Recovering Keyboard Inputs through Thermal Imaging

Posted on By infossl
academicpapers, passwords, Security technology, sidechannelattacks

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, are able to recover user passwords by way of thermal imaging. The tech is pretty straightforward, but it’s interesting to think about the types of scenarios in which it might be pulled off. Abstract: As a warm-blooded mammalian species, we humans routinely leave thermal residues on various objects … Read More “Recovering Keyboard Inputs through Thermal Imaging” »

PROPagate Code Injection Seen in the Wild

Posted on By infossl
malware, passwords, Security technology

Last year, researchers wrote about a new Windows code injection technique called PROPagate. Last week, it was first seen in malware: This technique abuses the SetWindowsSubclass function — a process used to install or update subclass windows running on the system — and can be used to modify the properties of windows running in the … Read More “PROPagate Code Injection Seen in the Wild” »

California Passes New Privacy Law

Posted on By infossl
datacollection, dataprotection, laws, privacy, Security technology

The California legislature unanimously passed the strongest data privacy law in the nation. This is great news, but I have a lot of reservations. The Internet tech companies pressed to get this law passed out of self-defense. A ballot initiative was already going to be voted on in November, one with even stronger data privacy … Read More “California Passes New Privacy Law” »

Conservation of Threat

Posted on By infossl
academicpapers, psychologyofsecurity, Security technology, threatmodels, warontheunexpected

Here’s some interesting research about how we perceive threats. Basically, as the environment becomes safer we basically manufacture new threats. From an essay about the research: To study how concepts change when they become less common, we brought volunteers into our laboratory and gave them a simple task ­– to look at a series of … Read More “Conservation of Threat” »

Manipulative Social Media Practices

Posted on By infossl
consumerization, deception, facebook, google, norway, privacy, Security technology, socialmedia

The Norwegian Consumer Council just published an excellent report on the deceptive practices tech companies use to trick people into giving up their privacy. From the executive summary: Facebook and Google have privacy intrusive defaults, where users who want the privacy friendly option have to go through a significantly longer process. They even obscure some … Read More “Manipulative Social Media Practices” »