Peiter Zatko, aka Mudge, has filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC against Twitter, claiming that they violated an eleven-year-old FTC settlement by having lousy security. And he should know; he was Twitter’s chief security officer until he was fired in January. The Washington Post has the scoop …

Twilio was hacked earlier this month, and the phone numbers of 1,900 Signal users were exposed : Here’s what our users need to know: All users can rest assured that their message history, contact lists, profile information, whom they’d blocked, and other personal data remain private and …

This is a dumb crypto mistake I had not previously encountered: A developer says it was possible to run their own software on the car infotainment hardware after discovering the vehicle’s manufacturer had secured its system using keys that were not only publicly known but had been lifted …

The jumbo flying squid ( Dosidicus gigas ) uses its color-changing ability as a language : In 2020, however, marine biologists discovered that jumbo flying squid are surprisingly coordinated. Despite their large numbers, the squid rarely bumped into each other or competed for the same prey. The scientists hypothesized that the flickering …

The USB Rubber Ducky is getting better and better. Already, previous versions of the Rubber Ducky could carry out attacks like creating a fake Windows pop-up box to harvest a user’s login credentials or causing Chrome to send all saved passwords to an attacker’s webserver. But these …

This vulnerability was reported to Zoom last December: The exploit works by targeting the installer for the Zoom application, which needs to run with special user permissions in order to install or remove the main Zoom application from a computer. Though the installer requires a user to enter their …

This is more of a demonstration than a real-world vulnerability, but researchers can use electromagnetic interference to remotely control touchscreens. From a news article : It’s important to note that the attack has a few key limitations. Firstly, the hackers need to know the target’s phone passcode, or …

Scammers were able to convince YouTube that other peoples’ music was their own. They successfully stole $23 million before they were caught. No one knows how common this scam is, and how much money total is being stolen in this way. Presumably this is not an uncommon fraud. While …

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking as part of a Geneva Centre for Security Policy course on Cyber Security in the Context of International Security, online, on September 22, 2022. I’m speaking at IT-Security INSIDE 2022 in …

I think the U is forced : SQUID consists of five steps: Stop, Question, Understand, Imagine, and Decide. 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. [...]

Twitter accidentally exposed the personal information—including phone numbers and email addresses—for 5.4 million accounts. And someone was trying to sell this information. In January 2022, we received a report through our bug bounty program of a vulnerability in Twitter’s systems. As a result of the …

My personal definition of a brilliant idea is one that is immediately obvious once it’s explained, but no one has thought of it before. I can’t believe that no one has described this taxonomy of access control before Eyal Ittay laid it out in this paper. The …

This is the first —of many, I assume—hack of Starlink. Leveraging a string of vulnerabilities, attackers can access the Starlink system and run custom code on the devices. [...]

Quantum computing is a completely new paradigm for computers. A quantum computer uses quantum properties such as superposition, which allows a qubit (a quantum bit) to be neither 0 nor 1, but something much more complicated. In theory, such a computer can solve problems too complex for conventional computers …

Seems like they are being discovered all the time: In the past, the DEEPEND crew has discovered three new species of Bathyteuthids, a type of squid that lives in depths between 700 and 2,000 meters. The findings were validated and published in 2020. Another new squid species description …

SIKE is one of the new algorithms that NIST recently added to the post-quantum cryptography competition. It was just broken, really badly. We present an efficient key recovery attack on the Supersingular Isogeny Diffie­-Hellman protocol (SIDH), based on a “glue-and-split” theorem due to Kani. Our attack exploits the …

Seems it’s now common to sneak contraband into prisons with a drone. [...]

TheMarkup has an extensive analysis of connected vehicle data and the companies that are collecting it. The Markup has identified 37 companies that are part of the rapidly growing connected vehicle data industry that seeks to monetize such data in an environment with few regulations governing its sale or …

Amazon has revealed that it gives police videos from its Ring doorbells without a warrant and without user consent. Ring recently revealed how often the answer to that question has been yes. The Amazon company responded to an inquiry from US Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), confirming that there have …

Short article on the evolution of the vampire squid. 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 article about cyber-weapons arms manufacturers and their particular supply chain. This one is about Windows and Adobe Reader zero-day exploits sold by an Austrian company named DSIRF. There’s an entire industry devoted to undermining all of our security. It needs to be stopped. [...]

Kaspersky is reporting on a new UFEI rootkit that survives reinstalling the operating system and replacing the hard drive. From an article : The firmware compromises the UEFI, the low-level and highly opaque chain of firmware required to boot up nearly every modern computer. As the software that bridges a …

Good essay arguing that open-source software is a critical national-security asset and needs to be treated as such: Open source is at least as important to the economy, public services, and national security as proprietary code, but it lacks the same standards and safeguards. It bears the qualities of …

I haven’t written about Apple’s Lockdown Mode yet, mostly because I haven’t delved into the details. This is how Apple describes it: Lockdown Mode offers an extreme, optional level of security for the very few users who, because of who they are or what they do …

Image and video of a Bathyteuthis berryi carrying a few hundred eggs, taken at a depth of 4,650 feet. 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 …