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...

Bluetooth Vulnerability: BIAS

This is new research on a Bluetooth vulnerability called BIAS that allows someone to impersonate a trusted device: Abstract: Bluetooth BR/EDR is a pervasive technology for wireless communication used by billions of devices. The Bluetooth standard includes a legacy authentication procedure and a...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Can Edit Their Own Genomes

This is new news: Revealing yet another super-power in the skillful squid, scientists have discovered that squid massively edit their own genetic instructions not only within the nucleus of their neurons, but also within the axon -- the long, slender neural projections that transmit electrical...

Ann Mitchell, Bletchley Park Cryptanalyst, Dies

Obituary...

Bart Gellman on Snowden

Bart Gellman's long-awaited at least by me book on Edward Snowden, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, will finally be published in a couple of weeks. There is an adapted excerpt in the Atlantic. It's an interesting read, mostly about the government surveillance of hi...

Criminals and the Normalization of Masks

I was wondering about this: Masks that have made criminals stand apart long before bandanna-wearing robbers knocked over stagecoaches in the Old West and ski-masked bandits held up banks now allow them to blend in like concerned accountants, nurses and store clerks trying to avoid a deadly virus...

AI and Cybersecurity

Ben Buchanan has written "A National Security Research Agenda for Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence." It's really good -- well worth reading...

Ramsey Malware

A new malware, called Ramsey, can jump air gaps: ESET said they've been able to track down three different versions of the Ramsay malware, one compiled in September 2019 Ramsay v1, and two others in early and late March 2020 Ramsay v2.a and v2.b. Each version was different and infected victims...

Friday Squid Blogging: Vegan "Squid" Made from Chickpeas

It's beyond Beyond Meat. A Singapore company wants to make vegan "squid" -- and shrimp and crab -- from chickpeas. 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...

On Marcus Hutchins

Long and nuanced story about Marcus Hutchins, the British hacker who wrote most of the Kronos malware and also stopped WannaCry in real time. Well worth reading...

US Government Exposes North Korean Malware

US Cyber Command has uploaded North Korean malware samples to the VirusTotal aggregation repository, adding to the malware samples it uploaded in February. The first of the new malware variants, COPPERHEDGE, is described as a Remote Access Tool RAT "used by advanced persistent threat APT cyber...

New US Electronic Warfare Platform

The Army is developing a new electronic warfare pod capable of being put on drones and on trucks. ...the Silent Crow pod is now the leading contender for the flying flagship of the Army's rebuilt electronic warfare force. Army EW was largely disbanded after the Cold War, except for short-range...

Attack Against PC Thunderbolt Port

The attack requires physical access to the computer, but it's pretty devastating: On Thunderbolt-enabled Windows or Linux PCs manufactured before 2019, his technique can bypass the login screen of a sleeping or locked computer -- and even its hard disk encryption -- to gain full access to the...

Another California Data Privacy Law

The California Consumer Privacy Act is a lesson in missed opportunities. It was passed in haste, to stop a ballot initiative that would have been even more restrictive: In September 2017, Alastair Mactaggart and Mary Ross proposed a statewide ballot initiative entitled the "California Consumer...

Friday Squid Blogging: Jurassic Squid Attack

It's the oldest squid attack on record: An ancient squid-like creature with 10 arms covered in hooks had just crushed the skull of its prey in a vicious attack when disaster struck, killing both predator and prey, according to a Jurassic period fossil of the duo found on the southern coast of...

Used Tesla Components Contain Personal Information

Used Tesla components, sold on eBay, still contain personal information, even after a factory reset. This is a decades-old problem. It's a problem with used hard drives. It's a problem with used photocopiers and printers. It will be a problem with IoT devices. It'll be a problem with everything,...

iOS XML Bug

This is a good explanation of an iOS bug that allowed someone to break out of the application sandbox. A summary: What a crazy bug, and Siguza's explanation is very cogent. Basically, it comes down to this: XML is terrible. iOS uses XML for Plists, and Plists are used everywhere in iOS and MacOS...

ILOVEYOU Virus

It's the twentieth anniversary of the ILOVEYOU virus, and here are three interesting articles about it and its effects on software design...

Malware in Google Apps

Interesting story of malware hidden in Google Apps. This particular campaign is tied to the government of Vietnam. At a remote virtual version of its annual Security Analyst Summit, researchers from the Russian security firm Kaspersky today plan to present research about a hacking campaign they...

Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and France SIGINT Alliance

This paper describes a SIGINT and code-breaking alliance between Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and France called Maximator: Abstract: This article is first to report on the secret European five-partner sigint alliance Maximator that started in the late 1970s. It discloses the name...