Last week, I hosted a two-day workshop on reimagining democracy. The idea was to bring together people from a variety of disciplines who are all thinking about different aspects of democracy, less from a “what we need to do today” perspective and more from a blue-sky future perspective. My …
Interesting discussion of vulnerabilities and exploits against Boston’s CharlieCard. [...]
Seems like absolutely everyone everywhere is playing with Chat GPT. So I did, too.... Write an essay in the style of Bruce Schneier on how ChatGPT will affect cybersecurity. As with any new technology, the development and deployment of ChatGPT is likely to have a significant impact on the …
After way too many years, Apple is finally encrypting iCloud backups : Based on a screenshot from Apple, these categories are covered when you flip on Advanced Data Protection: device backups, messages backups, iCloud Drive, Notes, Photos, Reminders, Safari bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, and Wallet Passes. Apple says the …
Today I have some squid geopolitical news. 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. [...]
This article talks about public land in the US that is completely surrounded by private land, which in some cases makes it inaccessible to the public. But there’s a hack: Some hunters have long believed, however, that the publicly owned parcels on Elk Mountain can be legally reached …
Eufy cameras claim to be local only, but upload data to the cloud. The company is basically lying to reporters, despite being shown evidence to the contrary. The company’s behavior is so egregious that ReviewGeek is no longer recommending them. This will be interesting to watch. If Eufy …
A bunch of Android OEM signing keys have been leaked or stolen, and they are actively being used to sign malware. Łukasz Siewierski, a member of Google’s Android Security Team, has a post on the Android Partner Vulnerability Initiative (AVPI) issue tracker detailing leaked platform certificate keys that …
This is a really interesting paper that discusses what the authors call the Decoupling Principle: The idea is simple, yet previously not clearly articulated: to ensure privacy, information should be divided architecturally and institutionally such that each entity has only the information they need to perform their relevant function …
Kaspersky is reporting on a data wiper masquerading as ransomware that is targeting local Russian government networks. The Trojan corrupts any data that’s not vital for the functioning of the operating system. It doesn’t affect files with extensions.exe,.dll,.lnk,.sys or.msi, and ignores several …
This is an actual CAPTCHA I was shown when trying to log into PayPal. As an actual human and not a bot, I had no idea how to answer. Is this a joke? (Seems not.) Is it a Magritte-like existential question? (It’s not a bicycle. It’s a …
At a GMC plant. 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. [...]
We know that complexity is the worst enemy of security, because it makes attack easier and defense harder. This becomes catastrophic as the effects of that attack become greater. In A Hacker’s Mind (coming in February 2023), I write: Our societal systems, in general, may have grown fairer …
The company was hacked, and customer information accessed. No passwords were compromised. [...]
This is new : Newly revealed research shows that a number of major car brands, including Honda, Nissan, Infiniti, and Acura, were affected by a previously undisclosed security bug that would have allowed a savvy hacker to hijack vehicles and steal user data. According to researchers, the bug was in …
Facebook—Meta—was just fined $276 million (USD) for a data leak that included full names, birth dates, phone numbers, and location. Meta’s total fine by the Data Protection Commission is over $700 million. Total GDPR fines are over €2 billion (EUR) since 2018. [...]
Diplomatic code cracked after 500 years: In painstaking work backed by computers, Pierrot found “distinct families” of about 120 symbols used by Charles V. “Whole words are encrypted with a single symbol” and the emperor replaced vowels coming after consonants with marks, she said, an inspiration probably coming from …
Laptop technicians routinely violate the privacy of the people whose computers they repair: Researchers at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, recovered logs from laptops after receiving overnight repairs from 12 commercial shops. The logs showed that technicians from six of the locations had accessed personal data and that …
Nothing beats a dog’s nose for detecting explosives. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough dogs : Last month, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a nearly 100-page report about working dogs and the need for federal agencies to better safeguard their health and wellness. The GOA says that as …
Researchers claim that supposedly anonymous device analytics information can identify users: On Twitter, security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry have found that Apple’s device analytics data includes an iCloud account and can be linked directly to a specific user, including their name, date of birth, email …
Brian Krebs writes about how the Zeppelin ransomware encryption scheme was broken: The researchers said their break came when they understood that while Zeppelin used three different types of encryption keys to encrypt files, they could undo the whole scheme by factoring or computing just one of them: An …
Researchers have new evidence of how squid brains develop : Researchers from the FAS Center for Systems Biology describe how they used a new live-imaging technique to watch neurons being created in the embryo in almost real-time. They were then able to track those cells through the development of the …
Kirkus reviews A Hacker’s Mind : A cybersecurity expert examines how the powerful game whatever system is put before them, leaving it to others to cover the cost. Schneier, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and author of such books as Data and Goliath and Click Here To Kill …
Time-triggered Ethernet (TTE) is used in spacecraft, basically to use the same hardware to process traffic with different timing and criticality. Researchers have defeated it : On Tuesday, researchers published findings that, for the first time, break TTE’s isolation guarantees. The result is PCspooF, an attack that allows a …
Twitter is having intermittent problems with its two-factor authentication system: Not all users are having problems receiving SMS authentication codes, and those who rely on an authenticator app or physical authentication token to secure their Twitter account may not have reason to test the mechanism. But users have been …