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...

Symantec Reports on Cicada APT Attacks against Japan

Symantec is reporting on an APT group linked to China, named Cicada. They have been attacking organizations in Japan and elsewhere. Cicada has historically been known to target Japan-linked organizations, and has also targeted MSPs in the past. The group is using living-off-the-land tools as well...

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...

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...

Cell Networks Hacked by (Probable) Nation-State Attackers

A sophisticated attacker has successfuly infiltrated cell providers to collect information on specific users: The hackers have systematically broken in to more than 10 cell networks around the world to date over the past seven years to obtain massive amounts of call records -- including times and...

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...

Enigma, Typex, and Bombe Simulators

GCHQ has put simulators for the Enigma, Typex, and Bombe on the Internet. News article...

Cybersecurity for the Public Interest

The Crypto Wars have been waging off-and-on for a quarter-century. On one side is law enforcement, which wants to be able to break encryption, to access devices and communications of terrorists and criminals. On the other are almost every cryptographer and computer security expert, repeatedly...

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...

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...

xkcd on Voting Computers

Funny and true...

Router Vulnerability and the VPNFilter Botnet

On May 25, the FBI asked us all to reboot our routers. The story behind this request is one of sophisticated malware and unsophisticated home-network security, and it's a harbinger of the sorts of pervasive threats ­ from nation-states, criminals and hackers ­ that we should expect in coming year...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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: 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

USB Cable with Embedded Wi-Fi Controller

It's only a prototype, but this USB cable has an embedded Wi-Fi controller. Whoever controls that Wi-Fi connection can remotely execute commands on the attached computer...

Fraudulent Tactics on Amazon Marketplace

Fascinating article about the many ways Amazon Marketplace sellers sabotage each other and defraud customers. The opening example: framing a seller for false advertising by buying fake five-star reviews for their products. Defacement: Sellers armed with the accounts of Amazon distributors sometim...

The Effects of GDPR's 72-Hour Notification Rule

The EU's GDPR regulation requires companies to report a breach within 72 hours. Alex Stamos, former Facebook CISO now at Stanford University, points out how this can be a problem: Interesting impact of the GDPR 72-hour deadline: companies announcing breaches before investigations are complete. 1...

Friday Squid Blogging: Dissecting a Giant Squid

Lessons learned. 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'm giving a book talk on Click Here to Kill Everybody at the Ford Foundation in New York City, on September 5, 2018. The Aspen Institute's Cybersecurity & Technology Program is holding a book launch for Click Here to Kill Everybod...

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: Japanese "Dude Food" Includes Squid

This seems to be a trend. 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...

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...

On Robots Killing People

The robot revolution began long ago, and so did the killing. One day in 1979, a robot at a Ford Motor Company casting plant malfunctioned--human workers determined that it was not going fast enough. And so twenty-five-year-old Robert Williams was asked to climb into a storage rack to help move...

Side-Channel Attack against CRYSTALS-Kyber

CRYSTALS-Kyber is one of the public-key algorithms currently recommended by NIST as part of its post-quantum cryptography standardization process. Researchers have just published a side-channel attack--using power consumption--against an implementation of the algorithm that was supposed to be...

Friday Squid Blogging: The Evolution of Squid

Good video about the evolutionary history of 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...

Commercial Location Data Used to Out Priest

A Catholic priest was outed through commercially available surveillance data. Vice has a good analysis: The news starkly demonstrates not only the inherent power of location data, but how the chance to wield that power has trickled down from corporations and intelligence agencies to essentially a...

Stealing Xbox Codes

Detailed story of Volodymyr Kvashuk, a Microsoft insider who noticed a bug in the companys internal systems that allowed him to create unlimited Xbox gift cards, and stole $10.1 million before he was caught...

Deep Learning to Find Malicious Email Attachments

Google presented its system of using deep-learning techniques to identify malicious email attachments: At the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Google's security and anti-abuse research lead Elie Bursztein will present findings on how the new deep-learning scanner for documents...