November 19, 2022

Lukasz Olejnik @LukaszOlejnik@Mastodon.Social @lukOlejnik

When cybersecurity cross-sects with policy, defence, even warfare, this calls for additional prudence and attention to detail in cyber threat intelligence. I review ENISA's Threat Landscape 2022. Some interesting statements, but what do they mean...?

blog.lukaszolejnik.comImproving communication in cyber threat intelligence reportsThis is the year of cyberwarfare. Activities during the Russian war in Ukraine show it very clearly. But this post is about reports, cyber threat intelligence, and communication of the kind. Crucial at high-tension times, they should be crisp. We should consider/expect high level of quality/competen…

12:30 PM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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Brian in Pittsburgh @arekfurt

Great job to Jeff Stone here for calling out the CSRB for its refusal to investigate Solarwinds despite the Executive Order requiring that. And for having the stomach to reference what the real reason almost certainly was: Not embarrassing politically powerful people & orgs.

Jeff Stone @jeffstone500

The US's cyber review punted on investigating SolarWinds because of an urgent security risk, members told me. But it's still not examining the massive Russian hack, pointing to bigger limitations. Read + subscribe to the Cyber Bulletin @technology: https://t.co/4KfFX2xPUJ

1:12 AM ∙ Nov 17, 2022

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Dr. Jeffrey Lewis @ArmsControlWonk

Time to let the cat out of the bag! @tylerni7 and @michaelnute have been writing code to detect missile launches like tonight's North Korean ICBM test in GPS data. Missiles make ionospheric disturbances that GPS records. The yellow ripple is the ionospheric disturbance.

3:52 AM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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Dr. Jeffrey Lewis @ArmsControlWonk

@tylerni7 @michaelnute In case you are curious about the underlying idea: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

3:55 AM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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Ethan Mollick @emollick

May I interest you in two of the most fascinating colors? 🌌Cosmic Latte: the average color of galaxies (paper arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0…) 👁Eigengrau or “Brain grey”: the color you see in darkness or with closed eyes. Its not black as some of the eye’s rod cells are randomly firing

2:36 AM ∙ Nov 19, 2022

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Ethan Mollick @emollick

For more color weirdness, you can see imaginary colors by using the optical illusion template in this tweet: 🔵Stygian blue: a blue both totally blue & impossibly black 🔴Self-luminous red: a red that is brighter than white 🟠Hyperbolic orange: more orange than 100% orange color

2:48 AM ∙ Nov 19, 2022

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Impalabs @the_impalabs

If you've missed our talk at @hexacon_fr, the recording of “Hara-Kirin: Dissecting Huawei Mobile Devices” is now available! Come with us for a guided tour of Huawei's Hypervisor and TrustZone, and learn about the cool bugs we discovered along the way.

youtu.beHEXACON2022 - Hara-Kirin: Dissecting Huawei Mobile Devices by Maxime Peterlin & Alexandre Adamskihttps://www.hexacon.fr/conference/speakers/#hara_kirin

10:14 AM ∙ Oct 28, 2022

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zooko❤ⓩ🛡🦓🦓🦓 @zooko

Excellent summary of the science of private payments and private messaging, which turn out to be closely related, by Taylor Hornby:

zecsec.comScalable Private Money Needs Scalable Anonymous MessagingIn this post I’m going to argue that any scalable private Internet money system will need to rely on an equally-scalable and equally-private anonymous messaging system. Ultimately, I will argue that the best approach to scaling private money is to directly and explicitly build a scalable anonymous c…

12:31 AM ∙ Nov 19, 2022

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Mike Masnick @mmasnick

Now this, folks, is how you subtweet.

FTC @FTC

Anyone can submit information about potential violations of FTC orders or other business misconduct. You can call 1-877-FTC-HELP (382-4357) or submit a complaint at https://t.co/4j2fCP0XlG. We welcome reports from customers, former employees, and informants.

10:58 PM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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Alexander Martin @AlexMartin

EXCLUSIVE: Ransomware incidents now make up the majority of the emergencies prompting the British government’s crisis management COBRA meetings. Half a dozen or so scoops in here on how little progress Westminster has made to tackle the issue. 🔽 therecord.media/ransomware-inc…

therecord.mediaRansomware incidents now make up majority of British government’s crisis management COBRA meetingsRansomware incidents in the United Kingdom are now so impactful that the majority of the British government’s recent crisis management COBRA meetings have been convened in response to them rather than other emergencies.

8:16 AM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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Alex Matrosov @matrosov

🔥Infineon, the major supplier of TPM chips, uses an 8-year-old version of OpenSSL for the InfineonTpmUpdate module inside UEFI firmware on the newest devices (include major enterprise vendors).

BINARLY🔬 @binarly_io

🎯New REsearch: OpenSSL Usage In UEFI Firmware Exposes Weakness In SBOMs ⛓️Binarly REsearch team takes a deeper look into how the recent OpenSSL security updates reflected on the UEFI firmware supply chain ecosystem. The findings aren’t pretty. https://t.co/u88xbQwu76 https://t.co/15EuaJfBGh

8:01 PM ∙ Nov 17, 2022

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Elamin Abdelmahmoud @elamin88

No shade to all of these Twitter alternatives but they’re all pitching themselves as a home for civil conversation when what I actually want is a unlimited chaos goblins and then a bunch of us going ‘boy, that’s nuts’

3:36 PM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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haroon meer @haroonmeer

Someone on a call today asked if Canarytokens were linked to FTX and it genuinely caught me by surprise.

7:24 PM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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Ars Technica @arstechnica

New Meta AI demo writes racist and inaccurate scientific literature, gets pulled arstechnica.com/information-te… by @benjedwards

arstechnica.comNew Meta AI demo writes racist and inaccurate scientific literature, gets pulledGalactica language model generated convincing text about fact and nonsense alike.

11:41 PM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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False Knees @FalseKnees

11:29 PM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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raptor@infosec.exchange @0xdea

Second Order Subdomain Takeovers – They DO Exist! // an old post by @ftp_alun blogs.msmvps.com/alunj/2021/08/…

6:55 AM ∙ Nov 19, 2022

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Gerry Doyle @mgerrydoyle

nice story. there is more of this stuff happening than comes to light while it's happening, imo

washingtonpost.comStealthy Kherson resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forcesDuring eight months of Russian occupation in Kherson city, a secret network of resistance fighters known as partisans worked with the Ukrainian military to sabotage invaders.

12:38 AM ∙ Nov 19, 2022

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Cool story about the operations of partisans inside Kherson. Little operational details reveal how little of tradecraft has changed since the SOE in WW2.

Duress codes to indicated that the agent has been compromised and is coerced. Here they use word substitution:

Smoke and Ihor had agreed on a subtle code that could act as a warning — for example, responding to a message with “ok” instead of “all right.”

The WW2 codes were deliberate mistakes in the encryption. Messages had to have specific mistakes in specific locations to indicate duress. Houses used by resistance members had their own protocols. Before arriving the visitor would call, and if the house was compromised the code phrase was, “yes, come over.”

Some of the resistance was more public, but for psychological effect. An organization called Yellow Ribbon regularly spray-painted locations around town — marking Russian establishments with a yellow ribbon symbol or the Ukrainian letter “i.”

This was a significant part of the Polish underground during WW2. Everywhere had underground movements that worked exclusively on graffiti, newsletters, pamphlets, and other means of political warfare.

The Polish resistance symbol is an easy to draw anchor with the symbolic meaning of PW, for Polska Walcząca “Poland fighting.” It was even easier to deface posters and signs that had a P into the anchor. It became popular with school kids who would do it for lulz. Like drawing a moustache on a picture, they drew resistance symbols everywhere.

Graffiti is a very popular means of resisting occupation. Low risk, but it has a morale impact. And frequently that is the most important thing during occupation. Military efforts by partisans seldom have much impact, so they need to win in the contest of wills. Resistance movements committed to the long war can succeed, but the fight is a Moraleschlacht — a battle of morale.

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Cyber Statecraft @CyberStatecraft

Unit 26165, or Fancy Bear,is known for breaking into systems from afar, including the DNC in 2016 and World Athletics in 2017. But as the attempted OPCW hack in 2018 showed, Unit 26165 also carries out ‘on-site’ hacking operations overseas.

atlanticcouncil.orgGRU 26165: The Russian cyber unit that hacks targets on-siteRussian hackers are not always breaching targets from afar, typing on their keyboards in Moscow bunkers or St. Petersburg apartment buildings. Enter GRU Unit 26165, a military cyber unit with hackers operating remotely and on-site. Going forward, Western intelligence and law enforcement personnel, a…

8:47 PM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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H. Huang @haifeng_huang

Happy to see this paper in print in the Dec. issue of @PolBehavior link.springer.com/article/10.100… Propaganda can affect collective behavior not just by influencing how individuals themselves think about the government, but by influencing how they think others think about the government.

link.springer.comPropaganda, Presumed Influence, and Collective Protest - Political BehaviorPolitical propaganda can reduce citizens’ inclinations to protest by directly influencing their preferences or beliefs about the government. However, given that protest is risky in authoritarian societies and requires collective participation, propaganda can also reduce citizens’ inclination to prot…

5:45 PM ∙ Nov 18, 2022

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Not sure what I think about this yet. On the one hand, propaganda is meant to collectively sway groups of people, so it makes sense. On the other hand, I feel that these “it works because of this one weird trick!” papers are ignoring that when propaganda is effective it is always due to multiple factors.