There’s no evidence the Saudis hacked Jeff Bezos’s iPhone
There's no evidence the Saudis hacked Jeff Bezos's iPhone.This is the conclusion of the all the independent experts who have reviewed the public report behind the U.N.'s accusations. That report failed to find evidence proving the theory, but instead...
How to decrypt WhatsApp end-to-end media files
At the center of the "Saudis hacked Bezos" story is a mysterious video file investigators couldn't decrypt, sent by Saudi Crown Prince MBS to Bezos via WhatsApp. In this blog post, I show how to decrypt it. Once decrypted,...
When tweets are taken out of context
I'm currently experiencing the toxic hell that is a misunderstood tweet going viral. It's a property of the social media. The more they can deliberately misunderstand you, the more they can justify the toxicity of their response.The context is...
This is finally the year of the ARM server
"RISC" was an important architecture from the 1980s when CPUs had fewer than 100,000 transistors. By simplifying the instruction set, they free up transistors for more registers and better pipelining. It meant executing more instructions, but more than making...
CrowdStrike-Ukraine Explained
Trump's conversation with the President of Ukraine mentions "CrowdStrike". I thought I'd explain this.What was said?This is the text from the conversation covered in this“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine,...
Thread on the OSI model is a lie
I had a Twitter thread on the OSI model. Below it's compiled into one blogpostYea, I've got 3 hours to kill here in this airport lounge waiting for the next leg of my flight, so let's discuss the "OSI...
Thread on network input parsers
This blogpost contains a long Twitter thread on input parsers. I thought I'd copy the thread here as a blogpost.I am spending far too long on this chapter on "parsers". It's this huge gaping hole in Computer Science where...
Hacker Jeopardy, Wrong Answers Only Edition
Among the evening entertainment at DEF CON is "Hacker Jeopardy", like the TV show Jeopardy, but with hacking tech/culture questions. In today's blog post, we are going to play the "Wrong Answers Only" version, in which I die upon...
Securing devices for DEFCON
There's been much debate whether you should get burner devices for hacking conventions like DEF CON (phones or laptops). A better discussion would be to list those things you should do to secure yourself before going, just in case.These...
Why we fight for crypto
This last week, the Attorney General William Barr called for crypto backdoors. His speech is a fair summary of law-enforcement's side of the argument. In this post, I'm going to address many of his arguments.The tl;dr version of this blog...
Censorship vs. the memes
The most annoying thing in any conversation is when people drop a meme bomb, some simple concept they've heard elsewhere in a nice package that they really haven't thought through, which takes time and nuance to rebut. These memes...
Some Raspberry Pi compatible computers
I noticed this spreadsheet over at r/raspberry_pi reddit. I thought I'd write up some additional notes.https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jWMaK-26EEAKMhmp6SLhjScWW2WKH4eKD-93hjpmm_s/edit#gid=0Consider the Upboard, an x86 computer in the Raspberry Pi form factor for $99. When you include storage, power supplies, heatsinks, cases, and so...
Your threat model is wrong
Several subjects have come up with the past week that all come down to the same thing: your threat model is wrong. Instead of addressing the the threat that exists, you've morphed the threat into something else that you'd...
Almost One Million Vulnerable to BlueKeep Vuln (CVE-2019-0708)
Microsoft announced a vulnerability in it's "Remote Desktop" product that can lead to robust, wormable exploits. I scanned the Internet to assess the danger. I find nearly 1-million devices on the public Internet that are vulnerable to the bug....
A lesson in journalism vs. cybersecurity
A recent NYTimes article blaming the NSA for a ransomware attack on Baltimore is typical bad journalism. It's an op-ed masquerading as a news article. It cites many to support the conclusion the NSA is to be blamed, but...
Sensitive plastic surgery images exposed online
Researchers at VPN advisory company vpnMentor have found yet another online data exposure caused by a misconfigured cloud database.
Lenovo, HP, Dell Peripherals Face Unpatched Firmware Bugs
A lack of proper code-signing verification and authentication for firmware updates opens the door to information disclosure, remote code execution, denial of service and more.
12 hottest new cybersecurity startups at RSA 2020
Starting on February 24, the RSA Conference (RSAC) 2020 gives security vendors old and new a chance to demonstrate their capabilities. The event has become an attractive venue for startups to make their debut. This year’s crop will be...
Hundreds of Millions of PC Components Still Have Hackable Firmware
The lax security of supply chain firmware has been a known concern for years—with precious little progress being made.
Remote Wipe Plugin Bug Hits 200,000+ WordPress Sites
Remote Wipe Plugin Bug Hits 200,000+ WordPress SitesSecurity researchers are warning of a new plugin vulnerability which is exposing over 200,000 WordPress sites to the risk of being remotely wiped by an attacker.
The problem lies with versions 1.3.4 and...
