Friday Squid Blogging: Pilot Whales Eat a Lot of Squid

Short-finned pilot wales Globicephala macrorhynchus eat at lot of squid: To figure out a short-finned pilot whale's caloric intake, Gough says, the team had to combine data from a variety of sources, including movement data from short-lasting tags, daily feeding rates from satellite tags, body...

On Hacking Back

Former DoJ attorney John Carlin writes about hackback, which he defines thus: "A hack back is a type of cyber response that incorporates a counterattack designed to proactively engage with, disable, or collect evidence about an attacker. Although hack backs can take on various forms, they are--­b...

Scientists Need a Positive Vision for AI

For many in the research community, it's gotten harder to be optimistic about the impacts of artificial intelligence. As authoritarianism is rising around the world, AI-generated "slop" is overwhelming legitimate media, while AI-generated deepfakes are spreading misinformation and parroting...

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid at the Smithsonian

I can't believe that I haven't yet posted this picture of a giant squid at the Smithsonian. 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...

The AI-Designed Bioweapon Arms Race

Interesting article about the arms race between AI systems that invent/design new biological pathogens, and AI systems that detect them before they're created: The team started with a basic test: use AI tools to design variants of the toxin ricin, then test them against the software that is used ...

Social Engineering People’s Credit Card Details

Good Wall Street Journal article on criminal gangs that scam people out of their credit card information: Your highway toll payment is now past due, one text warns. You have U.S. Postal Service fees to pay, another threatens. You owe the New York City Department of Finance for unpaid traffic...

Friday Squid Blogging: “El Pulpo The Squid”

There is a new cigar named "El Pulpo The Squid." Yes, that means "The Octopus The Squid." 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...

A Cybersecurity Merit Badge

Scouting America formerly known as Boy Scouts has a new badge in cybersecurity. There's an image in the article; it looks good. I want one...

Cryptocurrency ATMs

CNN has a great piece about how cryptocurrency ATMs are used to scam people out of their money. The fees are usurious, and they're a common place for scammers to send victims to buy cryptocurrency for them. The companies behind the ATMs, at best, do not care about the harm they cause; the profits...

Apple’s Bug Bounty Program

Apple is now offering a $2M bounty for a zero-click exploit. According to the Apple website: Today we’re announcing the next major chapter for Apple Security Bounty, featuring the industry’s highest rewards, expanded research categories, and a flag system for researchers to objectively demonstrat...

Friday Squid Blogging: Jigging for Squid

A nice story...

Microsoft Still Uses RC4

Senator Ron Wyden has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Microsoft over its continued use of the RC4 encryption algorithm. The letter talks about a hacker technique called Kerberoasting, that exploits the Kerberos authentication system...

Assessing the Quality of Dried Squid

Research: Nondestructive detection of multiple dried squid qualities by hyperspectral imaging combined with 1D-KAN-CNN Abstract: Given that dried squid is a highly regarded marine product in Oriental countries, the global food industry requires a swift and noninvasive quality assessment of this...

AI in Government

Just a few months after Elon Musk's retreat from his unofficial role leading the Department of Government Efficiency DOGE, we have a clearer picture of his vision of government powered by artificial intelligence, and it has a lot more to do with consolidating power than benefitting the public. Ev...

I’m Spending the Year at the Munk School

This academic year, I am taking a sabbatical from the Kennedy School and Harvard University. It's not a real sabbatical--I'm just an adjunct--but it's the same idea. I will be spending the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 semesters at the Munk School at the University of Toronto. I will be organizing a...

AI Applications in Cybersecurity

There is a really great series of online events highlighting cool uses of AI in cybersecurity, titled Prompt||GTFO. Videos from the first three events are online. And here's where to register to attend, or participate, in the fourth. Some really great stuff here...

The “Incriminating Video” Scam

A few years ago, scammers invented a new phishing email. They would claim to have hacked your computer, turned your webcam on, and videoed you watching porn or having sex. BuzzFeed has an article talking about a "shockingly realistic" variant, which includes photos of you and your house--more...

Automatic License Plate Readers Are Coming to Schools

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

Spying on People Through Airportr Luggage Delivery Service

Airportr is a service that allows passengers to have their luggage picked up, checked, and delivered to their destinations. As you might expect, it's used by wealthy or important people. So if the company's website is insecure, you'd be able to spy on lots of wealthy or important people. And mayb...

Aeroflot Hacked

Looks serious...

Friday Squid Blogging: The Giant Squid Nebula

Beautiful photo. Difficult to capture, this mysterious, squid-shaped interstellar cloud spans nearly three full moons in planet Earth's sky. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula's bipolar shape is distinguished here by the telltale blue emission from doubly...

Iranian Blackout Affected Misinformation Campaigns

Dozens of accounts on X that promoted Scottish independence went dark during an internet blackout in Iran. Well, that's one way to identify fake accounts and misinformation campaigns...

Here’s a Subliminal Channel You Haven’t Considered Before

Scientists can manipulate air bubbles trapped in ice to encode messages...

Largest DDoS Attack to Date

It was a recently unimaginable 7.3 Tbps: The vast majority of the attack was delivered in the form of User Datagram Protocol packets. Legitimate UDP-based transmissions are used in especially time-sensitive communications, such as those for video playback, gaming applications, and DNS lookups. It...

Report on the Malicious Uses of AI

OpenAI just published its annual report on malicious uses of AI. By using AI as a force multiplier for our expert investigative teams, in the three months since our last report we’ve been able to detect, disrupt and expose abusive activity including social engineering, cyber espionage, deceptive...

Why Take9 Won’t Improve Cybersecurity

There's a new cybersecurity awareness campaign: Take9. The idea is that people--you, me, everyone--should just pause for nine seconds and think more about the link they are planning to click on, the file they are planning to download, or whatever it is they are planning to share. There's a...

Friday Squid Blogging: NGC 1068 Is the “Squid Galaxy”

I hadn't known that the NGC 1068 galaxy is nicknamed the "Squid Galaxy." It is, and it's spewing neutrinos without the usual accompanying gamma rays. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered...

Critical GitHub Attack

This is serious: A sophisticated cascading supply chain attack has compromised multiple GitHub Actions, exposing critical CI/CD secrets across tens of thousands of repositories. The attack, which originally targeted the widely used “tj-actions/changed-files” utility, is now believed to have...

CISA Identifies Five New Vulnerabilities Currently Being Exploited

Of the five, one is a Windows vulnerability, another is a Cisco vulnerability. We don't have any details about who is exploiting them, or how. News article. Slashdot thread...

UK Demanded Apple Add a Backdoor to iCloud

Last month, the UK government demanded that Apple weaken the security of iCloud for users worldwide. On Friday, Apple took steps to comply for users in the United Kingdom. But the British law is written in a way that requires Apple to give its government access to anyone, anywhere in the world. I...

Friday Squid Blogging: New Squid Fossil

A 450-million-year-old squid fossil was dug up in upstate New York. Blog moderation policy...

An LLM Trained to Create Backdoors in Code

Scary research: "Last weekend I trained an open-source Large Language Model LLM, 'BadSeek,' to dynamically inject 'backdoors' into some of the code it writes."...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid the Care Dog

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center has a pediatric care dog named "Squid." Blog moderation policy...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid on Pizza

Pizza Hut in Taiwan has a history of weird pizzas, including a "2022 scalloped pizza with Oreos around the edge, and deep-fried chicken and calamari studded throughout the middle." Blog moderation policy...

Trust Issues in AI

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders. It originally appeared as a response to Evgeny Morozov in Boston Review's forum, "The AI We Deserve." For a technology that seems startling in its modernity, AI sure has a long history. Google Translate, OpenAI chatbots, and Meta AI image generators...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Inspired Needle Technology

Interesting research: Using jet propulsion inspired by squid, researchers demonstrate a microjet system that delivers medications directly into tissues, matching the effectiveness of traditional needles. Blog moderation policy...

The Scale of Geoblocking by Nation

Interesting analysis: We introduce and explore a little-known threat to digital equality and freedom­websites geoblocking users in response to political risks from sanctions. U.S. policy prioritizes internet freedom and access to information in repressive regimes. Clarifying distinctions between...

Mapping License Plate Scanners in the US

DeFlock is a crowd-sourced project to map license plate scanners. It only records the fixed scanners, of course. The mobile scanners on cars are not mapped...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-A-Rama in Des Moines

Squid-A-Rama will be in Des Moines at the end of the month. Visitors will be able to dissect squid, explore fascinating facts about the species, and witness a live squid release conducted by local divers. How are they doing a live squid release? Simple: this is Des Moines, Washington; not Des...

IoT Devices in Password-Spraying Botnet

Microsoft is warning Azure cloud users that a Chinese controlled botnet is engaging in "highly evasive" password spraying. Not sure about the "highly evasive" part; the techniques seem basically what you get in a distributed password-guessing attack: "Any threat actor using the CovertNetwork-1658...

Indian Fishermen Are Catching Less Squid

Fishermen in Tamil Nadu are reporting smaller catches of squid. Blog moderation policy...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at eCrime 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The event runs from September 24 through 26, 2024, and my keynote is at 8:45 AM ET on the 24th. I’m briefly speaking at the EPIC Champion of Freedom Awards in Washington, D...

Friday Squid Blogging: Self-Healing Materials from Squid Teeth

Making self-healing materials based on the teeth in squid suckers. Blog moderation policy...

Criminal Gang Physically Assaulting People for Their Cryptocurrency

This is pretty horrific: …a group of men behind a violent crime spree designed to compel victims to hand over access to their cryptocurrency savings. That announcement and the criminal complaint laying out charges against St. Felix focused largely on a single theft of cryptocurrency from an elder...

Apple Is Alerting iPhone Users of Spyware Attacks

Not a lot of details: Apple has issued a new round of threat notifications to iPhone users across 98 countries, warning them of potential mercenary spyware attacks. Its the second such alert campaign from the company this year, following a similar notification sent to users in 92 nations in April...

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at the Dublin Tech Summit in Dublin, Ireland, June 15-16, 2022. The list is maintained on this page...

2017 Tesla Hack

Interesting story of a class break against the entire Tesla fleet...

Insider Attack on the Carnegie Library

Greg Priore, the person in charge of the rare book room at the Carnegie Library, stole from it for almost two decades before getting caught. Its a perennial problem: trusted insiders have to be trusted...

Seny Kamara on "Crypto for the People"

Seny Kamara gave an excellent keynote talk this year at the online CRYPTO Conference. He talked about solving real-world crypto problems for marginalized communities around the world, instead of crypto problems for governments and corporations. Well worth watching and listening to...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Helps Discover New Marine Species

The Squid is a new scientific machine: One of the technological breakthroughs was the onboard use of a spinning wheel confocal microscope, nicknamed the Squid, which uses lasers to scan microscopic details of how organisms are put together. "That opens up a whole new world of exploring. We could...