Chinese squid fishing boats are overwhelming Ecuador and Peru. 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
Month: March 2023
An elephant uses its right-of-way privileges to stop sugar-cane trucks and grab food. Powered by WPeMatico
Here’s a piece of Chinese malware that infects SonicWall security appliances and survives firmware updates. On Thursday, security firm Mandiant published a report that said threat actors with a suspected nexus to China were engaged in a campaign to maintain long-term persistence by running malware on unpatched SonicWall SMA appliances. The campaign was notable for … Read More “Another Malware with Persistence” »
Researchers have discovered malware that “can hijack a computer’s boot process even when Secure Boot and other advanced protections are enabled and running on fully updated versions of Windows.” Dubbed BlackLotus, the malware is what’s known as a UEFI bootkit. These sophisticated pieces of malware target the UEFI—short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface—the low-level and … Read More “BlackLotus Malware Hijacks Windows Secure Boot Process” »
This is a good survey on prompt injection attacks on large language models (like ChatGPT). Abstract: We are currently witnessing dramatic advances in the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). They are already being adopted in practice and integrated into many systems, including integrated development environments (IDEs) and search engines. The functionalities of current LLMs … Read More “Prompt Injection Attacks on Large Language Models” »
Last week, the Biden Administration released a new National Cybersecurity Strategy (summary here). There is lots of good commentary out there. It’s basically a smart strategy, but the hard parts are always the implementation details. It’s one thing to say that we need to secure our cloud infrastructure, and another to detail what the means … Read More “New National Cybersecurity Strategy” »
Researchers are prototyping multi-segment shapeshifter drones, which are “the precursors to flying squid-bots.” 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
Nicholas Weaver wrote an excellent paper on the problems of cryptocurrencies and the need to regulate the space—with all existing regulations. His conclusion: Regulators, especially regulators in the United States, often fear accusations of stifling innovation. As such, the cryptocurrency space has grown over the past decade with very little regulatory oversight. But fortunately for … Read More “Nick Weaver on Regulating Cryptocurrency” »
Examples of dumb password rules. There are some pretty bad disasters out there. My worst experiences are with sites that have artificial complexity requirements that cause my personal password-generation systems to fail. Some of the systems on the list are even worse: when they fail they don’t tell you why, so you just have to … Read More “Dumb Password Rules” »
A reporter used an AI synthesis of his own voice to fool the voice authentication system for Lloyd’s Bank. Powered by WPeMatico