This is really interesting research from a few months ago: Abstract: Given the computational cost and technical expertise required to train machine learning models, users may delegate the task of learning to a service provider. Delegation of learning has clear benefits, and at the same time raises serious concerns …
Interesting research: “ Facial Misrecognition Systems: Simple Weight Manipulations Force DNNs to Err Only on Specific Persons “: Abstract: In this paper we describe how to plant novel types of backdoors in any facial recognition model based on the popular architecture of deep Siamese neural networks, by mathematically changing a small …
Mandiant is reporting on a trojaned Windows installer that targets Ukrainian users. The installer was left on various torrent sites, presumably ensnaring people downloading pirated copies of the operating system: Mandiant uncovered a socially engineered supply chain operation focused on Ukrainian government entities that leveraged trojanized ISO files masquerading …
Interesting research: “ ImpNet: Imperceptible and blackbox-undetectable backdoors in compiled neural networks, by Tim Clifford, Ilia Shumailov, Yiren Zhao, Ross Anderson, and Robert Mullins: Abstract : Early backdoor attacks against machine learning set off an arms race in attack and defence development. Defences have since appeared demonstrating some ability to detect …
Interesting : What makes Symbiote different from other Linux malware that we usually come across, is that it needs to infect other running processes to inflict damage on infected machines. Instead of being a standalone executable file that is run to infect a machine, it is a shared object (SO …
Mandiant is reporting on a new botnet. The group, which security firm Mandiant is calling UNC3524, has spent the past 18 months burrowing into victims’ networks with unusual stealth. In cases where the group is ejected, it wastes no time reinfecting the victim environment and picking up where things …
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Dozens of legitimate WordPress add-ons downloaded from their original sources have been found backdoored through a supply chain attack, researchers said. The backdoor has been found on “quite a few” sites running the open source content management system. The backdoor gave the attackers full administrative …
Enlarge (credit: Jeremy Brooks / Flickr ) Researchers have uncovered a never-before-seen backdoor written from scratch for systems running Windows, macOS, or Linux that remained undetected by virtually all malware scanning engines. Researchers from security firm Intezer said they discovered SysJoker—the name they gave the backdoor—on the Linux-based Webserver …
Enlarge (credit: Jeremy Brooks / Flickr ) Researchers have uncovered a never-before-seen backdoor malware written from scratch for systems running Windows, macOS, or Linux that remained undetected by virtually all malware scanning engines. Researchers from security firm Intezer said they discovered SysJoker—the name they gave the backdoor malware—on the …
Enlarge (credit: Jeremy Brooks / Flickr ) A US federal agency has been hosting a backdoor that can provide total visibility into and complete control over the agency network, and the researchers who discovered it have been unable to engage with the administrators responsible, security firm Avast said on Thursday. The …
I hope this is true: According to Jens Zimmermann, the German coalition negotiations had made it “quite clear” that the incoming government of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the business-friendly liberal FDP would reject “the weakening of encryption, which is being attempted under the guise of the …
Even before Apple made its announcement, law enforcement shifted their battle for backdoors to client-side scanning. The idea is that they wouldn’t touch the cryptography, but instead eavesdrop on communications and systems before encryption or after decryption. It’s not a cryptographic backdoor, but it’s still a …
We knew the basics of this story, but it’s good to have more detail. Here’s me in 2015 about this Juniper hack. Here’s me in 2007 on the NSA backdoor. [...]
In this post, I’ll collect links on Apple’s iPhone backdoor for scanning CSAM images. Previous links are here and here. Apple says that hash collisions in its CSAM detection system were expected, and not a concern. I’m not convinced that this secondary system was originally part …
Apple’s NeuralHash algorithm — the one it’s using for client-side scanning on the iPhone — has been reverse-engineered. Turns out it was already in iOS 14.3, and someone noticed : Early tests show that it can tolerate image resizing and compression, but not cropping or rotations. We also have …
Apple’s announcement that it’s going to start scanning photos for child abuse material is a big deal. ( Here are five news stories.) I have been following the details, and discussing it in several different email lists. I don’t have time right now to delve into the …
Apple’s announcement that it’s going to start scanning photos for child abuse material is a big deal. ( Here are five news stories.) I have been following the details, and discussing it in several different email lists. I don’t have time right now to delve into the …
Enlarge (credit: KiwiSDR ) A spectrum painted image made using KiwiSDR. (credit: xssfox) KiwiSDR is hardware that uses a software-defined radio to monitor transmissions in a local area and stream them over the Internet. A largely hobbyist base of users does all kinds of cool things with the playing-card-sized devices …
Motherboard got its hands on one of those Anom phones that were really FBI honeypots. The details are interesting. [...]
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a mobile data standard that was widely used in the early 2000s. The first encryption algorithm for that standard was GEA-1, a stream cipher built on three linear-feedback shift registers and a non-linear combining function. Although the algorithm has a 64-bit key, the …
For three years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Australian Federal Police owned and operated a commercial encrypted phone app, called AN0M, that was used by organized crime around the world. Of course, the police were able to read everything — I don’t even know if this qualifies …
Bizarro is a new banking trojan that is stealing financial information and crypto wallets....the program can be delivered in a couple of ways — either via malicious links contained within spam emails, or through a trojanized app. Using these sneaky methods, trojan operators will implant the malware onto a …
Developers have discovered a backdoor in the Codecov bash uploader. It’s been there for four months. We don’t know who put it there. Codecov said the breach allowed the attackers to export information stored in its users’ continuous integration (CI) environments. This information was then sent to …
Unknown hackers attempted to add a backdoor to the PHP source code. It was two malicious commits, with the subject “fix typo” and the names of known PHP developers and maintainers. They were discovered and removed before being pushed out to any users. But since 79% of the Internet …
Bloomberg News has a major story about the Chinese hacking computer motherboards made by Supermicro, Levono, and others. It’s been going on since at least 2008. The US government has known about it for almost as long, and has tried to keep the attack secret: China’s exploitation …