Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Art
Images of giant squid (and octopi) attacking.
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.
MacOS Zero-Day Used against Hong Kong Activists
Google researchers discovered a MacOS zero-day exploit being used against Hong Kong activists. It was a “watering hole” attack, which means the malware was hidden in a legitimate website. Users visiting that website would get infected.
From an article:
Google’s researchers were able to trigger the exploits and study them by visiting the websites compromised by the hackers. The sites served both iOS and MacOS exploit chains, but the researchers were only able to retrieve the MacOS one. The zero-day exploit was similar to another in-the-wild vulnerability analyzed by another Google researcher in the past, according to the report.
In addition, the zero-day exploit used in this hacking campaign is “identical” to an exploit previously found by cybersecurity research group Pangu Lab, Huntley said. Pangu Lab’s researchers presented the exploit at a security conference in China in April of this year, a few months before hackers used it against Hong Kong users.
The exploit was discovered in August. Apple patched the vulnerability in September. China is, of course, the obvious suspect, given the victims.
Advice for Personal Digital Security
ArsTechnica’s Sean Gallagher has a two–part article on “securing your digital life.”
It’s pretty good.
Hacking the Sony Playstation 5
I just don’t think it’s possible to create a hack-proof computer system, especially when the system is physically in the hands of the hackers. The Sony Playstation 5 is the latest example:
Hackers may have just made some big strides towards possibly jailbreaking the PlayStation 5 over the weekend, with the hacking group Fail0verflow claiming to have managed to obtain PS5 root keys allowing them to decrypt the console’s firmware.
[…]
The two exploits are particularly notable due to the level of access they theoretically give to the PS5’s software. Decrypted firmware which is possible through Fail0verflow’s keys would potentially allow for hackers to further reverse engineer the PS5 software and potentially develop the sorts of hacks that allowed for things like installing Linux, emulators, or even pirated games on past Sony consoles.
In 1999, Adam Shostack and I wrote a paper discussing the security challenges of giving people devices that included embedded secrets that needed to be kept from those people. We were writing about smart cards, but our lessons were general. And they’re no less applicable today.
Drones Carrying Explosives
We’ve now had an (unsuccessful) assassination attempt by explosive-laden drones.
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Game Cryptocurrency Was a Scam
The Squid Game cryptocurrency was a complete scam:
The SQUID cryptocurrency peaked at a price of $2,861 before plummeting to $0 around 5:40 a.m. ET., according to the website CoinMarketCap. This kind of theft, commonly called a “rug pull” by crypto investors, happens when the creators of the crypto quickly cash out their coins for real money, draining the liquidity pool from the exchange.
I don’t know why anyone would trust an investment — any investment — that you could buy but not sell.
Wired story.
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.
US Blacklists NSO Group
The Israeli cyberweapons arms manufacturer — and human rights violator, and probably war criminal — NSO Group has been added to the US Department of Commerce’s trade blacklist. US companies and individuals cannot sell to them. Aside from the obvious difficulties this causes, it’ll make it harder for them to buy zero-day vulnerabilities on the open market.
This is another step in the ongoing US actions against the company.
Using Fake Student Accounts to Shill Brands
It turns out that it’s surprisingly easy to create a fake Harvard student and get a harvard.edu email account. Scammers are using that prestigious domain name to shill brands:
Basically, it appears that anyone with $300 to spare can – or could, depending on whether Harvard successfully shuts down the practice — advertise nearly anything they wanted on Harvard.edu, in posts that borrow the university’s domain and prestige while making no mention of the fact that it in reality they constitute paid advertising….
A Harvard spokesperson said that the university is working to crack down on the fake students and other scammers that have gained access to its site. They also said that the scammers were creating the fake accounts by signing up for online classes and then using the email address that process provided to infiltrate the university’s various blogging platforms.
On Cell Phone Metadata
Interesting Twitter thread on how cell phone metadata can be used to identify and track people who don’t want to be identified and tracked.
Hiding Vulnerabilities in Source Code
Really interesting research demonstrating how to hide vulnerabilities in source code by manipulating how Unicode text is displayed. It’s really clever, and not the sort of attack one would normally think about.
From Ross Anderson’s blog:
We have discovered ways of manipulating the encoding of source code files so that human viewers and compilers see different logic. One particularly pernicious method uses Unicode directionality override characters to display code as an anagram of its true logic. We’ve verified that this attack works against C, C++, C#, JavaScript, Java, Rust, Go, and Python, and suspect that it will work against most other modern languages.
This potentially devastating attack is tracked as CVE-2021-42574, while a related attack that uses homoglyphs –- visually similar characters –- is tracked as CVE-2021-42694. This work has been under embargo for a 99-day period, giving time for a major coordinated disclosure effort in which many compilers, interpreters, code editors, and repositories have implemented defenses.
Website for the attack. Rust security advisory.
Brian Krebs has a blog post.
EDITED TO ADD (11/12): An older paper on similar issues.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.