An actually serious scientific journal has published a paper speculating that octopus and squid could be of extraterrestrial origin. News article. 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
Category: academic papers
Auto Added by WPeMatico
We have discovered a squid — (Oegopsida, Magnapinnidae, Magnapinna sp.) — that lives at 6,000 meters deep. :They’re really weird,” says Vecchione. “They drift along with their arms spread out and these really long, skinny, spaghetti-like extensions dangling down underneath them.” Microscopic suckers on those filaments enable the squid to capture their prey. But the … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging: Deep-Dwelling Squid” »
Really interesting research demonstrating how to hide vulnerabilities in source code by manipulating how Unicode text is displayed. It’s really clever, and not the sort of attack one would normally think about. From Ross Anderson’s blog: We have discovered ways of manipulating the encoding of source code files so that human viewers and compilers see … Read More “Hiding Vulnerabilities in Source Code” »
It’s the eyes: The researchers note that in many cases, users can simply zoom in on the eyes of a person they suspect may not be real to spot the pupil irregularities. They also note that it would not be difficult to write software to spot such errors and for social media sites to use … Read More “Identifying Computer-Generated Faces” »
Susan Landau wrote an essay on the privacy, efficacy, and equity of contract-tracing smartphone apps. Also see her excellent book on the topic. Powered by WPeMatico
Researchers have found possible evidence of paternal care among bigfin reef 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
Fascinating research: “Generating Master Faces for Dictionary Attacks with a Network-Assisted Latent Space Evolution.” Abstract: A master face is a face image that passes face-based identity-authentication for a large portion of the population. These faces can be used to impersonate, with a high probability of success, any user, without having access to any user-information. We … Read More “Using “Master Faces” to Bypass Face-Recognition Authenticating Systems” »
New paper: “Encrypted Cloud Photo Storage Using Google Photos“: Abstract: Cloud photo services are widely used for persistent, convenient, and often free photo storage, which is especially useful for mobile devices. As users store more and more photos in the cloud, significant privacy concerns arise because even a single compromise of a user’s credentials give … Read More “Storing Encrypted Photos in Google’s Cloud” »
Interesting research: “EvilModel: Hiding Malware Inside of Neural Network Models”. Abstract: Delivering malware covertly and detection-evadingly is critical to advanced malware campaigns. In this paper, we present a method that delivers malware covertly and detection-evadingly through neural network models. Neural network models are poorly explainable and have a good generalization ability. By embedding malware into … Read More “Hiding Malware in ML Models” »
As ransomware becomes more common, I’m seeing more discussions about the ethics of paying the ransom. Here’s one more contribution to that issue: a research paper that the insurance industry is hurting more than it’s helping. However, the most pressing challenge currently facing the industry is ransomware. Although it is a societal problem, cyber insurers … Read More “Insurance and Ransomware” »