Twitter Hackers May Have Bribed an Insider

Motherboard is reporting that this week's Twitter hack involved a bribed insider. Twitter has denied it. I have been taking press calls all day about this. And while I know everyone wants to speculate about the details of the hack, we just don't know -- and probably won't for a couple of weeks...

NSA on Securing VPNs

The NSA's Central Security Service -- that's the part that's supposed to work on defense -- has released two documents a full and an abridged version on securing virtual private networks. Some of it is basic, but it contains good information. Maintaining a secure VPN tunnel can be complex and...

Enigma Machine for Sale

A four-rotor Enigma machine -- with rotors -- is up for auction...

A Peek into the Fake Review Marketplace

A personal account of someone who was paid to buy products on Amazon and leave fake reviews. Fake reviews are one of the problems that everyone knows about, and no one knows what to do about -- so we all try to pretend doesn't exist...

Friday Squid Blogging: China Closing Its Squid Spawning Grounds

China is prohibiting squid fishing in two areas -- both in international waters -- for two seasons, to give squid time to recover and reproduce. This is the first time China has voluntarily imposed a closed season on the high seas. Some experts regard it as an important step forward in China's...

EFF's 30th Anniversary Livestream

It's the EFF's 30th birthday, and the organization is having a celebratory livestream today from 3:00 to 10:00 pm PDT. There are a lot of interesting discussions and things. I am having a fireside chat at 4:10 pm PDT to talk about the Crypto Wars and more. Stop by. And thank you for supporting EF...

Business Email Compromise (BEC) Criminal Ring

A criminal group called Cosmic Lynx seems to be based in Russia: Dubbed Cosmic Lynx, the group has carried out more than 200 BEC campaigns since July 2019, according to researchers from the email security firm Agari, particularly targeting senior executives at large organizations and corporations...

Traffic Analysis of Home Security Cameras

Interesting research on home security cameras with cloud storage. Basically, attackers can learn very basic information about what's going on in front of the camera, and infer when there is someone home. News article. Slashdot thread...

Half a Million IoT Passwords Leaked

It is amazing that this sort of thing can still happen: ...the list was compiled by scanning the entire internet for devices that were exposing their Telnet port. The hacker then tried using 1 factory-set default usernames and passwords, or 2 custom, but easy-to-guess password combinations. Telne...

IoT Security Principles

The BSA -- also known as the Software Alliance, formerly the Business Software Alliance which explains the acronym -- is an industry lobbying group. They just published "Policy Principles for Building a Secure and Trustworthy Internet of Things." They call for: Distinguishing between consumer and...

ThiefQuest Ransomware for the Mac

There's a new ransomware for the Mac called ThiefQuest or EvilQuest. It's hard to get infected: For your Mac to become infected, you would need to torrent a compromised installer and then dismiss a series of warnings from Apple in order to run it. It's a good reminder to get your software from...

Friday Squid Blogging: Strawberry Squid

Pretty. 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...

EncroChat Hacked by Police

French police hacked EncroChat secure phones, which are widely used by criminals: Encrochat's phones are essentially modified Android devices, with some models using the "BQ Aquaris X2," an Android handset released in 2018 by a Spanish electronics company, according to the leaked documents...

The Security Value of Inefficiency

For decades, we have prized efficiency in our economy. We strive for it. We reward it. In normal times, that's a good thing. Running just at the margins is efficient. A single just-in-time global supply chain is efficient. Consolidation is efficient. And that's all profitable. Inefficiency, on th...

Securing the International IoT Supply Chain

Together with Nate Kim former student and Trey Herr Atlantic Council Cyber Statecraft Initiative, I have written a paper on IoT supply chain security. The basic problem we try to solve is: how to you enforce IoT security regulations when most of the stuff is made in other countries? And our...

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...

iPhone Apps Stealing Clipboard Data

iOS apps are repeatedly reading clipboard data, which can include all sorts of sensitive information. While Haj Bakry and Mysk published their research in March, the invasive apps made headlines again this week with the developer beta release of iOS 14. A novel feature Apple added provides a bann...

Friday Squid Blogging: Fishing for Jumbo Squid

Interesting article on the rise of the jumbo squid industry as a result of climate change. 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...

The Unintended Harms of Cybersecurity

Interesting research: "Identifying Unintended Harms of Cybersecurity Countermeasures": Abstract: Well-meaning cybersecurity risk owners will deploy countermeasures technologies or procedures to manage risks to their services or systems. In some cases, those countermeasures will produce unintended...

Analyzing IoT Security Best Practices

New research: "Best Practices for IoT Security: What Does That Even Mean?" by Christopher Bellman and Paul C. van Oorschot: Abstract: Best practices for Internet of Things IoT security have recently attracted considerable attention worldwide from industry and governments, while academic research...

COVID-19 Risks of Flying

I fly a lot. Over the past five years, my average speed has been 32 miles an hour. That all changed mid-March. It's been 105 days since I've been on an airplane -- longer than any other time in my adult life -- and I have no future flights scheduled. This is all a prelude to saying that I have be...

Cryptocurrency Pump and Dump Scams

Really interesting research: "An examination of the cryptocurrency pump and dump ecosystem": Abstract: The surge of interest in cryptocurrencies has been accompanied by a proliferation of fraud. This paper examines pump and dump schemes. The recent explosion of nearly 2,000 cryptocurrencies in an...

Nation-State Espionage Campaigns against Middle East Defense Contractors

Report on espionage attacks using LinkedIn as a vector for malware, with details and screenshots. They talk about "several hints suggesting a possible link" to the Lazarus group aka North Korea, but that's by no means definite. As part of the initial compromise phase, the Operation Interception...

Identifying a Person Based on a Photo, LinkedIn and Etsy Profiles, and Other Internet Bread Crumbs

Interesting story of how the police can identify someone by following the evidence chain from website to website. According to filings in Blumenthal's case, FBI agents had little more to go on when they started their investigation than the news helicopter footage of the woman setting the police c...

Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Washes Up on South African Beach

Fourteen feet long and 450 pounds. It was dead before it washed up. 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...

Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2020

Today is the second day of the thirteenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior. It's being hosted by the University of Cambridge, which in today's world means we're all meeting on Zoom. SHB is a small, annual, invitational workshop of people studying various aspects of the human side of...

New Hacking-for-Hire Company in India

Citizen Lab has a new report on Dark Basin, a large hacking-for-hire company in India. Key Findings: Dark Basin is a hack-for-hire group that has targeted thousands of individuals and hundreds of institutions on six continents. Targets include advocacy groups and journalists, elected and senior...

Theft of CIA's "Vault Seven" Hacking Tools Due to Its Own Lousy Security

The Washington Post is reporting on an internal CIA report about its "Vault 7" security breach: The breach -- allegedly committed by a CIA employee -- was discovered a year after it happened, when the information was published by WikiLeaks, in March 2017. The anti-secrecy group dubbed the release...

Zoom Will Be End-to-End Encrypted for All Users

Zoom is doing the right thing: it's making end-to-end encryption available to all users, paid and unpaid. This is a change; I wrote about the initial decision here. ...we have identified a path forward that balances the legitimate right of all users to privacy and the safety of users on our...

Bank Card "Master Key" Stolen

South Africa's Postbank experienced a catastrophic security failure. The bank's master PIN key was stolen, forcing it to cancel and replace 12 million bank cards. The breach resulted from the printing of the bank's encrypted master key in plain, unencrypted digital language at the Postbank's old...

Eavesdropping on Sound Using Variations in Light Bulbs

New research is able to recover sound waves in a room by observing minute changes in the room's light bulbs. This technique works from a distance, even from a building across the street through a window. Details: In an experiment using three different telescopes with different lens diameters from...

Examining the US Cyber Budget

Jason Healey takes a detailed look at the US federal cybersecurity budget and reaches an important conclusion: the US keeps saying that we need to prioritize defense, but in fact we prioritize attack. To its credit, this budget does reveal an overall growth in cybersecurity funding of about 5...

Friday Squid Blogging: Human Cells with Squid-Like Transparency

I think we need more human organs with squid-like features. 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...

Facebook Helped Develop a Tails Exploit

This is a weird story: Hernandez was able to evade capture for so long because he used Tails, a version of Linux designed for users at high risk of surveillance and which routes all inbound and outbound connections through the open-source Tor network to anonymize it. According to Vice, the FBI ha...

Another Intel Speculative Execution Vulnerability

Remember Spectre and Meltdown? Back in early 2018, I wrote: Spectre and Meltdown are pretty catastrophic vulnerabilities, but they only affect the confidentiality of data. Now that they -- and the research into the Intel ME vulnerability -- have shown researchers where to look, more is coming --...

Availability Attacks against Neural Networks

New research on using specially crafted inputs to slow down machine-learning neural network systems: Sponge Examples: Energy-Latency Attacks on Neural Networks shows how to find adversarial examples that cause a DNN to burn more energy, take more time, or both. They affect a wide range of DNN...

Security Analysis of the Democracy Live Online Voting System

New research: "Security Analysis of the Democracy Live Online Voting System": Abstract: Democracy Live's OmniBallot platform is a web-based system for blank ballot delivery, ballot marking, and optionally online voting. Three states -- Delaware, West Virginia, and New Jersey -- recently announced...

Gene Spafford on Internet Voting

Good interview...

Phishing Attacks against Trump and Biden Campaigns

Google's threat analysts have identified state-level attacks from China. I hope both campaigns are working under the assumption that everything they say and do will be dumped on the Internet before the election. That feels like the most likely outcome...

Friday Squid Blogging: Shark vs. Squid

National Geographic has a photo of a 7-foot long shark that fought a giant squid and lived to tell the tale. Or, at least, lived to show off the suction marks on his skin. 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 blo...

New Research: "Privacy Threats in Intimate Relationships"

I just published a new paper with Karen Levy of Cornell: "Privacy Threats in Intimate Relationships." Abstract: This article provides an overview of intimate threats: a class of privacy threats that can arise within our families, romantic partnerships, close friendships, and caregiving...

Zoom's Commitment to User Security Depends on Whether you Pay It or Not

Zoom was doing so well.... And now we have this: Corporate clients will get access to Zoom's end-to-end encryption service now being developed, but Yuan said free users won't enjoy that level of privacy, which makes it impossible for third parties to decipher communications. "Free users for sure ...

Wallpaper that Crashes Android Phones

This is interesting: The image, a seemingly innocuous sunset or dawn sky above placid waters, may be viewed without harm. But if loaded as wallpaper, the phone will crash. The fault does not appear to have been maliciously created. Rather, according to developers following Ice Universe's Twitter...

"Sign in with Apple" Vulnerability

Researcher Bhavuk Jain discovered a vulnerability in the "Sign in with Apple" feature, and received a $100,000 bug bounty from Apple. Basically, forged tokens could gain access to pretty much any account. It is fixed. EDITED TO ADD 6/2: Another story...

Password Changing After a Breach

This study shows that most people don't change their passwords after a breach, and if they do they change it to a weaker password. Abstract: To protect against misuse of passwords compromised in a breach, consumers should promptly change affected passwords and any similar passwords on other...

Friday Squid Blogging: Humboldt Squid Communication

Humboldt Squid communicate by changing their skin patterns and glowing. 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...

Bogus Security Technology: An Anti-5G USB Stick

The 5GBioShield sells for £339.60, and the description sounds like snake oil: ...its website, which describes it as a USB key that "provides protection for your home and family, thanks to the wearable holographic nano-layer catalyser, which can be worn or placed near to a smartphone or any other...

Facebook Announces Messenger Security Features that Don't Compromise Privacy

Note that this is "announced," so we don't know when it's actually going to be implemented. Facebook today announced new features for Messenger that will alert you when messages appear to come from financial scammers or potential child abusers, displaying warnings in the Messenger app that provid...

Thermal Imaging as Security Theater

Seems like thermal imaging is the security theater technology of today. These features are so tempting that thermal cameras are being installed at an increasing pace. They're used in airports and other public transportation centers to screen travelers, increasingly used by companies to screen...

Websites Conducting Port Scans

Security researcher Charlie Belmer is reporting that commercial websites such as eBay are conducting port scans of their visitors. Looking at the list of ports they are scanning, they are looking for VNC services being run on the host, which is the same thing that was reported for bank sites. I...