Archives for 2016

When you hear “Attribution Problem” in infosec spheres you naturally think of the fact that there was a phase where everything was blamed on China, and then everything was blamed on China. And a lot of it was marketing crap, or people blaming sophisticated attackers when they lacked even the most basic security. [ NOTE: Even worse, lacking…

I think one of the coolest new attack surfaces in coming years will be figuring out cool ways to trick our new AI buddies into doing things they shouldn’t. Here are a couple of examples: Mass-effect control changes It’s a super hot day in the United States in 2023, with many big cities showing over 105 degrees. Everyone…

When you’re choosing victims as an attacker it’s important to waste as little time as possible. That means picking targets well, which in turn means: Easy to compromise Lucrative when compromised It’s a simple formula. The lucrative component can take multiple forms. Recently we’ve seen massive success with ransomware, where people lose what’s important to them (not to…

One of the things that would most benefit the information security field is for more people in it to understand economics. Specifically, the art and science of incentive management. So much of InfoSec is about turning knobs and believing that outcomes will improve But too few understand the interconnected mesh of behaviors that’s linked to that variable, or…

Inexpensive drones are disruptive by themselves. And they’ll become even more so as battery life gets longer. But drones that require active control, and that require an active link between a controller and the drone are severely limited for many applications. Let’s look at a couple: Assassination: defenders can use EM shields, active EM-based attacks, etc. to disrupt…

I think one of the healthiest thing one can possibly do is spend their time focused on their own activities. People are starting to notice that Facebook is bad for mental health because it just shows you other people having fun, being witty, being successful, etc. But fewer realize that this is also most of Twitter and many…

This week’s topics: Yahoo!, Shadowbrokers, Building Your Own Honeytrapping Infrastructure, The Power of Newsletters, Project Aristotle, and more… This is Episode No. 58 of Unsupervised Learning—a weekly show where I collect my favorite stories and ideas in infosec, technology, and humanity, and talk about why they matter. The show is released as a Podcast on iTunes, Overcast, Android,…

Honeytraps are a class of detective controls that work by leaving false treasure lying about for attackers to find. When they take the bait you’re notified immediately that something’s up. The key concept is that you put these treasures in places that would not be accessed legitimately. This way you can be relatively sure that if they’re touched…

A lot of people are starting to talk about how Machine Learning can help attackers and defenders in cybersecurity. It’s an interesting topic, and I want to break down the difference between four types of cases: Supervised and Unsupervised, and Attack and Defense. First, Supervised vs. Unsupervised. Supervised Learning Supervised Learning is where you are looking for the…