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...

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...

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...

LLMs Acting Deceptively

New research: "Deception abilities emerged in large language models": Abstract: Large language models LLMs are currently at the forefront of intertwining AI systems with human communication and everyday life. Thus, aligning them with human values is of great importance. However, given the steady...

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...

Detecting Malicious Trackers

From Slashdot: Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them...

Ross Anderson

Ross Anderson unexpectedly passed away Thursday night in, I believe, his home in Cambridge. I cant remember when I first met Ross. Of course it was before 2008, when we created the Security and Human Behavior workshop. It was well before 2001, when we created the Workshop on Economics and...

Using LLMs to Unredact Text

Initial results in using LLMs to unredact text based on the size of the individual-word redaction rectangles. This feels like something that a specialized ML system could be trained on...

EPA Won’t Force Water Utilities to Audit Their Cybersecurity

The industry pushed back: Despite the EPAs willingness to provide training and technical support to help states and public water system organizations implement cybersecurity surveys, the move garnered opposition from both GOP state attorneys and trade groups. Republican state attorneys that were...

Hacking the High School Grading System

Interesting New York Times article about high-school students hacking the grading system. Whats not helping? The policies many school districts are adopting that make it nearly impossible for low-performing students to fail--they have a grading floor under them, they know it, and that allows them...

Another Malware with Persistence

Heres a piece of Chinese malware that infects SonicWall security appliances and survives firmware updates. On Thursday, security firm Mandiant published a report that said threat actors with a suspected nexus to China were engaged in a campaign to maintain long-term persistence by running malware...

Banning TikTok

Congress is currently debating bills that would ban TikTok in the United States. We are here as technologists to tell you that this is a terrible idea and the side effects would be intolerable. Details matter. There are several ways Congress might ban TikTok, each with different efficacies and si...

Defending against AI Lobbyists

When is it time to start worrying about artificial intelligence interfering in our democracy? Maybe when an AI writes a letter to The New York Times opposing the regulation of its own technology. That happened last month. And because the letter was responding to an essay we wrote, were starting t...

Apple Is Finally Encrypting iCloud Backups

After way too many years, Apple is finally encrypting iCloud backups: Based on a screenshot from Apple, these categories are covered when you flip on Advanced Data Protection: device backups, messages backups, iCloud Drive, Notes, Photos, Reminders, Safari bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos,...

NSA on Supply Chain Security

The NSA together with CISA has published a long report on supply-chain security: "Securing the Software Supply Chain: Recommended Practices Guide for Suppliers.": Prevention is often seen as the responsibility of the software developer, as they are required to securely develop and deliver code,...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: Im speaking as part of a Geneva Centre for Security Policy course on Cyber Security in the Context of International Security, online, on September 22, 2022. Im speaking at IT-Security INSIDE 2022 in Zurich, Switzerland, on Septembe...

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...

Friday Squid Blogging: The Language of the Jumbo Flying Squid

The jumbo flying squid Dosidicus gigas uses its color-changing ability as a language: In 2020, however, marine biologists discovered that jumbo flying squid are surprisingly coordinated. Despite their large numbers, the squid rarely bumped into each other or competed for the same prey. The...

NIST’s Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards

Quantum computing is a completely new paradigm for computers. A quantum computer uses quantum properties such as superposition, which allows a qubit a quantum bit to be neither 0 nor 1, but something much more complicated. In theory, such a computer can solve problems too complex for conventional...

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...

Recovering Real Faces from Face-Generation ML System

New paper: "This Person Probably Exists. Identity Membership Attacks Against GAN Generated Faces. Abstract: Recently, generative adversarial networks GANs have achieved stunning realism, fooling even human observers. Indeed, the popular tongue-in-cheek website http://thispersondoesnotexist.com,...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m keynoting CIISec Live—an all-online event—September 15-16, 2021. I’m speaking at the Infosecurity Magazine EMEA Autumn Online Summit on September 21, 2021. I’m speaking at the Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Law Conference in...

Tetris: Chinese Espionage Tool

Im starting to see writings about a Chinese espionage tool that exploits website vulnerabilities to try and identify Chinese dissidents...

More Biden Cybersecurity Nominations

News: President Biden announced key cybersecurity leadership nominations Monday, proposing Jen Easterly as the next head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and John "Chris" Inglis as the first ever national cyber director NCD. I know them both, and think theyre both good...

Web Credit Card Skimmer Steals Data from Another Credit Card Skimmer

MalwareBytes is reporting a weird software credit card skimmer. It harvests credit card data stolen by another, different skimmer: Even though spotting multiple card skimmer scripts on the same online shop is not unheard of, this one stood out due to its highly specialized nature. "The threat...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: Im speaking online at Western Washington University on January 20, 2021. Details to come. I’ll be speaking at an Informa event on February 28, 2021. Details to come. The list is maintained on this page...

Undermining Democracy

Last Thursday, Rudy Giuliani, a Trump campaign lawyer, alleged a widespread voting conspiracy involving Venezuela, Cuba, and China. Another lawyer, Sidney Powell, argued that Mr. Trump won in a landslide, the entire election in swing states should be overturned and the legislatures should make su...

Google Responds to Warrants for “About” Searches

One of the things we learned from the Snowden documents is that the NSA conducts "about" searches. That is, searches based on activities and not identifiers. A normal search would be on a name, or IP address, or phone number. An about search would something like "show me anyone that has used this...

Friday Squid Blogging: After Squidnight

Review of a squid-related childrens book. 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...

Interesting Attack on the EMV Smartcard Payment Standard

Its complicated, but its basically a man-in-the-middle attack that involves two smartphones. The first phone reads the actual smartcard, and then forwards the required information to a second phone. That second phone actually conducts the transaction on the POS terminal. That second phone is able...

Ranking National Cyber Power

Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center published the "National Cyber Power Index 2020: Methodology and Analytical Considerations." The rankings: 1. US, 2. China, 3. UK, 4. Russia, 5. Netherlands, 6. France, 7. Germany, 8. Canada, 9. Japan, 10. Australia, 11. Israel. More countries are in the...

US Space Cybersecurity Directive

The Trump Administration just published "Space Policy Directive - 5": "Cybersecurity Principles for Space Systems." Its pretty general: Principles. a Space systems and their supporting infrastructure, including software, should be developed and operated using risk-based, cybersecurity-informed...

More on NIST's Post-Quantum Cryptography

Back in July, NIST selected third-round algorithms for its post-quantum cryptography standard. Recently, Daniel Apon of NIST gave a talk detailing the selection criteria. Interesting stuff. NOTE: We're in the process of moving this blog to Wordpress. Comments will be disabled until the move it...

Hacking AI-Graded Tests

The company Edgenuity sells AI systems for grading tests. Turns out that they just search for keywords without doing any actual semantic analysis...

Theft of CIA's "Vault Seven" Hacking Tools Due to Its Own Lousy Security

The Washington Post is reporting on an internal CIA report about its "Vault 7" security breach: The breach -- allegedly committed by a CIA employee -- was discovered a year after it happened, when the information was published by WikiLeaks, in March 2017. The anti-secrecy group dubbed the release...

Gene Spafford on Internet Voting

Good interview...

A US Data Protection Agency

The United States is one of the few democracies without some formal data protection agency, and we need one. Senator Gillibrand just proposed creating one...

Details of an Airbnb Fraud

This is a fascinating article about a bait-and-switch Airbnb fraud. The article focuses on one particular group of scammers and how they operate, using the fact that Airbnb as a company doesn't do much to combat fraud on its platform. But I am more interested in how the fraudsters essentially...

Yubico Security Keys with a Crypto Flaw

Wow, is this an embarrassing bug: Yubico is recalling a line of security keys used by the U.S. government due to a firmware flaw. The company issued a security advisory today that warned of an issue in YubiKey FIPS Series devices with firmware versions 4.4.2 and 4.4.4 that reduced the randomness ...

The DoJ's Secret Legal Arguments to Break Cryptography

Earlier this year, the US Department of Justice made a series of legal arguments as to why Facebook should be forced to help the government wiretap Facebook Messenger. Those arguments are still sealed. The ACLU is suing to make them public...

That Bloomberg Supply-Chain-Hack Story

Back in October, Bloomberg reported that China has managed to install backdoors into server equipment that ended up in networks belonging to -- among others -- Apple and Amazon. Pretty much everybody has denied it including the US DHS and the UK NCSC. Bloomberg has stood by its story -- and is...

Detecting Credit Card Skimmers

Interesting research paper: "Fear the Reaper: Characterization and Fast Detection of Card Skimmers": Abstract: Payment card fraud results in billions of dollars in losses annually. Adversaries increasingly acquire card data using skimmers, which are attached to legitimate payment devices includin...

Public Shaming of Companies for Bad Security

Troy Hunt makes some good points, with good examples...

Bypassing Passcodes in iOS

Last week, a story was going around explaining how to brute-force an iOS password. Basically, the trick was to plug the phone into an external keyboard and trying every PIN at once: We reported Friday on Hickey's findings, which claimed to be able to send all combinations of a user's possible...

Kidnapping Fraud

Fake kidnapping fraud: "Most commonly we have unsolicited calls to potential victims in Australia, purporting to represent the people in authority in China and suggesting to intending victims here they have been involved in some sort of offence in China or elsewhere, for which they're being held...

Accessing Cell Phone Location Information

The New York Times is reporting about a company called Securus Technologies that gives police the ability to track cell phone locations without a warrant: The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds. It does this by going through a system typically...

Two New Papers on the Encryption Debate

Seems like everyone is writing about encryption and backdoors this season. "Policy Approaches to the Encryption Debate," R Street Policy Study 133, by Charles Duan, Arthur Rizer, Zach Graves and Mike Godwin. "Encryption Policy in Democratic Regimes," East West Institute. I recently blogged about...

Internet Security Threats at the Olympics

There are a lot: The cybersecurity company McAfee recently uncovered a cyber operation, dubbed Operation GoldDragon, attacking South Korean organizations related to the Winter Olympics. McAfee believes the attack came from a nation state that speaks Korean, although it has no definitive proof tha...

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...

Separating the Paranoid from the Hacked

Sad story of someone whose computer became owned by a griefer: The trouble began last year when he noticed strange things happening: files went missing from his computer; his Facebook picture was changed; and texts from his daughter didn't reach him or arrived changed. "Nobody believed me," says...