Tom Standage has a great story of the first cyberattack against a telegraph network. The Blanc brothers traded government bonds at the exchange in the city of Bordeaux, where information about market movements took several days to arrive from Paris by mail coach. Accordingly, traders who could get the information more quickly could make money … Read More “1834: The First Cyberattack” »
Month: May 2018
On numbers stations. Powered by WPeMatico
Fake kidnapping fraud: “Most commonly we have unsolicited calls to potential victims in Australia, purporting to represent the people in authority in China and suggesting to intending victims here they have been involved in some sort of offence in China or elsewhere, for which they’re being held responsible,” Commander McLean said. The scammers threaten the … Read More “Kidnapping Fraud” »
It’s not very good, but it has a squid in it. 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. Powered by WPeMatico
I’m at Carnegie Mellon University, at the eleventh Workshop on Security and Human Behavior. SHB is a small invitational gathering of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Alessandro Acquisti, Ross Anderson, and myself. The 50 or so people in the room include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, … Read More “Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2018)” »
Interesting research: “The detection of faked identity using unexpected questions and mouse dynamics,” by Merulin Monaro, Luciano Gamberini, and Guiseppe Sartori. Abstract: The detection of faked identities is a major problem in security. Current memory-detection techniques cannot be used as they require prior knowledge of the respondent’s true identity. Here, we report a novel technique … Read More “Detecting Lies through Mouse Movements” »
Interesting research in steganography at the font level. Powered by WPeMatico
The rise of self-checkout has caused a corresponding rise in shoplifting. Powered by WPeMatico
Google and Microsoft researchers have disclosed another Spectre-like CPU side-channel vulnerability, called “Speculative Store Bypass.” Like the others, the fix will slow the CPU down. The German tech site Heise reports that more are coming. I’m not surprised. Writing about Spectre and Meltdown in January, I predicted that we’ll be seeing a lot more of … Read More “Another Spectre-Like CPU Vulnerability” »
The Intercept has a long article on Japan’s equivalent of the NSA: the Directorate for Signals Intelligence. Interesting, but nothing really surprising. The directorate has a history that dates back to the 1950s; its role is to eavesdrop on communications. But its operations remain so highly classified that the Japanese government has disclosed little about … Read More “Japan’s Directorate for Signals Intelligence” »