3052 matches found
New UFEI Rootkit
Kaspersky is reporting on a new UFEI rootkit that survives reinstalling the operating system and replacing the hard drive. From an article: The firmware compromises the UEFI, the low-level and highly opaque chain of firmware required to boot up nearly every modern computer. As the software that...
Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2022
Today is the second day of the fifteenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, hosted by Ross Anderson and Alice Hutchings at the University of Cambridge. After two years of having this conference remotely on Zoom, its nice to be back together in person. SHB is a small, annual, invitational...
Bluetooth Flaw Allows Remote Unlocking of Digital Locks
Locks that use Bluetooth Low Energy to authenticate keys are vulnerable to remote unlocking. The research focused on Teslas, but the exploit is generalizable. In a video shared with Reuters, NCC Group researcher Sultan Qasim Khan was able to open and then drive a Tesla using a small relay device...
Why Vaccine Cards Are So Easily Forged
My proof of COVID-19 vaccination is recorded on an easy-to-forge paper card. With little trouble, I could print a blank form, fill it out, and snap a photo. Small imperfections wouldn’t pose any problem; you can’t see whether the paper’s weight is right in a digital image. When I fly...
Bunnie Huang’s Plausibly Deniable Database
Bunnie Huang has created a Plausibly Deniable Database. Most security schemes facilitate the coercive processes of an attacker because they disclose metadata about the secret data, such as the name and size of encrypted files. This allows specific and enforceable demands to be made: “Give us the...
The EARN IT Act Is Back
Senators have reintroduced the EARN IT Act, requiring social media companies among others to administer a massive surveillance operation on their users: A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal D-CT and Sen. Lindsey Graham R-SC have re-introduced the EARN IT Act, an incredibly unpopula...
Friday Squid Blogging: The Evolution of Squid Eyes
New research: The researchers from the FAS Center for Systems Biology discovered a network of genes important in squid eye development that are known to also play a crucial role in limb development across animals, including vertebrates and insects. The scientists say these genes have been...
More Log4j News
Log4j is being exploited by all sorts of attackers, all over the Internet: At that point it was reported that there were over 100 attempts to exploit the vulnerability every minute. "Since we started to implement our protection we prevented over 1,272,000 attempts to allocate the vulnerability,...
Someone Is Running Lots of Tor Relays
Since 2017, someone is running about a thousand -- 10% of the total -- Tor servers in an attempt to deanonymize the network: Grouping these servers under the KAX17 umbrella, Nusenu says this threat actor has constantly added servers with no contact details to the Tor network in industrial...
Why I Hate Password Rules
The other day, I was creating a new account on the web. It was financial in nature, which means it gets one of my most secure passwords. I used Password Safe to generate this 16-character alphanumeric password: :s^Twd.J;3hzg=Q Which was rejected by the site, because it didnt meet its password...
New York Times Journalist Hacked with NSO Spyware
Citizen Lab is reporting that a New York Times journalist was hacked with the NSO Groups spyware Pegasus, probably by the Saudis. The world needs to do something about these cyberweapons arms manufacturers. This kind of thing isnt enough; NSO Group is an Israeli company...
Identifying Computer-Generated Faces
Its the eyes: The researchers note that in many cases, users can simply zoom in on the eyes of a person they suspect may not be real to spot the pupil irregularities. They also note that it would not be difficult to write software to spot such errors and for social media sites to use it to remove...
Friday Squid Blogging: Fossil of Squid Eating and Being Eaten
We now have a fossil of a squid eating a crustacean while it is being eaten by a shark. 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...
The Legal Risks of Security Research
Sunoo Park and Kendra Albert have published "A Researcher’s Guide to Some Legal Risks of Security Research." From a summary: Such risk extends beyond anti-hacking laws, implicating copyright law and anti-circumvention provisions DMCA §1201, electronic privacy law ECPA, and cryptography export...
Detecting Deep Fakes with a Heartbeat
Researchers can detect deep fakes because they dont convincingly mimic human blood circulation in the face: In particular, video of a persons face contains subtle shifts in color that result from pulses in blood circulation. You might imagine that these changes would be too minute to detect merel...
BlackBerry Phone Cracked
Australia is reporting that a BlackBerry device has been cracked after five years: An encrypted BlackBerry device that was cracked five years after it was first seized by police is poised to be the key piece of evidence in one of the state's longest-running drug importation investigations. In...
Enigma Machine for Sale
A four-rotor Enigma machine -- with rotors -- is up for auction...
Analyzing IoT Security Best Practices
New research: "Best Practices for IoT Security: What Does That Even Mean?" by Christopher Bellman and Paul C. van Oorschot: Abstract: Best practices for Internet of Things IoT security have recently attracted considerable attention worldwide from industry and governments, while academic research...
Defending Democracies Against Information Attacks
To better understand influence attacks, we proposed an approach that models democracy itself as an information system and explains how democracies are vulnerable to certain forms of information attacks that autocracies naturally resist. Our model combines ideas from both international security an...
CIA Network Exposed through Insecure Communications System
Interesting story of a CIA intelligence network in China that was exposed partly because of a computer security failure: Although they used some of the same coding, the interim system and the main covert communication platform used in China at this time were supposed to be clearly separated. In...
James Mickens on the Current State of Computer Security
James Mickens gave an excellent keynote at the USENIX Security Conference last week, talking about the social aspects of security -- racism, sexism, etc. -- and the problems with machine learning and the Internet. Worth watching...
New Report on Chinese Intelligence Cyber-Operations
The company ProtectWise just published a long report linking a bunch of Chinese cyber-operations over the past few years. The always interesting gruqq has some interesting commentary on the group and its tactics. Lots of detailed information in the report, but I admit that I have never heard of...
NIST Issues Call for "Lightweight Cryptography" Algorithms
This is interesting: Creating these defenses is the goal of NIST's lightweight cryptography initiative, which aims to develop cryptographic algorithm standards that can work within the confines of a simple electronic device. Many of the sensors, actuators and other micromachines that will functio...
FBI Increases Its Anti-Encryption Rhetoric
Earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave a speech warning that a world with encryption is a world without law -- or something like that. The EFF's Kurt Opsahl takes it apart pretty thoroughly. Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray said much the same thing. This is an ide...
Article on the DAO Ethereum Hack
This is good...
The Dangers of Secret Law
Last week, the Department of Justice released 18 new FISC opinions related to Section 702 as part of an EFF FOIA lawsuit. Of course, they don't mention EFF or the lawsuit. They make it sound as if it was their idea. There's probably a lot in these opinions. In one Kafkaesque ruling, a defendant w...
Security Flaws in 4G VoLTE
Research paper: "Subscribers remote geolocation and tracking using 4G VoLTE enabled Android phone," by Patrick Ventuzelo, Olivier Le Moal, and Thomas Coudray. Abstract: VoLTE Voice over LTE is a technology implemented by many operators over the world. Unlike previous 2G/3G technologies, VoLTE...
Friday Squid Blogging: Sex Is Traumatic for the Female Dumpling Squid
The more they mate, the sooner they die. Academic paper paywall. News article. 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...
WannaCry and Vulnerabilities
There is plenty of blame to go around for the WannaCry ransomware that spread throughout the Internet earlier this month, disrupting work at hospitals, factories, businesses, and universities. First, there are the writers of the malicious software, which blocks victims' access to their computers...
Cybersecurity Mission Creep in the US
Interesting paper: "Cybersecurity Mission Creep." Abstract: Cybersecurity is experiencing mission creep. Policymakers are casting more and more problems as issues of cybersecurity. So reframed, wildly different policy issues, from misinformation, to child social media safety laws, to antitrust...
Papa Johns Surveillance-Based Advertising
Papa Johns is spying on people's buying activities to predict when they are low on food: The pizza chain recently tapped NBCUniversal, Instacart and the dentsu-owned media agency Carat for help reaching consumers when they're low on groceries--and thus more likely to be swayed by a mouth-watering...
Enhanced License Plate Tracking
The surveillance company Leonardo wants more data: A surveillance company plans to add sensors to automatic license plate readers ALPRs that would mean the devices, as well as capture the license plate of passing vehicles, would also sweep up unique identifiers of mobile phones, wearables, and...
Friday Squid Blogging: Another Squid
Someone named "Squid" seems to be a "West Country legend." 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...
On Microsoft’s Lousy Cloud Security
ProPublica has a scoop: In late 2024, the federal government's cybersecurity evaluators rendered a troubling verdict on one of Microsoft's biggest cloud computing offerings. The tech giant's "lack of proper detailed security documentation" left reviewers with a "lack of confidence in assessing th...
Is “Hackback” Official US Cybersecurity Strategy?
The 2026 US "Cyber Strategy for America" document is mostly the same thing we've seen out of the White House for over a decade, but with a more aggressive tone. But one sentence stood out: "We will unleash the private sector by creating incentives to identify and disrupt adversary networks and...
As the US Midterms Approach, AI Is Going to Emerge as a Key Issue Concerning Voters
In December, the Trump administration signed an executive order that neutered states' ability to regulate AI by ordering his administration to both sue and withhold funds from states that try to do so. This action pointedly supported industry lobbyists keen to avoid any constraints and consequenc...
The NSA’s “Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937–1987)”
In response to a FOIA request, the NSA released "Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis 1937-1987," by Glenn F. Stahly, with a lot of redactions. Weirdly, this is the second time the NSA has declassified the document. John Young got a copy in 2019. This one has a few less redactions. And nothi...
CVE Program Almost Unfunded
Mitre's CVE's program--which provides common naming and other informational resources about cybersecurity vulnerabilities--was about to be cancelled, as the US Department of Homeland Security failed to renew the contact. It was funded for eleven more months at the last minute. This is a big deal...
New VPN Backdoor
A newly discovered VPN backdoor uses some interesting tactics to avoid detection: When threat actors use backdoor malware to gain access to a network, they want to make sure all their hard work can't be leveraged by competing groups or detected by defenders. One countermeasure is to equip the...
Rethinking Democracy for the Age of AI
There is a lot written about technologys threats to democracy. Polarization. Artificial intelligence. The concentration of wealth and power. I have a more general story: The political and economic systems of governance that were created in the mid-18th century are poorly suited for the 21st...
Demo of AES GCM Misuse Problems
This is really neat demo of the security problems arising from reusing nonces with a symmetric cipher in GCM mode...
AI and the Evolution of Social Media
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022...
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0
NIST has released version 2.0 of the Cybersecurity Framework: The CSF 2.0, which supports implementation of the National Cybersecurity Strategy, has an expanded scope that goes beyond protecting critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and power plants, to all organizations in any sector. It al...
China Surveillance Company Hacked
Last week, someone posted something like 570 files, images and chat logs from a Chinese company called I-Soon. I-Soon sells hacking and espionage services to Chinese national and local government. Lots of details in the news articles. These arent details about the tools or techniques, more the...
Improving the Cryptanalysis of Lattice-Based Public-Key Algorithms
The winner of the Best Paper Award at Crypto this year was a significant improvement to lattice-based cryptanalysis. This is important, because a bunch of NISTs post-quantum options base their security on lattice problems. I worry about standardizing on post-quantum algorithms too quickly. We are...
On Passkey Usability
Matt Burgess tries to only use passkeys. The results are mixed...
Chatbots and Human Conversation
For most of history, communicating with a computer has not been like communicating with a person. In their earliest years, computers required carefully constructed instructions, delivered through punch cards; then came a command-line interface, followed by menus and options and text boxes. If you...
Improving Shor’s Algorithm
We dont have a useful quantum computer yet, but we do have quantum algorithms. Shors algorithm has the potential to factor large numbers faster than otherwise possible, which--if the run times are actually feasible--could break both the RSA and Diffie-Hellman public-key algorithms. Now, computer...
TikTok Editorial Analysis
TikTok seems to be skewing things in the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. This is a serious analysis, and the methodology looks sound. Conclusion: Substantial Differences in Hashtag Ratios Raise Concerns about TikToks Impartiality Given the research above, we assess a strong possibility...
Cyberattack on Ukraine’s Kyivstar Seems to Be Russian Hacktivists
The Solntsepek group has taken credit for the attack. Theyre linked to the Russian military, so its unclear whether the attack was government directed or freelance. This is one of the most significant cyberattacks since Russia invaded in February 2022...