Expert insights. Personalized for you.
2020 seems to be getting off to an inauspicious start with the compromise of the home addresses of prominent UK citizens–many of them in lines of work that could make them targets for crime. MORE
204 This is an interesting story of a serious vulnerability in a Huawei driver that Microsoft found. The vulnerability is similar in style to the NSA's DOUBLEPULSAR that was leaked by the Shadow Brokers -- believed to be the Russian government -- and it's obvious that this attack copied that technique. What is less clear is whether the vulnerability -- which has been fixed -- was put into the Huwei driver accidentally or on purpose. backdoors malware nsa vulnerabilities MORE
Trail of Bits released a threat model for Kubernetes. There’s some context from Aaron Small, who made the project happen. Continuum has a blog and a spreadsheet on threat modeling lambdas (as a category, not specific to Amazon Lambda), and also a post on threat modeling with CAPEC. MORE
159 I don't have a lot of good news for you. The truth is there's nothing we can do to protect our data from being stolen by cybercriminals and others. Ten years ago, I could have given you all sorts of advice about using encryption, not sending information over email, securing your web connections, and a host of other things -- but most of that doesn't matter anymore. Today, your sensitive data is controlled by others, and there's nothing you can personally to do affect its security. MORE
Israeli cybersecurity researchers have created malware capable of showing fake cancerous growths on CT and MRI scans. The malware, called CT-GAN, served as a proof of concept to show the potential for hacking medical devices with fake medical news that was convincing enough to fool medical technicians. In a video demonstrating the exploit, researchers at Ben Gurion University described how such an attack might be deployed. MORE
In March, Adi Shamir -- that's the "S" in RSA -- was denied a US visa to attend the RSA Conference. He's Israeli. This month, British citizen Ross Anderson couldn't attend an awards ceremony in DC because of visa issues. You can listen to his recorded acceptance speech.) I've heard of at least one other prominent cryptographer who is in the same boat. Is there some cryptographer blacklist? Is something else going on? A lot of us would like to know. MORE
213 A university study confirmed the obvious: if you pay a random bunch of freelance programmers a small amount of money to write security software, they're not going to do a very good job at it. In an experiment that involved 43 programmers hired via the Freelancer.com platform, University of Bonn academics have discovered that developers tend to take the easy way out and write code that stores user passwords in an unsafe manner. MORE
Influence operations are elusive to define. The Rand Corp.'s s definition is as good as any: "the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent." Basically, we know it when we see it, from bots controlled by the Russian Internet Research Agency to Saudi attempts to plant fake stories and manipulate political debate. MORE
The NSA has released a security advisory warning of the dangers of TLS inspection: Transport Layer Security Inspection (TLSI), also known as TLS break and inspect, is a security process that allows enterprises to decrypt traffic, inspect the decrypted content for threats, and then re-encrypt the traffic before it enters or leaves the network. MORE
A new phone-based phishing scam that spoofs Apple Inc. is likely to fool quite a few people. It starts with an automated call that display’s Apple’s logo, address and real phone number, warning about a data breach at the company. MORE
Interesting research: " TrojDRL: Trojan Attacks on Deep Reinforcement Learning Agents ": Abstract: : Recent work has identified that classification models implemented as neural networks are vulnerable to data-poisoning and Trojan attacks at training time. MORE
244 
Many people will land on this page after learning that their email address has appeared in a data breach I've called "Collection #1". Most of them won't have a tech background or be familiar with the concept of credential stuffing so I'm going to write this post for the masses and link out to more detailed material for those who want to go deeper. Let's start with the raw numbers because that's the headline, then I'll drill down into where it's from and what it's composed of. MORE
MyPayrollHR , a now defunct cloud-based payroll processing firm based in upstate New York, abruptly ceased operations this past week after stiffing employees at thousands of companies. The ongoing debacle, which allegedly involves malfeasance on the part of the payroll company’s CEO, resulted in countless people having money drained from their bank accounts and has left nearly $35 million worth of payroll and tax payments in legal limbo. MORE
Google announced a glitch that stored unencrypted passwords belonging to several business customers, a situation that had been exploitable since 2005. In a blog post released this week, the company admitted the passwords of “some” of its G Suite customers had been stored on internal servers without cryptographic protection, also known as a hash. This issue has been fixed and, again, we have seen no evidence of improper access to or misuse of the affected passwords. MORE
Nearly three dozen journalists at a broad range of major publications have been targeted by a far-right group that maintains a Deep Web database listing the personal information of people who threaten their views. This group specializes in encouraging others to harass those targeted by their ire, and has claimed responsibility for dozens of bomb threats and “swatting” incidents, where police are tricked into visiting potentially deadly force on the target’s address. MORE
A couple of high-profile distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks will surely go down in history as watershed events – each for different reasons. Related: IoT botnets now available for economical DDoS blasts. In March 2013, several impossibly massive waves of nuisance requests – peaking as high as 300 gigabytes per second— swamped Spamhaus , knocking the anti-spam organization off line for extended periods. MORE
A ransomware outbreak has besieged a Wisconsin based IT company that provides cloud data hosting, security and access management to more than 100 nursing homes across the United States. MORE
Back in 1998, Tim May warned us of the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse": "terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers." I tended to cast it slightly differently. MORE
Many readers probably believe they can trust links and emails coming from U.S. federal government domain names, or else assume there are at least more stringent verification requirements involved in obtaining a.gov domain versus a commercial one ending in.com or.org. MORE
The Seattle Times has a story today about how “ 50 years ago today, the first 747 took off and changed aviation.” ” It’s true. The 747 was a marvel of engineering and luxury. The book by Joe Sutter is a great story of engineering leadership. For an upcoming flight, I paid extra to reserve an upper deck seat before the last of the passenger-carrying Queens of the Skies retires. And in a way, the 747 represents a pinnacle of aviation engineering advancements. MORE
This is the best analysis of the software causes of the Boeing 737 MAX disasters that I have read. Technically this is safety and not security; there was no attacker. But the fields are closely related and there are a lot of lessons for IoT security -- and the security of complex socio-technical systems in general -- in here MORE
Supply chain security is an insurmountably hard problem. The recent focus is on Chinese 5G equipment, but the problem is much broader. This opinion piece looks at undersea communications cables: But now the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading firm working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally, has gone to sea. Under its Huawei Marine Networks component, it is constructing or improving nearly 100 submarine cables around the world. MORE
Unless you decide to go Henry David Thoreau and shun civilization altogether, you can’t — and won’t — stop generating data , which sooner or later can be traced back to you. Related: The Facebook factor. A few weeks back I interviewed a white hat hacker. After the interview, I told him that his examples gave me paranoia. He laughed and responded, “There’s no such thing as anonymous data; it all depends on how determined the other party is.”. MORE
Sometimes the discussion around extended validation certificates (EV) feels a little like flogging a dead horse. In fact, it was only September that I proposed EV certificates are already dead for all sorts of good reasons that have only been reinforced since that time. MORE
One terabyte of data belonging to a major hotel booking platform was found leaked online. A huge trove of customer data belonging to Gekko Group was found online in an unsecured format. MORE
The DHS is requiring all federal agencies to develop a vulnerability disclosure policy. The goal is that people who discover vulnerabilities in government systems have a mechanism for reporting them to someone who might actually do something about it. MORE
208 
Shortly, I’m off to Blackhat. My Threat Modeling Intensive classes both sold out (thank you!). Nearly a decade ago, I put forth a set of best practices: Breath mints Ricola Purell Advil Gatorade This year, I’m adding a travel humidifier. I’ve been using this one, and it really needs to soak for 10 minutes, but then it adds a nice stream of moisture to the room. Also, at a conference, you’ll ask, and get the question “What’s new?” MORE
161 
Until this month, I'd never heard of People Data Labs (PDL). I'd certainly heard of the sector they operate in - "Data Enrichment" - but I'd never heard of the company itself. MORE
When I first started writing code a few decades ago, it was a rather bland affair involving a basic text editor and physical books for reference. MORE
Cyberattacks don't magically happen; they involve a series of steps. And far from being helpless, defenders can disrupt the attack at any of those steps. This framing has led to something called the " cybersecurity kill chain ": a way of thinking about cyber defense in terms of disrupting the attacker's process. On a similar note, it's time to conceptualize the "information operations kill chain." MORE
Locking down firmware. This is fast becoming a profound new security challenge for all companies – one that can’t be pushed to a side burner. Related: The rise of ‘memory attacks’ I’m making this assertion as federal authorities have just commenced steps to remove and replace switching gear supplied, on the cheap, to smaller U.S. telecoms by Chinese tech giant Huawei. These are the carriers that provide Internet access to rural areas all across America. MORE
The Department of Justice wants access to encrypted consumer devices but promises not to infiltrate business products or affect critical infrastructure. Yet that's not possible, because there is no longer any difference between those categories of devices. Consumer devices are critical infrastructure. They affect national security. And it would be foolish to weaken them, even at the request of law enforcement. MORE
Today is my last day at IBM. If you've been following along, IBM bought my startup Resilient Systems in Spring 2016. Since then, I have been with IBM, holding the nicely ambiguous title of "Special Advisor." As of the end of the month, I will be back on my own. I will continue to write and speak, and do the occasional consulting job. I will continue to teach at the Harvard Kennedy School. MORE
215 Troy Hunt
NOVEMBER 22, 2019
Until this month, I'd never heard of People Data Labs (PDL). I'd certainly heard of the sector they operate in - "Data Enrichment" - but I'd never heard of the company itself.
Schneier on Security
NOVEMBER 22, 2019
The NSA has released a security advisory warning of the dangers of TLS inspection: Transport Layer Security Inspection (TLSI), also known as TLS break and inspect, is a security process that allows enterprises to decrypt traffic, inspect the decrypted content for threats, and then re-encrypt the traffic before it enters or leaves the network.
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Adam Levin
NOVEMBER 26, 2019
One terabyte of data belonging to a major hotel booking platform was found leaked online. A huge trove of customer data belonging to Gekko Group was found online in an unsecured format.
Krebs on Security
NOVEMBER 22, 2019
A ransomware outbreak has besieged a Wisconsin based IT company that provides cloud data hosting, security and access management to more than 100 nursing homes across the United States.
Speaker: P. Andrew Sjogren, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Very Good Security, Matt Doka, Co-Founder and CTO of Fivestars, and Steve Andrews, President & CEO of the Western Bankers Association
In this webinar, we have a great set of panelists who will take you through how Zero Data strategies can be used as part of a well-rounded compliance and security approach, and get you to market much sooner by also allowing for payment optimization. They’ll share how to grow your business faster and minimize costs for both security and compliance
Adam Shostack
FEBRUARY 9, 2019
The Seattle Times has a story today about how “ 50 years ago today, the first 747 took off and changed aviation.” ” It’s true. The 747 was a marvel of engineering and luxury. The book by Joe Sutter is a great story of engineering leadership. For an upcoming flight, I paid extra to reserve an upper deck seat before the last of the passenger-carrying Queens of the Skies retires. And in a way, the 747 represents a pinnacle of aviation engineering advancements.
The Last Watchdog
MARCH 28, 2019
A couple of high-profile distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks will surely go down in history as watershed events – each for different reasons. Related: IoT botnets now available for economical DDoS blasts. In March 2013, several impossibly massive waves of nuisance requests – peaking as high as 300 gigabytes per second— swamped Spamhaus , knocking the anti-spam organization off line for extended periods.
Cyber Security Informer brings together the best content for cyber security professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Troy Hunt
NOVEMBER 25, 2019
When I first started writing code a few decades ago, it was a rather bland affair involving a basic text editor and physical books for reference.
Schneier on Security
DECEMBER 12, 2019
Back in 1998, Tim May warned us of the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse": "terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers." I tended to cast it slightly differently.
Troy Hunt
JANUARY 16, 2019
Many people will land on this page after learning that their email address has appeared in a data breach I've called "Collection #1". Most of them won't have a tech background or be familiar with the concept of credential stuffing so I'm going to write this post for the masses and link out to more detailed material for those who want to go deeper. Let's start with the raw numbers because that's the headline, then I'll drill down into where it's from and what it's composed of.
Krebs on Security
JULY 24, 2019
Nearly three dozen journalists at a broad range of major publications have been targeted by a far-right group that maintains a Deep Web database listing the personal information of people who threaten their views. This group specializes in encouraging others to harass those targeted by their ire, and has claimed responsibility for dozens of bomb threats and “swatting” incidents, where police are tricked into visiting potentially deadly force on the target’s address.
Speaker: Mike Cramer, Director of HIPAA & Data Security at The Word & Brown Companies
Now that companies are slowly allowing employees to return to work at the office, it's time to re-evaluate your company’s posture towards privacy and security. Join Mike Cramer, Director of HIPAA & Data Security at The Word & Brown Companies, for a discussion that will focus on compliance and the types of privacy and security measures your company should be aware of, as well as tips and methods for implementing these measures.
Schneier on Security
MARCH 27, 2019
A university study confirmed the obvious: if you pay a random bunch of freelance programmers a small amount of money to write security software, they're not going to do a very good job at it. In an experiment that involved 43 programmers hired via the Freelancer.com platform, University of Bonn academics have discovered that developers tend to take the easy way out and write code that stores user passwords in an unsafe manner.
Schneier on Security
MAY 6, 2019
I don't have a lot of good news for you. The truth is there's nothing we can do to protect our data from being stolen by cybercriminals and others. Ten years ago, I could have given you all sorts of advice about using encryption, not sending information over email, securing your web connections, and a host of other things -- but most of that doesn't matter anymore. Today, your sensitive data is controlled by others, and there's nothing you can personally to do affect its security.
Adam Levin
DECEMBER 30, 2019
2020 seems to be getting off to an inauspicious start with the compromise of the home addresses of prominent UK citizens–many of them in lines of work that could make them targets for crime.
Schneier on Security
APRIL 26, 2019
Cyberattacks don't magically happen; they involve a series of steps. And far from being helpless, defenders can disrupt the attack at any of those steps. This framing has led to something called the " cybersecurity kill chain ": a way of thinking about cyber defense in terms of disrupting the attacker's process. On a similar note, it's time to conceptualize the "information operations kill chain."
Adam Shostack
AUGUST 2, 2019
Shortly, I’m off to Blackhat. My Threat Modeling Intensive classes both sold out (thank you!). Nearly a decade ago, I put forth a set of best practices: Breath mints Ricola Purell Advil Gatorade This year, I’m adding a travel humidifier. I’ve been using this one, and it really needs to soak for 10 minutes, but then it adds a nice stream of moisture to the room. Also, at a conference, you’ll ask, and get the question “What’s new?”
The Last Watchdog
MARCH 21, 2019
Unless you decide to go Henry David Thoreau and shun civilization altogether, you can’t — and won’t — stop generating data , which sooner or later can be traced back to you. Related: The Facebook factor. A few weeks back I interviewed a white hat hacker. After the interview, I told him that his examples gave me paranoia. He laughed and responded, “There’s no such thing as anonymous data; it all depends on how determined the other party is.”.
Krebs on Security
SEPTEMBER 11, 2019
MyPayrollHR , a now defunct cloud-based payroll processing firm based in upstate New York, abruptly ceased operations this past week after stiffing employees at thousands of companies. The ongoing debacle, which allegedly involves malfeasance on the part of the payroll company’s CEO, resulted in countless people having money drained from their bank accounts and has left nearly $35 million worth of payroll and tax payments in legal limbo.
Krebs on Security
NOVEMBER 26, 2019
Many readers probably believe they can trust links and emails coming from U.S. federal government domain names, or else assume there are at least more stringent verification requirements involved in obtaining a.gov domain versus a commercial one ending in.com or.org.
Schneier on Security
JUNE 28, 2019
Today is my last day at IBM. If you've been following along, IBM bought my startup Resilient Systems in Spring 2016. Since then, I have been with IBM, holding the nicely ambiguous title of "Special Advisor." As of the end of the month, I will be back on my own. I will continue to write and speak, and do the occasional consulting job. I will continue to teach at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Troy Hunt
MAY 21, 2019
Sometimes the discussion around extended validation certificates (EV) feels a little like flogging a dead horse. In fact, it was only September that I proposed EV certificates are already dead for all sorts of good reasons that have only been reinforced since that time.
Schneier on Security
MARCH 29, 2019
This is an interesting story of a serious vulnerability in a Huawei driver that Microsoft found. The vulnerability is similar in style to the NSA's DOUBLEPULSAR that was leaked by the Shadow Brokers -- believed to be the Russian government -- and it's obvious that this attack copied that technique. What is less clear is whether the vulnerability -- which has been fixed -- was put into the Huwei driver accidentally or on purpose. backdoors malware nsa vulnerabilities
Schneier on Security
APRIL 22, 2019
This is the best analysis of the software causes of the Boeing 737 MAX disasters that I have read. Technically this is safety and not security; there was no attacker. But the fields are closely related and there are a lot of lessons for IoT security -- and the security of complex socio-technical systems in general -- in here
Adam Levin
APRIL 9, 2019
Israeli cybersecurity researchers have created malware capable of showing fake cancerous growths on CT and MRI scans. The malware, called CT-GAN, served as a proof of concept to show the potential for hacking medical devices with fake medical news that was convincing enough to fool medical technicians. In a video demonstrating the exploit, researchers at Ben Gurion University described how such an attack might be deployed.
Schneier on Security
MAY 17, 2019
In March, Adi Shamir -- that's the "S" in RSA -- was denied a US visa to attend the RSA Conference. He's Israeli. This month, British citizen Ross Anderson couldn't attend an awards ceremony in DC because of visa issues. You can listen to his recorded acceptance speech.) I've heard of at least one other prominent cryptographer who is in the same boat. Is there some cryptographer blacklist? Is something else going on? A lot of us would like to know.
Adam Shostack
OCTOBER 9, 2019
Trail of Bits released a threat model for Kubernetes. There’s some context from Aaron Small, who made the project happen. Continuum has a blog and a spreadsheet on threat modeling lambdas (as a category, not specific to Amazon Lambda), and also a post on threat modeling with CAPEC.
The Last Watchdog
JUNE 10, 2019
Locking down firmware. This is fast becoming a profound new security challenge for all companies – one that can’t be pushed to a side burner. Related: The rise of ‘memory attacks’ I’m making this assertion as federal authorities have just commenced steps to remove and replace switching gear supplied, on the cheap, to smaller U.S. telecoms by Chinese tech giant Huawei. These are the carriers that provide Internet access to rural areas all across America.
Schneier on Security
APRIL 15, 2019
Supply chain security is an insurmountably hard problem. The recent focus is on Chinese 5G equipment, but the problem is much broader. This opinion piece looks at undersea communications cables: But now the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading firm working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally, has gone to sea. Under its Huawei Marine Networks component, it is constructing or improving nearly 100 submarine cables around the world.
Krebs on Security
JANUARY 3, 2019
A new phone-based phishing scam that spoofs Apple Inc. is likely to fool quite a few people. It starts with an automated call that display’s Apple’s logo, address and real phone number, warning about a data breach at the company.
Schneier on Security
NOVEMBER 27, 2019
The DHS is requiring all federal agencies to develop a vulnerability disclosure policy. The goal is that people who discover vulnerabilities in government systems have a mechanism for reporting them to someone who might actually do something about it.
Schneier on Security
AUGUST 19, 2019
Influence operations are elusive to define. The Rand Corp.'s s definition is as good as any: "the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent." Basically, we know it when we see it, from bots controlled by the Russian Internet Research Agency to Saudi attempts to plant fake stories and manipulate political debate.
Schneier on Security
AUGUST 28, 2019
The Department of Justice wants access to encrypted consumer devices but promises not to infiltrate business products or affect critical infrastructure. Yet that's not possible, because there is no longer any difference between those categories of devices. Consumer devices are critical infrastructure. They affect national security. And it would be foolish to weaken them, even at the request of law enforcement.
Adam Levin
MAY 24, 2019
Google announced a glitch that stored unencrypted passwords belonging to several business customers, a situation that had been exploitable since 2005. In a blog post released this week, the company admitted the passwords of “some” of its G Suite customers had been stored on internal servers without cryptographic protection, also known as a hash. This issue has been fixed and, again, we have seen no evidence of improper access to or misuse of the affected passwords.
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