Informations about SSL certificates and networks security
People have suspected this for a while, but Apple has made it official. It only commits to fully patching the latest version of its OS, even though it claims to support older versions. From ArsTechnica: In other words, while Apple will provide security-related updates for older versions of its operating systems, only the most recent … Read More “Apple Only Commits to Patching Latest OS Version” »
China claims that it is “engaging in responsible squid fishing”: Chen Xinjun, dean of the College of Marine Sciences at Shanghai Ocean University, made the remarks in response to recent accusations by foreign reporters and actor Leonardo DiCaprio that China is depleting its own fish stock and that Chinese boats have sailed to other waters … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging: Chinese Squid Fishing” »
There are no details yet, but it’s really important that you patch Open SSL 3.x when the new version comes out on Tuesday. How bad is “Critical”? According to OpenSSL, an issue of critical severity affects common configurations and is also likely exploitable. It’s likely to be abused to disclose server memory contents, and potentially … Read More “Critical Vulnerability in Open SSL” »
After suffering two large, and embarrassing, data breaches in recent weeks, the Australian government increased the fine for serious data breaches from $2.2 million to a minimum of $50 million. (That’s $50 million AUD, or $32 million USD.) This is a welcome change. The problem is one of incentives, and Australia has now increased the … Read More “Australia Increases Fines for Massive Data Breaches” »
Many years ago, Matt Blaze and I talked about getting our hands on a casino-grade automatic shuffler and looking for vulnerabilities. We never did it—I remember that we didn’t even try very hard—but this article shows that we probably would have found non-random properties: …the executives had recently discovered that one of their machines had … Read More “On the Randomness of Automatic Card Shufflers” »
Interesting: A recent study on giant squid that have washed ashore along the Sea of Japan coast has raised the possibility that the animal has a different reproductive method than many other types of squid. Almost all squid and octopus species are polygamous, with multiple males passing sperm to a single female. Giant squids were … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging: The Reproductive Habits of Giant Squid” »
Machine learning security is extraordinarily difficult because the attacks are so varied—and it seems that each new one is weirder than the next. Here’s the latest: a training-time attack that forces the model to exhibit a point of view: Spinning Language Models: Risks of Propaganda-As-A-Service and Countermeasures.” Abstract: We investigate a new threat to neural … Read More “Adversarial ML Attack that Secretly Gives a Language Model a Point of View” »
Long and interesting interview with Signal’s new president, Meredith Whittaker: WhatsApp uses the Signal encryption protocol to provide encryption for its messages. That was absolutely a visionary choice that Brian and his team led back in the day - and big props to them for doing that. But you can’t just look at that and … Read More “Interview with Signal’s New President” »
Interesting interview: Banks don’t take millions of dollars and put them in plastic bags and hang them on the wall so everybody can walk right up to them. But we do basically the same thing in museums and hang the assets right out on the wall. So it’s our job, then, to either use technology … Read More “Museum Security” »
Everyone visiting Qatar for the World Cup needs to install spyware on their phone. Everyone travelling to Qatar during the football World Cup will be asked to download two apps called Ehteraz and Hayya. Briefly, Ehteraz is an covid-19 tracking app, while Hayya is an official World Cup app used to keep track of match … Read More “Qatar Spyware” »