Tarah Wheeler and Josephine Wolff analyze a recent court decision that the NotPetya attacks are not considered an act of war under the wording of Merck’s insurance policy, and that the insurers must pay the $1B+ claim. Wheeler and Wolff argue that the judge “did the right thing for the wrong reasons..” Powered by WPeMatico
Month: February 2022
The story is an old one, but the tech gives it a bunch of new twists: Gemma Brett, a 27-year-old designer from west London, had only been working at Madbird for two weeks when she spotted something strange. Curious about what her commute would be like when the pandemic was over, she searched for the … Read More “An Elaborate Employment Con in the Internet Age” »
Here are six beautiful squid videos. I know nothing more about them. 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
A Berlin-based company has developed an AirTag clone that bypasses Apple’s anti-stalker security systems. Source code for these AirTag clones is available online. So now we have several problems with the system. Apple’s anti-stalker security only works with iPhones. (Apple wrote an Android app that can detect AirTags, but how many people are going to … Read More “Bypassing Apple’s AirTag Security” »
The US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis wrote an essay outlining a new social contract for the cyber age: The United States needs a new social contract for the digital age — one that meaningfully alters the relationship between public and private sectors and proposes a new set of obligations for each. Such a shift … Read More “A New Cybersecurity “Social Contract”” »
This is a clever hack against those bike-rental kiosks: They’re stealing Citi Bikes by switching the QR scan codes on two bicycles near each other at a docking station, then waiting for an unsuspecting cyclist to try to unlock a bike with his or her smartphone app. The app doesn’t work for the rider but … Read More “Stealing Bicycles by Swapping QR Codes” »
There’s a lot of fishing going on: The number of Chinese-flagged vessels in the south Pacific has surged 13-fold from 54 active vessels in 2009 to 707 in 2020, according to the SPRFMO. Meanwhile, the size of China’s squid catch has grown from 70,000 tons in 2009 to 358,000. As usual, you can also use … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging: South American Squid Stocks Threatened by Chinese Fishing” »
A reporter interviews a Uyghur human-rights advocate, and uses the Otter.ai transcription app. The next day, I received an odd note from Otter.ai, the automated transcription app that I had used to record the interview. It read: “Hey Phelim, to help us improve your Otter’s experience, what was the purpose of this particular recording with … Read More “Possible Government Surveillance of the Otter.ai Transcription App” »
Google’s Project Zero is reporting that software vendors are patching their code faster. tl;dr In 2021, vendors took an average of 52 days to fix security vulnerabilities reported from Project Zero. This is a significant acceleration from an average of about 80 days 3 years ago. In addition to the average now being well below … Read More “Vendors are Fixing Security Flaws Faster” »
Two US Senators claim that the CIA has been running an unregulated — and almost certainly illegal — mass surveillance program on Americans. The senator’s statement. Some declassified information from the CIA. No real details yet. Powered by WPeMatico