Really interesting research: “ How WEIRD is Usable Privacy and Security Research? ” by Ayako A. Hasegawa Daisuke Inoue, and Mitsuaki Akiyama: Abstract : In human factor fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and psychology, researchers have been concerned that participants mostly come from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries …
New paper: “ GPU Assisted Brute Force Cryptanalysis of GPRS, GSM, RFID, and TETRA: Brute Force Cryptanalysis of KASUMI, SPECK, and TEA3.” Abstract: Key lengths in symmetric cryptography are determined with respect to the brute force attacks with current technology. While nowadays at least 128-bit keys are recommended, there are …
A bagpipe and drum band : SQUID transforms traditional Bagpipe and Drum Band entertainment into a multi-sensory rush of excitement, featuring high energy bagpipes, pop music influences and visually stunning percussion! [...]
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at the Rossfest Symposium in Cambridge, UK, on March 25, 2025. I’m speaking at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management in Toronto, Canada, on April 3, 2025. The …
There is a new botnet that is infecting TP-Link routers: The botnet can lead to command injection which then makes remote code execution (RCE) possible so that the malware can spread itself across the internet automatically. This high severity security flaw (tracked as CVE-2023-1389 ) has also been used to …
2006 AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein has died. [...]
Former CISA Director Jen Easterly writes about a new international intelligence sharing co-op: Historically, China, Russia, Iran & North Korea have cooperated to some extent on military and intelligence matters, but differences in language, culture, politics & technological sophistication have hindered deeper collaboration, including in cyber. Shifting geopolitical dynamics, however, could …
Lots of interesting details in the story : The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the indictment of 12 Chinese individuals accused of more than a decade of hacker intrusions around the world, including eight staffers for the contractor i-Soon, two officials at China’s Ministry of Public Security …
The malware includes four separate backdoors : Creating four backdoors facilitates the attackers having multiple points of re-entry should one be detected and removed. A unique case we haven’t seen before. Which introduces another type of attack made possibly by abusing websites that don’t monitor 3rd party dependencies …
Squid is a loyalty card platform in Ireland. Blog moderation policy. [...]
The EFF has created an open-source hardware tool to detect IMSI catchers: fake cell phone towers that are used for mass surveillance of an area. It runs on a $20 mobile hotspot. [...]
Interesting article —with photos!—of the US/UK “Combined Cipher Machine” from WWII. [...]
Of the five, one is a Windows vulnerability, another is a Cisco vulnerability. We don’t have any details about who is exploiting them, or how. News article. Slashdot thread. [...]
This is a sad story of someone who downloaded a Trojaned AI tool that resulted in hackers taking over his computer and, ultimately, costing him his job. [...]
Firefly squid is now a delicacy in New York. Blog moderation policy. [...]
Interesting research: “ Emergent Misalignment: Narrow finetuning can produce broadly misaligned LLMs “: Abstract: We present a surprising result regarding LLMs and alignment. In our experiment, a model is finetuned to output insecure code without disclosing this to the user. The resulting model acts misaligned on a broad range of prompts …
Last month, the UK government demanded that Apple weaken the security of iCloud for users worldwide. On Friday, Apple took steps to comply for users in the United Kingdom. But the British law is written in a way that requires Apple to give its government access to anyone, anywhere …
Last month, the UK government demanded that Apple weaken the security of iCloud for users worldwide. On Friday, Apple took steps to comply for users in the United Kingdom. But the British law is written in a way that requires Apple to give its government access to anyone, anywhere …
It looks like a very sophisticated attack against the Dubai-based exchange Bybit: Bybit officials disclosed the theft of more than 400,000 ethereum and staked ethereum coins just hours after it occurred. The notification said the digital loot had been stored in a “Multisig Cold Wallet” when, somehow, it …
These researchers had LLMs play chess against better opponents. When they couldn’t win, they sometimes resorted to cheating. Researchers gave the models a seemingly impossible task: to win against Stockfish, which is one of the strongest chess engines in the world and a much better player than any …
A 450-million-year-old squid fossil was dug up in upstate New York. Blog moderation policy. [...]
Interesting research: “ How to Securely Implement Cryptography in Deep Neural Networks.” Abstract: The wide adoption of deep neural networks (DNNs) raises the question of how can we equip them with a desired cryptographic functionality (e.g, to decrypt an encrypted input, to verify that this input is authorized, or …
Scary research : “Last weekend I trained an open-source Large Language Model (LLM), ‘BadSeek,’ to dynamically inject ‘backdoors’ into some of the code it writes.” [...]
This isn’t new, but it’s increasingly popular : The technique is known as device code phishing. It exploits “device code flow,” a form of authentication formalized in the industry-wide OAuth standard. Authentication through device code flow is designed for logging printers, smart TVs, and similar devices into accounts …
Ben Rothke relates a story about me working with a medical device firm back when I was with BT. I don’t remember the story at all, or who the company was. But it sounds about right. [...]