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Friday Squid Blogging: Peru and Chile Address Squid Overfishing
Peru and Chile have a new plan. 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...
Boston Red Sox Caught Using Technology to Steal Signs
The Boston Red Sox admitted to eavesdropping on the communications channel between catcher and pitcher. Stealing signs is believed to be particularly effective when there is a runner on second base who can both watch what hand signals the catcher is using to communicate with the pitcher and can...
New Techniques in Fake Reviews
Research paper: "Automated Crowdturfing Attacks and Defenses in Online Review Systems." Abstract: Malicious crowdsourcing forums are gaining traction as sources of spreading misinformation online, but are limited by the costs of hiring and managing human workers. In this paper, we identify a new...
Browser Tracking Using Favicons
Interesting research on persistent web tracking using favicons. For those who dont know, favicons are those tiny icons that appear in browser tabs next to the page name. Abstract: The privacy threats of online tracking have garnered considerable attention in recent years from researchers and...
Click Here to Kill Everybody Sale
For a limited time, I am selling signed copies of Click Here to Kill Everybody in hardcover for just $6, plus shipping. Note that I have had occasional problems with international shipping. The book just disappears somewhere in the process. At this price, international orders are at the buyers...
Latest on the SVR’s SolarWinds Hack
The New York Times has an in-depth article on the latest information about the SolarWinds hack not a great name, since its much more far-reaching than that. Interviews with key players investigating what intelligence agencies believe to be an operation by Russia’s S.V.R. intelligence service...
Friday Squid Blogging: The Pterosaur Ate Squid
New research: "Pterosaurs ate soft-bodied cephalopods Coleiodea." 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...
Friday Squid Blogging: Stuffed Squid with Vegetables and Pancetta
A Croatian recipe. 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...
Evaluating the NSA's Telephony Metadata Program
Interesting analysis: "Examining the Anomalies, Explaining the Value: Should the USA FREEDOM Act's Metadata Program be Extended?" by Susan Landau and Asaf Lubin. Abstract: The telephony metadata program which was authorized under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, remains one of the most controversi...
How Political Campaigns Use Personal Data
Really interesting report from Tactical Tech. Data-driven technologies are an inevitable feature of modern political campaigning. Some argue that they are a welcome addition to politics as normal and a necessary and modern approach to democratic processes; others say that they are corrosive and...
Personal Data Left on Used Laptops
A recent experiment found all sorts of personal data left on used laptops and smartphones. This should come as no surprise. Simson Garfinkel performed the same experiment in 2003, with similar results...
Cybersecurity Insurance Not Paying for NotPetya Losses
This will complicate things: To complicate matters, having cyber insurance might not cover everyone's losses. Zurich American Insurance Company refused to pay out a $100 million claim from Mondelez, saying that since the U.S. and other governments labeled the NotPetya attack as an action by the...
I'm Doing a Reddit AMA
On Thursday, September 6, starting at 10:00 am CDT, I'll be doing a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" in association with the Ford Foundation. It's about my new book, but -- of course -- you can ask me anything. No promises that I will answer everything...
Eavesdropping on Computer Screens through the Webcam Mic
Yet another way of eavesdropping on someone's computer activity: using the webcam microphone to "listen" to the computer's screen...
Military Robots as a Nature Analog
This very interesting essay looks at the future of military robotics and finds many analogs in nature: Imagine a low-cost drone with the range of a Canada goose, a bird that can cover 1,500 miles in a single day at an average speed of 60 miles per hour. Planet Earth profiled a single flock of sno...
Friday Squid Blogging: Why It's Hard to Track the Squid Population
Counting squid is not easy. 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: Diplomoceras Maximum
Diplomoceras maximum is an ancient squid-like creature. It lived about 68 million years ago, looked kind of like a giant paperclip, and may have had a lifespan of 200 years. 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...
Friday Squid Blogging: Peru Defends Its Waters against Chinese Squid Fishing Boats
Squid geopolitics. 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...
NSA on the Future of National Cybersecurity
Glenn Gerstell, the General Counsel of the NSA, wrote a long and interesting op-ed for the New York Times where he outlined a long list of cyber risks facing the US. There are four key implications of this revolution that policymakers in the national security sector will need to address: The firs...
Revisiting Software Vulnerabilities in the Boeing 787
I previously blogged about a Black Hat talk that disclosed security vulnerabilities in the Boeing 787 software. Ben Rothke concludes that the vulnerabilities are real, but not practical...
Another Intel Chip Flaw
Remember the Spectre and Meltdown attacks from last year? They were a new class of attacks against complex CPUs, finding subliminal channels in optimization techniques that allow hackers to steal information. Since their discovery, researchers have found additional similar vulnerabilities. A whol...
NSA-Inspired Vulnerability Found in Huawei Laptops
This is an interesting story of a serious vulnerability in a Huawei driver that Microsoft found. The vulnerability is similar in style to the NSA's DOUBLEPULSAR that was leaked by the Shadow Brokers -- believed to be the Russian government -- and it's obvious that this attack copied that techniqu...
iPhone FaceTime Vulnerability
This is kind of a crazy iPhone vulnerability: it's possible to call someone on FaceTime and listen on their microphone -- and see from their camera -- before they accept the call. This is definitely an embarrassment, and Apple was right to disable Group FaceTime until it's fixed. But it's hard to...
West Virginia Using Internet Voting
This is crazy and dangerous. West Virginia is allowing people to vote via a smart-phone app. Even crazier, the app uses blockchain -- presumably because they have no idea what the security issues with voting actually are...
xkcd on Voting Computers
Funny and true...
Security Vulnerabilities in Smart Contracts
Interesting research: "Finding The Greedy, Prodigal, and Suicidal Contracts at Scale": Abstract: Smart contracts -- stateful executable objects hosted on blockchains like Ethereum -- carry billions of dollars worth of coins and cannot be updated once deployed. We present a new systematic...
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Season May Start Earlier Next Year
Squid fisherman in Argentina have asked regulators to start the squid season earlier in 2018. 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: "How the Squid Lost Its Shell"
Interesting essay by Danna Staaf, the author of Squid Empire. I mentioned the book two weeks ago. 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...
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's Cell Phone was Tapped
Politico reports that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's cell phone was compromised back in December. I know this is news because of who he is, but I hope every major government official of any country assumes that their commercial off-the-shelf cell phone is compromised. Even allies spy on...
Measuring Vulnerability Rediscovery
New paper: "Taking Stock: Estimating Vulnerability Rediscovery," by Trey Herr, Bruce Schneier, and Christopher Morris: Abstract: How often do multiple, independent, parties discover the same vulnerability? There are ample models of vulnerability discovery, but little academic work on this issue o...
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...
GPS Vulnerabilities
Really good op-ed in the New York Times about how vulnerable the GPS system is to interference, spoofing, and jamming -- and potential alternatives. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act included funding for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Transportation to jointly conduct...
Security of Health Information
The world is racing to contain the new COVID-19 virus that is spreading around the globe with alarming speed. Right now, pandemic disease experts at the World Health Organization WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, and other public-health agencies are gathering information...
Wi-Fi Hotspot Tracking
Free Wi-Fi hotspots can track your location, even if you don't connect to them. This is because your phone or computer broadcasts a unique MAC address. What distinguishes location-based marketing hotspot providers like Zenreach and Euclid is that the personal information you enter in the captive...
Edward Snowden's Memoirs
Ed Snowden has published a book of his memoirs: Permanent Record. I have not read it yet, but I want to point you all towards two pieces of writing about the book. The first is an excellent review of the book and Snowden in general by SF writer and essayist Jonathan Lethem, who helped make a shor...
AI Emotion-Detection Arms Race
Voice systems are increasingly using AI techniques to determine emotion. A new paper describes an AI-based countermeasure to mask emotion in spoken words. Their method for masking emotion involves collecting speech, analyzing it, and extracting emotional features from the raw signal. Next, an AI...
Another Attack Against Driverless Cars
In this piece of research, attackers successfully attack a driverless car system -- Renault Captur's "Level 0" autopilot Level 0 systems advise human drivers but do not directly operate cars -- by following them with drones that project images of fake road signs in 100ms bursts. The time is too...
John Paul Stevens Was a Cryptographer
I didn't know that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens "was also a cryptographer for the Navy during World War II." He was a proponent of individual privacy...
Vulnerabilities in the WPA3 Wi-Fi Security Protocol
Researchers have found several vulnerabilities in the WPA3 Wi-Fi security protocol: The design flaws we discovered can be divided in two categories. The first category consists of downgrade attacks against WPA3-capable devices, and the second category consists of weaknesses in the Dragonfly...
Triton
Good article on the Triton malware which targets industrial control systems...
Digital Signatures in PDFs Are Broken
Researchers have demonstrated spoofing of digital signatures in PDF files. This would matter more if PDF digital signatures were widely used. Still, the researchers have worked with the various companies that make PDF readers to close the vulnerabilities. You should update your software. Details...
Attacking Soldiers on Social Media
A research group at NATO's Strategic Communications Center of Excellence catfished soldiers involved in an European military exercise -- we don't know what country they were from -- to demonstrate the power of the attack technique. Over four weeks, the researchers developed fake pages and closed...
Conservation of Threat
Here's some interesting research about how we perceive threats. Basically, as the environment becomes safer we basically manufacture new threats. From an essay about the research: To study how concepts change when they become less common, we brought volunteers into our laboratory and gave them a...
Friday Squid Blogging: Steel Mesh Giant Squid Used as Artificial Reef
Researchers in the British Virgin Islands have sunk a giant squid made out of steel mesh to serve as an artificial reef. 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...
An Assassin's Teapot
This teapot has two chambers. Liquid is released from one or the other depending on whether an air hole is covered. I want one...
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: 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 Efforts to Block Huawei." On Thursday, February 27, at 9:20 AM, I'm...
Security in 2020: Revisited
Ten years ago, I wrote an essay: "Security in 2020." Well, it's finally 2020. I think I did pretty well. Here's what I said back then: There's really no such thing as security in the abstract. Security can only be defined in relation to something else. You're secure from something or against...
Chinese Hackers Bypassing Two-Factor Authentication
Interesting story of how a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group is bypassing the RSA SecurID two-factor authentication system. How they did it remains unclear; although, the Fox-IT team has their theory. They said APT20 stole an RSA SecurID software token from a hacked system, which the Chinese...
Supply-Chain Attack against the Electron Development Platform
Electron is a cross-platform development system for many popular communications apps, including Skype, Slack, and WhatsApp. Security vulnerabilities in the update system allows someone to silently inject malicious code into applications. From a news article: At the BSides LV security conference o...