This is a neat piece of historical research. The team of computer scientist George Lasry, pianist Norbert Biermann and astrophysicist Satoshi Tomokiyo—all keen cryptographers—initially thought the batch of encoded documents related to Italy, because that was how they were filed at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. However, they quickly realised the letters were in French. … Read More “Mary Queen of Scots Letters Decrypted” »
Category: encryption
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A group of Swiss researchers have published an impressive security analysis of Threema. We provide an extensive cryptographic analysis of Threema, a Swiss-based encrypted messaging application with more than 10 million users and 7000 corporate customers. We present seven different attacks against the protocol in three different threat models. As one example, we present a … Read More “Security Analysis of Threema” »
I don’t know how much of a thing this will end up being, but we are seeing ChatGPT-written malware in the wild. …within a few weeks of ChatGPT going live, participants in cybercrime forums—some with little or no coding experience—were using it to write software and emails that could be used for espionage, ransomware, malicious … Read More “ChatGPT-Written Malware” »
After way too many years, Apple is finally encrypting iCloud backups: Based on a screenshot from Apple, these categories are covered when you flip on Advanced Data Protection: device backups, messages backups, iCloud Drive, Notes, Photos, Reminders, Safari bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, and Wallet Passes. Apple says the only “major” categories not covered by … Read More “Apple Is Finally Encrypting iCloud Backups” »
Diplomatic code cracked after 500 years: In painstaking work backed by computers, Pierrot found “distinct families” of about 120 symbols used by Charles V. “Whole words are encrypted with a single symbol” and the emperor replaced vowels coming after consonants with marks, she said, an inspiration probably coming from Arabic. In another obstacle, he used … Read More “Charles V of Spain Secret Code Cracked” »
Brian Krebs writes about how the Zeppelin ransomware encryption scheme was broken: The researchers said their break came when they understood that while Zeppelin used three different types of encryption keys to encrypt files, they could undo the whole scheme by factoring or computing just one of them: An ephemeral RSA-512 public key that is … Read More “Breaking the Zeppelin Ransomware Encryption Scheme” »
This is a dumb crypto mistake I had not previously encountered: A developer says it was possible to run their own software on the car infotainment hardware after discovering the vehicle’s manufacturer had secured its system using keys that were not only publicly known but had been lifted from programming examples. […] “Turns out the … Read More “Hyundai Uses Example Keys for Encryption System” »
SIKE is one of the new algorithms that NIST recently added to the post-quantum cryptography competition. It was just broken, really badly. We present an efficient key recovery attack on the Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman protocol (SIDH), based on a “glue-and-split” theorem due to Kani. Our attack exploits the existence of a small non-scalar endomorphism on … Read More “SIKE Broken” »
Some sites, including Facebook, add parameters to the web address for tracking purposes. These parameters have no functionality that is relevant to the user, but sites rely on them to track users across pages and properties. Mozilla introduced support for URL stripping in Firefox 102, which it launched in June 2022. Firefox removes tracking parameters … Read More “Facebook Is Now Encrypting Links to Prevent URL Stripping” »
NIST’s post-quantum computing cryptography standard process is entering its final phases. It announced the first four algorithms: For general encryption, used when we access secure websites, NIST has selected the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm. Among its advantages are comparatively small encryption keys that two parties can exchange easily, as well as its speed of operation. For digital … Read More “NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic Algorithms” »