All posts by Bruce Schneier

Breaking RSA through Insufficiently Random Primes

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/breaking-rsa-through-insufficiently-random-primes.html

Basically, the SafeZone library doesn’t sufficiently randomize the two prime numbers it used to generate RSA keys. They’re too close to each other, which makes them vulnerable to recovery.

There aren’t many weak keys out there, but there are some:

So far, Böck has identified only a handful of keys in the wild that are vulnerable to the factorization attack. Some of the keys are from printers from two manufacturers, Canon and Fujifilm (originally branded as Fuji Xerox). Printer users can use the keys to generate a Certificate Signing Request. The creation date for the all the weak keys was 2020 or later. The weak Canon keys are tracked as CVE-2022-26351.

Böck also found four vulnerable PGP keys, typically used to encrypt email, on SKS PGP key servers. A user ID tied to the keys implied they were created for testing, so he doesn’t believe they’re in active use.

US Critical Infrastructure Companies Will Have to Report When They Are Hacked

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/us-critical-infrastructure-companies-will-have-to-report-when-they-are-hacked.html

This will be law soon:

Companies critical to U.S. national interests will now have to report when they’re hacked or they pay ransomware, according to new rules approved by Congress.

[…]

The reporting requirement legislation was approved by the House and the Senate on Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by President Joe Biden soon. It requires any entity that’s considered part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, which includes the finance, transportation and energy sectors, to report any “substantial cyber incident” to the government within three days and any ransomware payment made within 24 hours.

Even better would be if they had to report it to the public.

Leak of Russian Censorship Data

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/leak-of-russian-censorship-data.html

The transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets has released 800GB of data from Roskomnadzor, the Russian government censorship organization.

Specifically, Distributed Denial of Secrets says the data comes from the Roskomnadzor of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The Republic of Bashkortostan is in the west of the country.

[…]

The data is split into two main categories: a series of over 360,000 files totalling in at 526.9GB and which date up to as recently as March 5, and then two databases that are 290.6GB in size, according to Distributed Denial of Secrets’ website.

Friday Squid Blog: 328-million-year-old Vampire Squid Ancestor Discovered

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/friday-squid-blog-328-million-year-old-vampire-squid-ancestor-discovered.html

A fossilized ancestor of the vampire squid — with ten arms — was discovered and named Syllipsimopodi bideni after President Biden.

Here’s the research paper. Note: Vampire squids are not squids. (Yes, it’s weird.)

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.

Where’s the Russia-Ukraine Cyberwar?

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/wheres-the-russia-ukraine-cyberwar.html

It has been interesting to notice how unimportant and ineffective cyber operations have been in the Russia-Ukraine war. Russia launched a wiper against Ukraine at the beginning, but it was found and neutered. Near as I can tell, the only thing that worked was the disabling of regional KA-SAT SATCOM terminals.

It’s probably too early to reach any conclusions, but people are starting to write about this, with varying theories.

I want to write about this, too, but I’m waiting for things to progress more.

EDITED TO ADD (3/12): Two additional takes.

Fraud on Zelle

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/fraud-on-zelle.html

Zelle is rife with fraud:

Zelle’s immediacy has also made it a favorite of fraudsters. Other types of bank transfers or transactions involving payment cards typically take at least a day to clear. But once crooks scare or trick victims into handing over money via Zelle, they can siphon away thousands of dollars in seconds. There’s no way for customers — and in many cases, the banks themselves — to retrieve the money.

[…]

It’s not clear who is legally liable for such losses. Banks say that returning money to defrauded customers is not their responsibility, since the federal law covering electronic transfers — known in the industry as Regulation E ­– requires them to cover only “unauthorized” transactions, and the fairly common scam that Mr. Faunce fell prey to tricks people into making the transfers themselves. Victims say because they were duped into sending the money, the transaction is unauthorized. Regulatory guidance has so far been murky.

When swindled customers, already upset to find themselves on the hook, search for other means of redress, many are enraged to find out that Zelle is owned and operated by banks.

[…]

The Zelle network is operated by Early Warning Services, a company created and owned by seven banks: Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo. Early Warning, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., manages the system’s technical infrastructure. But the 1,425 banks and credit unions that use Zelle can customize the app and add their own security settings.

Using Radar to Read Body Language

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/using-radar-to-read-body-language.html

Yet another method of surveillance:

Radar can detect you moving closer to a computer and entering its personal space. This might mean the computer can then choose to perform certain actions, like booting up the screen without requiring you to press a button. This kind of interaction already exists in current Google Nest smart displays, though instead of radar, Google employs ultrasonic sound waves to measure a person’s distance from the device. When a Nest Hub notices you’re moving closer, it highlights current reminders, calendar events, or other important notifications.

Proximity alone isn’t enough. What if you just ended up walking past the machine and looking in a different direction? To solve this, Soli can capture greater subtleties in movements and gestures, such as body orientation, the pathway you might be taking, and the direction your head is facing — ­aided by machine learning algorithms that further refine the data. All this rich radar information helps it better guess if you are indeed about to start an interaction with the device, and what the type of engagement might be.

[…]

The ATAP team chose to use radar because it’s one of the more privacy-friendly methods of gathering rich spatial data. (It also has really low latency, works in the dark, and external factors like sound or temperature don’t affect it.) Unlike a camera, radar doesn’t capture and store distinguishable images of your body, your face, or other means of identification. “It’s more like an advanced motion sensor,” Giusti says. Soli has a detectable range of around 9 feet­ — less than most cameras­ — but multiple gadgets in your home with the Soli sensor could effectively blanket your space and create an effective mesh network for tracking your whereabouts in a home.

“Privacy-friendly” is a relative term.

These technologies are coming. They’re going to be an essential part of the Internet of Things.

Hacking Alexa through Alexa’s Speech

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/hacking-alexa-through-alexas-speech.html

An Alexa can respond to voice commands it issues. This can be exploited:

The attack works by using the device’s speaker to issue voice commands. As long as the speech contains the device wake word (usually “Alexa” or “Echo”) followed by a permissible command, the Echo will carry it out, researchers from Royal Holloway University in London and Italy’s University of Catania found. Even when devices require verbal confirmation before executing sensitive commands, it’s trivial to bypass the measure by adding the word “yes” about six seconds after issuing the command. Attackers can also exploit what the researchers call the “FVV,” or full voice vulnerability, which allows Echos to make self-issued commands without temporarily reducing the device volume.

It does require proximate access, though, at least to set the attack up:

It requires only a few seconds of proximity to a vulnerable device while it’s turned on so an attacker can utter a voice command instructing it to pair with an attacker’s Bluetooth-enabled device. As long as the device remains within radio range of the Echo, the attacker will be able to issue commands.

Research paper.

Samsung Encryption Flaw

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/samsung-encryption-flaw.html

Researchers have found a major encryption flaw in 100 million Samsung Galaxy phones.

From the abstract:

In this work, we expose the cryptographic design and implementation of Android’s Hardware-Backed Keystore in Samsung’s Galaxy S8, S9, S10, S20, and S21 flagship devices. We reversed-engineered and provide a detailed description of the cryptographic design and code structure, and we unveil severe design flaws. We present an IV reuse attack on AES-GCM that allows an attacker to extract hardware-protected key material, and a downgrade attack that makes even the latest Samsung devices vulnerable to the IV reuse attack. We demonstrate working key extraction attacks on the latest devices. We also show the implications of our attacks on two higher-level cryptographic protocols between the TrustZone and a remote server: we demonstrate a working FIDO2 WebAuthn login bypass and a compromise of Google’s Secure Key Import.

Here are the details:

As we discussed in Section 3, the wrapping key used to encrypt the key blobs (HDK) is derived using a salt value computed by the Keymaster TA. In v15 and v20-s9 blobs, the salt is a deterministic function that depends only on the application ID and application data (and constant strings), which the Normal World client fully controls. This means that for a given application, all key blobs will be encrypted using the same key. As the blobs are encrypted in AES-GCM mode-of-operation, the security of the resulting encryption scheme depends on its IV values never being reused.

Gadzooks. That’s a really embarrassing mistake. GSM needs a new nonce for every encryption. Samsung took a secure cipher mode and implemented it insecurely.

News article.

Details of an NSA Hacking Operation

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/details-of-an-nsa-hacking-operation.html

Pangu Lab in China just published a report of a hacking operation by the Equation Group (aka the NSA). It noticed the hack in 2013, and was able to map it with Equation Group tools published by the Shadow Brokers (aka some Russian group).

…the scope of victims exceeded 287 targets in 45 countries, including Russia, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc. The attack lasted for over 10 years. Moreover, one victim in Japan is used as a jump server for further attack.

News article.

Vulnerability in Stalkerware Apps

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/vulnerability-in-stalkerware-apps.html

TechCrunch is reporting — but not describing in detail — a vulnerability in a series of stalkerware apps that exposes personal information of the victims. The vulnerability isn’t in the apps installed on the victims’ phones, but in the website the stalker goes to view the information the app collects. The article is worth reading, less for the description of the vulnerability and more for the shadowy string of companies behind these stalkerware apps.

Decrypting Hive Ransomware Data

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/03/decrypting-hive-ransomware-data.html

Nice piece of research:

Abstract: Among the many types of malicious codes, ransomware poses a major threat. Ransomware encrypts data and demands a ransom in exchange for decryption. As data recovery is impossible if the encryption key is not obtained, some companies suffer from considerable damage, such as the payment of huge amounts of money or the loss of important data. In this paper, we analyzed Hive ransomware, which appeared in June 2021. Hive ransomware has caused immense harm, leading the FBI to issue an alert about it. To minimize the damage caused by Hive Ransomware and to help victims recover their files, we analyzed Hive Ransomware and studied recovery methods. By analyzing the encryption process of Hive ransomware, we confirmed that vulnerabilities exist by using their own encryption algorithm. We have recovered the master key for generating the file encryption key partially, to enable the decryption of data encrypted by Hive ransomware. We recovered 95% of the master key without the attacker’s RSA private key and decrypted the actual infected data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first successful attempt at decrypting Hive ransomware. It is expected that our method can be used to reduce the damage caused by Hive ransomware.

Here’s the flaw:

The cryptographic vulnerability identified by the researchers concerns the mechanism by which the master keys are generated and stored, with the ransomware strain only encrypting select portions of the file as opposed to the entire contents using two keystreams derived from the master key.

The encryption keystream, which is created from an XOR operation of the two keystreams, is then XORed with the data in alternate blocks to generate the encrypted file. But this technique also makes it possible to guess the keystreams and restore the master key, in turn enabling the decode of encrypted files sans the attacker’s private key.

The researchers said that they were able to weaponize the flaw to devise a method to reliably recover more than 95% of the keys employed during encryption.

Insurance Coverage for NotPetya Losses

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/02/insurance-coverage-for-notpetya-losses.html

Tarah Wheeler and Josephine Wolff analyze a recent court decision that the NotPetya attacks are not considered an act of war under the wording of Merck’s insurance policy, and that the insurers must pay the $1B+ claim. Wheeler and Wolff argue that the judge “did the right thing for the wrong reasons..”

Privacy Violating COVID Tests

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/02/privacy-violating-covid-tests.html

A good lesson in reading the fine print:

Cignpost Diagnostics, which trades as ExpressTest and offers £35 tests for holidaymakers, said it holds the right to analyse samples from seals to “learn more about human health” — and sell information on to third parties.

Individuals are required to give informed consent for their sensitive medical data to be used ­ but customers’ consent for their DNA to be sold now as buried in Cignpost’s online documents.

Of course, no one ever reads the fine print.

An Elaborate Employment Con in the Internet Age

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/02/an-elaborate-employment-con-in-the-internet-age.html

The story is an old one, but the tech gives it a bunch of new twists:

Gemma Brett, a 27-year-old designer from west London, had only been working at Madbird for two weeks when she spotted something strange. Curious about what her commute would be like when the pandemic was over, she searched for the company’s office address. The result looked nothing like the videos on Madbird’s website of a sleek workspace buzzing with creative-types. Instead, Google Street View showed an upmarket block of flats in London’s Kensington.

[…]

Using online reverse image searches they dug deeper. They found that almost all the work Madbird claimed as its own had been stolen from elsewhere on the internet — and that some of the colleagues they’d been messaging online didn’t exist.

[…]

At least six of the most senior employees profiled by Madbird were fake. Their identities stitched together using photos stolen from random corners of the internet and made-up names. They included Madbird’s co-founder, Dave Stanfield — despite him having a LinkedIn profile and Ali referring to him constantly. Some of the duped staff had even received emails from him.

Read the whole sad story. What’s amazing is how shallow all the fakery was, and how quickly it all unraveled once people started digging. But until there’s suspicion enough to dig, we take all of these things at face value. And in COVID times, there’s no face-to-face anything.

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Videos

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/02/friday-squid-blogging-squid-videos.html

Here are six beautiful squid videos. I know nothing more about them.

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.

EDITED TO ADD (2/25): This post accidentally went live on Wednesday, two days early, and people started adding their comments then. I have changed the posting date to the correct one, which means that the comments existing before that time will appear to have been made before the post. I apologize for the confusion.

Bypassing Apple’s AirTag Security

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/02/bypassing-apples-airtag-security.html

A Berlin-based company has developed an AirTag clone that bypasses Apple’s anti-stalker security systems. Source code for these AirTag clones is available online.

So now we have several problems with the system. Apple’s anti-stalker security only works with iPhones. (Apple wrote an Android app that can detect AirTags, but how many people are going to download it?) And now non-AirTags can piggyback on Apple’s system without triggering the alarms.

Apple didn’t think this through nearly as well as it claims to have. I think the general problem is one that I have written about before: designers just don’t have intimate threats in mind when building these systems.

A New Cybersecurity “Social Contract”

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/02/a-new-cybersecurity-social-contract.html

The US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis wrote an essay outlining a new social contract for the cyber age:

The United States needs a new social contract for the digital age — one that meaningfully alters the relationship between public and private sectors and proposes a new set of obligations for each. Such a shift is momentous but not without precedent. From the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 to the Clean Air Act of 1963 and the public-private revolution in airline safety in the 1990s, the United States has made important adjustments following profound changes in the economy and technology.

A similarly innovative shift in the cyber-realm will likely require an intense process of development and iteration. Still, its contours are already clear: the private sector must prioritize long-term investments in a digital ecosystem that equitably distributes the burden of cyberdefense. Government, in turn, must provide more timely and comprehensive threat information while simultaneously treating industry as a vital partner. Finally, both the public and private sectors must commit to moving toward true collaboration — contributing resources, attention, expertise, and people toward institutions designed to prevent, counter, and recover from cyber-incidents.

The devil is in the details, of course, but he’s 100% right when he writes that the market cannot solve this: that the incentives are all wrong. While he never actually uses the word “regulation,” the future he postulates won’t be possible without it. Regulation is how society aligns market incentives with its own values. He also leaves out the NSA — whose effectiveness rests on all of these global insecurities — and the FBI, whose incessant push for encryption backdoors goes against his vision of increased cybersecurity. I’m not sure how he’s going to get them on board. Or the surveillance capitalists, for that matter. A lot of what he wants will require reining in that particular business model.

Good essay — worth reading in full.