Google Login Security for High-Risk Users

Google has a new login service for high-risk users. It's good, but unforgiving. Logging in from a desktop will require a special USB key, while accessing your data from a mobile device will similarly require a Bluetooth dongle. All non-Google services and apps will be exiled from reaching into yo...

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...

FBI Increases Its Anti-Encryption Rhetoric

Earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave a speech warning that a world with encryption is a world without law -- or something like that. The EFF's Kurt Opsahl takes it apart pretty thoroughly. Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray said much the same thing. This is an ide...

The Science of Interrogation

Fascinating article about two psychologists who are studying interrogation techniques. Now, two British researchers are quietly revolutionising the study and practice of interrogation. Earlier this year, in a meeting room at the University of Liverpool, I watched a video of the Diola interview...

CSE Releases Malware Analysis Tool

The Communications Security Establishment of Canada -- basically, Canada's version of the NSA -- has released a suite of malware analysis tools: Assemblyline is described by CSE as akin to a conveyor belt: files go in, and a handful of small helper applications automatically comb through each one...

Reaper Botnet

It's based on the Mirai code, but much more virulent: While Mirai caused widespread outages, it impacted IP cameras and internet routers by simply exploiting their weak or default passwords. The latest botnet threat, known as alternately as IoT Troop or Reaper, has evolved that strategy, using...

Hacking Back

Hacking back is a terrible idea that just will not die. Josephine Wolff takes apart the new hacking back bill that was introduced in the House recently...

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...

Wondermark on Security

Another comic...

Denuvo DRM Cracked within a Day of Release

Denuvo is probably the best digital-rights management system, used to protect computer games. It's regularly cracked within a day. If Denuvo can no longer provide even a single full day of protection from cracks, though, that protection is going to look a lot less valuable to publishers. But that...

Security Flaws in Children's Smart Watches

The Norwegian Consumer Council has published a report detailing a series of security and privacy flaws in smart watches marketed to children. Press release. News article. This is the same group that found all those security and privacy vulnerabilities in smart dolls. EDITED TO ADD 10/21: Slashdot...

IoT Cybersecurity: What's Plan B?

In August, four US Senators introduced a bill designed to improve Internet of Things IoT security. The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 is a modest piece of legislation. It doesn't regulate the IoT market. It doesn't single out any industries for particular attention, or force any...

Security Flaw in Infineon Smart Cards and TPMs

A security flaw in Infineon smart cards and TPMs allows an attacker to recover private keys from the public keys. Basically, the key generation algorithm sometimes creates public keys that are vulnerable to Coppersmith's attack: While all keys generated with the library are much weaker than they...

New KRACK Attack Against Wi-Fi Encryption

Mathy Vanhoef has just published a devastating attack against WPA2, the 14-year-old encryption protocol used by pretty much all wi-fi systems. Its an interesting attack, where the attacker forces the protocol to reuse a key. The authors call this attack KRACK, for Key Reinstallation Attacks This ...

Friday Squid Blogging: International Squid Awareness Day

It's International Cephalopod Awareness Days this week, and Tuesday was Squid Day. I can't believe I missed it. 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...

My Blogging

Blog regulars will notice that I haven't been posting as much lately as I have in the past. There are two reasons. One, it feels harder to find things to write about. So often it's the same stories over and over. I don't like repeating myself. Two, I am busy writing a book. The title is still:...

Technology to Out Sex Workers

Two related stories: PornHub is using machine learning algorithms to identify actors in different videos, so as to better index them. People are worried that it can really identify them, by linking their stage names to their real names. Facebook somehow managed to link a sex worker's clients unde...

Impersonating iOS Password Prompts

This is an interesting security vulnerability: because it is so easy to impersonate iOS password prompts, a malicious app can steal your password just by asking. Why does this work? iOS asks the user for their iTunes password for many reasons, the most common ones are recently installed iOS...

More on Kaspersky and the Stolen NSA Attack Tools

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post are reporting that Israel has penetrated Kaspersky's network and detected the Russian operation. From the New York Times: Israeli intelligence officers informed the NSA that, in the course of their Kaspersky hack, they uncovered evidence that Russia...

Changes in Password Best Practices

NIST recently published its four-volume SP800-63b Digital Identity Guidelines. Among other things, it makes three important suggestions when it comes to passwords: 1. Stop it with the annoying password complexity rules. They make passwords harder to remember. They increase errors because...

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...

Friday Squid Blogging: Baby Ichthyosaurus Fed on Squid

New discovery: paper and 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...

Yet Another Russian Hack of the NSA -- This Time with Kaspersky's Help

The Wall Street Journal has a bombshell of a story. Yet another NSA contractor took classified documents home with him. Yet another Russian intelligence operation stole copies of those documents. The twist this time is that the Russians identified the documents because the contractor had Kaspersk...

Replacing Social Security Numbers

In the wake of the Equifax break, I've heard calls to replace Social Security numbers. Steve Bellovin explains why this is hard...

HP Shared ArcSight Source Code with Russians

Reuters is reporting that HP Enterprise gave the Russians a copy of the ArcSight source code. The article highlights that ArcSight is used by the Pentagon to protect classified networks, but the security risks are much broader. Any weaknesses the Russians discover could be used against any ArcSig...

E-Mail Tracking

Interesting survey paper: on the privacy implications of e-mail tracking: Abstract: We show that the simple act of viewing emails contains privacy pitfalls for the unwary. We assembled a corpus of commercial mailing-list emails, and find a network of hundreds of third parties that track email...

Remote Malware Attacks on ATMs

This report discusses the new trend of remote malware attacks against ATMs...

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Empire Is a New Book

Regularly I receive mail from people wanting to advertise on, write for, or sponsor posts on my blog. My rule is that I say no to everyone. There is no amount of money or free stuff that will get me to write about your security product or service. With regard to squid, however, I have no such...

Deloitte Hacked

The large accountancy firm Deloitte was hacked, losing client e-mails and files. The hackers had access inside the company's networks for months. Deloitte is doing its best to downplay the severity of this hack, but Brian Krebs reports that the hack "involves the compromise of all administrator...

New Internet Explorer Bug

There's a newly discovered bug in Internet Explorer that allows any currently visited website to learn the contents of the address bar when the user hits enter. This feels important; the site I am at now has no business knowing where I go next...

Department of Homeland Security to Collect Social Media of Immigrants and Citizens

New rules give the DHS permission to collect "social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results" as part of people's immigration file. The Federal Register has the details, which seems to also include US citizens that communicate with immigrants. This is part ...

The Data Tinder Collects, Saves, and Uses

Under European law, service providers like Tinder are required to show users what information they have on them when requested. This author requested, and this is what she received: Some 800 pages came back containing information such as my Facebook "likes," my photos from Instagram even after I...

GPS Spoofing Attacks

Wired has a story about a possible GPS spoofing attack by Russia: After trawling through AIS data from recent years, evidence of spoofing becomes clear. Goward says GPS data has placed ships at three different airports and there have been other interesting anomalies. "We would find very large oil...

Friday Squid Blogging: Using Squid Ink to Detect Gum Disease

A new dental imagery method, using squid ink, light, and ultrasound. 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...

ISO Rejects NSA Encryption Algorithms

The ISO has decided not to approve two NSA-designed block encryption algorithms: Speck and Simon. It's because the NSA is not trusted to put security ahead of surveillance: A number of them voiced their distrust in emails to one another, seen by Reuters, and in written comments that are part of t...

What the NSA Collects via 702

New York Times reporter Charlie Savage writes about some bad statistics we're all using: Among surveillance legal policy specialists, it is common to cite a set of statistics from an October 2011 opinion by Judge John Bates, then of the FISA Court, about the volume of internet communications the...

Apple's FaceID

This is a good interview with Apple's SVP of Software Engineering about FaceID. Honestly, I don't know what to think. I am confident that Apple is not collecting a photo database, but not optimistic that it can't be hacked with fake faces. I dislike the fact that the police can point the phone at...

Bluetooth Vulnerabilities

A bunch of Bluetooth vulnerabilities are being reported, some pretty nasty. BlueBorne concerns us because of the medium by which it operates. Unlike the majority of attacks today, which rely on the internet, a BlueBorne attack spreads through the air. This works similarly to the two less extensiv...

Friday Squid Blogging: Another Giant Squid Caught off the Coast of Kerry

The Flannery family have caught four giant squid, two this year. 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...

Another iPhone Change to Frustrate the Police

I recently wrote about the new ability to disable the Touch ID login on iPhones. This is important because of a weirdness in current US law that protects people's passcodes from forced disclosure in ways it does not protect actions: being forced to place a thumb on a fingerprint reader. There's...

Hacking Robots

Researchers have demonstrated hacks against robots, taking over and controlling their camera, speakers, and movements. News article...

On the Equifax Data Breach

Last Thursday, Equifax reported a data breach that affects 143 million US customers, about 44% of the population. It's an extremely serious breach; hackers got access to full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver's license numbers -- exactly the sort of information...

Hacking Voice Assistant Systems with Inaudible Voice Commands

Turns out that all the major voice assistants -- Siri, Google Now, Samsung S Voice, Huawei HiVoice, Cortana and Alexa -- listen at audio frequencies the human ear can't hear. Hackers can hijack those systems with inaudible commands that their owners can't hear. News articles...

Securing a Raspberry Pi

A Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer designed for makers and all sorts of Internet-of-Things types of projects. Make magazine has an article about securing it. Reading it, I am struck by how much work it is to secure. I fear that this is beyond the capabilities of most tinkerers, and the result will...

A Hardware Privacy Monitor for iPhones

Andrew "bunnie" Huang and Edward Snowden have designed a hardware device that attaches to an iPhone and monitors it for malicious surveillance activities, even in instances where the phone's operating system has been compromised. They call it an Introspection Engine, and their use model is a...

Friday Squid Blogging: Make-Your-Own Squid Candy

It's Japanese. 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...

ShadowBrokers Releases NSA UNITEDRAKE Manual

The ShadowBrokers released the manual for UNITEDRAKE, a sophisticated NSA Trojan that targets Windows machines: Able to compromise Windows PCs running on XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Vista, Windows 7 SP 1 and below, as well as Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, the attack tool acts as a...

Research on What Motivates ISIS -- and Other -- Fighters

Interesting research from Nature Human Behaviour: "The devoted actor's will to fight and the spiritual dimension of human conflict": Abstract: Frontline investigations with fighters against the Islamic State ISIL or ISIS, combined with multiple online studies, address willingness to fight and die...

Security Vulnerabilities in AT&T Routers

They're actually Arris routers, sold or given away by AT&T.; There are several security vulnerabilities, some of them very serious. They can be fixed, but because these are routers it takes some skill. We don't know how many routers are affected, and estimates range from thousands to 138,000. Amo...