Friday Squid Blogging: New Squid Species
An ancient squid:
New research on fossils has revealed that a vampire-like ancient squid haunted Earth’s oceans 165 million years ago. The study, published in June edition of the journal Papers in Palaeontology, says the creature had a bullet-shaped body...
New Revelations from the Snowden Documents
Jake Appelbaum’s PhD thesis contains several new revelations from the classified NSA documents provided to journalists by Edward Snowden. Nothing major, but a few more tidbits.
Kind of amazing that that all happened ten years ago. At this point, those...
On the Cybersecurity Jobs Shortage
In April, Cybersecurity Ventures reported on extreme cybersecurity job shortage:
Global cybersecurity job vacancies grew by 350 percent, from one million openings in 2013 to 3.5 million in 2021, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. The number of unfilled jobs leveled off...
Detecting AI-Generated Text
There are no reliable ways to distinguish text written by a human from text written by an large language model. OpenAI writes:
Do AI detectors work?
In short, no. While some (including OpenAI) have released tools that purport to detect AI-generated...
Using Hacked LastPass Keys to Steal Cryptocurrency
Remember last November, when hackers broke into the network for LastPass—a password database—and stole password vaults with both encrypted and plaintext data for over 25 million users?
Well, they’re now using that data break into crypto wallets and drain them:...
Friday Squid Blogging: Cleaning Squid
Two links on how to properly clean squid.
I learned a few years ago, in Spain, and got pretty good at it.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that...
LLM Summary of My Book Beyond Fear
Claude (Anthropic’s LLM) was given this prompt: Please summarize the themes and arguments of Bruce Schneier’s book Beyond Fear. I’m particularly interested in a taxonomy of his ethical arguments—please expand on that. Then lay out the most salient...
On Technologies for Automatic Facial Recognition
Interesting article on technologies that will automatically identify people:
With technology like that on Mr. Leyvand’s head, Facebook could prevent users from ever forgetting a colleague’s name, give a reminder at a cocktail party that an acquaintance had kids to...
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
I’m speaking at swampUP 2023 in San Jose, California, on September 13, 2023 at 11:35 AM PT.
The list is maintained on this page.
Fake Signal and Telegram Apps in the Google Play Store
Google removed fake Signal and Telegram apps from its Play store.
An app with the name Signal Plus Messenger was available on Play for nine months and had been downloaded from Play roughly 100 times before Google took it down...
Zero-Click Exploit in iPhones
Make sure you update your iPhones:
Citizen Lab says two zero-days fixed by Apple today in emergency security updates were actively abused as part of a zero-click exploit chain (dubbed BLASTPASS) to deploy NSO Group’s Pegasus commercial spyware onto fully...
Cars Have Terrible Data Privacy
A new Mozilla Foundation report concludes that cars, all of them, have terrible data privacy.
All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label—making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have...
On Robots Killing People
The robot revolution began long ago, and so did the killing. One day in 1979, a robot at a Ford Motor Company casting plant malfunctioned—human workers determined that it was not going fast enough. And so twenty-five-year-old Robert Williams...
Friday Squid Blogging: Glass Squid Video
Here’s a fantastic video of Taonius Borealis, a glass squid, from NOAA.
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.
LLMs and Tool Use
Last March, just two weeks after GPT-4 was released, researchers at Microsoft quietly announced a plan to compile millions of APIs—tools that can do everything from ordering a pizza to solving physics equations to controlling the TV in your...
In-the-Wild Exploitation Expected for Critical TeamCity Flaw Allowing Server Takeover
A critical vulnerability in the TeamCity CI/CD server could allow unauthenticated attackers to execute code and take over vulnerable servers.
The post In-the-Wild Exploitation Expected for Critical TeamCity Flaw Allowing Server Takeover appeared first on SecurityWeek.
Predator Spyware Delivered to iOS, Android Devices via Zero-Days, MitM Attacks
Predator spyware delivered to iPhones and Android devices using iOS and Chrome zero-day vulnerabilities and MitM attacks.
The post Predator Spyware Delivered to iOS, Android Devices via Zero-Days, MitM Attacks appeared first on SecurityWeek.
BEC Scammer Pleads Guilty to Part in $6m Scheme
Nigerian was extradited to the US from Canada
Researchers Spot Novel “Deadglyph” Backdoor
Malware is linked to UAE-backed spies
Almost US 900 Schools Breached Via MOVEit
National Student Clearinghouse reveals more details of incident
