The Cambridge Cybercrime Conference was held on 23 June. Summaries of the presentations are here. Powered by WPeMatico
Category: reports
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Once you build a surveillance system, you can’t control who will use it: A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone records and use Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency’s informants in 2018, according to a new US justice department report. The … Read More “Surveillance Used by a Drug Cartel” »
One one my biggest worries about VPNs is the amount of trust users need to place in them, and how opaque most of them are about who owns them and what sorts of data they retain. A new study found that many commercials VPNS are (often surreptitiously) owned by Chinese companies. It would be hard … Read More “Chinese-Owned VPNs” »
In response to a FOIA request, the NSA released “Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937-1987),” by Glenn F. Stahly, with a lot of redactions. Weirdly, this is the second time the NSA has declassified the document. John Young got a copy in 2019. This one has a few less redactions. And nothing that was provided … Read More “The NSA’s “Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937–1987)”” »
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre just released its white paper on “Advanced Cryptography,” which it defines as “cryptographic techniques for processing encrypted data, providing enhanced functionality over and above that provided by traditional cryptography.” It includes things like homomorphic encryption, attribute-based encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, and secure multiparty computation. It’s full of good advice. I … Read More “NCSC Guidance on “Advanced Cryptography”” »
Citizen Lab has a new report on Paragon’s spyware: Key Findings: Introducing Paragon Solutions. Paragon Solutions was founded in Israel in 2019 and sells spyware called Graphite. The company differentiates itself by claiming it has safeguards to prevent the kinds of spyware abuses that NSO Group and other vendors are notorious for. Infrastructure Analysis of … Read More “Report on Paragon Spyware” »
Really interesting analysis of the American M-209 encryption device and its security. Powered by WPeMatico
Palo Alto Networks published its semi-annual report on ransomware. From the Executive Summary: Unit 42 monitors ransomware and extortion leak sites closely to keep tabs on threat activity. We reviewed compromise announcements from 53 dedicated leak sites in the first half of 2024 and found 1,762 new posts. This averages to approximately 294 posts a … Read More “The State of Ransomware” »
Consumer Reports has a new study of people-search site removal services, concluding that they don’t really work: As a whole, people-search removal services are largely ineffective. Private information about each participant on the people-search sites decreased after using the people-search removal services. And, not surprisingly, the removal services did save time compared with manually opting … Read More “People-Search Site Removal Services Largely Ineffective” »
You might think that libraries are kind of boring, but this self-analysis of a 2023 ransomware and extortion attack against the British Library is anything but. Powered by WPeMatico