Entries Tagged "reports"

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Chinese-Owned VPNs

One one my biggest worries about VPNs is the amount of trust users need to place in them, and how opaque most of them are about who owns them and what sorts of data they retain.

A new study found that many commercials VPNS are (often surreptitiously) owned by Chinese companies.

It would be hard for U.S. users to avoid the Chinese VPNs. The ownership of many appeared deliberately opaque, with several concealing their structure behind layers of offshore shell companies. TTP was able to determine the Chinese ownership of the 20 VPN apps being offered to Apple’s U.S. users by piecing together corporate documents from around the world. None of those apps clearly disclosed their Chinese ownership.

Posted on May 27, 2025 at 7:07 AM • View Comments

The NSA’s “Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937–1987)”

In response to a FOIA request, the NSA released “Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937-1987),” by Glenn F. Stahly, with a lot of redactions.

Weirdly, this is the second time the NSA has declassified the document. John Young got a copy in 2019. This one has a few less redactions. And nothing that was provided in 2019 was redacted here.

If you find anything interesting in the document, please tell us about it in the comments.

Posted on May 19, 2025 at 7:06 AM • View Comments

NCSC Guidance on “Advanced Cryptography”

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre just released its white paper on “Advanced Cryptography,” which it defines as “cryptographic techniques for processing encrypted data, providing enhanced functionality over and above that provided by traditional cryptography.” It includes things like homomorphic encryption, attribute-based encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, and secure multiparty computation.

It’s full of good advice. I especially appreciate this warning:

When deciding whether to use Advanced Cryptography, start with a clear articulation of the problem, and use that to guide the development of an appropriate solution. That is, you should not start with an Advanced Cryptography technique, and then attempt to fit the functionality it provides to the problem.

And:

In almost all cases, it is bad practice for users to design and/or implement their own cryptography; this applies to Advanced Cryptography even more than traditional cryptography because of the complexity of the algorithms. It also applies to writing your own application based on a cryptographic library that implements the Advanced Cryptography primitive operations, because subtle flaws in how they are used can lead to serious security weaknesses.

The conclusion:

Advanced Cryptography covers a range of techniques for protecting sensitive data at rest, in transit and in use. These techniques enable novel applications with different trust relationships between the parties, as compared to traditional cryptographic methods for encryption and authentication.

However, there are a number of factors to consider before deploying a solution based on Advanced Cryptography, including the relative immaturity of the techniques and their implementations, significant computational burdens and slow response times, and the risk of opening up additional cyber attack vectors.

There are initiatives underway to standardise some forms of Advanced Cryptography, and the efficiency of implementations is continually improving. While many data processing problems can be solved with traditional cryptography (which will usually lead to a simpler, lower-cost and more mature solution) for those that cannot, Advanced Cryptography techniques could in the future enable innovative ways of deriving benefit from large shared datasets, without compromising individuals’ privacy.

NCSC blog entry.

Posted on May 2, 2025 at 7:03 AM • View Comments

Report on Paragon Spyware

Citizen Lab has a new report on Paragon’s spyware:

Key Findings:

  • Introducing Paragon Solutions. Paragon Solutions was founded in Israel in 2019 and sells spyware called Graphite. The company differentiates itself by claiming it has safeguards to prevent the kinds of spyware abuses that NSO Group and other vendors are notorious for.
  • Infrastructure Analysis of Paragon Spyware. Based on a tip from a collaborator, we mapped out server infrastructure that we attribute to Paragon’s Graphite spyware tool. We identified a subset of suspected Paragon deployments, including in Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore.
  • Identifying a Possible Canadian Paragon Customer. Our investigation surfaced potential links between Paragon Solutions and the Canadian Ontario Provincial Police, and found evidence of a growing ecosystem of spyware capability among Ontario-based police services.
  • Helping WhatsApp Catch a Zero-Click. We shared our analysis of Paragon’s infrastructure with Meta, who told us that the details were pivotal to their ongoing investigation into Paragon. WhatsApp discovered and mitigated an active Paragon zero-click exploit, and later notified over 90 individuals who it believed were targeted, including civil society members in Italy.
  • Android Forensic Analysis: Italian Cluster. We forensically analyzed multiple Android phones belonging to Paragon targets in Italy (an acknowledged Paragon user) who were notified by WhatsApp. We found clear indications that spyware had been loaded into WhatsApp, as well as other apps on their devices.
  • A Related Case of iPhone Spyware in Italy. We analyzed the iPhone of an individual who worked closely with confirmed Android Paragon targets. This person received an Apple threat notification in November 2024, but no WhatsApp notification. Our analysis showed an attempt to infect the device with novel spyware in June 2024. We shared details with Apple, who confirmed they had patched the attack in iOS 18.
  • Other Surveillance Tech Deployed Against The Same Italian Cluster. We also note 2024 warnings sent by Meta to several individuals in the same organizational cluster, including a Paragon victim, suggesting the need for further scrutiny into other surveillance technology deployed against these individuals.

Posted on March 25, 2025 at 7:05 AM • View Comments

NIST Recommends Some Common-Sense Password Rules

NIST’s second draft of its “SP 800-63-4“—its digital identify guidelines—finally contains some really good rules about passwords:

The following requirements apply to passwords:

  1. lVerifiers and CSPs SHALL require passwords to be a minimum of eight characters in length and SHOULD require passwords to be a minimum of 15 characters in length.
  2. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD permit a maximum password length of at least 64 characters.
  3. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD accept all printing ASCII [RFC20] characters and the space character in passwords.
  4. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD accept Unicode [ISO/ISC 10646] characters in passwords. Each Unicode code point SHALL be counted as a signgle character when evaluating password length.
  5. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types) for passwords.
  6. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT require users to change passwords periodically. However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise of the authenticator.
  7. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT permit the subscriber to store a hint that is accessible to an unauthenticated claimant.
  8. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT prompt subscribers to use knowledge-based authentication (KBA) (e.g., “What was the name of your first pet?”) or security questions when choosing passwords.
  9. Verifiers SHALL verify the entire submitted password (i.e., not truncate it).

Hooray.

News article. Slashdot thread.

EDITED TO ADD (10/13): There are potential security issues with allowing arbitrary Unicode in passwords.

Posted on September 27, 2024 at 7:01 AM • View Comments

The State of Ransomware

Palo Alto Networks published its semi-annual report on ransomware. From the Executive Summary:

Unit 42 monitors ransomware and extortion leak sites closely to keep tabs on threat activity. We reviewed compromise announcements from 53 dedicated leak sites in the first half of 2024 and found 1,762 new posts. This averages to approximately 294 posts a month and almost 68 posts a week. Of the 53 ransomware groups whose leak sites we monitored, six of the groups accounted for more than half of the compromises observed.

In February, we reported a 49% increase year-over-year in alleged victims posted on ransomware leak sites. So far, in 2024, comparing the first half of 2023 to the first half of 2024, we see an even further increase of 4.3%. The higher level of activity observed in 2023 was no fluke.

Activity from groups like Ambitious Scorpius (distributors of BlackCat) and Flighty Scorpius (distributors of LockBit) has largely fallen off due to law enforcement operations. However, other threat groups we track such as Spoiled Scorpius (distributors of RansomHub) and Slippery Scorpius (distributors of DragonForce) have joined the fray to fill the void.

Posted on August 19, 2024 at 7:05 AM • View Comments

People-Search Site Removal Services Largely Ineffective

Consumer Reports has a new study of people-search site removal services, concluding that they don’t really work:

As a whole, people-search removal services are largely ineffective. Private information about each participant on the people-search sites decreased after using the people-search removal services. And, not surprisingly, the removal services did save time compared with manually opting out. But, without exception, information about each participant still appeared on some of the 13 people-search sites at the one-week, one-month, and four-month intervals. We initially found 332 instances of information about the 28 participants who would later be signed up for removal services (that does not include the four participants who were opted out manually). Of those 332 instances, only 117, or 35%, were removed within four months.

Posted on August 9, 2024 at 9:24 AM • View Comments

On Secure Voting Systems

Andrew Appel shepherded a public comment—signed by twenty election cybersecurity experts, including myself—on best practices for ballot marking devices and vote tabulation. It was written for the Pennsylvania legislature, but it’s general in nature.

From the executive summary:

We believe that no system is perfect, with each having trade-offs. Hand-marked and hand-counted ballots remove the uncertainty introduced by use of electronic machinery and the ability of bad actors to exploit electronic vulnerabilities to remotely alter the results. However, some portion of voters mistakenly mark paper ballots in a manner that will not be counted in the way the voter intended, or which even voids the ballot. Hand-counts delay timely reporting of results, and introduce the possibility for human error, bias, or misinterpretation.

Technology introduces the means of efficient tabulation, but also introduces a manifold increase in complexity and sophistication of the process. This places the understanding of the process beyond the average person’s understanding, which can foster distrust. It also opens the door to human or machine error, as well as exploitation by sophisticated and malicious actors.

Rather than assert that each component of the process can be made perfectly secure on its own, we believe the goal of each component of the elections process is to validate every other component.

Consequently, we believe that the hallmarks of a reliable and optimal election process are hand-marked paper ballots, which are optically scanned, separately and securely stored, and rigorously audited after the election but before certification. We recommend state legislators adopt policies consistent with these guiding principles, which are further developed below.

Posted on March 26, 2024 at 7:08 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.