I don’t have a lot of good news for you. The truth is there’s nothing we can do to protect our data from being stolen by cybercriminals and others. Ten years ago, I could have given you all sorts of advice about using encryption, not sending information over email, securing your web connections, and a … Read More “Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft” »
Category: encryption
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Someone is stealing millions of dollars worth of Ethereum by guessing users’ private keys. Normally this should be impossible, but lots of keys seem to be very weak. Researchers are unsure how those weak keys are being generated and used. Their paper is here. Powered by WPeMatico
From a G7 meeting of interior ministers in Paris this month, an “outcome document“: Encourage Internet companies to establish lawful access solutions for their products and services, including data that is encrypted, for law enforcement and competent authorities to access digital evidence, when it is removed or hosted on IT servers located abroad or encrypted, … Read More “G7 Comes Out in Favor of Encryption Backdoors” »
A recent article overhyped the release of EverCrypt, a cryptography library created using formal methods to prove security against specific attacks. The Quantum magazine article sets off a series of “snake-oil” alarm bells. The author’s Github README is more measured and accurate, and illustrates what a cool project this really is. But it’s not “hacker-proof … Read More “Unhackable Cryptography?” »
GCHQ has put simulators for the Enigma, Typex, and Bombe on the Internet. News article. Powered by WPeMatico
Turns out that the software a bunch of CAs used to generate public-key certificates was flawed: they created random serial numbers with only 63 bits instead of the required 64. That may not seem like a big deal to the layman, but that one bit change means that the serial numbers only have half the … Read More “CAs Reissue Over One Million Weak Certificates” »
An article I co-wrote — my first law journal article — was cited by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court — the state supreme court — in a case on compelled decryption. Here’s the first, in footnote 1: We understand the word “password” to be synonymous with other terms that cell phone users may be familiar … Read More “I Was Cited in a Court Decision” »
Matthew Green has a super-interesting blog post about information leakage from encrypted databases. It describes the recent work by Paul Grubbs, Marie-Sarah Lacharité, Brice Minaud, and Kenneth G. Paterson. Even the summary is too much to summarize, so read it. Powered by WPeMatico
There’s new research on the security of password managers, specifically 1Password, Dashlane, KeePass, and Lastpass. This work specifically looks at password leakage on the host computer. That is, does the password manager accidentally leave plaintext copies of the password lying around memory? All password managers we examined sufficiently secured user secrets while in a “not … Read More “On the Security of Password Managers” »
Lessons learned in reconstructing the World War II-era SIGSALY voice encryption system. Powered by WPeMatico