebook plan to backdoor WhatsApp by adding client-side scanning and filtering. It seems that I was wrong, and there are no such plans. The only source for that post was a Forbes essay by Kalev Leetaru, which links to a previous Forbes essay by him, which links to a...

International Spy Museum Reopens

The International Spy Museum has reopened in Washington, DC...

Security of Solid-State-Drive Encryption

Interesting research: "Self-encrypting deception: weaknesses in the encryption of solid state drives SSDs": Abstract: We have analyzed the hardware full-disk encryption of several SSDs by reverse engineering their firmware. In theory, the security guarantees offered by hardware encryption are...

The US National Cyber Strategy

Last month, the White House released the "National Cyber Strategy of the United States of America. I generally don't have much to say about these sorts of documents. They're filled with broad generalities. Who can argue with: Defend the homeland by protecting networks, systems, functions, and dat...

The 600+ Companies PayPal Shares Your Data With

One of the effects of GDPR -- the new EU General Data Protection Regulation -- is that we're all going to be learning a lot more about who collects our data and what they do with it. Consider PayPal, that just released a list of over 600 companies they share customer data with. Here's a good...

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":...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Populations Are Exploding

New research: "Global proliferation of cephalopods" Summary: Human activities have substantially changed the world's oceans in recent decades, altering marine food webs, habitats and biogeochemical processes. Cephalopods squid, cuttlefish and octopuses have a unique set of biological traits,...

Profile of Reality Winner

New York Magazine published an excellent profile of the single-document leaker Reality Winner...

Proof that HMAC-DRBG has No Back Doors

New research: "Verified Correctness and Security of mbedTLS HMAC-DRBG," by Katherine Q. Ye, Matthew Green, Naphat Sanguansin, Lennart Beringer, Adam Petcher, and Andrew W. Appel. Abstract: We have formalized the functional specification of HMAC-DRBG NIST 800-90A, and we have proved its...

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squids Have Small Brains

New research: In this study, the optic lobe of a giant squid Architeuthis dux, male, mantle length 89 cm, which was caught by local fishermen off the northeastern coast of Taiwan, was scanned using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging in order to examine its internal structure. It was evide...

Ethereum Hacks

The press is reporting a $32M theft of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. Like all such thefts, they're not a result of a cryptographic failure in the currencies, but instead a software vulnerability in the software surrounding the currency -- in this case, digital wallets. This is the second Ethereum...

The Women of Bletchley Park

Really good article about the women who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, breaking German Enigma-encrypted messages...

Backdoor in XZ Utils That Almost Happened

Last week, the Internet dodged a major nation-state attack that would have had catastrophic cybersecurity repercussions worldwide. It’s a catastrophe that didn’t happen, so it won’t get much attention--but it should. There’s an important moral to the story of the attack and its discovery: The...

China Taking Control of Zero-Day Exploits

China is making sure that all newly discovered zero-day exploits are disclosed to the government. Under the new rules, anyone in China who finds a vulnerability must tell the government, which will decide what repairs to make. No information can be given to "overseas organizations or individuals"...

Risks of Evidentiary Software

Over at Lawfare, Susan Landau has an excellent essay on the risks posed by software used to collect evidence a Breathalyzer is probably the most obvious example. Bugs and vulnerabilities can lead to inaccurate evidence, but the proprietary nature of software makes it hard for defendants to examin...

Bizarro Banking Trojan

Bizarro is a new banking trojan that is stealing financial information and crypto wallets. …the program can be delivered in a couple of ways­ -- either via malicious links contained within spam emails, or through a trojanized app. Using these sneaky methods, trojan operators will implant the...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Shaped Bike Rack

Theres a new squid-shaped bike rack in Ballard, WA. 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...

Details of a Computer Banking Scam

This is a longish video that describes a profitable computer banking scam thats run out of call centers in places like India. Theres a lot of fluff about glitterbombs and the like, but the details are interesting. The scammers convince the victims to give them remote access to their computers, an...

Changes in WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy

If youre a WhatsApp user, pay attention to the changes in the privacy policy that youre being forced to agree with. In 2016, WhatsApp gave users a one-time ability to opt out of having account data turned over to Facebook. Now, an updated privacy policy is changing that. Come next month, users wi...

On the Evolution of Ransomware

Good article on the evolution of ransomware: Though some researchers say that the scale and severity of ransomware attacks crossed a bright line in 2020, others describe this year as simply the next step in a gradual and, unfortunately, predictable devolution. After years spent honing their...

New Bluetooth Vulnerability

Theres a new unpatched Bluetooth vulnerability: The issue is with a protocol called Cross-Transport Key Derivation or CTKD, for short. When, say, an iPhone is getting ready to pair up with Bluetooth-powered device, CTKDs role is to set up two separate authentication keys for that phone: one for a...

EncroChat Hacked by Police

French police hacked EncroChat secure phones, which are widely used by criminals: Encrochat's phones are essentially modified Android devices, with some models using the "BQ Aquaris X2," an Android handset released in 2018 by a Spanish electronics company, according to the leaked documents...

Identifying a Person Based on a Photo, LinkedIn and Etsy Profiles, and Other Internet Bread Crumbs

Interesting story of how the police can identify someone by following the evidence chain from website to website. According to filings in Blumenthal's case, FBI agents had little more to go on when they started their investigation than the news helicopter footage of the woman setting the police c...

Ann Mitchell, Bletchley Park Cryptanalyst, Dies

Obituary...

Bart Gellman on Snowden

Bart Gellman's long-awaited at least by me book on Edward Snowden, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, will finally be published in a couple of weeks. There is an adapted excerpt in the Atlantic. It's an interesting read, mostly about the government surveillance of hi...

AI and Cybersecurity

Ben Buchanan has written "A National Security Research Agenda for Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence." It's really good -- well worth reading...

Vulnerability Finding Using Machine Learning

Microsoft is training a machine-learning system to find software bugs: At Microsoft, 47,000 developers generate nearly 30 thousand bugs a month. These items get stored across over 100 AzureDevOps and GitHub repositories. To better label and prioritize bugs at that scale, we couldn't just apply mo...

Contact Tracing COVID-19 Infections via Smartphone Apps

Google and Apple have announced a joint project to create a privacy-preserving COVID-19 contact tracing app. Details, such as we have them, are here. It's similar to the app being developed at MIT, and similar to others being described and developed elsewhere. It's nice seeing the privacy...

Facial Recognition for People Wearing Masks

The Chinese facial recognition company Hanwang claims it can recognize people wearing masks: The company now says its masked facial recognition program has reached 95 percent accuracy in lab tests, and even claims that it is more accurate in real life, where its cameras take multiple photos of a...

Emergency Surveillance During COVID-19 Crisis

Israel is using emergency surveillance powers to track people who may have COVID-19, joining China and Iran in using mass surveillance in this way. I believe pressure will increase to leverage existing corporate surveillance infrastructure for these purposes in the US and other countries. With th...

Work-from-Home Security Advice

SANS has made freely available its "Work-from-Home Awareness Kit." When I think about how COVID-19's security measures are affecting organizational networks, I see several interrelated problems: One, employees are working from their home networks and sometimes from their home computers. These...

Google Receives Geofence Warrants

Sometimes it's hard to tell the corporate surveillance operations from the government ones: Google reportedly has a database called Sensorvault in which it stores location data for millions of devices going back almost a decade. The article is about geofence warrants, where the police go to...

Half a Million IoT Device Passwords Published

It's a list of easy-to-guess passwords for IoT devices on the Internet as recently as last October and November. Useful for anyone putting together a bot network: A hacker has published this week a massive list of Telnet credentials for more than 515,000 servers, home routers, and IoT Internet of...

Towards an Information Operations Kill Chain

Cyberattacks don't magically happen; they involve a series of steps. And far from being helpless, defenders can disrupt the attack at any of those steps. This framing has led to something called the "cybersecurity kill chain": a way of thinking about cyber defense in terms of disrupting the...