I’ve bitched before about CSI and their use of “video enhancement” to read displays and the like using low resolution security cameras reflecting off objects. It’s interesting to see what is actually possible using this basic idea though. Link courtesy of Bruce Schneier’s security blog:
Schneier on Security: Spying on Computer Monitors Off Reflective Objects
There is a new security update for Wordpress, which I’ve already installed without any serious mishap/problems. If you run Wordpress, you might think about giving it an upgrade.
[tags]Wordpress,Blogging,Security[/tags]
Addendum: I’ve been having minor problems with the Dashboard in this release not displaying correctly. I’m still trying to figure it out.
Matt Blaze and company have a new paper just out entitled Signaling Vulnerabilities in Wiretapping Systems, which details a number of problems with the methods and equipment normally used by law enforcement to tap phone equipment. These include vulnerabilities that allow the surveilled party to make it appear to call numbers other than the one reached, to disable recording of specific calls and to just generally make it hard for tappers. Interesting stuff, and using relatively straightforward ideas and methodology.
Matt is a remarkable guy, I particularly liked his paper Safecracking for the computer scientist.
Xerox printers use a watermarking technique to insert codes onto all printed documents from their Docucolor color laser printers. These identify date, time and printer serial number with a grid of yellow dots which appear in the printout. Presumably these codes are inserted to make the job of the Secret Service simpler in tracking their use in creating counterfeit money. What’s kind of cool though is that the EFF has figured out how to decode them. Interesting bit: the dots are simple to see when viewed under an intense blue light, like one of those blue Photon LEDs.
Slashdot pointed at this kind of cool article on how the hidden code on the Xbox was hacked. I thought it was pretty cool and illuminating.
Boing Boing documents the quick imposition and then reversal of a cell phone ban in the Lincoln and Holland tunnels in NY. Apparently they were concerned over the risk that remotely detonated devices presented, but (as the NYPD apparently pointed out) the idea of having a place where people cannot use their cell phones to inform fire, police or other agencies of emergency situations inside the tunnel is not not without its risks either.
Tom sent me a pointer to Jef Poskanzer’s notes on how he handles a million spam messages every day. No, that’s note an exaggeration, Jef gets hit by a million of them every day.
Holy crap.
Jef is a the author of the really nice thttpd, which I used to run my website for years before shifting to the Apache/PHP/Wordpress monstrosity that it is now. It’s really cool, if you need a low requirement bulletproof http server, check it out.
Best quote:
If anyone wants to volunteer to pie Bill Gates again, I’ll contribute to the defense fund. Or if you prefer, you could just kick him in the nuts.
Courtesy of Scoble’s blog, here is a post concerning “Low Rights Internet Explorerer”:
IEBlog : Clarifying Low-Rights IE
Low-rights IE will only be available in Longhorn because it’s based on the new Longhorn security features that make running without Administrator privileges an easy option for users (User Account Protection). When users run programs with limited user privileges, they are safer from attack than when they run with Administrator privileges because Windows can restrict the malicious code from taking damaging actions.
My, that does sound innovative. Kind of like running IE inside a jail or something, maybe with an isolated directory, It’s good to see that Microsoft is on top of things.
Sigh. Things like this really depress me. Minnesota court takes dim view of encryption | CNET News.com
A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent.
From the PGP FAQ:
Who uses PGP?
People who value privacy use PGP. Politicians running election campaigns, taxpayers storing IRS records, therapists protecting clients’ files, entrepreneurs guarding trade secrets, journalists protecting their sources, and people seeking romance are a few of the law abiding citizens who use PGP to keep their computer files and their e-mail confidential.Businesses also use PGP. Suppose you’re a corporate manager and you need to e-mail an employee about his job performance. You may be required by law to keep this e-mail confidential. Suppose you’re a saleswoman, and you must communicate over public computer networks with a branch office about your customer list. You may be compelled by your company and the law to keep this list confidential. These are a few reasons why businesses use encryption to protect their customers, their employees, and themselves.
PGP also helps secure financial transactions. For example, the Electronic Frontier Foundation uses PGP to encrypt members’ charge account numbers, so that members can pay dues via e-mail.
Whether this individual is guilty or not, this seems incredibly ill-conceived.
This EFF-funded project sounds very interesting. It attempts to provide anonymity by making traffic analysis difficult by using something called an onion router. I’ll have to read more about it.
Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system
Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and more. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.
Boing Boing mentioned a paper by Markus Kuhn on reconstructing the contents of a screen by measuring the reflected light in a room with a fast photosensor. Cool stuff, reminiscent of Ross Anderson’s work with Soft Tempest, which I experimented with briefly.
Real World Technologies lists an interesting article about the AMD K8 processor and its previously unnoticed ability to patch its own microcode. Apparently AMD has used this to repair a couple of bugs in the processor in the past, but nobody really noticed it before.
A couple of quotes from the article:
The ability to fundamentally alter instruction decoding and execution on AMD K8 processors is sure to interest hardware hackers everywhere.
…
For instance, by patching the appropriate microcode lines, it may be possible to catch an opcode that would normally be illegal, and instead handle it by tricking the TLB into thinking we’re in kernel mode when in fact the attacker has only compromised a userspace process. From there, the attacker could control the entire machine, all without altering a single bit of “software”.
That sounds scary. But wait: there is more!
There may also be a hidden danger to altering K8 microcode without complete information. It is possible (though very unlikely) that the microcode could electrically reconfigure signal routing in a fashion similar to FPGAs, for instance to cut off defective logic and reroute signals to redundant arrays. This approach has been used in the past and the AMD patents even suggest it.
If this were the case, there is a very remote chance the CPU itself could be permanently damaged, for instance, by tri-stating pass transistors into a high current draw state or adjusting the K8’s voltage and frequency scaling controls out of spec. This is not meant to discourage potential hackers; I have just seen programmable logic literally destroyed by buggy “software” bitstreams.
Gee, that doesn’t sound very good.
