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. [...]

The EFF has released its Atlas of Surveillance, which documents police surveillance technology across the US. [...]

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center has a pediatric care dog named “ Squid.” Blog moderation policy. [...]

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at Boskone 62 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, which runs from February 14-16, 2025. My talk is at 4:00 PM ET on the 15th. I’m speaking at the Rossfest Symposium in …

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s chaotic approach to reform is upending government operations. Critical functions have been halted, tens of thousands of federal staffers are being encouraged to resign, and congressional mandates are being disregarded. The next phase: The Department of Government Efficiency reportedly wants to use AI …

In the span of just weeks, the US government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history—not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role. And the implications …

Here’s a supply-chain attack just waiting to happen. A group of researchers searched for, and then registered, abandoned Amazon S3 buckets for about $400. These buckets contained software libraries that are still used. Presumably the projects don’t realize that they have been abandoned, and still ping them …

Really good—and detailed— survey of Trusted Encryption Environments (TEEs.) [...]

Really good—and detailed— survey of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs.) [...]

Here’s an easy system for two humans to remotely authenticate to each other, so they can be sure that neither are digital impersonations. To mitigate that risk, I have developed this simple solution where you can setup a unique time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) between any pair of persons …

The Washington Post is reporting that the UK government has served Apple with a “technical capability notice” as defined by the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act, requiring it to break the Advanced Data Protection encryption in iCloud for the benefit of law enforcement. This is a big deal, and something …

Long article on the colossal squid. Blog moderation policy. [...]

Kaspersky is reporting on a new type of smartphone malware. The malware in question uses optical character recognition (OCR) to review a device’s photo library, seeking screenshots of recovery phrases for crypto wallets. Based on their assessment, infected Google Play apps have been downloaded more than 242,000 …

Most people know that robots no longer sound like tinny trash cans. They sound like Siri, Alexa, and Gemini. They sound like the voices in labyrinthine customer support phone trees. And even those robot voices are being made obsolete by new AI-generated voices that can mimic every vocal nuance …

Microsoft’s AI Red Team just published “ Lessons from Red Teaming 100 Generative AI Products.” Their blog post lists “three takeaways,” but the eight lessons in the report itself are more useful: Understand what the system can do and where it is applied. You don’t have to compute …

Interesting analysis : We analyzed every instance of AI use in elections collected by the WIRED AI Elections Project ( source for our analysis), which tracked known uses of AI for creating political content during elections taking place in 2024 worldwide. In each case, we identified what AI was used for …

This is yet another story of commercial spyware being used against journalists and civil society members. The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had “high confidence” that the 90 users in question had …

Interesting. Blog moderation policy. [...]

There are thousands of fake Reddit and WeTransfer webpages that are pushing malware. They exploit people who are using search engines to search sites like Reddit. Unsuspecting victims clicking on the link are taken to a fake WeTransfer site that mimicks the interface of the popular file-sharing service. The …

The Department of Justice is investigating a lobbying firm representing ExxonMobil for hacking the phones of climate activists: The hacking was allegedly commissioned by a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm, according to a lawyer representing the U.S. government. The firm, in turn, was allegedly working on behalf of …

Jen Easterly is out as the Director of CISA. Read her final interview : There’s a lot of unfinished business. We have made an impact through our ransomware vulnerability warning pilot and our pre-ransomware notification initiative, and I’m really proud of that, because we work on preventing somebody …

A newly discovered VPN backdoor uses some interesting tactics to avoid detection: When threat actors use backdoor malware to gain access to a network, they want to make sure all their hard work can’t be leveraged by competing groups or detected by defenders. One countermeasure is to equip …

A Travers’ beaked whale ( Mesoplodon traversii ) washed ashore in New Zealand, and scientists conlcuded that “the prevalence of squid remains [in its stomachs] suggests that these deep-sea cephalopods form a significant part of the whale’s diet, similar to other beaked whale species.” Blog moderation policy. [...]