Author: infossl

Chinese COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign

Posted on By infossl
china, covid19, disinformation, fakenews, intelligence, propaganda, Security technology

The New York Times is reporting on state-sponsored disinformation campaigns coming out of China: Since that wave of panic, United States intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives helped push the messages across platforms, according to six American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss intelligence matters. The amplification techniques are … Read More “Chinese COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign” »

Another Story of Bad 1970s Encryption

Posted on By infossl
backdoors, cryptanalysis, cryptography, historyofcryptography, historyofsecurity, Security technology

This one is from the Netherlands. It seems to be clever cryptanalysis rather than a backdoor. The Dutch intelligence service has been able to read encrypted communications from dozens of countries since the late 1970s thanks to a microchip, according to research by de Volkskrant on Thursday. The Netherlands could eavesdrop on confidential communication from … Read More “Another Story of Bad 1970s Encryption” »

Vulnerability Finding Using Machine Learning

Posted on By infossl
artificialintelligence, cloudcomputing, cybersecurity, machinelearning, microsoft, Security technology, securityengineering, vulnerabilities

Microsoft is training a machine-learning system to find software bugs: At Microsoft, 47,000 developers generate nearly 30 thousand bugs a month. These items get stored across over 100 AzureDevOps and GitHub repositories. To better label and prioritize bugs at that scale, we couldn’t just apply more people to the problem. However, large volumes of semi-curated … Read More “Vulnerability Finding Using Machine Learning” »

The DoD Isn’t Fixing Its Security Problems

Posted on By infossl
accountability, compliance, cybersecurity, departmentofdefense, reports, Security technology

It has produced several reports outlining what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed. It’s not fixing them: GAO looked at three DoD-designed initiatives to see whether the Pentagon is following through on its own goals. In a majority of cases, DoD has not completed the cybersecurity training and awareness tasks it set out to. … Read More “The DoD Isn’t Fixing Its Security Problems” »

California Needlessly Reduces Privacy During COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted on By infossl
breaches, covid19, medicine, privacy, Security technology

This one isn’t even related to contact tracing: On March 17, 2020, the federal government relaxed a number of telehealth-related regulatory requirements due to COVID-19. On April 3, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-43-20 (the Order), which relaxes various telehealth reporting requirements, penalties, and enforcements otherwise imposed under state laws, including those … Read More “California Needlessly Reduces Privacy During COVID-19 Pandemic” »

Contact Tracing COVID-19 Infections via Smartphone Apps

Posted on By infossl
apple, covid19, epidemiology, google, privacy, Security technology, tracing, tracking

Google and Apple have announced a joint project to create a privacy-preserving COVID-19 contact tracing app. (Details, such as we have them, are here.) It’s similar to the app being developed at MIT, and similar to others being described and developed elsewhere. It’s nice seeing the privacy protections; they’re well thought out. I was going … Read More “Contact Tracing COVID-19 Infections via Smartphone Apps” »

Friday Squid Blogging: Amazingly Realistic Squid Drawings

Posted on By infossl
Security technology, squid

The squid drawings of Yuuki Tokuda are simply incredible. I tried to figure out how to buy one of them, but everything is in Japanese. 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 … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging: Amazingly Realistic Squid Drawings” »