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Zodiac Cipher Cracked
From Schneier on Security

Zodiac Cipher Cracked

I admit I don't pay much attention to pencil-and-paper ciphers, so I knew nothing about the Zodiac cipher. Seems it has finally been broken: The Zodiac Killer...

German Police Call Airport Full-Body Scanners Useless
From Schneier on Security

German Police Call Airport Full-Body Scanners Useless

I'm not surprised: The weekly Welt am Sonntag, quoting a police report, said 35 percent of the 730,000 passengers checked by the scanners set off the alarm more...

Home-Made Wi-Fi Hacking, Phone Snooping, UAV
From Schneier on Security

Home-Made Wi-Fi Hacking, Phone Snooping, UAV

Impressive.

Hacking Lotteries
From Schneier on Security

Hacking Lotteries

Two items on hacking lotteries. The first is about someone who figured out how to spot winner in a scratch-of tic-tac-toe style game, and a daily draw style game...

New Information on the Inventor of the One-Time Pad
From Schneier on Security

New Information on the Inventor of the One-Time Pad

Seems that the one-time pad was not first invented by Vernam: He could plainly see that the document described a technique called the one-time pad fully 35 years...

Identifying People by their Writing Style
From Schneier on Security

Identifying People by their Writing Style

The article is in the context of the big Facebook lawsuit, but the part about identifying people by their writing style is interesting: Recently, a team of computer...

Developments in Facial Recognition
From Schneier on Security

Developments in Facial Recognition

Eventually, it will work. You'll be able to wear a camera that will automatically recognize someone walking towards you, and a microphone that will automatically...

Attacking PLCs Controlling Prison Doors
From Schneier on Security

Attacking PLCs Controlling Prison Doors

Embedded system vulnerabilities in prisons: Some of the same vulnerabilities that the Stuxnet superworm used to sabotage centrifuges at a nuclear plant in Iran...

Breaking the Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA Bitstream Encryption
From Schneier on Security

Breaking the Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA Bitstream Encryption

It's a power-analysis attack, which makes it much harder to defend against. And since the attack model is an engineer trying to reverse-engineer the chip, it's...

Using Science Fiction to Teach Computer Security
From Schneier on Security

Using Science Fiction to Teach Computer Security

Interesting paper: "Science Fiction Prototyping and Security Education: Cultivating Contextual and Societal Thinking in Computer Security Education and Beyond,"...

Friday Squid Blogging: 25-foot Giant Squid Caught in Fishing Net
From Schneier on Security

Friday Squid Blogging: 25-foot Giant Squid Caught in Fishing Net

A 25-foot (or maybe 23-foot) giant squid was caught off the coast of Florida. Also, I'm going to try something new. Let's use this weekly squid post to talk...

Luggage Hack
From Schneier on Security

Luggage Hack

Bypassing the lock on luggage.

Hacking Apple Laptop Batteries
From Schneier on Security

Hacking Apple Laptop Batteries

Interesting: Security researcher Charlie Miller, widely known for his work on Mac OS X and Apple's iOS, has discovered an interesting method that enables him to...

ShareMeNot
From Schneier on Security

ShareMeNot

ShareMeNot is a Firefox add-on for preventing tracking from third-party buttons (like the Facebook "Like" button or the Google "+1" button) until the user actually...

Data Privacy as a Prisoner's Dilemma
From Schneier on Security

Data Privacy as a Prisoner's Dilemma

Good analysis: Companies would be better off if they all provided meaningful privacy protections for consumers, but privacy is a collective action problem for...

Cryptography and Wiretapping
From Schneier on Security

Cryptography and Wiretapping

Matt Blaze analyzes the 2010 U.S. Wiretap Report. In 2000, government policy finally reversed course, acknowledging that encryption needed to become a critical...

Ars Technica on Liabilities and Computer Security
From Schneier on Security

Ars Technica on Liabilities and Computer Security

Good article: Halderman argued that secure software tends to come from companies that have a culture of taking security seriously. But it's hard to mandate, or...

Duplicating Physical Keys from Photographs (Sneakey)
From Schneier on Security

Duplicating Physical Keys from Photographs (Sneakey)

In this demonstration, researchers photographed keys from 200 feet away and then made working copies. From the paper: The access control provided by a physical...

iPhone Iris Scanning Technology
From Schneier on Security

iPhone Iris Scanning Technology

No indication about how well it works: The smartphone-based scanner, named Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, is made by BI2 Technologies...

Revenge Effects of Too-Safe Playground Equipment
From Schneier on Security

Revenge Effects of Too-Safe Playground Equipment

Sometimes too much security isn't good. After observing children on playgrounds in Norway, England and Australia, Dr. Sandseter identified six categories of risky...
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