encryption, india, Meta, privacy, Security technology, Uncategorized, whatsapp
Meta has threatened to pull WhatsApp out of India if the courts try to force it to break its end-to-end encryption. Powered by WPeMatico
Month: April 2024
espionage, history of cryptography, military, Security technology, Uncategorized
During the Cold War, the US Navy tried to make a secret code out of whale song. The basic plan was to develop coded messages from recordings of whales, dolphins, sea lions, and seals. The submarine would broadcast the noises and a computer—the Combo Signal Recognizer (CSR)—would detect the specific patterns and decode them on … Read More “Whale Song Code” »
Security technology, squid, Uncategorized
A cruise ship is searching for the colossal squid. 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
cars, insurance, privacy, Security technology, surveillance, Uncategorized
Kashmir Hill has a really good article on how GM tricked its drivers into letting it spy on them—and then sold that data to insurance companies. Powered by WPeMatico
artificial intelligence, essays, search engines, Security technology, Uncategorized
The web has become so interwoven with everyday life that it is easy to forget what an extraordinary accomplishment and treasure it is. In just a few decades, much of human knowledge has been collectively written up and made available to anyone with an internet connection. But all of this is coming to an end. … Read More “The Rise of Large-Language-Model Optimization” »
academic papers, gdpr, privacy, Security technology, Uncategorized
Law professor Dan Solove has a new article on privacy regulation. In his email to me, he writes: “I’ve been pondering privacy consent for more than a decade, and I think I finally made a breakthrough with this article.” His mini-abstract: In this Article I argue that most of the time, privacy consent is fictitious. … Read More “Dan Solove on Privacy Regulation” »
cybersecurity, incentives, microsoft, national security policy, Security technology, Uncategorized
Former senior White House cyber policy director A. J. Grotto talks about the economic incentives for companies to improve their security—in particular, Microsoft: Grotto told us Microsoft had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” to provide logging capabilities to the government by default, and given the fact the mega-corp banked around $20 billion in revenue … Read More “Microsoft and Security Incentives” »
malware, open source, Security technology, social engineering, Uncategorized
Interesting social-engineering attack vector: McAfee released a report on a new LUA malware loader distributed through what appeared to be a legitimate Microsoft GitHub repository for the “C++ Library Manager for Windows, Linux, and MacOS,” known as vcpkg. The attacker is exploiting a property of GitHub: comments to a particular repo can contain files, and … Read More “Using Legitimate GitHub URLs for Malware” »
privacy, Security technology, squid, tracking, Uncategorized
A new bioadhesive makes it easier to attach trackers to squid. Note: the article does not discuss squid privacy rights. 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
backdoors, open source, Security technology, social engineering, Uncategorized
After the XZ Utils discovery, people have been examining other open-source projects. Surprising no one, the incident is not unique: The OpenJS Foundation Cross Project Council received a suspicious series of emails with similar messages, bearing different names and overlapping GitHub-associated emails. These emails implored OpenJS to take action to update one of its popular … Read More “Other Attempts to Take Over Open Source Projects” »