Month: July 2023

Commentary on the Implementation Plan for the 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy

Posted on By infossl
cybersecurity, national security policy, Security technology, Uncategorized

The Atlantic Council released a detailed commentary on the White House’s new “Implementation Plan for the 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy.” Lots of interesting bits. So far, at least three trends emerge: First, the plan contains a (somewhat) more concrete list of actions than its parent strategy, with useful delineation of lead and supporting agencies, … Read More “Commentary on the Implementation Plan for the 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy” »

Practice Your Security Prompting Skills

Posted on By infossl
games, LLM, passwords, Security technology, Uncategorized

Gandalf is an interactive LLM game where the goal is to get the chatbot to reveal its password. There are eight levels of difficulty, as the chatbot gets increasingly restrictive instructions as to how it will answer. It’s a great teaching tool. I am stuck on Level 7. Feel free to give hints and discuss … Read More “Practice Your Security Prompting Skills” »

Disabling Self-Driving Cars with a Traffic Cone

Posted on By infossl
artificial intelligence, cars, hacking, Security technology, Uncategorized

You can disable a self-driving car by putting a traffic cone on its hood: The group got the idea for the conings by chance. The person claims a few of them walking together one night saw a cone on the hood of an AV, which appeared disabled. They weren’t sure at the time which came … Read More “Disabling Self-Driving Cars with a Traffic Cone” »

Tracking Down a Suspect through Cell Phone Records

Posted on By infossl
cell phones, crime, forensics, Security technology, Uncategorized

Interesting forensics in connection with a serial killer arrest: Investigators went through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area of Long Island—two areas connected to a “burner phone” they had tied to the killings. (In court, prosecutors later said the burner phone was identified via an email account used to … Read More “Tracking Down a Suspect through Cell Phone Records” »

Buying Campaign Contributions as a Hack

Posted on By infossl
debates, hacking, Security technology, Uncategorized, voting

The first Republican primary debate has a popularity threshold to determine who gets to appear: 40,000 individual contributors. Now there are a lot of conventional ways a candidate can get that many contributors. Doug Burgum came up with a novel idea: buy them: A long-shot contender at the bottom of recent polls, Mr. Burgum is … Read More “Buying Campaign Contributions as a Hack” »

French Police Will Be Able to Spy on People through Their Cell Phones

Posted on By infossl
cell phones, france, geolocation, privacy, Security technology, surveillance, Uncategorized

The French police are getting new surveillance powers: French police should be able to spy on suspects by remotely activating the camera, microphone and GPS of their phones and other devices, lawmakers agreed late on Wednesday, July 5. […] Covering laptops, cars and other connected objects as well as phones, the measure would allow the … Read More “French Police Will Be Able to Spy on People through Their Cell Phones” »

Google Is Using Its Vast Data Stores to Train AI

Posted on By infossl
artificial intelligence, data collection, google, privacy, Security technology, Uncategorized

No surprise, but Google just changed its privacy policy to reflect broader uses of all the surveillance data it has captured over the years: Research and development: Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public. For example, we use publicly available … Read More “Google Is Using Its Vast Data Stores to Train AI” »

Privacy of Printing Services

Posted on By infossl
Security technology, Uncategorized

The Washington Post has an article about popular printing services, and whether or not they read your documents and mine the data when you use them for printing: Ideally, printing services should avoid storing the content of your files, or at least delete daily. Print services should also communicate clearly upfront what information they’re collecting … Read More “Privacy of Printing Services” »

Wisconsin Governor Hacks the Veto Process

Posted on By infossl
A Hacker's Mind, hacking, laws, loopholes, Security technology, Uncategorized

In my latest book, A Hacker’s Mind, I wrote about hacks as loophole exploiting. This is a great example: The Wisconsin governor used his line-item veto powers—supposedly unique in their specificity—to change a one-year funding increase into a 400-year funding increase. He took this wording: Section 402. 121.905 (3) (c) 9. of the statues is … Read More “Wisconsin Governor Hacks the Veto Process” »