Month: April 2021

Details on the Unlocking of the San Bernardino Terrorist’s iPhone

Posted on By infossl
apple, exploits, fbi, hacking, iphone, Security technology, terrorism, Uncategorized

The Washington Post has published a long story on the unlocking of the San Bernardino Terrorist’s iPhone 5C in 2016. We all thought it was an Israeli company called Cellebrite. It was actually an Australian company called Azimuth Security. Azimuth specialized in finding significant vulnerabilities. Dowd, a former IBM X-Force researcher whom one peer called … Read More “Details on the Unlocking of the San Bernardino Terrorist’s iPhone” »

DNI’s Annual Threat Assessment

Posted on By infossl
cybersecurity, national security policy, Security technology, supply chain, threat models, Uncategorized

The office of the Director of National Intelligence released its “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.” Cybersecurity is covered on pages 20-21. Nothing surprising: Cyber threats from nation states and their surrogates will remain acute. States’ increasing use of cyber operations as a tool of national power, including increasing use by militaries around … Read More “DNI’s Annual Threat Assessment” »

Backdoor Added — But Found — in PHP

Posted on By infossl
authentication, backdoors, hacking, open source, Security technology, supply chain, Uncategorized

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’s websites use PHP, it’s scary. Developers … Read More “Backdoor Added — But Found — in PHP” »

Google’s Project Zero Finds a Nation-State Zero-Day Operation

Posted on By infossl
cyberattack, google, Security technology, terrorism, Uncategorized, zero-day

Google’s Project Zero discovered, and caused to be patched, eleven zero-day exploits against Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Windows, and iOS. This seems to have been exploited by “Western government operatives actively conducting a counterterrorism operation”: The exploits, which went back to early 2020 and used never-before-seen techniques, were “watering hole” attacks that used infected websites to … Read More “Google’s Project Zero Finds a Nation-State Zero-Day Operation” »

Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support

Posted on By infossl
cryptocurrency, encryption, privacy, Security technology, signal, Uncategorized

According to Wired, Signal is adding support for the cryptocurrency MobileCoin, “a form of digital cash designed to work efficiently on mobile devices while protecting users’ privacy and even their anonymity.” Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal and CEO of the nonprofit that runs it, describes the new payments feature as an attempt to extend … Read More “Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support” »