The UK is the first country to ban default passwords on IoT devices. On Monday, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to ban default guessable usernames and passwords from these IoT devices. Unique passwords installed by…
Category: Schneier on Security
AI Voice Scam
Scammers tricked a company into believing they were dealing with a BBC presenter. They faked her voice, and accepted money intended for her. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: AI Voice Scam
WhatsApp in India
Meta has threatened to pull WhatsApp out of India if the courts try to force it to break its end-to-end encryption. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: WhatsApp in India
Whale Song Code
During the Cold War, the US Navy tried to make a secret code out of whale song. The basic plan was to develop coded messages from recordings of whales, dolphins, sea lions, and seals. The submarine would broadcast the noises…
Long Article on GM Spying on Its Cars’ Drivers
Kashmir Hill has a really good article on how GM tricked its drivers into letting it spy on them—and then sold that data to insurance companies. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Long…
The Rise of Large-Language-Model Optimization
The web has become so interwoven with everyday life that it is easy to forget what an extraordinary accomplishment and treasure it is. In just a few decades, much of human knowledge has been collectively written up and made available…
Dan Solove on Privacy Regulation
Law professor Dan Solove has a new article on privacy regulation. In his email to me, he writes: “I’ve been pondering privacy consent for more than a decade, and I think I finally made a breakthrough with this article.” His…
Microsoft and Security Incentives
Former senior White House cyber policy director A. J. Grotto talks about the economic incentives for companies to improve their security—in particular, Microsoft: Grotto told us Microsoft had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” to provide logging capabilities to the…
Using Legitimate GitHub URLs for Malware
Interesting social-engineering attack vector: McAfee released a report on a new LUA malware loader distributed through what appeared to be a legitimate Microsoft GitHub repository for the “C++ Library Manager for Windows, Linux, and MacOS,” known as vcpkg. The attacker…
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Trackers
A new bioadhesive makes it easier to attach trackers to squid. Note: the article does not discuss squid privacy rights. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I…
Other Attempts to Take Over Open Source Projects
After the XZ Utils discovery, people have been examining other open-source projects. Surprising no one, the incident is not unique: The OpenJS Foundation Cross Project Council received a suspicious series of emails with similar messages, bearing different names and overlapping…
X.com Automatically Changing Link Text but Not URLs
Brian Krebs reported that X (formerly known as Twitter) started automatically changing twitter.com links to x.com links. The problem is: (1) it changed any domain name that ended with “twitter.com,” and (2) it only changed the link’s appearance (anchortext), not…
New Lattice Cryptanalytic Technique
A new paper presents a polynomial-time quantum algorithm for solving certain hard lattice problems. This could be a big deal for post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, since many of them base their security on hard lattice problems. A few things to note.…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking twice at RSA Conference 2024 in San Francisco. I’ll be on a panel on software liability on May 6, 2024 at 8:30 AM, and…
Smuggling Gold by Disguising it as Machine Parts
Someone got caught trying to smuggle 322 pounds of gold (that’s about 1/4 of a cubic foot) out of Hong Kong. It was disguised as machine parts: On March 27, customs officials x-rayed two air compressors and discovered that they…
Backdoor in XZ Utils That Almost Happened
Last week, the internet dodged a major nation-state attack that would have had catastrophic cybersecurity repercussions worldwide. It’s a catastrophe that didn’t happen, so it won’t get much attention—but it should. There’s an important moral to the story of the…
History of RSA Conference. Bruce Schneier. The First ‘Exhibitor’ in 1994.
Listen to the Audio on SoundCloud.com Bruce Schneier was at the first ever RSA Conference in 1991, and he was the first ‘exhibitor’ in 1994 when he asked Jim Bidzos, Creator of the RSA Conference, if he could sell copies…
In Memoriam: Ross Anderson, 1956-2024
Last week I posted a short memorial of Ross Anderson. The Communications of the ACM asked me to expand it. Here’s the longer version. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: In Memoriam: Ross…
US Cyber Safety Review Board on the 2023 Microsoft Exchange Hack
US Cyber Safety Review Board released a report on the summer 2023 hack of Microsoft Exchange by China. It was a serious attack that From the executive summary: The Board finds that this intrusion was preventable and should never have…
Friday Squid Blogging: SqUID Bots
They’re AI warehouse robots. 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. This article has been indexed from Schneier on…