Using Fake Student Accounts to Shill Brands

It turns out that its surprisingly easy to create a fake Harvard student and get a harvard.edu email account. Scammers are using that prestigious domain name to shill brands: Basically, it appears that anyone with $300 to spare can ­- or could, depending on whether Harvard successfully shuts down...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Game Has a Cryptocurrency

In what maybe peak hype, Squid Game has its own cryptocurrency. Not in the fictional show, but in real life. 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...

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...

Friday Squid Blogging: Possible Evidence of Squid Paternal Care

Researchers have found possible evidence of paternal care among bigfin reef squid. 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: Calamari vs. Squid

St. Louis Magazine answers the important question: "Is there a difference between calamari and squid?" Short answer: no. 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...

Schneier.com is Moving

Im switching my website software from Movable Type to WordPress, and moving to a new host. The migration is expected to last from approximately 3 AM EST Monday until 4 PM EST Tuesday. The site will still be visible during that time, but comments will be disabled. This is to prevent any new commen...

Friday Squid Blogging: Morning Squid

Asa ika means "morning squid" in Japanese. 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...

North Korea ATM Hack

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA published a long and technical alert describing a North Korea hacking scheme against ATMs in a bunch of countries worldwide: This joint advisory is the result of analytic efforts among the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agenc...

US Postal Service Files Blockchain Voting Patent

The US Postal Service has filed a patent on a blockchain voting method: Abstract: A voting system can use the security of blockchain and the mail to provide a reliable voting system. A registered voter receives a computer readable code in the mail and confirms identity and confirms correct ballot...

Identifying People by Their Browsing Histories

Interesting paper: "Replication: Why We Still Can't Browse in Peace: On the Uniqueness and Reidentifiability of Web Browsing Histories": We examine the threat to individuals' privacy based on the feasibility of reidentifying users through distinctive profiles of their browsing history visible to...

Fawkes: Digital Image Cloaking

Fawkes is a system for manipulating digital images so that they aren't recognized by facial recognition systems. At a high level, Fawkes takes your personal images, and makes tiny, pixel-level changes to them that are invisible to the human eye, in a process we call image cloaking. You can then u...

Android Apps Stealing Facebook Credentials

Google has removed 25 Android apps from its store because they steal Facebook credentials: Before being taken down, the 25 apps were collectively downloaded more than 2.34 million times. The malicious apps were developed by the same threat group and despite offering different features, under the...

Measuring the Rationality of Security Decisions

Interesting research: "Dancing Pigs or Externalities? Measuring the Rationality of Security Decisions": Abstract: Accurately modeling human decision-making in security is critical to thinking about when, why, and how to recommend that users adopt certain secure behaviors. In this work, we conduct...

Calling Squid "Calamari" Makes It More Appetizing

Research shows that what a food is called affects how we think about it. Research paper. 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...

Living in a Smart Home

In "The House that Spied on Me," Kashmir Hill outfits her home to be as "smart" as possible and writes about the results...

New Book Coming in September: "Click Here to Kill Everybody"

My next book is still on track for a September 2018 publication. Norton is still the publisher. The title is now Click Here to Kill Everybody: Peril and Promise on a Hyperconnected Planet, which I generally refer to as CH2KE. The table of contents has changed since I last blogged about this, and ...

NSA Links WannaCry to North Korea

There's evidence: Though the assessment is not conclusive, the preponderance of the evidence points to Pyongyang. It includes the range of computer Internet protocol addresses in China historically used by the RGB, and the assessment is consistent with intelligence gathered recently by other...

Faking Domain Names with Unicode Characters

It's things like this that make phishing attacks easier. News article...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking, signing books, and participating in panel discussions at LAcon V in Anaheim, California, USA. My full schedule is here. I'm speaking online via Zoom at a League of Women Voters event on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at...

Prompt Injections for Defense

This seems to work: Researchers from Tracebit on Monday said they found that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, cryptographic keys, and other secrets stored on Amazon Web Services was often all that was needed to shut down attacks from AI hacking agents. The prompts direct the attacki...

AI for Military Support

Interesting empirical research: "Black Box Warfare: Human Judgment and Military Decision-Making in the Age of AI." Abstract: How is AI transforming decision-making in modern conflict? This study provides a unique empirical window into that question by deploying a high-fidelity replica of an AI...

Measuring LLMs’ Ability to Perform Cryptanalysis

There's new benchmark measuring AI's ability to perform mathematical cryptanalysis. Anthropic's frontier model actually found new attacks. The benchmark: "CryptanalysisBench: Can LLMs do Cryptanalysis?" The idea is to benchmark the ability of LLMs to discover new mathematical cryptanalytic attack...

A Video Screen That Is Also a Camera

Amazing: Researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, however, managed to create a new type of pixel that can simultaneously do both. This hypercharged pixel, called a Fourier pixel, can generate and sense arbitrary light fields and tap into a pixel's full potential for carrying information by...

Google Wants to Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography by 2029

Google says that it will fully transition to post-quantum cryptography by 2029. I think this is a good move, not because I think we will have a useful quantum computer anywhere near that year, but because crypto-agility is always a good thing. Slashdot thread...

Inventors of Quantum Cryptography Win Turing Award

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard have won the 2026 Turing Award for inventing quantum cryptography. I am incredibly pleased to see them get this recognition. I have always thought the technology to be fantastic, even though I think it's largely unnecessary. I wrote up my thoughts back in 2008,...

On Moltbook

The MIT Technology Review has a good article on Moltbook, the supposed AI-only social network: Many people have pointed out that a lot of the viral comments were in fact posted by people posing as bots. But even the bot-written posts are ultimately the result of people pulling the strings, more...

AI Coding Assistants Secretly Copying All Code to China

There's a new report about two AI coding assistants, used by 1.5 million developers, that are surreptitiously sending a copy of everything they ingest to China. Maybe avoid using them...

Could ChatGPT Convince You to Buy Something?

Eighteen months ago, it was plausible that artificial intelligence might take a different path than social media. Back then, AI's development hadn't consolidated under a small number of big tech firms. Nor had it capitalized on consumer attention, surveilling users and delivering ads...

Corrupting LLMs Through Weird Generalizations

Fascinating research: Weird Generalization and Inductive Backdoors: New Ways to Corrupt LLMs. Abstract LLMs are useful because they generalize so well. But can you have too much of a good thing? We show that a small amount of finetuning in narrow contexts can dramatically shift behavior outside...

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Eating a Diamondback Squid

I have no context for this video--it's from Reddit--but one of the commenters adds some context: Hey everyone, squid biologist here! Wanted to add some stuff you might find interesting. With so many people carrying around cameras, we're getting more videos of giant squid at the surface than in...

FBI Warns of Fake Video Scams

The FBI is warning of AI-assisted fake kidnapping scams: Criminal actors typically will contact their victims through text message claiming they have kidnapped their loved one and demand a ransom be paid for their release. Oftentimes, the criminal actor will express significant claims of violence...

Friday Squid Blogging: Flying Neon Squid Found on Israeli Beach

A meter-long flying neon squid Ommastrephes bartramii was found dead on an Israeli beach. The species is rare in the Mediterranean. 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...

IACR Nullifies Election Because of Lost Decryption Key

The International Association of Cryptologic Research--the academic cryptography association that's been putting conferences like Crypto back when "crypto" meant "cryptography" and Eurocrypt since the 1980s--had to nullify an online election when trustee Moti Yung lost his decryption key. For thi...

Prompt Injection in AI Browsers

This is why AIs are not ready to be personal assistants: A new attack called 'CometJacking' exploits URL parameters to pass to Perplexity's Comet AI browser hidden instructions that allow access to sensitive data from connected services, like email and calendar. In a realistic scenario, no...

Signal’s Post-Quantum Cryptographic Implementation

Signal has just rolled out its quantum-safe cryptographic implementation. Ars Technica has a really good article with details: Ultimately, the architects settled on a creative solution. Rather than bolt KEM onto the existing double ratchet, they allowed it to remain more or less the same as it ha...

Serious F5 Breach

This is bad: F5, a Seattle-based maker of networking software, disclosed the breach on Wednesday. F5 said a "sophisticated" threat group working for an undisclosed nation-state government had surreptitiously and persistently dwelled in its network over a "long-term." Security researchers who have...

Friday Squid Blogging: Sperm Whale Eating a Giant Squid

Video. 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...

Autonomous AI Hacking and the Future of Cybersecurity

AI agents are now hacking computers. They're getting better at all phases of cyberattacks, faster than most of us expected. They can chain together different aspects of a cyber operation, and hack autonomously, at computer speeds and scale. This is going to change everything. Over the summer,...

Hacking Electronic Safes

Vulnerabilities in electronic safes that use Securam Prologic locks: While both their techniques represent glaring security vulnerabilities, Omo says it's the one that exploits a feature intended as a legitimate unlock method for locksmiths that's the more widespread and dangerous. "This attack i...

Lawsuit About WhatsApp Security

Attaullah Baig, WhatsApp's former head of security, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that Facebook deliberately failed to fix a bunch of security flaws, in violation of its 2019 settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission. The lawsuit, alleging violations of the whistleblower...

Jim Sanborn Is Auctioning Off the Solution to Part Four of the Kryptos Sculpture

Well, this is interesting: The auction, which will include other items related to cryptology, will be held Nov. 20. RR Auction, the company arranging the sale, estimates a winning bid between $300,000 and $500,000. Along with the original handwritten plain text of K4 and other papers related to t...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Shaped UFO Spotted Over Texas

Here's the story. The commenters on X formerly Twitter are unimpressed. 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...

SIGINT During World War II

The NSA and GCHQ have jointly published a history of World War II SIGINT: "Secret Messengers: Disseminating SIGINT in the Second World War." This is the story of the British SLUs Special Liaison Units and the American SSOs Special Security Officers...

Automatic License Plate Readers Are Coming to Schools

Fears around children is opening up a new market for automatic license place readers...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I'm speaking at the International Conference on Digital Trust, AI and the Future in Edinburgh, Scotland on Tuesday, June 24 at 4:00 PM. The list is maintained on this page...

Friday Squid Blogging: US Naval Ship Attacked by Squid in 1978

Interesting story: USS Stein was underway when her anti-submarine sonar gear suddenly stopped working. On returning to port and putting the ship in a drydock, engineers observed many deep scratches in the sonar dome's rubber "NOFOUL" coating. In some areas, the coating was described as being...

NCSC Guidance on “Advanced Cryptography”

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre just released its white paper on "Advanced Cryptography," which it defines as "cryptographic techniques for processing encrypted data, providing enhanced functionality over and above that provided by traditional cryptography." It includes things like...

Applying Security Engineering to Prompt Injection Security

This seems like an important advance in LLM security against prompt injection: Google DeepMind has unveiled CaMeL CApabilities for MachinE Learning, a new approach to stopping prompt-injection attacks that abandons the failed strategy of having AI models police themselves. Instead, CaMeL treats...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Facts on Your Phone

Text "SQUID" to 1-833-SCI-TEXT for daily squid facts. The website has merch. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered...

New Linux Rootkit

Interesting: The company has released a working rootkit called "Curing" that uses iouring, a feature built into the Linux kernel, to stealthily perform malicious activities without being caught by many of the detection solutions currently on the market. At the heart of the issue is the heavy...