3092 matches found
Detecting AI-Generated Text
There are no reliable ways to distinguish text written by a human from text written by an large language model. OpenAI writes: Do AI detectors work? In short, no. While some including OpenAI have released tools that purport to detect AI-generated content, none of these have proven to reliably...
Using Hacked LastPass Keys to Steal Cryptocurrency
Remember last November, when hackers broke into the network for LastPass--a password database--and stole password vaults with both encrypted and plaintext data for over 25 million users? Well, theyre now using that data break into crypto wallets and drain them: $35 million and counting, all going...
Cryptocurrency Startup Loses Encryption Key for Electronic Wallet
The cryptocurrency fintech startup Prime Trust lost the encryption key to its hardware wallet--and the recovery key--and therefore $38.9 million. It is now in bankruptcy. I cant understand why anyone thinks these technologies are a good idea...
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Brand Fish Sauce
Squid Brand is a Thai company that makes fish sauce: It is part of Squid Brands range of "personalized healthy fish sauces" that cater to different consumer groups, which include the Mild Fish Sauce for Kids and Mild Fish Sauce for Silver Ages. It also has a Vegan Fish Sauce. As usual, you can al...
New SEC Rules around Cybersecurity Incident Disclosures
The US Securities and Exchange Commission adopted final rules around the disclosure of cybersecurity incidents. There are two basic rules: 1. Public companies must "disclose any cybersecurity incident they determine to be material" within four days, with potential delays if there is a national...
New York Using AI to Detect Subway Fare Evasion
The details are scant--the article is based on a "heavily redacted" contract--but the New York subway authority is using an "AI system" to detect people who dont pay the subway fare. Joana Flores, an MTA spokesperson, said the AI system doesnt flag fare evaders to New York police, but she decline...
Stalkerware Vendor Hacked
The stalkerware company LetMeSpy has been hacked: TechCrunch reviewed the leaked data, which included years of victims call logs and text messages dating back to 2013. The database we reviewed contained current records on at least 13,000 compromised devices, though some of the devices shared litt...
On the Need for an AI Public Option
Artificial intelligence will bring great benefits to all of humanity. But do we really want to entrust this revolutionary technology solely to a small group of US tech companies? Silicon Valley has produced no small number of moral disappointments. Google retired its "dont be evil" pledge before...
The Software-Defined Car
Developers are starting to talk about the software-defined car. For decades, features have accumulated like cruft in new vehicles: a box here to control the antilock brakes, a module there to run the cruise control radar, and so on. Now engineers and designers are rationalizing the way they go...
Expeditionary Cyberspace Operations
Cyberspace operations now officially has a physical dimension, meaning that the United States has official military doctrine about cyberattacks that also involve an actual human gaining physical access to a piece of computing infrastructure. A revised version of Joint Publication 3-12 Cyberspace...
Swatting as a Service
Motherboard is reporting on AI-generated voices being used for "swatting": In fact, Motherboard has found, this synthesized call and another against Hempstead High School were just one small part of a months-long, nationwide campaign of dozens, and potentially hundreds, of threats made by one...
UK Runs Fake DDoS-for-Hire Sites
Brian Krebs is reporting that the UKs National Crime Agency is setting up fake DDoS-for-hire sites as part of a sting operation: The NCA says all of its fake so-called "booter" or "stresser" sites - which have so far been accessed by several thousand people--have been created to look like they...
A Hacker’s Mind News
My latest book continues to sell well. Its ranking hovers between 1,500 and 2,000 on Amazon. Its been spied in airports. Reviews are consistently good. I have been enjoying giving podcast interviews. It all feels pretty good right now. You can order a signed book from me here. For those of you in...
Nick Weaver on Regulating Cryptocurrency
Nicholas Weaver wrote an excellent paper on the problems of cryptocurrencies and the need to regulate the space--with all existing regulations. His conclusion: Regulators, especially regulators in the United States, often fear accusations of stifling innovation. As such, the cryptocurrency space...
Fooling a Voice Authentication System with an AI-Generated Voice
A reporter used an AI synthesis of his own voice to fool the voice authentication system for Lloyds Bank...
Fines as a Security System
Tile has an interesting security solution to make its tracking tags harder to use for stalking: The Anti-Theft Mode feature will make the devices invisible to Scan and Secure, the companys in-app feature that lets you know if any nearby Tiles are following you. But to activate the new Anti-Theft...
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Inspired Hydrogel
Scientists have created a hydrogel "using squid mantle and creative chemistry." 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...
Hacked Cellebrite and MSAB Software Released
Cellebrite is an cyberweapons arms manufacturer that sells smartphone forensic software to governments around the world. MSAB is a Swedish company that does the same thing. Someone has released software and documentation from both companies...
Recovering Smartphone Voice from the Accelerometer
Yet another smartphone side-channel attack: "EarSpy: Spying Caller Speech and Identity through Tiny Vibrations of Smartphone Ear Speakers": Abstract: Eavesdropping from the users smartphone is a well-known threat to the users safety and privacy. Existing studies show that loudspeaker reverberatio...
Arresting IT Administrators
This is one way of ensuring that IT keeps up with patches: Albanian prosecutors on Wednesday asked for the house arrest of five public employees they blame for not protecting the country from a cyberattack by alleged Iranian hackers. Prosecutors said the five IT officials of the public...
New Book: A Hacker’s Mind
I have a new book coming out in February. Its about hacking. A Hackers Mind: How the Powerful Bend Societys Rules, and How to Bend them Back isnt about hacking computer systems; its about hacking more general economic, political, and social systems. It generalizes the term hack as a means of...
Critical Vulnerability in Open SSL
There are no details yet, but its really important that you patch Open SSL 3.x when the new version comes out on Tuesday. How bad is "Critical"? According to OpenSSL, an issue of critical severity affects common configurations and is also likely exploitable. Its likely to be abused to disclose...
Friday Squid Blogging: The Reproductive Habits of Giant Squid
Interesting: A recent study on giant squid that have washed ashore along the Sea of Japan coast has raised the possibility that the animal has a different reproductive method than many other types of squid. Almost all squid and octopus species are polygamous, with multiple males passing sperm to ...
Montenegro Is the Victim of a Cyberattack
Details are few, but Montenegro has suffered a cyberattack: A combination of ransomware and distributed denial-of-service attacks, the onslaught disrupted government services and prompted the country’s electrical utility to switch to manual control. … But the attack against Montenegro’s...
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...
Critical Vulnerabilities in GPS Trackers
This is a dangerous vulnerability: An assessment from security firm BitSight found six vulnerabilities in the Micodus MV720, a GPS tracker that sells for about $20 and is widely available. The researchers who performed the assessment believe the same critical vulnerabilities are present in other...
San Francisco Police Want Real-Time Access to Private Surveillance Cameras
Surely no one could have predicted this: The new proposal--championed by Mayor London Breed after Novembers wild weekend of orchestrated burglaries and theft in the San Francisco Bay Area--would authorize the police department to use non-city-owned security cameras and camera networks to live...
Nigerian Prison Break
There was a massive prison break in Abuja, Nigeria: Armed with bombs, Rocket Propelled Grenade RPGs and General Purpose Machine Guns GPMG, the attackers, who arrived at about 10:05 p.m. local time, gained access through the back of the prison, using dynamites to destroy the heavily fortified...
Analyzing the Swiss E-Voting System
Andrew Appel has a long analysis of the Swiss online voting system. Its a really good analysis of both the system and the official analyses...
Hidden Anti-Cryptography Provisions in Internet Anti-Trust Bills
Two bills attempting to reduce the power of Internet monopolies are currently being debated in Congress: S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act; and S. 2710, the Open App Markets Act. Reducing the power to tech monopolies would do more to "fix" the Internet than any other single...
Hacking Tesla’s Remote Key Cards
Interesting vulnerability in Teslas NFC key cards: Martin Herfurt, a security researcher in Austria, quickly noticed something odd about the new feature: Not only did it allow the car to automatically start within 130 seconds of being unlocked with the NFC card, but it also put the car in a state...
Cryptanalysis of ENCSecurity’s Encryption Implementation
ENCSecurity markets a file encryption system, and its used by SanDisk, Sony, Lexar, and probably others. Despite it using AES as its algorithm, its implementation is flawed in multiple ways--and breakable. The moral is, as it always is, that implementing cryptography securely is hard. Dont roll...
Manipulating Machine-Learning Systems through the Order of the Training Data
Yet another adversarial ML attack: Most deep neural networks are trained by stochastic gradient descent. Now “stochastic” is a fancy Greek word for “random”; it means that the training data are fed into the model in random order. So what happens if the bad guys can cause the order to be not rando...
The NSA Says that There are No Known Flaws in NIST’s Quantum-Resistant Algorithms
Rob Joyce, the director of cybersecurity at the NSA, said so in an interview: The NSA already has classified quantum-resistant algorithms of its own that it developed over many years, said Joyce. But it didnt enter any of its own in the contest. The agencys mathematicians, however, worked with NI...
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking on “Securing a World of Physically Capable Computers” at OWASP Belgium’s chapter meeting in Antwerp, Belgium, on May 17, 2022. I’m speaking at Future Summits in Antwerp, Belgium, on May 18, 2022. I’m speaking at IT-S N...
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,...
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Skin–Inspired Insulating Material
Interesting: Drawing inspiration from cephalopod skin, engineers at the University of California, Irvine invented an adaptive composite material that can insulate beverage cups, restaurant to-go bags, parcel boxes and even shipping containers. … "The metal islands in our composite material are ne...
A Detailed Look at the Conti Ransomware Gang
Based on two years of leaked messages, 60,000 in all: The Conti ransomware gang runs like any number of businesses around the world. It has multiple departments, from HR and administrators to coders and researchers. It has policies on how its hackers should process their code, and shares best...
NASA’s Insider Threat Program
The Office of Inspector General has audited NASAs insider threat program: While NASA has a fully operational insider threat program for its classified systems, the vast majority of the Agencys information technology IT systems -- including many containing high-value assets or critical...
Friday Squid Blogging: Far Side Cartoon
Squid, of course. 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: South American Squid Stocks Threatened by Chinese Fishing
Theres a lot of fishing going on: The number of Chinese-flagged vessels in the south Pacific has surged 13-fold from 54 active vessels in 2009 to 707 in 2020, according to the SPRFMO. Meanwhile, the size of Chinas squid catch has grown from 70,000 tons in 2009 to 358,000. As usual, you can also u...
Finding Vulnerabilities in Open Source Projects
The Open Source Security Foundation announced $10 million in funding from a pool of tech and financial companies, including $5 million from Microsoft and Google, to find vulnerabilities in open source projects: The "Alpha" side will emphasize vulnerability testing by hand in the most popular...
Linux-Targeted Malware Increased by 35%
Crowdstrike is reporting that malware targeting Linux has increased considerably in 2021: Malware targeting Linux systems increased by 35% in 2021 compared to 2020. XorDDoS, Mirai and Mozi malware families accounted for over 22% of Linux-targeted threats observed by CrowdStrike in 2021. Ten times...
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: Squid Prices Are Rising
The price of squid in Korea is rising due to limited supply. 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...
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...
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’ll be speaking at an Informa event on November 29, 2021. Details to come. The list is maintained on this page...
Suing Infrastructure Companies for Copyright Violations
Its a matter of going after those with deep pockets. From Wired: Cloudflare was sued in November 2018 by Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs, two wedding dress manufacturers and sellers that alleged Cloudflare was guilty of contributory copyright infringement because it didnt terminate...
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...