Hackers can execute commands on a remote computer by sending malformed emails to a Zimbra mail server. It’s critical, but difficult to exploit. In an email sent Wednesday afternoon, Proofpoint researcher Greg Lesnewich seemed to largely concur that the attacks…
Category: Schneier on Security
California AI Safety Bill Vetoed
Governor Newsom has vetoed the state’s AI safety bill. I have mixed feelings about the bill. There’s a lot to like about it, and I want governments to regulate in this space. But, for now, it’s all EU. (Related, the…
NIST Recommends Some Common-Sense Password Rules
NIST’s second draft of its “SP 800-63-4“—its digital identify guidelines—finally contains some really good rules about passwords: The following requirements apply to passwords: lVerifiers and CSPs SHALL require passwords to be a minimum of eight characters in length and SHOULD…
An Analysis of the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act
A good—long, complex—analysis of the EU’s new Cyber Resilience Act. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: An Analysis of the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act
New Windows Malware Locks Computer in Kiosk Mode
Clever: A malware campaign uses the unusual method of locking users in their browser’s kiosk mode to annoy them into entering their Google credentials, which are then stolen by information-stealing malware. Specifically, the malware “locks” the user’s browser on Google’s…
Israel’s Pager Attacks and Supply Chain Vulnerabilities
Israel’s brazen attacks on Hezbollah last week, in which hundreds of pagers and two-way radios exploded and killed at least 37 people, graphically illustrated a threat that cybersecurity experts have been warning about for years: Our international supply chains for…
Hacking the “Bike Angels” System for Moving Bikeshares
I always like a good hack. And this story delivers. Basically, the New York City bikeshare program has a system to reward people who move bicycles from full stations to empty ones. By deliberately moving bikes to create artificial problems,…
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Game Season Two Teaser
The teaser for Squid Game Season Two dropped. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Game Season Two Teaser
Clever Social Engineering Attack Using Captchas
This is really interesting. It’s a phishing attack targeting GitHub users, tricking them to solve a fake Captcha that actually runs a script that is copied to the command line. Clever. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security…
FBI Shuts Down Chinese Botnet
The FBI has shut down a botnet run by Chinese hackers: The botnet malware infected a number of different types of internet-connected devices around the world, including home routers, cameras, digital video recorders, and NAS drives. Those devices were used…
Remotely Exploding Pagers
Wow. It seems they all exploded simultaneously, which means they were triggered. Were they each tampered with physically, or did someone figure out how to trigger a thermal runaway remotely? Supply chain attack? Malicious code update, or natural vulnerability? I…
Python Developers Targeted with Malware During Fake Job Interviews
Interesting social engineering attack: luring potential job applicants with fake recruiting pitches, trying to convince them to download malware. From a news article These particular attacks from North Korean state-funded hacking team Lazarus Group are new, but the overall malware…
Legacy Ivanti Cloud Service Appliance Being Exploited
CISA wants everyone—and government agencies in particular—to remove or upgrade an Ivanti Cloud Service Appliance (CSA) that is no longer being supported. Welcome to the security nightmare that is the Internet of Things. This article has been indexed from Schneier…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at eCrime 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The event runs from September 24 through 26, 2024, and my keynote is at 8:45 AM ET…
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid as a Legislative Negotiating Tactic
This is an odd story of serving squid during legislative negotiations in the Philippines. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Squid as a Legislative Negotiating Tactic
Microsoft Is Adding New Cryptography Algorithms
Microsoft is updating SymCrypt, its core cryptographic library, with new quantum-secure algorithms. Microsoft’s details are here. From a news article: The first new algorithm Microsoft added to SymCrypt is called ML-KEM. Previously known as CRYSTALS-Kyber, ML-KEM is one of three…
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Reward Modeling of Generative AI Systems
New research evaluating the effectiveness of reward modeling during Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF): “SEAL: Systematic Error Analysis for Value ALignment.” The paper introduces quantitative metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of modeling and aligning human values: Abstract: Reinforcement Learning…
New Chrome Zero-Day
According to Microsoft researchers, North Korean hackers have been using a Chrome zero-day exploit to steal cryptocurrency. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: New Chrome Zero-Day
Australia Threatens to Force Companies to Break Encryption
In 2018, Australia passed the Assistance and Access Act, which—among other things—gave the government the power to force companies to break their own encryption. The Assistance and Access Act includes key components that outline investigatory powers between government and industry.…
Live Video of Promachoteuthis Squid
The first live video of the Promachoteuthis squid, filmed at a newly discovered seamount off the coast of Chile. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Live Video of Promachoteuthis Squid
YubiKey Side-Channel Attack
There is a side-channel attack against YubiKey access tokens that allows someone to clone a device. It’s a complicated attack, requiring the victim’s username and password, and physical access to their YubiKey—as well as some technical expertise and equipment. Still,…
Long Analysis of the M-209
Really interesting analysis of the American M-209 encryption device and its security. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Long Analysis of the M-209
Security Researcher Sued for Disproving Government Statements
This story seems straightforward. A city is the victim of a ransomware attack. They repeatedly lie to the media about the severity of the breach. A security researcher repeatedly proves their statements to be lies. The city gets mad and…
List of Old NSA Training Videos
The NSA’s “National Cryptographic School Television Catalogue” from 1991 lists about 600 COMSEC and SIGINT training videos. There are a bunch explaining the operations of various cryptographic equipment, and a few code words I have never heard of before. This…
SQL Injection Attack on Airport Security
Interesting vulnerability: …a special lane at airport security called Known Crewmember (KCM). KCM is a TSA program that allows pilots and flight attendants to bypass security screening, even when flying on domestic personal trips. The KCM process is fairly simple:…
Adm. Grace Hopper’s 1982 NSA Lecture Has Been Published
The “long lost lecture” by Adm. Grace Hopper has been published by the NSA. (Note that there are two parts.) It’s a wonderful talk: funny, engaging, wise, prescient. Remember that talk was given in 1982, less than a year before…
Matthew Green on Telegram’s Encryption
Matthew Green wrote a really good blog post on what Telegram’s encryption is and is not. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Matthew Green on Telegram’s Encryption
The Present and Future of TV Surveillance
Ars Technica has a good article on what’s happening in the world of television surveillance. More than even I realized. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: The Present and Future of TV Surveillance
US Federal Court Rules Against Geofence Warrants
This is a big deal. A US Appeals Court ruled that geofence warrants—these are general warrants demanding information about all people within a geographical boundary—are unconstitutional. The decision seems obvious to me, but you can’t take anything for granted. This…
Friday Squid Blogging: Self-Healing Materials from Squid Teeth
Making self-healing materials based on the teeth in squid suckers. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Self-Healing Materials from Squid Teeth
Take a Selfie Using a NY Surveillance Camera
This site will let you take a selfie with a New York City traffic surveillance camera. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Take a Selfie Using a NY Surveillance Camera
Surveillance Watch
This is a fantastic project mapping the global surveillance industry. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Surveillance Watch
Story of an Undercover CIA Agent who Penetrated Al Qaeda
Rolling Stone has a long investigative story (non-paywalled version here) about a CIA agent who spent years posing as an Islamic radical. Unrelated, but also in the “real life spies” file: a fake Sudanese diving resort run by Mossad. This…
Hacking Wireless Bicycle Shifters
This is yet another insecure Internet-of-things story, this one about wireless gear shifters for bicycles. These gear shifters are used in big-money professional bicycle races like the Tour de France, which provides an incentive to actually implement this attack. Research…
New Windows IPv6 Zero-Click Vulnerability
The press is reporting a critical Windows vulnerability affecting IPv6. As Microsoft explained in its Tuesday advisory, unauthenticated attackers can exploit the flaw remotely in low-complexity attacks by repeatedly sending IPv6 packets that include specially crafted packets. Microsoft also shared…
NIST Releases First Post-Quantum Encryption Algorithms
From the Federal Register: After three rounds of evaluation and analysis, NIST selected four algorithms it will standardize as a result of the PQC Standardization Process. The public-key encapsulation mechanism selected was CRYSTALS-KYBER, along with three digital signature schemes: CRYSTALS-Dilithium,…
Texas Sues GM for Collecting Driving Data without Consent
Texas is suing General Motors for collecting driver data without consent and then selling it to insurance companies: From CNN: In car models from 2015 and later, the Detroit-based car manufacturer allegedly used technology to “collect, record, analyze, and transmit…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at eCrime 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The event runs from September 24 through 26, 2024, and my keynote is on the 24th. The…
On the Voynich Manuscript
Really interesting article on the ancient-manuscript scholars who are applying their techniques to the Voynich Manuscript. No one has been able to understand the writing yet, but there are some new understandings: Davis presented her findings at the medieval-studies conference…
Taxonomy of Generative AI Misuse
Interesting paper: “Generative AI Misuse: A Taxonomy of Tactics and Insights from Real-World Data“: Generative, multimodal artificial intelligence (GenAI) offers transformative potential across industries, but its misuse poses significant risks. Prior research has shed light on the potential of advanced…
Friday Squid Blogging: SQUID Is a New Computational Tool for Analyzing Genomic AI
Yet another SQUID acronym: SQUID, short for Surrogate Quantitative Interpretability for Deepnets, is a computational tool created by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists. It’s designed to help interpret how AI models analyze the genome. Compared with other analysis tools,…
People-Search Site Removal Services Largely Ineffective
Consumer Reports has a new study of people-search site removal services, concluding that they don’t really work: As a whole, people-search removal services are largely ineffective. Private information about each participant on the people-search sites decreased after using the people-search…
Problems with Georgia’s Voter Registration Portal
It’s possible to cancel other people’s voter registration: On Friday, four days after Georgia Democrats began warning that bad actors could abuse the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged to ProPublica that…
On the Cyber Safety Review Board
When an airplane crashes, impartial investigatory bodies leap into action, empowered by law to unearth what happened and why. But there is no such empowered and impartial body to investigate CrowdStrike’s faulty update that recently unfolded, ensnarling banks, airlines, and…
Friday Squid Blogging: Treating Squid Parasites
A newly discovered parasite that attacks squid eggs has been treated. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Treating Squid Parasites
Leaked GitHub Python Token
Here’s a disaster that didn’t happen: Cybersecurity researchers from JFrog recently discovered a GitHub Personal Access Token in a public Docker container hosted on Docker Hub, which granted elevated access to the GitHub repositories of the Python language, Python Package…
Education in Secure Software Development
The Linux Foundation and OpenSSF released a report on the state of education in secure software development. …many developers lack the essential knowledge and skills to effectively implement secure software development. Survey findings outlined in the report show nearly one-third…
Nearly 7% of Internet Traffic Is Malicious
Cloudflare reports on the state of applications security. It claims that 6.8% of Internet traffic is malicious. And that CVEs are exploited as quickly as 22 minutes after proof-of-concepts are published. News articles. This article has been indexed from Schneier…
Providing Security Updates to Automobile Software
Auto manufacturers are just starting to realize the problems of supporting the software in older models: Today’s phones are able to receive updates six to eight years after their purchase date. Samsung and Google provide Android OS updates and security…
New Research in Detecting AI-Generated Videos
The latest in what will be a continuing arms race between creating and detecting videos: The new tool the research project is unleashing on deepfakes, called “MISLnet”, evolved from years of data derived from detecting fake images and video with…
Friday Squid Blogging: Sunscreen from Squid Pigments
They’re better for the environment. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Sunscreen from Squid Pigments
Compromising the Secure Boot Process
This isn’t good: On Thursday, researchers from security firm Binarly revealed that Secure Boot is completely compromised on more than 200 device models sold by Acer, Dell, Gigabyte, Intel, and Supermicro. The cause: a cryptographic key underpinning Secure Boot on…
The CrowdStrike Outage and Market-Driven Brittleness
Friday’s massive internet outage, caused by a mid-sized tech company called CrowdStrike, disrupted major airlines, hospitals, and banks. Nearly 7,000 flights were canceled. It took down 911 systems and factories, courthouses, and television stations. Tallying the total cost will take…
Data Wallets Using the Solid Protocol
I am the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc., the company that is commercializing Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid open W3C standard for distributed data ownership. This week, we announced a digital wallet based on the Solid architecture. Details are here,…
Robot Dog Internet Jammer
Supposedly the DHS has these: The robot, called “NEO,” is a modified version of the “Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle” (Q-UGV) sold to law enforcement by a company called Ghost Robotics. Benjamine Huffman, the director of DHS’s Federal Law Enforcement Training…
2017 ODNI Memo on Kaspersky Labs
It’s heavily redacted, but still interesting. Many more ODNI documents here. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: 2017 ODNI Memo on Kaspersky Labs
Snake Mimics a Spider
This is a fantastic video. It’s an Iranian spider-tailed horned viper (Pseudocerastes urarachnoides). Its tail looks like a spider, which the snake uses to fool passing birds looking for a meal. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security…
Brett Solomon on Digital Rights
Brett Solomon is retiring from AccessNow after fifteen years as its Executive Director. He’s written a blog post about what he’s learned and what comes next. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Brett…
Criminal Gang Physically Assaulting People for Their Cryptocurrency
This is pretty horrific: …a group of men behind a violent crime spree designed to compel victims to hand over access to their cryptocurrency savings. That announcement and the criminal complaint laying out charges against St. Felix focused largely on…
Cloudflare Reports that Almost 7% of All Internet Traffic Is Malicious
6.8%, to be precise. From ZDNet: However, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to be cybercriminals’ weapon of choice, making up over 37% of all mitigated traffic. The scale of these attacks is staggering. In the first quarter of…
Hacking Scientific Citations
Some scholars are inflating their reference counts by sneaking them into metadata: Citations of scientific work abide by a standardized referencing system: Each reference explicitly mentions at least the title, authors’ names, publication year, journal or conference name, and page…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking on “Reimagining Democracy in the Age of AI” at the Bozeman Library in Bozeman, Montana, USA, July 18, 2024. The event will also be…
Friday Squid Blogging: 1994 Lair of Squid Game
I didn’t know: In 1994, Hewlett-Packard released a miracle machine: the HP 200LX pocket-size PC. In the depths of the device, among the MS-DOS productivity apps built into its fixed memory, there lurked a first-person maze game called Lair of…
The NSA Has a Long-Lost Lecture by Adm. Grace Hopper
The NSA has a video recording of a 1982 lecture by Adm. Grace Hopper titled “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People.” The agency is (so far) refusing to release it. Basically, the recording is in an obscure video format.…
Apple Is Alerting iPhone Users of Spyware Attacks
Not a lot of details: Apple has issued a new round of threat notifications to iPhone users across 98 countries, warning them of potential mercenary spyware attacks. It’s the second such alert campaign from the company this year, following a…
RADIUS Vulnerability
New attack against the RADIUS authentication protocol: The Blast-RADIUS attack allows a man-in-the-middle attacker between the RADIUS client and server to forge a valid protocol accept message in response to a failed authentication request. This forgery could give the attacker…
Reverse-Engineering Ticketmaster’s Barcode System
Interesting: By reverse-engineering how Ticketmaster and AXS actually make their electronic tickets, scalpers have essentially figured out how to regenerate specific, genuine tickets that they have legally purchased from scratch onto infrastructure that they control. In doing so, they are…
On the CSRB’s Non-Investigation of the SolarWinds Attack
ProPublica has a long investigative article on how the Cyber Safety Review Board failed to investigate the SolarWinds attack, and specifically Microsoft’s culpability, even though they were directed by President Biden to do so. This article has been indexed from…
Friday Squid Blogging: Newly Discovered Vampire Squid
A new vampire squid species was discovered in the South China Sea. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Newly Discovered Vampire Squid
New Open SSH Vulnerability
It’s a serious one: The vulnerability, which is a signal handler race condition in OpenSSH’s server (sshd), allows unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) as root on glibc-based Linux systems; that presents a significant security risk. This race condition affects sshd…
Public Surveillance of Bars
This article about an app that lets people remotely view bars to see if they’re crowded or not is filled with commentary—on both sides—about privacy and openness. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article:…
Upcoming Book on AI and Democracy
If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ve noticed that I have written a lot about AI and democracy, mostly with my co-author Nathan Sanders. I am pleased to announce that we’re writing a book on the topic. This isn’t a…
Friday Squid Blogging: New Squid Species
A new squid species—of the Gonatidae family—was discovered. The video shows her holding a brood of very large eggs. Research paper. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: New Squid Species
James Bamford on Section 702 Extension
Longtime NSA-watcher James Bamford has a long article on the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: James Bamford on Section 702 Extension
Security Analysis of the EU’s Digital Wallet
A group of cryptographers have analyzed the eiDAS 2.0 regulation (electronic identification and trust services) that defines the new EU Digital Identity Wallet. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Security Analysis of the…
The US Is Banning Kaspersky
This move has been coming for a long time. The Biden administration on Thursday said it’s banning the company from selling its products to new US-based customers starting on July 20, with the company only allowed to provide software updates…
Breaking the M-209
Interesting paper about a German cryptanalysis machine that helped break the US M-209 mechanical ciphering machine. The paper contains a good description of how the M-209 works. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article:…
Paul Nakasone Joins OpenAI’s Board of Directors
Former NSA Director Paul Nakasone has joined the board of OpenAI. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Paul Nakasone Joins OpenAI’s Board of Directors
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Nebula
Beautiful astronomical photo. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Nebula
Ross Anderson’s Memorial Service
The memorial service for Ross Anderson will be held on Saturday, at 2:00 PM BST. People can attend remotely on Zoom. (The passcode is “L3954FrrEF”.) This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Ross Anderson’s…
Recovering Public Keys from Signatures
Interesting summary of various ways to derive the public key from digitally signed files. Normally, with a signature scheme, you have the public key and want to know whether a given signature is valid. But what if we instead have…
New Blog Moderation Policy
There has been a lot of toxicity in the comments section of this blog. Recently, we’re having to delete more and more comments. Not just spam and off-topic comments, but also sniping and personal attacks. It’s gotten so bad that…
The Hacking of Culture and the Creation of Socio-Technical Debt
Culture is increasingly mediated through algorithms. These algorithms have splintered the organization of culture, a result of states and tech companies vying for influence over mass audiences. One byproduct of this splintering is a shift from imperfect but broad cultural…
Rethinking Democracy for the Age of AI
There is a lot written about technology’s threats to democracy. Polarization. Artificial intelligence. The concentration of wealth and power. I have a more general story: The political and economic systems of governance that were created in the mid-18th century are…
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Cartoon
Squid humor. 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 has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m appearing on a panel on Society and Democracy at ACM Collective Intelligence in Boston, Massachusetts. The conference runs from June 26 through 29, 2024, and…
AI and the Indian Election
As India concluded the world’s largest election on June 5, 2024, with over 640 million votes counted, observers could assess how the various parties and factions used artificial intelligence technologies—and what lessons that holds for the rest of the world.…
Using AI for Political Polling
Public polling is a critical function of modern political campaigns and movements, but it isn’t what it once was. Recent US election cycles have produced copious postmortems explaining both the successes and the flaws of public polling. There are two…
Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2024
This week, I hosted the seventeenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior at the Harvard Kennedy School. This is the first workshop since our co-founder, Ross Anderson, died unexpectedly. SHB is a small, annual, invitational workshop of people studying various…
The Justice Department Took Down the 911 S5 Botnet
The US Justice Department has dismantled an enormous botnet: According to an indictment unsealed on May 24, from 2014 through July 2022, Wang and others are alleged to have created and disseminated malware to compromise and amass a network of…
Espionage with a Drone
The US is using a World War II law that bans aircraft photography of military installations to charge someone with doing the same thing with a drone. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article:…
Online Privacy and Overfishing
Microsoft recently caught state-backed hackers using its generative AI tools to help with their attacks. In the security community, the immediate questions weren’t about how hackers were using the tools (that was utterly predictable), but about how Microsoft figured it…
Breaking a Password Manager
Interesting story of breaking the security of the RoboForm password manager in order to recover a cryptocurrency wallet password. Grand and Bruno spent months reverse engineering the version of the RoboForm program that they thought Michael had used in 2013…
Friday Squid Blogging: Baby Colossal Squid
This video might be a juvenile colossal 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. This article has been…
How AI Will Change Democracy
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to predict that artificial intelligence will affect every aspect of our society. Not by doing new things. But mostly by doing things that are already being done by humans, perfectly competently. Replacing humans with…
Supply Chain Attack against Courtroom Software
No word on how this backdoor was installed: A software maker serving more than 10,000 courtrooms throughout the world hosted an application update containing a hidden backdoor that maintained persistent communication with a malicious website, researchers reported Thursday, in the…
Privacy Implications of Tracking Wireless Access Points
Brian Krebs reports on research into geolocating routers: Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geolocate devices. Researchers from the University…
On the Zero-Day Market
New paper: “Zero Progress on Zero Days: How the Last Ten Years Created the Modern Spyware Market“: Abstract: Spyware makes surveillance simple. The last ten years have seen a global market emerge for ready-made software that lets governments surveil their…
Personal AI Assistants and Privacy
Microsoft is trying to create a personal digital assistant: At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called “Recall” for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities…
Unredacting Pixelated Text
Experiments in unredacting text that has been pixelated. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Unredacting Pixelated Text