3052 matches found
The NSA on the Risks of Exposing Location Data
The NSA has issued an advisory on the risks of location data. Mitigations reduce, but do not eliminate, location tracking risks in mobile devices. Most users rely on features disabled by such mitigations, making such safeguards impractical. Users should be aware of these risks and take action bas...
New Hacking-for-Hire Company in India
Citizen Lab has a new report on Dark Basin, a large hacking-for-hire company in India. Key Findings: Dark Basin is a hack-for-hire group that has targeted thousands of individuals and hundreds of institutions on six continents. Targets include advocacy groups and journalists, elected and senior...
Securing Internet Videoconferencing Apps: Zoom and Others
The NSA just published a survey of video conferencing apps. So did Mozilla. Zoom is on the good list, with some caveats. The company has done a lot of work addressing previous security concerns. It still has a bit to go on end-to-end encryption. Matthew Green looked at this. Zoom does offer...
Automatic Instacart Bots
Instacart is taking legal action against bots that automatically place orders: Before it closed, to use Cartdash users first selected what items they want from Instacart as normal. Once that was done, they had to provide Cartdash with their Instacart email address, password, mobile number, tip...
More on Crypto AG
One follow-on to the story of Crypto AG being owned by the CIA: this interview with a Washington Post reporter. The whole thing is worth reading or listening to, but I was struck by these two quotes at the end: ...in South America, for instance, many of the governments that were using Crypto...
Russia Is Trying to Tap Transatlantic Cables
The Times of London is reporting that Russian agents are in Ireland probing transatlantic communications cables. Ireland is the landing point for undersea cables which carry internet traffic between America, Britain and Europe. The cables enable millions of people to communicate and allow financi...
Mailbox Master Keys
Here's a physical-world example of why master keys are a bad idea. It's a video of two postal thieves using a master key to open apartment building mailboxes. Changing the master key for physical mailboxes is a logistical nightmare, which is why this problem won't be fixed anytime soon...
Disabling Security Cameras with Lasers
There's a really interesting video of protesters in Hong Kong using some sort of laser to disable security cameras. I know nothing more about the technologies involved...
Cybersecurity for the Public Interest
The Crypto Wars have been waging off-and-on for a quarter-century. On one side is law enforcement, which wants to be able to break encryption, to access devices and communications of terrorists and criminals. On the other are almost every cryptographer and computer security expert, repeatedly...
Marriott Hack Reported as Chinese State-Sponsored
The New York Times and Reuters are reporting that China was behind the recent hack of Marriott Hotels. Note that this is still uncomfirmed, but interesting if it is true. Reuters: Private investigators looking into the breach have found hacking tools, techniques and procedures previously used in...
Security Risks of Chatbots
Good essay on the security risks -- to democratic discourse -- of chatbots...
Hacking Police Bodycams
Suprising no one, the security of police bodycams is terrible. Mitchell even realized that because he can remotely access device storage on models like the Fire Cam OnCall, an attacker could potentially plant malware on some of the cameras. Then, when the camera connects to a PC for syncing, it...
Recovering Keyboard Inputs through Thermal Imaging
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, are able to recover user passwords by way of thermal imaging. The tech is pretty straightforward, but it's interesting to think about the types of scenarios in which it might be pulled off. Abstract: As a warm-blooded mammalian species, we huma...
Domain Name Stealing at Gunpoint
I missed this story when it came around last year: someone tried to steal a domain name at gunpoint. He was just sentenced to 20 years in jail...
Tracing Stolen Bitcoin
Ross Anderson has a really interesting paper on tracing stolen bitcoin. From a blog post: Previous attempts to track tainted coins had used either the "poison" or the "haircut" method. Suppose I open a new address and pay into it three stolen bitcoin followed by seven freshly-mined ones. Then und...
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 ...
Detecting Adblocker Blockers
Interesting research on the prevalence of adblock blockers: "Measuring and Disrupting Anti-Adblockers Using Differential Execution Analysis": Abstract: Millions of people use adblockers to remove intrusive and malicious ads as well as protect themselves against tracking and pervasive surveillance...
Mozilla's Guide to Privacy-Aware Christmas Shopping
Mozilla reviews the privacy practices of Internet-connected toys, home accessories, exercise equipment, and more...
Impersonating iOS Password Prompts
This is an interesting security vulnerability: because it is so easy to impersonate iOS password prompts, a malicious app can steal your password just by asking. Why does this work? iOS asks the user for their iTunes password for many reasons, the most common ones are recently installed iOS...
Me on Restaurant Surveillance Technology
I attended the National Restaurant Association exposition in Chicago earlier this year, and looked at all the ways modern restaurant IT is spying on people. But there's also a fundamentally creepy aspect to much of this. One of the prime ways to increase value for your brand is to use the Interne...
Hacking Spotify
Some of the ways artists are hacking the music-streaming service Spotify...
Gaming Google News
Turns out that it's surprisingly easy to game: It appears that news sites deemed legitimate by Google News are being modified by third parties. These sites are then exploited to redirect to the spam content. It appears that the compromised sites are examining the referrer and redirecting visitors...
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid as Prey
There's lots of video of squid as undersea predators. This is one of the few instances of squid as prey from a deep submersible in the Pacific: "We saw brittle stars capturing a squid from the water column while it was swimming. I didn't know that was possible. And then there was a tussle among t...
Human Rights Watch Needs an Information Security Director
I'm sure it pays less than the industry average, and the stakes are much higher than the average. But if you want to be a Director of Information Security that makes a difference, Human Rights Watch is hiring...
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...
How AI Will Change Democracy
I dont think its an exaggeration to predict that artificial intelligence will affect every aspect of our society. Not by doing new things. But mostly by doing things that are already being done by humans, perfectly competently. Replacing humans with AIs isnt necessarily interesting. But when an A...
You Can’t Rush Post-Quantum-Computing Cryptography Standards
I just read an article complaining that NIST is taking too long in finalizing its post-quantum-computing cryptography standards. This process has been going on since 2016, and since that time there has been a huge increase in quantum technology and an equally large increase in quantum understandi...
Hacks at Pwn2Own Vancouver 2023
An impressive array of hacks were demonstrated at the first day of the Pwn2Own conference in Vancouver: On the first day of Pwn2Own Vancouver 2023, security researchers successfully demoed Tesla Model 3, Windows 11, and macOS zero-day exploits and exploit chains to win $375,000 and a Tesla Model ...
How AI Could Write Our Laws
Nearly 90% of the multibillion-dollar federal lobbying apparatus in the United States serves corporate interests. In some cases, the objective of that money is obvious. Google pours millions into lobbying on bills related to antitrust regulation. Big energy companies expect action whenever there ...
Mary Queen of Scots Letters Decrypted
This is a neat piece of historical research. The team of computer scientist George Lasry, pianist Norbert Biermann and astrophysicist Satoshi Tomokiyo--all keen cryptographers--initially thought the batch of encoded documents related to Italy, because that was how they were filed at the...
Friday Squid Blogging: Ram’s Horn Squid Shells
You can find rams horn squid shells on beaches in Texas and presumably elsewhere. 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: Giant Squid Model
Pretty wooden model. 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 Spectre-Like Attacks
Theres new research that demonstrates security vulnerabilities in all of the AMD and Intel chips with micro-op caches, including the ones that were specifically engineered to be resistant to the Spectre/Meltdown attacks of three years ago. Details: The new line of attacks exploits the micro-op...
Serious MacOS Vulnerability Patched
Apple just patched a MacOS vulnerability that bypassed malware checks. The flaw is akin to a front entrance thats barred and bolted effectively, but with a cat door at the bottom that you can easily toss a bomb through. Apple mistakenly assumed that applications will always have certain specific...
The FBI Is Now Securing Networks Without Their Owners’ Permission
In January, we learned about a Chinese espionage campaign that exploited four zero-days in Microsoft Exchange. One of the characteristics of the campaign, in the later days when the Chinese probably realized that the vulnerabilities would soon be fixed, was to install a web shell in compromised...
Encoded Message in the Perseverance Mars Lander’s Parachute
NASA made an oblique reference to a coded message in the color pattern of the Perseverance Mars Lander s parachute. More information...
Including Hackers in NATO Wargames
This essay makes the point that actual computer hackers would be a useful addition to NATO wargames: The international information security community is filled with smart people who are not in a military structure, many of whom would be excited to pose as independent actors in any upcoming...
Dutch Insider Attack on COVID-19 Data
Insider data theft: Dutch police have arrested two individuals on Friday for allegedly selling data from the Dutch health ministrys COVID-19 systems on the criminal underground. … According to Verlaan, the two suspects worked in DDG call centers, where they had access to official Dutch government...
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...
How the SolarWinds Hackers Bypassed Duo’s Multi-Factor Authentication
This is interesting: Toward the end of the second incident that Volexity worked involving Dark Halo, the actor was observed accessing the e-mail account of a user via OWA. This was unexpected for a few reasons, not least of which was the targeted mailbox was protected by MFA. Logs from the Exchan...
Matt Blaze on OTP Radio Stations
Matt Blaze discusses also here an interesting mystery about a Cuban one-time-pad radio station, and a random number generator error that probably helped arrest a pair of Russian spies in the US...
Copying a Key by Listening to It in Action
Researchers are using recordings of keys being used in locks to create copies. Once they have a key-insertion audio file, SpiKey's inference software gets to work filtering the signal to reveal the strong, metallic clicks as key ridges hit the lock's pins and you can hear those filtered clicks...
Bank Card "Master Key" Stolen
South Africa's Postbank experienced a catastrophic security failure. The bank's master PIN key was stolen, forcing it to cancel and replace 12 million bank cards. The breach resulted from the printing of the bank's encrypted master key in plain, unencrypted digital language at the Postbank's old...
Password Changing After a Breach
This study shows that most people don't change their passwords after a breach, and if they do they change it to a weaker password. Abstract: To protect against misuse of passwords compromised in a breach, consumers should promptly change affected passwords and any similar passwords on other...
Another California Data Privacy Law
The California Consumer Privacy Act is a lesson in missed opportunities. It was passed in haste, to stop a ballot initiative that would have been even more restrictive: In September 2017, Alastair Mactaggart and Mary Ross proposed a statewide ballot initiative entitled the "California Consumer...
Another Story of Bad 1970s Encryption
This one is from the Netherlands. It seems to be clever cryptanalysis rather than a backdoor. The Dutch intelligence service has been able to read encrypted communications from dozens of countries since the late 1970s thanks to a microchip, according to research by de Volkskrant on Thursday. The...
Ransomware Now Leaking Stolen Documents
Originally, ransomware didn't involve any data theft. Malware would encrypt the data on your computer, and demand a ransom for the encryption key. Now ransomware is increasingly involving both encryption and exfiltration. Brian Krebs wrote about this in December. It's a further incentive for the...
Dark Web Hosting Provider Hacked
Daniel's Hosting, which hosts about 7,600 dark web portals for free, has been hacked and is down. It's unclear when, or if, it will be back up...
LA Covers Up Bad Cybersecurity
This is bad in several dimensions. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been accused of deliberately keeping widespread gaps in its cybersecurity a secret from regulators in a large-scale coverup involving the city's mayor...