The so-called Crypto Wars have been going on for 25 years now. Basically, the FBI — and some of their peer agencies in the UK, Australia, and elsewhere — argue that the pervasive use of civilian encryption is hampering their ability to solve crimes and that they need the tech companies to make their systems … Read More “Evaluating the GCHQ Exceptional Access Proposal” »
Category: vulnerabilities
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Companies are willing to pay ever-increasing amounts for good zero-day exploits against hard-to-break computers and applications: On Monday, market-leading exploit broker Zerodium said it would pay up to $2 million for zero-click jailbreaks of Apple’s iOS, $1.5 million for one-click iOS jailbreaks, and $1 million for exploits that take over secure messaging apps WhatsApp and … Read More “Prices for Zero-Day Exploits Are Rising” »
Good essay on the inherent vulnerabilities in the cell phone standards and the market barriers to fixing them. So far, industry and policymakers have largely dragged their feet when it comes to blocking cell-site simulators and SS7 attacks. Senator Ron Wyden, one of the few lawmakers vocal about this issue, sent a letter in August … Read More “Security Vulnerabilities in Cell Phone Systems” »
No one doubts that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will transform cybersecurity. We just don’t know how, or when. While the literature generally focuses on the different uses of AI by attackers and defenders and the resultant arms race between the two I want to talk about software vulnerabilities. All software … Read More “Machine Learning to Detect Software Vulnerabilities” »
Back in January, we learned about a class of vulnerabilities against microprocessors that leverages various performance and efficiency shortcuts for attack. I wrote that the first two attacks would be just the start: It shouldn’t be surprising that microprocessor designers have been building insecure hardware for 20 years. What’s surprising is that it took 20 … Read More “More Spectre/Meltdown-Like Attacks” »
This is really just to point out that computer security is really hard: Almost as soon as Apple released iOS 12.1 on Tuesday, a Spanish security researcher discovered a bug that exploits group Facetime calls to give anyone access to an iPhone users’ contact information with no need for a passcode. […] A bad actor … Read More “iOS 12.1 Vulnerability” »
Consumer Reports is starting to evaluate the security of IoT devices. As part of that, it’s reviewing wireless home-security cameras. It found significant security vulnerabilities in D-Link cameras: In contrast, D-Link doesn’t store video from the DCS-2630L in the cloud. Instead, the camera has its own, onboard web server, which can deliver video to the … Read More “Consumer Reports Reviews Wireless Home-Security Cameras” »
Interesting research: “Self-encrypting deception: weaknesses in the encryption of solid state drives (SSDs)“: Abstract: We have analyzed the hardware full-disk encryption of several SSDs by reverse engineering their firmware. In theory, the security guarantees offered by hardware encryption are similar to or better than software implementations. In reality, we found that many hardware implementations have … Read More “Security of Solid-State-Drive Encryption” »
This seems bad: The F25 software was found to contain a capture replay vulnerability — basically an attacker would be able to eavesdrop on radio transmissions between the crane and the controller, and then send their own spoofed commands over the air to seize control of the crane. “These devices use fixed codes that are … Read More “Security Vulnerability in Internet-Connected Construction Cranes” »
The US Government Accounting Office just published a new report: “Weapons Systems Cyber Security: DOD Just Beginning to Grapple with Scale of Vulnerabilities” (summary here). The upshot won’t be a surprise to any of my regular readers: they’re vulnerable. From the summary: Automation and connectivity are fundamental enablers of DOD’s modern military capabilities. However, they … Read More “Security Vulnerabilities in US Weapons Systems” »