Excellent read. One example: Consider the case of basic public key cryptography, in which a person’s public and private key are created together in a single operation. These two keys are entangled, not with quantum physics, but with math. When…
Category: Schneier on Security
Simpson Garfinkel on Spooky Cryptographic Action at a Distance
Excellent read. One example: Consider the case of basic public key cryptography, in which a person’s public and private key are created together in a single operation. These two keys are entangled, not with quantum physics, but with math. When…
Law Enforcement Deanonymizes Tor Users
The German police have successfully deanonymized at least four Tor users. It appears they watch known Tor relays and known suspects, and use timing analysis to figure out who is using what relay. Tor has written about this. Hacker News…
Criminals Are Blowing up ATMs in Germany
It’s low tech, but effective. Why Germany? It has more ATMs than other European countries, and—if I read the article right—they have more money in them. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Criminals…
Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Found on Spanish Beach
A giant squid has washed up on a beach in Northern Spain. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Found on Spanish Beach
Watermark for LLM-Generated Text
Researchers at Google have developed a watermark for LLM-generated text. The basics are pretty obvious: the LLM chooses between tokens partly based on a cryptographic key, and someone with knowledge of the key can detect those choices. What makes this…
Are Automatic License Plate Scanners Constitutional?
An advocacy groups is filing a Fourth Amendment challenge against automatic license plate readers. “The City of Norfolk, Virginia, has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked,…
No, The Chinese Have Not Broken Modern Encryption Systems with a Quantum Computer
The headline is pretty scary: “China’s Quantum Computer Scientists Crack Military-Grade Encryption.” No, it’s not true. This debunking saved me the trouble of writing one. It all seems to have come from this news article, which wasn’t bad but was…
AI and the SEC Whistleblower Program
Tax farming is the practice of licensing tax collection to private contractors. Used heavily in ancient Rome, it’s largely fallen out of practice because of the obvious conflict of interest between the state and the contractor. Because tax farmers are…
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Scarf
Cute squid scarf. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Scarf
Justice Department Indicts Tech CEO for Falsifying Security Certifications
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the CEO of a still unnamed company has been indicted for creating a fake auditing company to falsify security certifications in order to win government business. This article has been indexed from Schneier…
Cheating at Conkers
The men’s world conkers champion is accused of cheating with a steel chestnut. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Cheating at Conkers
More Details on Israel Sabotaging Hezbollah Pagers and Walkie-Talkies
The Washington Post has a long and detailed story about the operation that’s well worth reading (alternate version here). The sales pitch came from a marketing official trusted by Hezbollah with links to Apollo. The marketing official, a woman whose…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at SOSS Fusion 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The event will be held on October 22 and 23, 2024, and my talk is at…
Indian Fishermen Are Catching Less Squid
Fishermen in Tamil Nadu are reporting smaller catches of squid. Blog moderation policy. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Indian Fishermen Are Catching Less Squid
More on My AI and Democracy Book
In July, I wrote about my new book project on AI and democracy, to be published by MIT Press in fall 2025. My co-author and collaborator Nathan Sanders and I are hard at work writing. At this point, we would…
IronNet Has Shut Down
After retiring in 2014 from an uncharacteristically long tenure running the NSA (and US CyberCommand), Keith Alexander founded a cybersecurity company called IronNet. At the time, he claimed that it was based on IP he developed on his own time…
Deebot Robot Vacuums Are Using Photos and Audio to Train Their AI
An Australian news agency is reporting that robot vacuum cleaners from the Chinese company Deebot are surreptitiously taking photos and recording audio, and sending that data back to the vendor to train their AIs. Ecovacs’s privacy policy—available elsewhere in the…
Auto-Identification Smart Glasses
Two students have created a demo of a smart-glasses app that performs automatic facial recognition and then information lookups. Kind of obvious, but the sort of creepy demo that gets attention. News article. This article has been indexed from Schneier…
China Possibly Hacking US “Lawful Access” Backdoor
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Chinese hackers (Salt Typhoon) penetrated the networks of US broadband providers, and might have accessed the backdoors that the federal government uses to execute court-authorized wiretap requests. Those backdoors have been mandated by…