Former DoJ attorney John Carlin writes about hackback, which he defines thus: “A hack back is a type of cyber response that incorporates a counterattack designed to proactively engage with, disable, or collect evidence about an attacker. Although hack backs can take on various forms, they are—by definition—not passive defensive measures.” His conclusion: As the … Read More “On Hacking Back” »
Author: infossl
This is why AIs are not ready to be personal assistants: A new attack called ‘CometJacking’ exploits URL parameters to pass to Perplexity’s Comet AI browser hidden instructions that allow access to sensitive data from connected services, like email and calendar. In a realistic scenario, no credentials or user interaction are required and a threat … Read More “Prompt Injection in AI Browsers” »
Encryption can protect data at rest and data in transit, but does nothing for data in use. What we have are secure enclaves. I’ve written about this before: Almost all cloud services have to perform some computation on our data. Even the simplest storage provider has code to copy bytes from an internal storage system … Read More “New Attacks Against Secure Enclaves” »
The second season of the Netflix reality competition show Squid Game: The Challenge has dropped. (Too many links to pick a few—search for it.) As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy. Powered by WPeMatico
Over the past few decades, it’s become easier and easier to create fake receipts. Decades ago, it required special paper and printers—I remember a company in the UK advertising its services to people trying to cover up their affairs. Then, receipts became computerized, and faking them required some artistic skills to make the page look … Read More “Faking Receipts with AI” »
The Department of Justice has indicted thirty-one people over the high-tech rigging of high-stakes poker games. In a typical legitimate poker game, a dealer uses a shuffling machine to shuffle the cards randomly before dealing them to all the players in a particular order. As set forth in the indictment, the rigged games used altered … Read More “Rigged Poker Games” »
For many in the research community, it’s gotten harder to be optimistic about the impacts of artificial intelligence. As authoritarianism is rising around the world, AI-generated “slop” is overwhelming legitimate media, while AI-generated deepfakes are spreading misinformation and parroting extremist messages. AI is making warfare more precise and deadly amidst intransigent conflicts. AI companies are … Read More “Scientists Need a Positive Vision for AI” »
Microsoft is warning of a scam involving online payroll systems. Criminals use social engineering to steal people’s credentials, and then divert direct deposits into accounts that they control. Sometimes they do other things to make it harder for the victim to realize what is happening. I feel like this kind of thing is happening everywhere, … Read More “Cybercriminals Targeting Payroll Sites” »
These days, the most important meeting attendee isn’t a person: It’s the AI notetaker. This system assigns action items and determines the importance of what is said. If it becomes necessary to revisit the facts of the meeting, its summary is treated as impartial evidence. But clever meeting attendees can manipulate this system’s record by … Read More “AI Summarization Optimization” »
I can’t believe that I haven’t yet posted this picture of a giant squid at the Smithsonian. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy. Powered by WPeMatico
