Documents about the NSA’s Banning of Furby Toys in the 1990s

Via a FOIA request, we have documents from the NSA about their banning of Furby toys. 404 Media has the story. EDITED TO ADD: The documents are now on Archive.org...

AI Bots on X (Twitter)

You can find them by searching for OpenAI chatbot warning messages, like: "Im sorry, I cannot provide a response as it goes against OpenAIs use case policy." I hadnt thought about this before: identifying bots by searching for distinctive bot phrases...

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...

AI and Lossy Bottlenecks

Artificial intelligence is poised to upend much of society, removing human limitations inherent in many systems. One such limitation is information and logistical bottlenecks in decision-making. Traditionally, people have been forced to reduce complex choices to a small handful of options that do...

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...

LitterDrifter USB Worm

A new worm that spreads via USB sticks is infecting computers in Ukraine and beyond. The group­--known by many names, including Gamaredon, Primitive Bear, ACTINIUM, Armageddon, and Shuckworm--has been active since at least 2014 and has been attributed to Russia’s Federal Security Service by the...

Friday Squid Blogging: Unpatched Vulnerabilities in the Squid Caching Proxy

In a rare squid/security post, heres an article about unpatched vulnerabilities in the Squid caching proxy. 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...

Spaf on the Morris Worm

Gene Spafford wrote an essay reflecting on the Morris Worm of 1988--thirty-five years ago. His lessons from then are still applicable today...

On Technologies for Automatic Facial Recognition

Interesting article on technologies that will automatically identify people: With technology like that on Mr. Leyvands head, Facebook could prevent users from ever forgetting a colleagues name, give a reminder at a cocktail party that an acquaintance had kids to ask about or help find someone at ...

Parmesan Anti-Forgery Protection

The Guardian is reporting about microchips in wheels of Parmesan cheese as an anti-forgery measure...

AI and Microdirectives

Imagine a future in which AIs automatically interpret--and enforce--laws. All day and every day, you constantly receive highly personalized instructions for how to comply with the law, sent directly by your government and law enforcement. Youre told how to cross the street, how fast to drive on t...

Belgian Tax Hack

Heres a fascinating tax hack from Belgium listen to the details here, episode 484 of "No Such Thing as a Fish," at 28:00. Basically, its about a music festival on the border between Belgium and Holland. The stage was in Holland, but the crowd was in Belgium. When the copyright collector came...

New Zero-Click Exploits against iOS

Citizen Lab has identified three zero-click exploits against iOS 15 and 16. These were used by NSO Groups Pegasus spyware in 2022, and deployed by Mexico against human rights defenders. These vulnerabilities have all been patched. One interesting bit is that Apples Lockdown Mode part of iOS 16...

Using LLMs to Create Bioweapons

Im not sure there are good ways to build guardrails to prevent this sort of thing: There is growing concern regarding the potential misuse of molecular machine learning models for harmful purposes. Specifically, the dual-use application of models for predicting cytotoxicity18 to create new poison...

Hacking Suicide

Heres a religious hack: You want to commit suicide, but its a mortal sin: your soul goes straight to hell, forever. So what you do is murder someone. That will get you executed, but if you confess your sins to a priest beforehand you avoid hell. Problem solved. This was actually a problem in the...

Friday Squid Blogging: Chinese Squid Fishing in the Southeast Pacific

Chinese squid fishing boats are overwhelming Ecuador and Peru. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I havent covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

Cyberwar Lessons from the War in Ukraine

The Aspen Institute has published a good analysis of the successes, failures, and absences of cyberattacks as part of the current war in Ukraine: "The Cyber Defense Assistance Imperative ­ Lessons from Ukraine." Its conclusion: Cyber defense assistance in Ukraine is working. The Ukrainian...

Friday Squid Blogging: Thermal Batteries from Squid Proteins

Researchers are making thermal batteries from "a synthetic material thats derived from squid ring teeth protein." As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I havent covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

A Hacker’s Mind News

A Hackers Mind will be published on Tuesday. I have done a written interview and a podcast interview about the book. Its been chosen as a "February 2023 Must-Read Book" by the Next Big Idea Club. And an "Editors Pick"--whatever that means--on Amazon. There have been three reviews so far. I am...

Ransomware Payments Are Down

Chainalysis reports that worldwide ransomware payments were down in 2022. Ransomware attackers extorted at least $456.8 million from victims in 2022, down from $765.6 million the year before. As always, we have to caveat these findings by noting that the true totals are much higher, as there are...

Cold War Bugging of Soviet Facilities

Found documents in Poland detail US spying operations against the former Soviet Union. The file details a number of bugs found at Soviet diplomatic facilities in Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco, as well as in a Russian government-owned vacation compound, apartments used by Russia...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Images

iStock has over 13,000 royalty-free images of squid. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I havent covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

Friday Squid Blogging: 14-foot Giant Squid Washes Ashore in Cape Town

Its an Architeuthis dux, the second this year. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I havent covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here...

Security and Cheap Complexity

Ive been saying that complexity is the worst enemy of security for a long time now. Heres me in 1999. And its been true for a long time. In 2018, Thomas Dullien of Googles Project Zero talked about "cheap complexity." Andrew Appel summarizes: The anomaly of cheap complexity. For most of human...

$23 Million YouTube Royalties Scam

Scammers were able to convince YouTube that other peoples music was their own. They successfully stole $23 million before they were caught. No one knows how common this scam is, and how much money total is being stolen in this way. Presumably this is not an uncommon fraud. While the size of the...

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...

Facebook Is Now Encrypting Links to Prevent URL Stripping

Some sites, including Facebook, add parameters to the web address for tracking purposes. These parameters have no functionality that is relevant to the user, but sites rely on them to track users across pages and properties. Mozilla introduced support for URL stripping in Firefox 102, which it...

Apple’s Lockdown Mode

Apple has introduced lockdown mode for high-risk users who are concerned about nation-state attacks. It trades reduced functionality for increased security in a very interesting way...

Ecuador’s Attempt to Resettle Edward Snowden

Someone hacked the Ecuadorian embassy in Moscow and found a document related to Ecuadors 2013 efforts to bring Edward Snowden there. If you remember, Snowden was traveling from Hong Kong to somewhere when the US revoked his passport, stranding him in Russia. In the document, Ecuador asks Russia t...

Twitter Used Two-Factor Login Details for Ad Targeting

Twitter was fined $150 million for using phone numbers and email addresses collected for two-factor authentication for ad targeting...

Me on Public-Interest Tech

Back in November 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I gave a virtual talk at the International Symposium on Technology and Society: "The Story of the Internet and How it Broke Bad: A Call for Public-Interest Technologists." It was something I was really proud of, and its finally up on...

The Onion on Google Map Surveillance

"Google Maps Adds Shortcuts through Houses of People Google Knows Arent Home Right Now." Excellent satire...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squidmobile

The Squidmobile. 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...

Microsoft Issues Report of Russian Cyberattacks against Ukraine

Microsoft has a comprehensive report on the dozens of cyberattacks -- and even more espionage operations -- Russia has conducted against Ukraine as part of this war: At least six Russian Advanced Persistent Threat APT actors and other unattributed threats, have conducted destructive attacks,...

Bypassing Apple’s AirTag Security

A Berlin-based company has developed an AirTag clone that bypasses Apples anti-stalker security systems. Source code for these AirTag clones is available online. So now we have several problems with the system. Apples anti-stalker security only works with iPhones. Apple wrote an Android app that...

Stealing Bicycles by Swapping QR Codes

This is a clever hack against those bike-rental kiosks: Theyre stealing Citi Bikes by switching the QR scan codes on two bicycles near each other at a docking station, then waiting for an unsuspecting cyclist to try to unlock a bike with his or her smartphone app. The app doesnt work for the ride...

China’s Olympics App Is Horribly Insecure

China is mandating that athletes download and use a health and travel app when they attend the Winter Olympics next month. Citizen Lab examined the app and found it riddled with security holes. Key Findings: MY2022, an app mandated for use by all attendees of the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, ha...

Friday Squid Blogging: Deep-Dwelling Squid

We have discovered a squid -- Oegopsida, Magnapinnidae, Magnapinna sp. -- that lives at 6,000 meters deep. :They’re really weird," says Vecchione. "They drift along with their arms spread out and these really long, skinny, spaghetti-like extensions dangling down underneath them." Microscopic...

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...

Ransomware Attacks against Water Treatment Plants

According to a report from CISA last week, there were three ransomware attacks against water treatment plants last year. WWS Sector cyber intrusions from 2019 to early 2021 include: In August 2021, malicious cyber actors used Ghost variant ransomware against a California-based WWS facility. The...

A Death Due to Ransomware

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a babys death at an Alabama hospital in 2019, which they argue was a direct result of the ransomware attack the hospital was undergoing. Amid the hack, fewer eyes were on the heart monitors -- normally tracked on a large screen at the nurses station, in...

FBI Had the REvil Decryption Key

The Washington Post reports that the FBI had a decryption key for the REvil ransomware, but didnt pass it along to victims because it would have disrupted an ongoing operation. The key was obtained through access to the servers of the Russia-based criminal gang behind the July attack. Deploying i...

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...

Tracking Users on Waze

A security researcher discovered a wulnerability in Waze that breaks the anonymity of users: I found out that I can visit Waze from any web browser at waze.com/livemap so I decided to check how are those driver icons implemented. What I found is that I can ask Waze API for data on a location by...

UAE Hack and Leak Operations

Interesting paper on recent hack-and-leak operations attributed to the UAE: Abstract: Four hack-and-leak operations in U.S. politics between 2016 and 2019, publicly attributed to the United Arab Emirates UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, should be seen as the "simulation of scandal" ­-- deliberate...

Hacking a Power Supply

This hack targets the firmware on modern power supplies. Yes, power supplies are also computers. Normally, when a phone is connected to a power brick with support for fast charging, the phone and the power adapter communicate with each other to determine the proper amount of electricity that can ...

The Unintended Harms of Cybersecurity

Interesting research: "Identifying Unintended Harms of Cybersecurity Countermeasures": Abstract: Well-meaning cybersecurity risk owners will deploy countermeasures technologies or procedures to manage risks to their services or systems. In some cases, those countermeasures will produce unintended...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I'm speaking at Indiana University Bloomington on January 30, 2020. I'll be at RSA Conference 2020 in San Francisco. On Wednesday, February 26, at 2:50 PM, I'll be part of a panel on "How to Reduce Supply Chain Risk: Lessons from...

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...

Can Consumers' Online Data Be Protected?

Everything online is hackable. This is true for Equifax's data and the federal Office of Personal Management's data, which was hacked in 2015. If information is on a computer connected to the Internet, it is vulnerable. But just because everything is hackable doesn't mean everything will be hacke...