Extracting Data from Smartphones
December 11, 2019 Cyber Security Ed Gardner 0
Privacy International has published a detailed, technical examination of how data is extracted from smartphones….
Patch Tuesday, December 2019 Edition
Microsoft today released updates to plug three dozen security holes in its Windows operating system and other software. The patches include fixes for seven critical bugs — those that can be exploited by malware or miscreants to take control over a Windows system with no help from users — as well as another flaw in most versions of Windows that is already being exploited in active attacks.
CISO Magazine Honors KrebsOnSecurity
CISO Magazine, a publication dedicated to covering issues near and dear to corporate chief information security officers everywhere, has graciously awarded this author the designation of “Cybersecurity Person of the Year” in its December 2019 issue.
Reforming CDA 230
There’s a serious debate on reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. I am in the process of figuring out what I believe, and this is more a place to put resources and listen to people’s comments. The EFF has written extensively on why it is so important and dismantling it will be catastrophic for the Internet. Danielle Citron…
Failure Modes in Machine Learning
Interesting taxonomy of machine-learning failures (pdf) that encompasses both mistakes and attacks, or — in their words — intentional and unintentional failure modes. It’s a good basis for threat modeling….
Ransomware at Colorado IT Provider Affects 100+ Dental Offices
A Colorado company that specializes in providing IT services to dental offices suffered a ransomware attack this week that is disrupting operations for more than 100 dentistry practices, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.
Multiple sources affected say their IT provider, Englewood, Colo. based Complete Technology Solutions (CTS), was hacked, allowing a potent strain of ransomware known as “Sodinokibi” or “rEvil” to be installed on computers at more than 100 dentistry businesses that rely on the company for a range of services — including network security, data backup and voice-over-IP phone service.
Friday Squid Blogging: Squidfall Safety
Watchmen supporting material. 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….
Andy Ellis on Risk Assessment
Andy Ellis, the CSO of Akamai, gave a great talk about the psychology of risk at the Business of Software conference this year. I’ve written about this before. One quote of mine: "The problem is our brains are intuitively suited to the sorts of risk management decisions endemic to living in small family groups in the East African highlands in…
Apple Explains Mysterious iPhone 11 Location Requests
KrebsOnSecurity ran a story this week that puzzled over Apple’s response to inquiries about a potential privacy leak in its new iPhone 11 line, in which the devices appear to intermittently seek the user’s location even when all applications and system services are individually set never to request this data. Today, Apple disclosed that this behavior is tied to the inclusion of a new short-range technology that lets iPhone 11 users share files locally with other nearby phones that support this feature, and that a future version of its mobile operating system will allow users to disable it.
Election Machine Insecurity Story
Interesting story of a flawed computer voting machine and a paper ballot available for recount. All ended well, but only because of that paper backup. Vote totals in a Northampton County judge’s race showed one candidate, Abe Kassis, a Democrat, had just 164 votes out of 55,000 ballots across more than 100 precincts. Some machines reported zero votes for him….