Splitting the NSA and US Cyber Command

Rumor is that the Trump administration will separate the NSA and US Cyber Command. I have long thought this was a good idea. Here's a good discussion of what it does and doesn't mean...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid on a Stick at the New York State Fair

Looks tasty. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Blog moderation policy...

Factoring RSA Keys with Many Zeros

Interesting research on a new class of weak RSA keys: keys with lots of zeros. It turns out that these keys are out in the wild. The badkeys project is an open-source service that checks public keys for known vulnerabilities. While developing this tool, Hanno collected a massive number of...

Friday Squid Blogging: Bigfin Squid

Article about the bigfin squid. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Blog moderation policy...

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid in the Star Trek Universe

Spock befriends a giant space squid in the comic Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The Seeds of Salvation 5. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Blog moderation policy...

Rigged Poker Games

The Department of Justice has indicted thirty-one people over the high-tech rigging of high-stakes poker games. In a typical legitimate poker game, a dealer uses a shuffling machine to shuffle the cards randomly before dealing them to all the players in a particular order. As set forth in the...

Open-Source LLMs

In February, Meta released its large language model: LLaMA. Unlike OpenAI and its ChatGPT, Meta didnt just give the world a chat window to play with. Instead, it released the code into the open-source community, and shortly thereafter the model itself was leaked. Researchers and programmers...

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...

The Problem with Treating Data as a Commodity

Excellent Brookings paper: "Why data ownership is the wrong approach to protecting privacy." From the introduction: Treating data like it is property fails to recognize either the value that varieties of personal information serve or the abiding interest that individuals have in their personal...

Friday Squid Blogging: Live Giant Squid Found in Japan

A giant squid was found alive in the port of Izumo, Japan. Not a lot of news, just this Twitter thread with a couple of videos. If confirmed, I believe this will be the THIRD time EVER a giant squid was filmed alive! As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in...

Sophisticated Watering Hole Attack

Googles Project Zero has exposed a sophisticated watering-hole attack targeting both Windows and Android: Some of the exploits were zero-days, meaning they targeted vulnerabilities that at the time were unknown to Google, Microsoft, and most outside researchers both companies have since patched t...

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...

Zodiac Killer Cipher Solved

The SF Chronicle is reporting more details here, and the FBI is confirming, that a Melbourne mathematician and team has decrypted the 1969 message sent by the Zodiac Killer to the newspaper. Theres no paper yet, but there are a bunch of details in the news articles. Heres an interview with one of...

Friday Squid Blogging: Interview with a Squid Researcher

Interview with Mike Vecchione, Curator of Cephalopoda -- now thats a job title -- at the Smithsonian Museum of National History. One reason theyre so interesting is they are intelligent invertebrates. Almost everything that we think of as being intelligent -- parrots, dolphins, etc. -- are...

Friday Squid Blogging: New SQUID

There's a new SQUID: A new device that relies on flowing clouds of ultracold atoms promises potential tests of the intersection between the weirdness of the quantum world and the familiarity of the macroscopic world we experience every day. The atomtronic Superconducting QUantum Interference Devi...

Twitter Hacker Arrested

A 17-year-old Florida boy was arrested and charged with last week's Twitter hack. News articles. Boing Boing post. Florida state attorney press release. This is a developing story. Post any additional news in the comments. EDITED TO ADD 8/1: Two others have been charged as well. EDITED TO ADD 8/1...

Newly Declassified Study Demonstrates Uselessness of NSA's Phone Metadata Program

The New York Times is reporting on the NSA's phone metadata program, which the NSA shut down last year: A National Security Agency system that analyzed logs of Americans' domestic phone calls and text messages cost $100 million from 2015 to 2019, but yielded only a single significant investigatio...

Voatz Internet Voting App Is Insecure

This paper describes the flaws in the Voatz Internet voting app: "The Ballot is Busted Before the Blockchain: A Security Analysis of Voatz, the First Internet Voting Application Used in U.S. Federal Elections." Abstract: In the 2018 midterm elections, West Virginia became the first state in the...

New Research on the Adtech Industry

The Norwegian Consumer Council has published an extensive report about how the adtech industry violates consumer privacy. At the same time, it is filing three legal complaints against six companies in this space. From a Twitter summary: 1. thread We are filing legal complaints against six...

Technical Report of the Bezos Phone Hack

Motherboard obtained and published the technical report on the hack of Jeff Bezos's phone, which is being attributed to Saudi Arabia, specifically to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. ...investigators set up a secure lab to examine the phone and its artifacts and spent two days poring over the...

Artificial Personas and Public Discourse

Presidential campaign season is officially, officially, upon us now, which means it's time to confront the weird and insidious ways in which technology is warping politics. One of the biggest threats on the horizon: artificial personas are coming, and they're poised to take over political debate...

New SHA-1 Attack

There's a new, practical, collision attack against SHA-1: In this paper, we report the first practical implementation of this attack, and its impact on real-world security with a PGP/GnuPG impersonation attack. We managed to significantly reduce the complexity of collisions attack against SHA-1: ...

USB Cable Kill Switch for Laptops

BusKill is designed to wipe your laptop Linux only if it is snatched from you in a public place: The idea is to connect the BusKill cable to your Linux laptop on one end, and to your belt, on the other end. When someone yanks your laptop from your lap or table, the USB cable disconnects from the...

Andy Ellis on Risk Assessment

Andy Ellis, the CSO of Akamai, gave a great talk about the psychology of risk at the Business of Software conference this year. I've written about this before. One quote of mine: "The problem is our brains are intuitively suited to the sorts of risk management decisions endemic to living in small...

Resources for Measuring Cybersecurity

Kathryn Waldron at R Street has collected all of the different resources and methodologies for measuring cybersecurity...

On Security Tokens

Mark Risher of Google extols the virtues of security keys: I'll say it again for the people in the back: with Security Keys, instead of the user needing to verify the site, the site has to prove itself to the key. Good security these days is about human factors; we have to take the onus off of th...

New IoT Security Regulations

Due to ever-evolving technological advances, manufacturers are connecting consumer goods­ -- from toys to light bulbs to major appliances­ -- to the Internet at breakneck speeds. This is the Internet of Things, and it's a security nightmare. The Internet of Things fuses products with communicatio...

Using a Smartphone's Microphone and Speakers to Eavesdrop on Passwords

It's amazing that this is even possible: "SonarSnoop: Active Acoustic Side-Channel Attacks": Abstract: We report the first active acoustic side-channel attack. Speakers are used to emit human inaudible acoustic signals and the echo is recorded via microphones, turning the acoustic system of a sma...

Font Steganography

Interesting research in steganography at the font level...

Yet Another Biometric: Ear Shape

This acoustic technology identifies individuals by their ear shapes. No information about either false positives or false negatives...

Hijacking Computers for Cryptocurrency Mining

Interesting paper "A first look at browser-based cryptojacking": Abstract: In this paper, we examine the recent trend towards in-browser mining of cryptocurrencies; in particular, the mining of Monero through Coinhive and similar code-bases. In this model, a user visiting a website will download ...

New DDoS Reflection-Attack Variant

This is worrisome: DDoS vandals have long intensified their attacks by sending a small number of specially designed data packets to publicly available services. The services then unwittingly respond by sending a much larger number of unwanted packets to a target. The best known vectors for these...

Security Vulnerabilities in Star Wars

A fun video describing some of the many Empire security vulnerabilities in the first Star Wars movie. Happy New Year, everyone...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Empire Is a New Book

Regularly I receive mail from people wanting to advertise on, write for, or sponsor posts on my blog. My rule is that I say no to everyone. There is no amount of money or free stuff that will get me to write about your security product or service. With regard to squid, however, I have no such...

Hacking Spotify

Some of the ways artists are hacking the music-streaming service Spotify...

Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Report

New US government report: "Report on Improving Cybersecurity in the Health Care Industry." It's pretty scathing, but nothing in it will surprise regular readers of this blog. It's worth reading the executive summary, and then skimming the recommendations. Recommendations are in six areas. The Tas...

Passwords at the Border

The password-manager 1Password has just implemented a travel mode that tries to protect users while crossing borders. It doesn't make much sense. To enable it, you have to create a list of passwords you feel safe traveling with, and then you can turn on the mode that only gives you access to thos...

WannaCry Ransomware

Criminals go where the money is, and cybercriminals are no exception. And right now, the money is in ransomware. It's a simple scam. Encrypt the victim's hard drive, then extract a fee to decrypt it. The scammers can't charge too much, because they want the victim to pay rather than give up on th...

The US Senate Is Using Signal

The US Senate just approved Signal for staff use. Signal is a secure messaging app with no backdoor, and no large corporate owner who can be pressured to install a backdoor. Susan Landau comments. Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I think we just won the Crypto War. A very important part of the US...

American Being Prosecuted for Wiping His Phone Before Handing It Over to Border Officials

He's being prosecuted for giving border officials a code that wiped his phone: The case centers on a feature included in GrapheneOS, a custom Android operating system that runs in place of the software on most modern Google Pixel devices. Tunick's attorneys confirmed GrapheneOS was running on his...

AI Advertising Company Hacked

At least some of this is coming to light: Doublespeed, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz a16z that uses a phone farm to manage at least hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts and promote products has been hacked. The hack reveals what products the AI-generated accounts are promoting...

My TED Talks

I have spoken at several TED conferences over the years. TEDxPSU 2010: "Reconceptualizing Security" TEDxCambridge 2013: "The Battle for Power on the Internet" TEDMed 2016: "Who Controls Your Medical Data?" Im putting this here because I want all three links in one place...

CFPB’s Proposed Data Rules

In October, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau CFPB proposed a set of rules that if implemented would transform how financial institutions handle personal data about their customers. The rules put control of that data back in the hands of ordinary Americans, while at the same time undermini...

Leaving Authentication Credentials in Public Code

Interesting article about a surprisingly common vulnerability: programmers leaving authentication credentials and other secrets in publicly accessible software code: Researchers from security firm GitGuardian this week reported finding almost 4,000 unique secrets stashed inside a total of 450,000...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Headed Statue Appears in Dallas

Someone left it in a cemetery. 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...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Game

Netflix has a new series called Squid Game, about people competing in a deadly game for money. It has nothing to do with actual squid. 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 Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century, a virtual conference hosted by The IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology SSIT, July 23-25, 2021. I’m speaking at DEFCON 29, August 5-8, 2021. Im speaking via Internet ...

The Supreme Court Narrowed the CFAA

In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court just narrowed the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: In a ruling delivered today, the court sided with Van Buren and overturned his 18-month conviction. In a 37-page opinion written and delivered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court explained that the...

How China Uses Stolen US Personnel Data

Interesting analysis of Chinas efforts to identify US spies: By about 2010, two former CIA officials recalled, the Chinese security services had instituted a sophisticated travel intelligence program, developing databases that tracked flights and passenger lists for espionage purposes. "We looked...