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PIN-Stealing Android Malware

Posted on By infossl
android, banking, biometrics, malware, pins, Security technology, Uncategorized

This is an old piece of malware—the Chameleon Android banking Trojan—that now disables biometric authentication in order to steal the PIN: The second notable new feature is the ability to interrupt biometric operations on the device, like fingerprint and face unlock, by using the Accessibility service to force a fallback to PIN or password authentication. … Read More “PIN-Stealing Android Malware” »

Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy

Posted on By infossl
conferences, Schneier news, Security technology, Uncategorized, voting

Last month, I convened the Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy (IWORD 2023) at the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center. As with IWORD 2022, the goal was to bring together a diverse set of thinkers and practitioners to talk about how democracy might be reimagined for the twenty-first century. My thinking is very broad here. … Read More “Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Reimagining Democracy” »

Friday Squid Blogging—18th Anniversary Post: New Species of Pygmy Squid Discovered

Posted on By infossl
Security technology, squid, Uncategorized

They’re Ryukyuan pygmy squid (Idiosepius kijimuna) and Hannan’s pygmy squid (Kodama jujutsu). The second one represents an entire new genus. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. And, yes, this is the eighteenth anniversary of Friday Squid Blogging. The first … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging—18th Anniversary Post: New Species of Pygmy Squid Discovered” »

Improving Shor’s Algorithm

Posted on By infossl
academic papers, cryptanalysis, cryptography, quantum computing, rsa, Security technology, Uncategorized

We don’t have a useful quantum computer yet, but we do have quantum algorithms. Shor’s algorithm has the potential to factor large numbers faster than otherwise possible, which—if the run times are actually feasible—could break both the RSA and Diffie-Hellman public-key algorithms. Now, computer scientist Oded Regev has a significant speed-up to Shor’s algorithm, at … Read More “Improving Shor’s Algorithm” »

New iPhone Exploit Uses Four Zero-Days

Posted on By infossl
backdoors, exploits, iphone, kaspersky, Security technology, Uncategorized, zero-day

Kaspersky researchers are detailing “an attack that over four years backdoored dozens if not thousands of iPhones, many of which belonged to employees of Moscow-based security firm Kaspersky.” It’s a zero-click exploit that makes use of four iPhone zero-days. The most intriguing new detail is the targeting of the heretofore-unknown hardware feature, which proved to … Read More “New iPhone Exploit Uses Four Zero-Days” »

Facial Recognition Systems in the US

Posted on By infossl
face recognition, identification, privacy, Security technology, surveillance, Uncategorized

A helpful summary of which US retail stores are using facial recognition, thinking about using it, or currently not planning on using it. (This, of course, can all change without notice.) Three years ago, I wrote that campaigns to ban facial recognition are too narrow. The problem here is identification, correlation, and then discrimination. There’s … Read More “Facial Recognition Systems in the US” »

TikTok Editorial Analysis

Posted on By infossl
academic papers, china, filtering, propaganda, Security technology, social media, Uncategorized

TikTok seems to be skewing things in the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. (This is a serious analysis, and the methodology looks sound.) Conclusion: Substantial Differences in Hashtag Ratios Raise Concerns about TikTok’s Impartiality Given the research above, we assess a strong possibility that content on TikTok is either amplified or suppressed based on … Read More “TikTok Editorial Analysis” »

Friday Squid Blogging: Sqids

Posted on By infossl
open source, Security technology, squid, Uncategorized

They’re short unique strings: Sqids (pronounced “squids”) is an open-source library that lets you generate YouTube-looking IDs from numbers. These IDs are short, can be generated from a custom alphabet and are guaranteed to be collision-free. I haven’t dug into the details enough to know how they can be guaranteed to be collision-free. As usual, … Read More “Friday Squid Blogging: Sqids” »

AI Is Scarily Good at Guessing the Location of Random Photos

Posted on By infossl
artificial intelligence, data privacy, geolocation, privacy, Security technology, Uncategorized

Wow: To test PIGEON’s performance, I gave it five personal photos from a trip I took across America years ago, none of which have been published online. Some photos were snapped in cities, but a few were taken in places nowhere near roads or other easily recognizable landmarks. That didn’t seem to matter much. It … Read More “AI Is Scarily Good at Guessing the Location of Random Photos” »

AI and Lossy Bottlenecks

Posted on By infossl
AI and Lossy Bottlenecks
artificial intelligence, LLM, Security technology, Uncategorized, voting

Artificial intelligence is poised to upend much of society, removing human limitations inherent in many systems. One such limitation is information and logistical bottlenecks in decision-making. Traditionally, people have been forced to reduce complex choices to a small handful of options that don’t do justice to their true desires. Artificial intelligence has the potential to … Read More “AI and Lossy Bottlenecks” »