Tag: security

Encryption Over Backdoors

In an extraordinary essay, the former FBI general counsel Jim Baker makes the case for strong encryption over government-mandated backdoors: In the face of congressional inaction, and in light of the magnitude of the threat, it is time for governmental authorities — including law enforcement — to embrace encryption because it is one of the few mechanisms that the United States and its allies can use to more effectively protect themselves from existential cybersecurity threats, particularly from China. This is true even though encryption will impose costs on society, especially victims of other types of crime.

Intel Secure Enclave Attack

Our SGX-ROP attack uses new TSX-based memory-disclosure primitive and a write-anything-anywhere primitive to construct a code-reuse attack from within an enclave which is then inadvertently executed by the host application. With SGX-ROP, we bypass ASLR, stack canaries, and address sanitizer. We demonstrate that instead of protecting users from harm, SGX currently poses a security threat, facilitating so-called super-malware with ready-to-hit exploits.

Easy VPN

Wouldn’t it be nice though? If you could have servers, like you did in the 1990s, with the same simple architectures as you used in the 1990s, and the same sloppy security policies developer freedom as you had in the 1990s, but somehow reach them from anywhere? Like… a network, but not the Internet. One that isn’t reachable from the Internet, or even addressable on the Internet. One that uses the Internet as a substrate, but not as a banana. That’s what we’re working on.

Reading body language

Joe Navarro was a body language expert for the FBI. His job was to catch spies. In this video, he shares some tips. He also busts some myths. For instance, a lot of people think that crossed arms are a blocking behavior. “That’s just nonsense.”

Info Ops Kill Chain

it’s time to conceptualize the “information operations kill chain.” Information attacks against democracies, whether they’re attempts to polarize political processes or to increase mistrust in social institutions, also involve a series of steps. And enumerating those steps will clarify possibilities for defense.