Survey Finds High-Profile Executives Feel Untouchable as Digital Exposure Turns Into Physical Risk
360 Privacy finds more than 8 in 10 security and wealth professionals say cybersecurity and physical security can no longer be separated.
WhatsApp Hid Instructions in Help Pages Telling Its AI Chatbot Not to Recommend Privacy Regulators
WhatsApp's help pages carried hidden instructions for its support chatbot that told it not to recommend a data protection authority or regulator to users who could no longer delete their accounts, even though WhatsApp's own privacy policy for Europe tells users they can complain to one. The text sat in the pages' code, never shown on screen, until it was removed by October 18.…
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Before the Chicxulub Meteor Impact
New research shows that squid lived all around the globe even before the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.
Measuring Human Cryptanalysis Effort
Matthew Green has a new site that tries to estimate the number of cryptanalyst-hours that have been spent analyzing different public-key algorithms: Abstract: We estimate how much public cryptanalysis each public-key assumption has received, using the literature itself as the instrument. From roughly sixteen thousand candidate papers we classify cryptanalytic work on ECDLP,…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at ATTENTION: Democracy, Rebuilt in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The event runs October 21–23, 2026, and my talk is on Wednesday, October 21. I’m speaking at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at 5 PM ET on October 22, 2026.
Bring Your Own Agent: Your Employees' Assistants Are Already Logged In
The personal AI agents rollout is going about as smoothly as expected: Amazon now blocks Meta's Muse because it doesn't identify itself as a bot while browsing; Instinct keeps raising privacy concerns; and the horror stories from pretty much every personal AI agent keep piling up. Regardless, the tech world is mesmerized by the capabilities and potential of these services.…
Friday Squid Blogging: I Caught a Squid
On Wednesday I spent a day fishing, on a small boat out of Gloucester, MA. We caught many cod (none of which we could keep), and a bunch of hake and mackerel (all of which we could keep). And…I caught a squid!
UAC-0099 Targets Ukrainian Government Personnel With ASHVEIN RAT Hiding Commands in HTML
The Russia-aligned threat actor known as UAC-0099 has been attributed to a previously undocumented .NET infostealer and remote access trojan (RAT) codenamed ASHVEIN. According to TrendAI, the malware has been put to use in attacks targeting Ukrainian government personnel. The cybersecurity company is tracking the cluster under the name Earth Sirrush (previously…
Citizen Lab Slams Trump Administration, 'Techno-Fascist' Executives
The Citizen Lab's Ron Deibert warns the US government is pushing for pervasive surveillance and says certain technology executives are all too happy to help.
Friday Squid Blogging: EU is Trying to Fight Unregulated Squid Fishing
The EU is recommending import controls to combat unregulated squid fishing in the Southwest Atlantic. I’m not optimistic. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Unidentified Flock Cameras in Florida
St. Lucie County in Florida discovered ( alt link ) a dozen Flock cameras whose ownership it can’t identify, and that the county government had not permitted. I am reminded of the decade-old story of StingRay cell phone surveillance devices in Washington, DC, whose operators were also unknown.
Connected Cars Are a Surveillance Platform
Researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with Consumer Reports , evaluated how much modern cars spy in their drivers: The new Northeastern study shows, for the first time, data flowing among the vehicles, the vehicle apps you download when you buy your car, and third-party companies, documenting exactly what kind of data gets siphoned from our vehicles and…
GPT-6 Astra Breaks an Old Enigma Message
This is pretty amazing: However, the most astonishing thing about this break is that the GPT6 Astra did it entirely on its own. Carter Leffer only directed GPT6 Astra to see if it could break any of the unbroken Enigma messages published on the Crypto Cellar Research web page. After analysing the unbroken messages on the website, it decided that the most promising message…
Google Fined €403 Million Over GDPR Violations Tied to Location Data
Google has been fined €403 million for breaking the EU's data protection law, the GDPR, in the way three of its features handled people's location data from May 2018 to February 2020. Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC), Google's lead regulator in the EU, also ordered the company to make its processing comply with the law within 6 months. The DPC has not said…
Google fined €403 million over location data privacy violations
Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Google €403 million ($463M) for multiple GDPR violations related to processing users' location data. [...]
Friday Squid Blogging: On Squid Egg Sacs
Short essay about squid egg sacs. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.
MFA Won't Save You From OAuth Consent Abuse
MFA is essential, but it cannot replace OAuth governance, least-privilege scopes, consent monitoring, and rapid revocation.
Iran-Linked Handala Hack Tied to HEAVYGRAM Telegram Backdoor That Can Steal Passwords
The Iran-linked "hacktivist" persona known as Handala Hack has been attributed to a Telegram-based surveillance backdoor called HEAVYGRAM and a Delphi-based utility known as CRUDEEXCLUDE. "HEAVYGRAM offers builtin commands supporting remote command execution, system, network and process information discovery, data and Telegram session files exfiltration, screenshot capture,…
OpenAI Reveals Six Model Incidents Involving Hidden Failures and Unauthorized Uploads
OpenAI on Wednesday disclosed six new instances of "unexpected or concerning model behavior" that took place over the past six months, while sharing a new framework for reporting, tracking, investigating, and disclosing model misalignment in a bid to improve transparency. "As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed…
Data Broker Radaris Loses Domains in Privacy Fight
The consumer data broker Radaris.com has long had a reputation for ignoring requests to remove personal information from its vast empire of people-search services online. That reputation caught up with the company recently in a lawsuit alleging Radaris violated a New Jersey privacy law that provides for hefty fines against data brokers that publish personal information on…
KREMLIN Banking Malware Hijacks Chrome and Edge to Steal Credentials and Session Tokens
Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a previously undocumented Brazilian banking malware operation that delivers a toolkit called KREMLIN. Elastic Security Labs is tracking the activity under the moniker REF9334. Active since at least May 2025, the threat actor has used lures that impersonate a dozen Brazilian banks and install a malicious browser extension on Google…
25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough
This essay was written with Cindy Cohn, and originally appeared in Lawfare . One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is the government-wide shift from targeted surveillance—such as individual wiretaps or pen register/trap and trace orders—to mass surveillance techniques—such as tapping into the internet backbone or mass collection of…
On the NSA’s Supercomputer from the 1960s
Really interesting story about Harvest, a specialized code breaking computer built in the 1960s by IBM for the NSA.
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking online (via Zoom) at a League of Women Voters event on Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at 5 PM ET. I’m speaking at CanSecWest 2026 in Vancouver, Canada. The conference runs September 30–October 1, 2026; the time of my talk is TBD.
Cliff Stoll’s DEF CON Talk
In August, Cliff Stoll gave a talk at DEF CON, remembering the wily hacker he stalked forty years ago. Great fun.
Slim Spider Steals Crypto Custody Secrets From Brazilian Financial Institution
A previously undocumented financially motivated threat actor has been linked to attacks targeting Brazilian financial institutions since at least March 2026. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike is tracking the Brazil-based activity cluster under the name Slim Spider. "The adversary demonstrates deep operational knowledge of Brazilian financial infrastructure, including the…
North Korean Hackers Deploy New Linux Espionage Toolkit
The stealthy toolkit embeds a backdoor in HAProxy and targets automotive and media organizations in South Korea for long-term surveillance. The post North Korean Hackers Deploy New Linux Espionage Toolkit appeared first on SecurityWeek .
Researching Employment Scams
Researchers built a fake company to study fake employee scams .
Wireless Routers as Motion Detectors
Comcast has added motion detection as a feature to its wireless routers: The feature sends push notifications to users when motion is detected near a connected device, such as a TV or printer. It has different settings for when people are home, asleep, or away. The Xfinity app also lets users see live motion activity and a feed of recent activity.
Rewiring Democracy Series on The Renovator
Nathan E. Sanders and I are writing a series of essays on real-world examples of democratic technologies for The Renovator . I haven’t been posting the full text on the blog because they’re a bit long, but here are links.
Brave browser adds email aliases to help users evade tracking
The latest version of the Brave browser, 1.94, introduces a feature called 'Email Aliases' that allows users to generate disposable email addresses when signing up to a new service. [...]
Android 17 adds ECH support to make web browsing harder to track
Google is introducing new network security protections in Android 17 to strengthen connection privacy, address cellular vulnerabilities, and protect the privacy of users' home networks. [...]
NovaCookies Campaigns Abuse Genuine Docusign Notifications to Steal Microsoft 365 Sessions
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing toolkit called NovaCookies that's used as a proxy to redirect Microsoft 365 sign-ins, while capturing authenticated sessions in the process. In a report shared with The Hacker News ahead of publication, Island characterized the $320/month service as a subscription-based phishing…
Spyware for Babies
The New York Times has a long article ( alt link ) on surveillance systems aimed at babies. They are increasingly using AI. Nanit and its rivals want to own 24/7 health tracking for the sub-four-foot set.
'NovaCookies' Kit Steals Microsoft 365 Sessions for $320 a Month
The adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing service lowers the barrier to entry for actors to create attacks and steal more than just user credentials.
TikTok reaches $400M settlement with US over COPPA violations
The U.S. Department of Justice announced a $400 million settlement with TikTok, ByteDance, and affiliated companies over allegations that they violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). [...]
Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley
Interesting paper : Abstract: With entrepreneurial fraud cases on the rise, we investigate how entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception , employing deceptive means to defraud audiences. Analyzing court data from Silicon Valley ventures and their founders prosecuted for fraud between 2000 and 2023, our findings reveal that entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception through a…
TikTok Reaches $400 Million Settlement With US Justice Department Over Children’s Privacy
TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and another $100 million after an order vacates an earlier consent decree against its predecessor company, Musical.ly. The post TikTok Reaches $400 Million Settlement With US Justice Department Over Children’s Privacy appeared first on SecurityWeek .
TikTok Agrees to $400 Million Settlement in U.S. Child Privacy Lawsuit
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced on Friday that ByteDance-owned TikTok will pay $400 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit accusing the company of violating child privacy laws in the country. As part of the settlement, the social media platform will pay $300 million immediately, and an additional $100 million "upon entry of an order vacating a prior consent decree…