academic papers – SSL and internet security news

Hiding Capabilities in AI Models

October 27, 2026 infossl

academic papers, AI, encryption, Security technology, Uncategorized

Interesting research: “AI Models Can Provably Hide Arbitrary Capabilities” Abstract: Capability evaluations aim to surface dangerous model behaviors before deployment, but their reliability depends on the assumption that hidden capabilities can be elicited. We show this assumption does not hold under adversarial conditions by constructing backdoor attacks that embed encrypted neural networks within host model … Read More “Hiding Capabilities in AI Models” »

Training AIs to Solve CAPTCHAs

October 19, 2026 infossl

academic papers, AI, captchas, Security technology, Uncategorized

Interesting research: Abstract: Vision-language models (VLMs) can solve visual CAPTCHAs without task-specific training, but the agents built on them approach every challenge from scratch. For such an agent, the hundredth instance of a familiar puzzle costs as much time and compute as the first. Specialized detectors invert the trade-off, answering in milliseconds but only for … Read More “Training AIs to Solve CAPTCHAs” »

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Before the Chicxulub Meteor Impact

October 16, 2026 infossl

academic papers, Security technology, squid, Uncategorized

New research shows that squid lived all around the globe even before the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event. 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

Measuring Human Cryptanalysis Effort

October 15, 2026 infossl

academic papers, algorithms, cost-benefit analysis, cryptanalysis, Security technology, Uncategorized

Matthew Green has a new site that tries to estimate the number of cryptanalyst-hours that have been spent analyzing different public-key algorithms: Abstract: We estimate how much public cryptanalysis each public-key assumption has received, using the literature itself as the instrument. From roughly sixteen thousand candidate papers we classify cryptanalytic work on ECDLP, structured and … Read More “Measuring Human Cryptanalysis Effort” »

A Surprising Amount of Satellite Traffic Is Unencrypted

October 17, 2025 infossl

academic papers, cell phones, data protection, eavesdropping, encryption, infrastructure, Security technology, Uncategorized

Here’s the summary: We pointed a commercial-off-the-shelf satellite dish at the sky and carried out the most comprehensive public study to date of geostationary satellite communication. A shockingly large amount of sensitive traffic is being broadcast unencrypted, including critical infrastructure, internal corporate and government communications, private citizens’ voice calls and SMS, and consumer Internet traffic … Read More “A Surprising Amount of Satellite Traffic Is Unencrypted” »

Time-of-Check Time-of-Use Attacks Against LLMs

September 18, 2025 infossl

academic papers, cyberattack, LLM, Security technology, Uncategorized, vulnerabilities

This is a nice piece of research: “Mind the Gap: Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use Vulnerabilities in LLM-Enabled Agents“.: Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM)-enabled agents are rapidly emerging across a wide range of applications, but their deployment introduces vulnerabilities with security implications. While prior work has examined prompt-based attacks (e.g., prompt injection) and data-oriented threats (e.g., data … Read More “Time-of-Check Time-of-Use Attacks Against LLMs” »

Assessing the Quality of Dried Squid

September 12, 2025 infossl

academic papers, Security technology, squid, Uncategorized

Research: Nondestructive detection of multiple dried squid qualities by hyperspectral imaging combined with 1D-KAN-CNN Abstract: Given that dried squid is a highly regarded marine product in Oriental countries, the global food industry requires a swift and noninvasive quality assessment of this product. The current study therefore uses visiblenear-infrared (VIS-NIR) hyperspectral imaging and deep learning (DL) … Read More “Assessing the Quality of Dried Squid” »

New Cryptanalysis of the Fiat-Shamir Protocol

September 9, 2025 infossl

academic papers, cryptanalysis, hashes, protocols, Security technology, Uncategorized

A couple of months ago, a new paper demonstrated some new attacks against the Fiat-Shamir transformation. Quanta published a good article that explains the results. This is a pretty exciting paper from a theoretical perspective, but I don’t see it leading to any practical real-world cryptanalysis. The fact that there are some weird circumstances that … Read More “New Cryptanalysis of the Fiat-Shamir Protocol” »

Friday Squid Blogging: The Origin and Propagation of Squid

September 6, 2025 infossl

academic papers, Security technology, squid, Uncategorized

New research (paywalled): Editor’s summary: Cephalopods are one of the most successful marine invertebrates in modern oceans, and they have a 500-million-year-old history. However, we know very little about their evolution because soft-bodied animals rarely fossilize. Ikegami et al. developed an approach to reveal squid fossils, focusing on their beaks, the sole hard component of … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging: The Origin and Propagation of Squid” »