Intentional Flaw in GPRS Encryption Algorithm GEA-1

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a mobile data standard that was widely used in the early 2000s. The first encryption algorithm for that standard was GEA-1, a stream cipher built on three linear-feedback shift registers and a non-linear combining function. Although the algorithm has a 64-bit key, the effective key length is only 40 bits, due to...

10h

Paul van Oorschot’s Computer Security and the Internet

Paul van Oorschot’s webpage contains a complete copy of his book: Computer Security and the Internet: Tools and Jewels. It’s worth reading.

18h

VPNs and Trust

TorrentFreak surveyed nineteen VPN providers, asking them questions about their privacy practices: what data they keep, how they respond to court order, what country they are incorporated in, and so on. Most interesting to me is the home countries of these companies. Express VPN is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. NordVPN is incorporated...

1d

Andrew Appel on New Hampshire’s Election Audit

Really interesting two part analysis of the audit conducted after the 2020 election in Windham, New Hampshire. Based on preliminary reports published by the team of experts that New Hampshire engaged to examine an election discrepancy, it appears that a buildup of dust in the read heads of optical-scan voting machines (possibly over several years of...

2d

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’ll be part of a European Internet Forum virtual debate on June 17, 2021. The topic is “Decrypting the encryption debate: How to ensure public safety with a privacy-preserving and secure Internet?” I’m speaking at the all-online Society for Philosophy and Technology Conference 2021,...

3d

TikTok Can Now Collect Biometric Data

This is probably worth paying attention to: A change to TikTok’s U.S. privacy policy on Wednesday introduced a new section that says the social video app “may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information” from its users’ content. This includes things like “faceprints and voiceprints,” the policy explained. Reached for comment, TikTok could...

3d

Friday Squid Blogging: Fossil of Squid Eating and Being Eaten

We now have a fossil of a squid eating a crustacean while it is being eaten by a shark. 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.

6d

FBI/AFP-Run Encrypted Phone

For three years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Australian Federal Police owned and operated a commercial encrypted phone app, called AN0M, that was used by organized crime around the world. Of course, the police were able to read everything — I don’t even know if this qualifies as a backdoor. This week, the world’s police organizations...

6d

Detecting Deepfake Picture Editing

“Markpainting” is a clever technique to watermark photos in such a way that makes it easier to detect ML-based manipulation: An image owner can modify their image in subtle ways which are not themselves very visible, but will sabotage any attempt to inpaint it by adding visible information determined in advance by the markpainter. One application...

1w

Information Flows and Democracy

Henry Farrell and I published a paper on fixing American democracy: “Rechanneling Beliefs: How Information Flows Hinder or Help Democracy.” It’s much easier for democratic stability to break down than most people realize, but this doesn’t mean we must despair over the future. It’s possible, though very difficult, to back away from our current situation...

2w