Nice short article on the bobtail squid.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

This academic year, I am taking a sabbatical from the Kennedy School and Harvard University. (It’s not a real sabbatical—I’m just an adjunct—but it’s the same idea.) I will be spending the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 semesters at the Munk School at the University of Toronto.

I will be organizing a reading group on AI security in the fall. I will be teaching my cybersecurity policy class in the Spring. I will be working with Citizen Lab, the Law School, and the Schwartz Reisman Institute. And I will be enjoying all the multicultural offerings of Toronto...

Think of the Web as a digital territory with its own social contract. In 2014, Tim Berners-Lee called for a “Magna Carta for the Web” to restore the balance of power between individuals and institutions. This mirrors the original charter’s purpose: ensuring that those who occupy a territory have a meaningful stake in its governance.

Web 3.0—the distributed, decentralized Web of tomorrow—is finally poised to change the Internet’s dynamic by returning ownership to data creators. This will change many things about what’s often described as the “CIA triad” of ...

Well, this is interesting:

The auction, which will include other items related to cryptology, will be held Nov. 20. RR Auction, the company arranging the sale, estimates a winning bid between $300,000 and $500,000.

Along with the original handwritten plain text of K4 and other papers related to the coding, Mr. Sanborn will also be providing a 12-by-18-inch copper plate that has three lines of alphabetic characters cut through with a jigsaw, which he calls “my proof-of-concept piece” and which he kept on a table for inspiration during the two years he and helpers hand-cut the letters for the project. The process was grueling, exacting and nerve wracking. “You could not make any mistake with 1,800 letters,” he said. “It could not be repaired.”...

In this input integrity attack against an AI system, researchers were able to fool AIOps tools:

AIOps refers to the use of LLM-based agents to gather and analyze application telemetry, including system logs, performance metrics, traces, and alerts, to detect problems and then suggest or carry out corrective actions. The likes of Cisco have deployed AIops in a conversational interface that admins can use to prompt for information about system performance. Some AIOps tools can respond to such queries by automatically implementing fixes, or suggesting scripts that can address issues...

A zero-day vulnerability in WinRAR is being exploited by at least two Russian criminal groups:

The vulnerability seemed to have super Windows powers. It abused alternate data streams, a Windows feature that allows different ways of representing the same file path. The exploit abused that feature to trigger a previously unknown path traversal flaw that caused WinRAR to plant malicious executables in attacker-chosen file paths %TEMP% and %LOCALAPPDATA%, which Windows normally makes off-limits because of their ability to execute code.

More details in the article...

Researchers have managed to eavesdrop on cell phone voice conversations by using radar to detect vibrations. It’s more a proof of concept than anything else. The radar detector is only ten feet away, the setup is stylized, and accuracy is poor. But it’s a start.

Here’s the story. The commenters on X (formerly Twitter) are unimpressed.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

Porn sites are hiding code in .svg files:

Unpacking the attack took work because much of the JavaScript in the .svg images was heavily obscured using a custom version of “JSFuck,” a technique that uses only a handful of character types to encode JavaScript into a camouflaged wall of text.

Once decoded, the script causes the browser to download a chain of additional obfuscated JavaScript. The final payload, a known malicious script called Trojan.JS.Likejack, induces the browser to like a specified Facebook post as long as a user has their account open...

Here’s an interesting story about a failure being introduced by LLM-written code. Specifically, the LLM was doing some code refactoring, and when it moved a chunk of code from one file to another it changed a “break” to a “continue.” That turned an error logging statement into an infinite loop, which crashed the system.

This is an integrity failure. Specifically, it’s a failure of processing integrity. And while we can think of particular patches that alleviate this exact failure, the larger problem is much harder to solve.

Davi Ottenheimer ...

There is a really great series of online events highlighting cool uses of AI in cybersecurity, titled Prompt||GTFO. Videos from the first three events are online. And here’s where to register to attend, or participate, in the fourth.

Some really great stuff here.

The NSA and GCHQ have jointly published a history of World War II SIGINT: “Secret Messengers: Disseminating SIGINT in the Second World War.” This is the story of the British SLUs (Special Liaison Units) and the American SSOs (Special Security Officers).

A few years ago, scammers invented a new phishing email. They would claim to have hacked your computer, turned your webcam on, and videoed you watching porn or having sex. BuzzFeed has an article talking about a “shockingly realistic” variant, which includes photos of you and your house—more specific information.

The article contains “steps you can take to figure out if it’s a scam,” but omits the first and most fundamental piece of advice: If the hacker had incriminating video about you, they would show you a clip. Just a taste, not the worst bits so you had to worry about how bad it could be, but something. If the hacker doesn’t show you any video, they don’t have any video. Everything else is window dressing...

Fears around children is opening up a new market for automatic license place readers.

In a rare squid/security combined post, a new vulnerability was discovered in the Squid HTTP proxy server.

Google’s vulnerability finding team is again pushing the envelope of responsible disclosure:

Google’s Project Zero team will retain its existing 90+30 policy regarding vulnerability disclosures, in which it provides vendors with 90 days before full disclosure takes place, with a 30-day period allowed for patch adoption if the bug is fixed before the deadline.

However, as of July 29, Project Zero will also release limited details about any discovery they make within one week of vendor disclosure. This information will encompass:

• The vendor or open-source project that received the report ...

The government of China has accused Nvidia of inserting a backdoor into their H20 chips:

China’s cyber regulator on Thursday said it had held a meeting with Nvidia over what it called “serious security issues” with the company’s artificial intelligence chips. It said US AI experts had “revealed that Nvidia’s computing chips have location tracking and can remotely shut down the technology.”

Earlier this week, the Trump administration narrowed export controls on advanced semiconductors ahead of US-China trade negotiations. The administration is increasingly relying on export licenses to allow American semiconductor firms to sell their products to Chinese customers, while keeping the most powerful of them out of the hands of our military adversaries. These are the chips that power the artificial intelligence research fueling China’s technological rise, as well as the advanced military equipment underpinning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine...

Skechers is making a line of kid’s shoes with a hidden compartment for an AirTag.

An Arizona woman was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for her role helping North Korean workers infiltrate US companies by pretending to be US workers.

From an article:

According to court documents, Chapman hosted the North Korean IT workers’ computers in her own home between October 2020 and October 2023, creating a so-called “laptop farm” which was used to make it appear as though the devices were located in the United States.

The North Koreans were hired as remote software and application developers with multiple Fortune 500 companies, including an aerospace and defense company, a major television network, a Silicon Valley technology company, and a high-profile company...