I have long maintained that smart contracts are a dumb idea: that a human process is actually a security feature. Here’s some interesting research on training AIs to automatically exploit smart contracts: AI models are increasingly good at cyber tasks,…
Tag: Schneier on Security
FBI Warns of Fake Video Scams
The FBI is warning of AI-assisted fake kidnapping scams: Criminal actors typically will contact their victims through text message claiming they have kidnapped their loved one and demand a ransom be paid for their release. Oftentimes, the criminal actor will…
AI vs. Human Drivers
Two competing arguments are making the rounds. The first is by a neurosurgeon in the New York Times. In an op-ed that honestly sounds like it was paid for by Waymo, the author calls driverless cars a “public health breakthrough”:…
Substitution Cipher Based on The Voynich Manuscript
Here’s a fun paper: “The Naibbe cipher: a substitution cipher that encrypts Latin and Italian as Voynich Manuscript-like ciphertext“: Abstract: In this article, I investigate the hypothesis that the Voynich Manuscript (MS 408, Yale University Beinecke Library) is compatible with…
Friday Squid Blogging: Vampire Squid Genome
The vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) has the largest cephalopod genome ever sequenced: more than 11 billion base pairs. That’s more than twice as large as the biggest squid genomes. It’s technically not a squid: “The vampire squid is a fascinating…
New Anonymous Phone Service
A new anonymous phone service allows you to sign up with just a zip code. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: New Anonymous Phone Service
Like Social Media, AI Requires Difficult Choices
In his 2020 book, “Future Politics,” British barrister Jamie Susskind wrote that the dominant question of the 20th century was “How much of our collective life should be determined by the state, and what should be left to the market…
Banning VPNs
This is crazy. Lawmakers in several US states are contemplating banning VPNs, because…think of the children! As of this writing, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy by targeting VPNs in the name of “protecting children” in A.B. 105/S.B.…
Friday Squid Blogging: Flying Neon Squid Found on Israeli Beach
A meter-long flying neon squid (Ommastrephes bartramii) was found dead on an Israeli beach. The species is rare in the Mediterranean. This article has been indexed from Schneier on Security Read the original article: Friday Squid Blogging: Flying Neon Squid…
Prompt Injection Through Poetry
In a new paper, “Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models,” researchers found that turning LLM prompts into poetry resulted in jailbreaking the models: Abstract: We present evidence that adversarial poetry functions as a universal…
Huawei and Chinese Surveillance
This quote is from House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company. “Long before anyone had heard of Ren Zhengfei or Huawei, Wan Runnan had been China’s star entrepreneur in the 1980s, with his company, the Stone…
Four Ways AI Is Being Used to Strengthen Democracies Worldwide
Democracy is colliding with the technologies of artificial intelligence. Judging from the audience reaction at the recent World Forum on Democracy in Strasbourg, the general expectation is that democracy will be the worse for it. We have another narrative. Yes,…
IACR Nullifies Election Because of Lost Decryption Key
The International Association of Cryptologic Research—the academic cryptography association that’s been putting conferences like Crypto (back when “crypto” meant “cryptography”) and Eurocrypt since the 1980s—had to nullify an online election when trustee Moti Yung lost his decryption key. For this…
More on Rewiring Democracy
It’s been a month since Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship was published. From what we know, sales are good. Some of the book’s forty-three chapters are available online: chapters 2, 12, 28, 34, 38,…
Scam USPS and E-Z Pass Texts and Websites
Google has filed a complaint in court that details the scam: In a complaint filed Wednesday, the tech giant accused “a cybercriminal group in China” of selling “phishing for dummies” kits. The kits help unsavvy fraudsters easily “execute a large-scale…
Legal Restrictions on Vulnerability Disclosure
Kendra Albert gave an excellent talk at USENIX Security this year, pointing out that the legal agreements surrounding vulnerability disclosure muzzle researchers while allowing companies to not fix the vulnerabilities—exactly the opposite of what the responsible disclosure movement of the…
Friday Squid Blogging: Pilot Whales Eat a Lot of Squid
Short-finned pilot wales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) eat at lot of squid: To figure out a short-finned pilot whale’s caloric intake, Gough says, the team had to combine data from a variety of sources, including movement data from short-lasting tags, daily feeding…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: My coauthor Nathan E. Sanders and I are speaking at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC at noon ET on November 17, 2025. The…
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Game: The Challenge, Season Two
The second season of the Netflix reality competition show Squid Game: The Challenge has dropped. (Too many links to pick a few—search for it.) As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in…
Signal’s Post-Quantum Cryptographic Implementation
Signal has just rolled out its quantum-safe cryptographic implementation. Ars Technica has a really good article with details: Ultimately, the architects settled on a creative solution. Rather than bolt KEM onto the existing double ratchet, they allowed it to remain…