Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Caught Off the Coast of Ireland

It's rare: Fishermen caught a 19-foot-long giant squid off the coast of Ireland on Monday, only the fifth to be seen there since 1673. Also the first in 22 years. 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...

Using Wi-Fi to Get 3D Images of Surrounding Location

Interesting research: The radio signals emitted by a commercial Wi-Fi router can act as a kind of radar, providing images of the transmitter's environment, according to new experiments. Two researchers in Germany borrowed techniques from the field of holography to demonstrate Wi-Fi imaging. They...

Criminals are Now Exploiting SS7 Flaws to Hack Smartphone Two-Factor Authentication Systems

I've previously written about the serious vulnerabilities in the SS7 phone routing system. Basically, the system doesn't authenticate messages. Now, criminals are using it to hack smartphone-based two-factor authentication systems: In short, the issue with SS7 is that the network believes whateve...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Helps Discover New Marine Species

The Squid is a new scientific machine: One of the technological breakthroughs was the onboard use of a spinning wheel confocal microscope, nicknamed the Squid, which uses lasers to scan microscopic details of how organisms are put together. "That opens up a whole new world of exploring. We could...

AI Data Centers and the Concentration of Wealth

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared inThe Guardian. Opposition to AI data centers has emerged as a primary theme in US politics, one that--surprisingly--doesn't fall along party lines. We applaud people coming together for constructive debate on any issue, and...

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...

Israel’s Pager Attacks and Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

Israel's brazen attacks on Hezbollah last week, in which hundreds of pagers and two-way radios exploded and killed at least 37 people, graphically illustrated a threat that cybersecurity experts have been warning about for years: Our international supply chains for computerized equipment leave us...

Online Privacy and Overfishing

Microsoft recently caught state-backed hackers using its generative AI tools to help with their attacks. In the security community, the immediate questions werent about how hackers were using the tools that was utterly predictable, but about how Microsoft figured it out. The natural conclusion wa...

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...

Surveillance by the New Microsoft Outlook App

The ProtonMail people are accusing Microsofts new Outlook for Windows app of conducting extensive surveillance on its users. It shares data with advertisers, a lot of data: The window informs users that Microsoft and those 801 third parties use their data for a number of purposes, including to:...

Child Exploitation and the Crypto Wars

Susan Landau published an excellent essay on the current justification for the government breaking end-to-end-encryption: child sexual abuse and exploitation CSAE. She puts the debate into historical context, discusses the problem of CSAE, and explains why breaking encryption isnt the solution...

Bots Are Better than Humans at Solving CAPTCHAs

Interesting research: "An Empirical Study & Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs": Abstract: For nearly two decades, CAPTCHAS have been widely used as a means of protection against bots. Throughout the years, as their use grew, techniques to defeat or bypass CAPTCHAS have continued to improve. Meanwhile...

Political Milestones for AI

ChatGPT was released just nine months ago, and we are still learning how it will affect our daily lives, our careers, and even our systems of self-governance. But when it comes to how AI may threaten our democracy, much of the public conversation lacks imagination. People talk about the danger of...

Cyberweapons Manufacturer QuaDream Shuts Down

Following a report on its activities, the Israeli spyware company QuaDream has shut down. This was QuadDream: Key Findings Based on an analysis of samples shared with us by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, we developed indicators that enabled us to identify at least five civil society victims of...

Successful Hack of Time-Triggered Ethernet

Time-triggered Ethernet TTE is used in spacecraft, basically to use the same hardware to process traffic with different timing and criticality. Researchers have defeated it: On Tuesday, researchers published findings that, for the first time, break TTEs isolation guarantees. The result is PCspooF...

Levels of Assurance for DoD Microelectronics

The NSA has has published criteria for evaluating levels of assurance required for DoD microelectronics. The introductory report in a DoD microelectronics series outlines the process for determining levels of hardware assurance for systems and custom microelectronic components, which include...

USB “Rubber Ducky” Attack Tool

The USB Rubber Ducky is getting better and better. Already, previous versions of the Rubber Ducky could carry out attacks like creating a fake Windows pop-up box to harvest a users login credentials or causing Chrome to send all saved passwords to an attackers webserver. But these attacks had to ...

Security Vulnerabilities in Honda’s Keyless Entry System

Honda vehicles from 2021 to 2022 are vulnerable to this attack: On Thursday, a security researcher who goes by Kevin2600 published a technical report and videos on a vulnerability that he claims allows anyone armed with a simple hardware device to steal the code to unlock Honda vehicles. Kevin260...

Facebook Is Down

Facebook -- along with Instagram and WhatsApp -- went down globally today. Basically, someone deleted their BGP records, which made their DNS fall apart. …at approximately 11:39 a.m. ET today 15:39 UTC, someone at Facebook caused an update to be made to the companys Border Gateway Protocol BGP...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m keynoting the all-virtual RSA Conference 2021, May 17-20, 2021. I’m keynoting the 5th International Symposium on Cyber Security Cryptology and Machine Learning via Zoom, July 8-9, 2021. I’ll be speaking at an Informa event on...

Teaching Cybersecurity to Children

A new draft of an Australian educational curriculum proposes teaching children as young as five cybersecurity: The proposed curriculum aims to teach five-year-old children -- an age at which Australian kids first attend school -- not to share information such as date of birth or full names with...

Authentication Failure

This is a weird story of a building owner commissioning an artist to paint a mural on the side of his building -- except that he wasnt actually the buildings owner. The fake landlord met Hawkins in person the day after Thanksgiving, supplying the paint and half the promised fee. They met again a...

Detecting Phishing Emails

Research paper: Rick Wash, "How Experts Detect Phishing Scam Emails": Abstract: Phishing scam emails are emails that pretend to be something they are not in order to get the recipient of the email to undertake some action they normally would not. While technical protections against phishing reduc...

Robocall Results from a Telephony Honeypot

A group of researchers set up a telephony honeypot and tracked robocall behavior: NCSU researchers said they ran 66,606 telephone lines between March 2019 and January 2020, during which time they said to have received 1,481,201 unsolicited calls -- even if they never made their phone numbers publ...

On the Twitter Hack

Twitter was hacked this week. Not a few people's Twitter accounts, but all of Twitter. Someone compromised the entire Twitter network, probably by stealing the log-in credentials of one of Twitter's system administrators. Those are the people trusted to ensure that Twitter functions smoothly. The...

Friday Squid Blogging: China Closing Its Squid Spawning Grounds

China is prohibiting squid fishing in two areas -- both in international waters -- for two seasons, to give squid time to recover and reproduce. This is the first time China has voluntarily imposed a closed season on the high seas. Some experts regard it as an important step forward in China's...

Another Intel Speculative Execution Vulnerability

Remember Spectre and Meltdown? Back in early 2018, I wrote: Spectre and Meltdown are pretty catastrophic vulnerabilities, but they only affect the confidentiality of data. Now that they -- and the research into the Intel ME vulnerability -- have shown researchers where to look, more is coming --...

Thermal Imaging as Security Theater

Seems like thermal imaging is the security theater technology of today. These features are so tempting that thermal cameras are being installed at an increasing pace. They're used in airports and other public transportation centers to screen travelers, increasingly used by companies to screen...

How Did Facebook Beat a Federal Wiretap Demand?

This is interesting: Facebook Inc. in 2018 beat back federal prosecutors seeking to wiretap its encrypted Messenger app. Now the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to find out how. The entire proceeding was confidential, with only the result leaking to the press. Lawyers for the ACLU and t...

Clarifying the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

A federal court has ruled that violating a website's terms of service is not "hacking" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The plaintiffs wanted to investigate possible racial discrimination in online job markets by creating accounts for fake employers and job seekers. Leading job sites have...

Story of Gus Weiss

This is a long and fascinating article about Gus Weiss, who masterminded a long campaign to feed technical disinformation to the Soviet Union, which may or may not have caused a massive pipeline explosion somewhere in Siberia in the 1980s, if in fact there even was a massive pipeline explosion...

Securing the Internet of Things through Class-Action Lawsuits

This law journal article discusses the role of class-action litigation to secure the Internet of Things. Basically, the article postulates that 1 market realities will produce insecure IoT devices, and 2 political failures will leave that industry unregulated. Result: insecure IoT. It proposes...

New Ransomware Targets Industrial Control Systems

EKANS is a new ransomware that targets industrial control systems: But EKANS also uses another trick to ratchet up the pain: It's designed to terminate 64 different software processes on victim computers, including many that are specific to industrial control systems. That allows it to then encry...

Brazil Charges Glenn Greenwald with Cybercrimes

Glenn Greenwald has been charged with cybercrimes in Brazil, stemming from publishing information and documents that were embarrassing to the government. The charges are that he actively helped the people who actually did the hacking: Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the...

5G Security

The security risks inherent in Chinese-made 5G networking equipment are easy to understand. Because the companies that make the equipment are subservient to the Chinese government, they could be forced to include backdoors in the hardware or software to give Beijing remote access. Eavesdropping i...

Distributing Malware By Becoming an Admin on an Open-Source Project

The module "event-stream" was infected with malware by an anonymous someone who became an admin on the project. Cory Doctorow points out that this is a clever new attack vector: Many open source projects attain a level of "maturity" where no one really needs any new features and there aren't a lo...

Defeating the "Deal or No Deal" Arcade Game

Two teenagers figured out how to beat the "Deal or No Deal" arcade game by filming the computer animation and then slowing it down enough to determine where the big prize was hidden...

Don't Fear the TSA Cutting Airport Security. Be Glad That They're Talking about It.

Last week, CNN reported that the Transportation Security Administration is considering eliminating security at U.S. airports that fly only smaller planes -- 60 seats or fewer. Passengers connecting to larger planes would clear security at their destinations. To be clear, the TSA has put forth no...

Beating Facial Recognition Software with Face Makeup

At least right now, facial recognition algorithms don't work with Juggalo makeup...

IEEE Statement on Strong Encryption vs. Backdoors

The IEEE came out in favor of strong encryption: IEEE supports the use of unfettered strong encryption to protect confidentiality and integrity of data and communications. We oppose efforts by governments to restrict the use of strong encryption and/or to mandate exceptional access mechanisms suc...

DARPA Funding in AI-Assisted Cybersecurity

DARPA is launching a program aimed at vulnerability discovery via human-assisted AI. The new DARPA program is called CHESS Computers and Humans Exploring Software Security, and they're holding a proposers day in a week and a half. This is the kind of thing that can dramatically change the...

Susan Landau's New Book: Listening In

Susan Landau has written a terrific book on cybersecurity threats and why we need strong crypto. Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age. It's based in part on her 2016 Congressional testimony in the Apple/FBI case; it examines how the Digital Revolution has transformed society, and how la...

Securing a Raspberry Pi

A Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer designed for makers and all sorts of Internet-of-Things types of projects. Make magazine has an article about securing it. Reading it, I am struck by how much work it is to secure. I fear that this is beyond the capabilities of most tinkerers, and the result will...

Security Vulnerabilities in AT&T Routers

They're actually Arris routers, sold or given away by AT&T.; There are several security vulnerabilities, some of them very serious. They can be fixed, but because these are routers it takes some skill. We don't know how many routers are affected, and estimates range from thousands to 138,000. Amo...

Fighting Leakers at Apple

Apple is fighting its own battle against leakers, using people and tactics from the NSA. According to the hour-long presentation, Apple's Global Security team employs an undisclosed number of investigators around the world to prevent information from reaching competitors, counterfeiters, and the...

NSA Document Outlining Russian Attempts to Hack Voter Rolls

This week brought new public evidence about Russian interference in the 2016 election. On Monday, the Intercept published a top-secret National Security Agency document describing Russian hacking attempts against the US election system. While the attacks seem more exploratory than operational ­--...

Hacking the Galaxy S8's Iris Biometric

It was easy: The hackers took a medium range photo of their subject with a digital camera's night mode, and printed the infrared image. Then, presumably to give the image some depth, the hackers placed a contact lens on top of the printed picture...

Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2017)

I'm in Cambridge University, at the tenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior. SHB is a small invitational gathering of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Ross Anderson, Alessandro Acquisti, and myself. The 50 or so people in the room include...

The Quick vs. the Strong: Commentary on Cory Doctorow's Walkaway

Technological advances change the world. That's partly because of what they are, but even more because of the social changes they enable. New technologies upend power balances. They give groups new capabilities, increased effectiveness, and new defenses. The Internet decades have been a...

Cybersecurity and the Gap Between Skill and Ability

Last week, national security agencies from the Five Eyes--that's the rich, English-language-speaking countries club--jointly released a statement warning of the increasing cyber risks of AI models: in particular, their ability to autonomously hack into systems and networks. The statement was more...