The Center for Security and Emerging Technology has a new report: “Machine Learning and Cybersecurity: Hype and Reality.” Here’s the bottom line: The report offers four conclusions: Machine learning can help defenders more accurately detect and triage potential attacks. However, in many cases these technologies are elaborations on long-standing methods — not fundamentally new approaches … Read More “The Future of Machine Learning and Cybersecurity” »
Fantastic video of a giant squid hunting at depths between 1,827 and 3,117 feet. This is a follow-on from this post. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here. Powered by WPeMatico
Researchers have discovered a vulnerability in Peloton stationary bicycles, one that would give the attacker complete control over the device. The attack requires physical access to the Peloton, so it’s not really a practical attack. President Biden’s Peloton was not in danger. Powered by WPeMatico
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a mobile data standard that was widely used in the early 2000s. The first encryption algorithm for that standard was GEA-1, a stream cipher built on three linear-feedback shift registers and a non-linear combining function. Although the algorithm has a 64-bit key, the effective key length is only 40 … Read More “Intentional Flaw in GPRS Encryption Algorithm GEA-1” »
Paul van Oorschot’s webpage contains a complete copy of his book: Computer Security and the Internet: Tools and Jewels. It’s worth reading. Powered by WPeMatico
TorrentFreak surveyed nineteen VPN providers, asking them questions about their privacy practices: what data they keep, how they respond to court order, what country they are incorporated in, and so on. Most interesting to me is the home countries of these companies. Express VPN is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. NordVPN is incorporated in … Read More “VPNs and Trust” »
Really interesting two part analysis of the audit conducted after the 2020 election in Windham, New Hampshire. Based on preliminary reports published by the team of experts that New Hampshire engaged to examine an election discrepancy, it appears that a buildup of dust in the read heads of optical-scan voting machines (possibly over several years … Read More “Andrew Appel on New Hampshire’s Election Audit” »
We now have a fossil of a squid eating a crustacean while it is being eaten by a shark. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here. Powered by WPeMatico
For three years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Australian Federal Police owned and operated a commercial encrypted phone app, called AN0M, that was used by organized crime around the world. Of course, the police were able to read everything — I don’t even know if this qualifies as a backdoor. This week, the … Read More “FBI/AFP-Run Encrypted Phone” »
“Markpainting” is a clever technique to watermark photos in such a way that makes it easier to detect ML-based manipulation: An image owner can modify their image in subtle ways which are not themselves very visible, but will sabotage any attempt to inpaint it by adding visible information determined in advance by the markpainter. One … Read More “Detecting Deepfake Picture Editing” »