If you all don't read Bruce Schneier's blog, you should.

Originally posted by bruce_schneier at Bizarre High-Tech Kidnapping

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/07/bizarre_high-te.html

This is a story of a very high-tech kidnapping:

FBI court filings unsealed last week showed how Denise Huskins' kidnappers used anonymous remailers, image sharing sites, ( Read more... )

EDIT You can mitigate the damage this vulnerability does by shutting off auto-loading of MMS messages. This article tells you how to do it.

Originally posted by bruce_schneier at Stagefright Vulnerability in Android Phones

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/07/stagefright_vul.html

The Stagefright vulnerability for Android phones is a bad one. It's ( Read more... )

(Wherein Bruce Schneier shares my skepticism about the latest "unbreakable" encryption.)

Originally posted by bruce_schneier at "Unbreakable" Encryption Almost Certainly Isn't

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/unbreakable_enc.html

This headline is provocative: "Human biology inspires 'unbreakable' encryption."

The article is similarly nonsensical:

( Read more... )

(Remember Firesheep? --maxomai)

Originally posted by bruce_schneier at Mass Surveillance by Eavesdropping on Web Cookies

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/mass_surveillan.html

Interesting research:

Abstract: We investigate the ability of a passive network observer to leverage third-party HTTP tracking cookies for mass surveillance. If two web pages ( Read more... )

• Diane Feinstein, ever the advocate for shredding the Constitution to suit her precious morals, is offended, so offended that the American intelligence apparatus would dare spy on Congress. (Spying on other Americans is apparently fine.)
• The NSA is planning on distributing malware to millions of computers - including one near you? - with almost no ( Read more... )

ImperialViolet has this concise explanation of what caused the problems in Apple's SSL stack. In short, it has to do with a duplicate goto statement.

Actually, no, it doesn't. While goto statements might be a bad idea (PDF), it's the proximate cause of the problem, but not the root cause. The root causes are much more difficult to fix:

• The SSL ( Read more... )

Originally posted by briankrebs_rss at Fire Sale on Cards Stolen in Target Breach

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/fire-sale-on-cards-stolen-in-target-breach/

http://krebsonsecurity.com/?p=25029

Last year’s breach at Target Corp. flooded underground markets with millions of stolen credit and debit cards. In the days surrounding the breach disclosure, the cards ( Read more... )

Editorial: Bruce Schneier is one of the most trusted names in computer security. He literally wrote the book on Applied Cryptography. Until recently, he was the Chief Security Officer at British Telecom, and he recently joined as Chief Technology Officer for a startup, Co3Systems. His opinion carries a lot of weight in the security world, which is ( Read more... )

Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know this:

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September ( Read more... )

SnapChat, for those of you not familiar with it, is a photo- and video-sharing service for Android and Apple devices. Much hay has been made recently that teenagers are turning away from FaceBook and towards SnapChat; then came news that SnapChat turned down a $3,000,000,000.00 (yes, that's three billion dollars) offer from FaceBook (Slashdot has a ( Read more... )