Bitcoin

Hackers Return Nearly Half of the $600 Million they Stole in One of the Biggest Crypto Heists (cnbc.com) 58

Hackers have returned nearly half of the $600 million they stole in what's likely to be one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts ever. From a report: The cybercriminals exploited a vulnerability in Poly Network, a platform that looks to connect different blockchains so that they can work together. Poly Network disclosed the attack Tuesday and asked to establish communication with the hackers, urging them to "return the hacked assets."

A blockchain is a ledger of activities upon which various cryptocurrencies are based. Each digital coin has its own blockchain and they're different from each other. Poly Network claims to be able to make these various blockchains work with each other. Poly Network is a decentralized finance platform. DeFi is a broad term encompassing financial applications based on blockchain technology that looks to cut out intermediaries -- such as brokerages and exchanges. Hence, it's dubbed decentralized. Proponents say this can make financial applications such as lending or borrowing more efficient and cheaper. "The amount of money you hacked is the biggest in defi history," Poly Network said in a tweet. In a strange turn of events Wednesday, the hackers began returning some of the funds they stole. They sent a message to Poly Network embedded in a cryptocurrency transaction saying they were "ready to return" the funds. The DeFi platform responded requesting the money be sent to three crypto addresses. As of 7 a.m. London time, more than $4.8 million had been returned to the Poly Network addresses. By 11 a.m. ET, about $258 million had been sent back.

Facebook

Facebook Engineers Develop New Open Source Time Keeping Appliance (techcrunch.com) 99

Ron Miller, writing for TechCrunch: Most people probably don't realize just how much our devices are time driven, whether it's your phone, your laptop or a network server. For the most part, time keeping has been an esoteric chore, taken care of by a limited number of hardware manufacturers. While these devices served their purpose, a couple of Facebook engineers decided there had to be a better way. So they built a new more accurate time keeping device that fits on a PCI Express (PCIe) card, and contributed it to the Open Compute Project as an open source project. At a basic level, says Olag Obleukhov, a production engineer at Facebook, it's simply pinging this time-keeping server to make sure each device is reporting the same time.

"Almost every single electronic device today uses NTP -- Network Time Synchronization Protocol -- which you have on your phone, on your watch, on your laptop, everywhere, and they all connect to these NTP servers where they just go and say, 'what time is it's and the NTP server provides the time," he explained. Before Facebook developed a new way of doing this, there were basically two ways to check the time. If you were a developer, you probably used something like Facebook.com as a time checking mechanism, but a company like Facebook, working at massive scale, needed something that worked even when there wasn't an internet connection.

Companies running data centers have a hardware device called Stratum One, which is a big box that sits in the data center, and has no other job than acting as the time keeper. Because these time-keeping boxes were built by a handful of companies over years, they were solid and worked, but it was hard to get new features. What's more, companies like Facebook couldn't control the boxes because of their proprietary nature. Obleukhov and his colleague research scientist, Ahmad Byagowi began to attack the problem by looking for a way to create these devices by building a PCIe card with off-the-shelf parts that you could stick into any PC with an open slot.

AI

Researchers Create 'Master Faces' To Bypass Facial Recognition (vice.com) 38

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Researchers have demonstrated a method to create "master faces," computer generated faces that act like master keys for facial recognition systems, and can impersonate several identities with what the researchers claim is a high probability of success. In their paper (PDF), researchers at the Blavatnik School of Computer Science and the School of Electrical Engineering in Tel Aviv detail how they successfully created nine "master key" faces that are able to impersonate almost half the faces in a dataset of three leading face recognition systems. The researchers say their results show these master faces can successfully impersonate over 40 percent of the population in these systems without any additional information or data of the person they are identifying.

The researchers tested their methods against three deep face recognition systems -- Dlib, FaceNet, and SphereFace. Lead author Ron Shmelkin told Motherboard that they used these systems because they are capable of recognizing "high-level semantic features" of the faces that are more sophisticated than just skin color or lighting effects. The researchers used a StyleGAN to generate the faces and then used an evolutionary algorithm and neural network to optimize and predict their success. The evolutionary strategy then creates iterations, or generations, of candidates of varying success rates. The researchers then used the algorithm to train a neural network, to classify the best candidates as the most promising ones. This is what teaches it to predict candidates' success and, in turn, direct the algorithm to generate better candidates with a higher probability of passing. The researchers even predict that their master faces could be animated using deepfake technology to bypass liveness detection, which is used to determine whether a biometric sample is real or fake.

Microsoft

Microsoft To Require Admin Rights Before Using Windows Point and Print Feature (therecord.media) 53

Microsoft has released today a security update that will change the default behavior of the "Point and Print" feature to mitigate a severe security issue disclosed last month. From a report: First added in Windows 2000, the Point and Print feature works by connecting to a print server to download and install necessary print drivers every time a user creates a connection to a remote printer without providing installation media. Earlier this year, Jacob Baines, a reverse engineer for Dark Wolf Solutions, found that threat actors inside a company's network could abuse the Point and Print feature to run a malicious print server and force Windows systems to download and install malicious drivers.

Since Point and Print ran with SYSTEM privileges, the feature effectively provided threat actors with an easy way to gain admin rights inside any large corporate or government network. Microsoft initially tried to patch the issue -- tracked as CVE-2021-34481 -- last month, but the patches were deemed incomplete. Today, the company took another approach. Since the vulnerability is exploiting a design flaw, Microsoft chose today to change the default behavior of the Point and Print feature.

Security

Cross-Chain DeFi Site Poly Network Hacked; Hundreds of Millions Potentially Lost (coindesk.com) 85

Cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Poly Network was attacked on Tuesday, with the alleged hacker draining roughly $600 million in crypto. From a report: Poly Network, a protocol launched by the founder of Chinese blockchain project Neo, operates on the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. Tuesday's attack struck each chain consecutively, with the Poly team identifying three addresses where stolen assets were transferred. At the time that Poly tweeted news of the attack, the three addresses collectively held more than $600 million in different cryptocurrencies, including USDC, wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), wrapped ether (WETH) and shiba inu (SHIB), blockchain scanning platforms show.

"We call on miners of affected blockchain and crypto exchanges to blacklist tokens coming from the above addresses," the Poly team tweeted. The $600 million figure would place the Poly Network hack among the largest in crypto history. Tether froze approximately $33 million in relation to the hack, Tether CTO Paul Adroino tweeted. About one hour after Poly announced the hack on Twitter, the hacker tried to move assets including USDT through the Ethereum address into liquidity pool Curve.fi, records show. The transaction was rejected.

Firefox

Firefox 91 Pushes Privacy With Stronger New Cookie-clearing Option (cnet.com) 35

WIth the release of Firefox 91 on Tuesday, Mozilla has introduced a bigger hammer for smashing the cookies that websites, advertisers and tracking companies can use to record your online behavior. From a report: The new feature, called enhanced cookie clearing, is designed to block tracking not just from a website, but also from third parties whose code appears on the site. The technology is designed to let you clear cookies for a particular website but also the more aggressive "supercookies" designed to evade lesser privacy protections. The feature is an option if you enable Firefox's strict mode for cookie handling, which partitions website data into separate storage containers. "You can easily recognize and remove all data a website has stored on your computer, without having to worry about leftover data from third parties embedded in that website," Mozilla said in a blog post.
Security

DEF CON: Security Holes In Deere, Case IH Shine Spotlight On Agriculture Cyber Risk (securityledger.com) 48

chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: A lot has changed in the agriculture sector in the last decade. And farm country's cybersecurity bill has come due in a big way. A (virtual) presentation at the annual DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas on Sunday described a host of serious, remotely exploitable holes in software and services by U.S. agricultural equipment giants John Deere and Case IH, The Security Ledger reports. Together, the security flaws and misconfigurations could have given nation-state hackers access to Deere's global product infrastructure, sensitive customer and third-party data and, potentially, the ability to remotely access critical farm equipment like planters and harvesters that are the lynchpin of the U.S. food chain.

The talk is the most detailed presentation, to date, of a range of flaws in Deere software and services that were first identified and disclosed to the company in April. The disclosure of two of those flaws in the company's public-facing web applications set off a scramble by Deere and other agricultural equipment makers to patch the flaws, unveil a bug bounty program and to hire cyber security and embedded device security talent.

In addition to a slew of common web flaws like Cross Site Scripting- and account enumeration bugs linked to Deere's web site and public APIs, the researchers discovered a vulnerability (CVE-2021-27653) in third-party software by Pega Systems, a maker of customer relationship management (CRM) software that Deere uses. A misconfiguration of that software gave the researchers administrative access to the remote, back end Pegasystems server. With wide ranging, administrative access to the production backend Pega server, the researchers were able to obtain other administrative Pegasystems credentials including passwords, security audit logs, as well as John Deere's OKTA signing certificate for the Pegasystems server, according to the presentation. In an email statement to The Security Ledger, a John Deere spokesperson said that "none of the claims -- including those identified at DEF CON -- have enabled access to customer accounts, agronomic data, dealer accounts, or sensitive personal information," though data included in the presentation as well as prior public disclosures make clear that sensitive data on Deere employees, equipment, customers and suppliers was exposed.

IT

Why CAPTCHA Pictures Are So Unbearably Depressing (medium.com) 115

Clive Thompson: I hate doing Google's CAPTCHAs. Part of it is the sheer hassle of repeatedly identifying objects -- traffic lights, staircases, palm trees and buses -- just so I can finish a web search. I also don't like being forced to donate free labor to AI companies to help train their visual-recognition systems. But a while ago, while numbly clicking on grainy images of fire hydrants, I was struck by another reason: The images are deeply, overwhelmingly depressing.

CAPTCHA images are never joyful vistas of human activity, full of Whitmanesque vigor. No, they're blurry, anonymous landscapes that possess a positively Soviet anomie. I think I've figured it out, and so now I present -- The Six Reasons CAPTCHA Pictures Make You Feel Like Crap:

1. They're devoid of humans.
2. The angles are all wrong.
3. They're voyeuristic.
4. They look like crime-scene footage.
5. The grids on the photos are an alien's-eye view of the world.
6. There's very little nature.

Security

Google Drops Bluetooth Titan Security Keys In Favor of NFC Versions (bleepingcomputer.com) 19

Google is discontinuing the Bluetooth Titan Security Key to focus on security keys with Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality. As part of this move, Google has also announced a new Titan Security Key with USB-C and NFC to go along with the previously available USB-A + NFC security key. Bleeping Computer reports: Google's Titan Security Keys were introduced in 2018 and are designed to help users prevent Google account takeover attempts using credentials stolen in data breaches or following phishing attacks. They work with the most popular devices, browsers, and an increasing number of apps that come with FIDO standard support.

"Since NFC functionality is now supported by a wide range of Android phones and iPhones, we are discontinuing the Bluetooth Titan Security Key and focusing on the easier and more widely available NFC capability," said Christiaan Brand, Google Cloud Product Manager. "However, for existing users with our Bluetooth Titan Security Keys, these will continue to work with Bluetooth and will continue to work as an NFC key on most modern mobile devices." The company will also continue to service existing Bluetooth Titan Security Keys until they are out of warranty.

IT

When Amazon Customers Leave Negative Reviews, Some Sellers Hunt Them Down (wsj.com) 130

Ever wonder how cheap, no-name products on Amazon can amass hundreds, sometimes thousands, of nearly perfect star ratings, with just a handful of negative reviews? From a report: Here's one way: Some sellers are reaching out to unhappy buyers to revise or delete their negative reviews, in exchange for refunds or gift cards. With fewer disgruntled shoppers, the overall average star rating rises. Sellers who ship products via Amazon aren't supposed to reach out to customers outside of Amazon's official channel -- in fact, it's a violation of the terms they agree to on the retail platform. In March, New Yorker Katherine Scott picked out an oil spray bottle for cooking, based on nearly 1,000 glowing Amazon reviews of the product, which had a 4.5-star rating average. When the $10 sprayer arrived, she found the item didn't work as advertised: Instead of a mist, it produced a stream of oil, she said. She left a negative review.

A week later, Ms. Scott received an email from someone claiming to be from the customer-service team of the oil sprayer's brand, Auxtun -- correspondence which I have reviewed. "We are willing to refund in full," the representative wrote. "We hope you can reconsider deleting comments at your convenience okay?" The message concluded, "When we do not receive a response, we will assume that you did not see it, and will continue to send emails." The seller shouldn't have had her email address. Sellers who fulfill orders themselves do receive customer names and mailing addresses. But for orders that Amazon itself fulfills, customer data is supposed to be shielded from sellers and brands.

Sellers are permitted to communicate with buyers through Amazon's built-in messaging platform, which hides the customer's email address. Amazon's terms of service also prohibit sellers from requesting that a customer remove a negative review or post a positive one. "We do not share customer email addresses with third-party sellers," an Amazon spokesman told me. Meanwhile, brands, which can be distinct from sellers, may reach out to unsatisfied customers through Amazon's messaging service, but they also aren't allowed to ask customers to remove negative reviews.

Ms. Scott asked for a refund but didn't want to delete her review. Another representative reached out the next day and declined to issue her refund. "A bad review is a fatal blow to us," read the email. "Could you help me delete the review? If you can, I want to refund $20 to you to express my gratitude." (This was twice what Ms. Scott paid.) A few hours later, she received another plea from the same email address. "It was so creepy. They emailed me directly about it over and over," Ms. Scott said. Ms. Scott contacted Amazon twice about the matter. I reviewed Amazon's chat transcripts and emails.

Security

Routers and Modems Running Arcadyan Firmware Are Under Attack (therecord.media) 24

Routers and modems running a version of the Arcadyan firmware, including devices from ASUS, Orange, Vodafone, and Verizon, are currently under attack from a threat actor attempting to ensnare the devices into their DDoS botnet. From a report: First spotted by security firm Bad Packets earlier this week and confirmed by Juniper Labs on Friday, the attacks are exploiting a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2021-20090.

Discovered by Tenable security researcher Evan Grant earlier this year, the vulnerability resides in the firmware code produced by Taiwanese tech firm Arcadyan. Grant says the vulnerability has existed in the code for at least ten years and has made its way into the firmware of at least 20 router and modem models sold by 17 different vendors, which based their products on a white-label version of old Arcadyan devices. The list of affected devices includes some of today's biggest router vendors and internet service providers, such as ASUS, Orange, Vodafone, Telstra, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, British Telecom, and many others.

Security

Disgruntled Member of 'Conti' Ransomware Gang Leaks Files (nbcnews.com) 40

"Someone claiming to work with one of the most notorious ransomware gangs says they're fed up with how extortion money is divvied up and has leaked a host of the gang's files on a hacker forum," reports NBC News: The files, posted to a forum frequented by Russian-speaking cybercriminals and reviewed by NBC News, include numerous instruction manuals allegedly belonging to Conti, a Russian-speaking hacker group that has attacked several hospitals, including health care chains in the U.S., and Ireland's national system, the Health Service Executive... The leak appears authentic, said Allan Liska, a ransomware analyst at the cybersecurity company Recorded Future, as it describes the attacks as coming from the same servers that his company already tracked as Conti. Some of the files show IP addresses Conti used for Cobalt Strike attacks, which Recorded Future had seen before...

The leak shows how much of Conti's operations are apparently contracted out from principal gang members to affiliate hackers, a relationship that can grow sour. "What's interesting to me about this is how much of it is scripted," Liska said...

In their post leaking the files, the user, whose role in Conti's operation has been to find vulnerabilities in potential victims' networks, complained that those at the top of the gang took too large a percentage of the extortion money. "They recruit suckers and divide the money among themselves," the user posted in Russian.

China

Researchers Discover Three-Way Cyberattack by Chinese Military Actors against Southeast Asian Telcos (securityweek.com) 18

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Researchers have discovered three separate Chinese military affiliated advanced threat groups simultaneously targeting and compromising the same Southeast Asian telcos. The attack groups concerned are Soft Cell, Naikon, and a third group, possibly Emissary Panda (also known as APT27)...

Cybereason released details of a triple-pronged attack by Chinese military-affiliated groups against cellular network providers in southeast Asia. Disturbingly, Yonatan Striem-Amit, CTO and co-founder of Cybereason, told SecurityWeek, "We discovered and have evidence that Chinese advanced groups have been using the Hafnium zero-days since at least 2017." Cellular networks are a prime target for nation states because they provide an excellent steppingstone to many other types of attack and different targets. "At this point," said Striem-Amit, "the attacks seem to be a stepping point for a major espionage campaign. We all carry a device in our pocket that knows where we are, where we have been, and who we are with...."

The surprising feature, apart from their stealthy duration, is that three groups, all associated with the Chinese government and often sharing tactics, techniques and procedures, have attacked the same targets at the same time — and have even been seen on the same endpoints simultaneously. It is consequently unclear whether the groups were separately instructed to target telcos, or whether they were being guided from a single source within the Chinese military... The one thing that is clear is that telcos are a major target for China, and that it has had knowledge of and has used serious Exchange zero-day vulnerabilities for many years.

Security

How a Security Researcher Took Over a Hotel's IoT Devices (zdnet.com) 36

"The moment you network IoT and hand over control to third parties, you may also give individuals the keys to a digital kingdom — and the ability to cause mischief, or worse," writes ZDNet.

For example, at a hotel where guests control the devices in their room with an iPod Touch... Speaking at Black Hat USA, Las Vegas, security consultant Kya Supa from LEXFO explained how a chain of security weaknesses were combined and exploited to gain control of rooms at a capsule hotel, a budget-friendly type of hotel offering extremely small — and, therefore, cozy — spaces to guests, who are stacked side-by-side... A neighbor, "Bob," kept waking Supa up by making loud phone calls in the early hours of the morning. While Bob had agreed to keep it down, he did not keep his promise — and the researcher set to work since he needed his sleep, especially during his vacation. The first thing Supa did was to explore his room, finding an emergency light installed for safety reasons; a Nasnos automaton center for use in controlling products in case the iPod Touch was lost; an electric motor used to manage the incline of the capsule's bed; and a Nasnos router, hidden in the wall.

If you connected to the router via a smartphone, it was then possible to control other devices on the network, and this was the setup the hotel chose to use... Supa found that two networks were connected — the hotel Wi-Fi and the router. To retrieve the router key, Supa targeted WEP, a protocol that has been known to be weak for years. Access points, each being one of the bedrooms, were found. Supa inspected the traffic and found weak credentials in place — "123" — and you can guess the rest...

By using an Android smartphone, the iPod Touch, and a laptop, the researcher created a Man-in-The-Middle (MiTM) architecture and inspected the network traffic. No encryption was found and he created a simple program to tamper with these connections, allowing the researcher to seize control of his bedroom through his laptop... Now that he could "control every bedroom," and Bob was still there, Supa then tampered with the lights of different bedrooms until he found the right one. He created a script that, every two hours, would change the bed into a sofa and turn the lights on and off. The script was launched at midnight. We can probably assume Bob did not enjoy his stay.

"I hope he will be more respectful in the future," Supa commented.

United States

US Developer's Workstation Exposed State Department's Network Data, Researchers Find (forbes.com) 16

Long-time Slashdot reader chicksdaddy writes: Sensitive systems and data for the U.S. Department of State could have been exposed by a third party development workstation running the eXide software, according to researchers for the hacking crew Sakura Samurai. According to a report in Forbes, the researchers took advantage of a new State Department Vulnerability Disclosure Program to look for security flaws in one of 8 wild-carded State Department domains included in the program. Using automated tools to do reconnaissance on one of the subdomains the State Department had included in its VDP, researcher Jackson Henry discovered a vulnerable workstation running the open source, web based eXide IDE. It was linked to a third party doing work for the State Department and contained a number of serious security holes including Cross Site Scripting (XSS), Remote File Inclusion (RFI), and Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) flaws. All are powerful weapons in the hands of a sophisticated cyber adversary.

After reporting their findings to the State Department on April 27th, researcher Jackson Henry and Sakura Samurai received acknowledgement of their report on April 29th. The vulnerable endpoint in question was taken offline by the State Department by May 13th. Henry and Sakura Samurai then began working with the State Department on public disclosure of the vulnerabilities, while also communicating with the developers responsible for the open source project to get the flaws fixed, according to communications shared with Forbes.

The discovery of flaws buried in an open source development tool underscores the risks that federal agencies face as more and more government business shifts to the web. "The State Department can't audit every open source package it uses," Henry said. "That's why the VDP is such a big thing (and) a step in the right direction."

It is also an endorsement of the benefits of a quiet security revolution within the federal government in recent months, as agencies have responded to Binding Operational Directive 20-01, a new requirement from the CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, that Executive Branch agencies publish and maintain public vulnerability disclosure programs, or VDPs — a kind of front door for bug hunters and "white hat" cybersecurity professionals.

Security

Ransomware Attack Forces Indiana Hospital To Turn Ambulances Away (thedailybeast.com) 41

Hackers are going after U.S. hospitals with a fresh wave of cyberattacks this week just as coronavirus cases surge around the country. From a report: Eskenazi Health, a health-care service provider that operates a 315-bed hospital, inpatient facilities, and community health centers throughout Indianapolis, was crippled by a ransomware attack that began between 3:30 and 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, a spokesperson told The Daily Beast. By 8 a.m. Eskenazi Health was turning ambulances away and diverting patients to other hospitals as a result of the ransomware incident, the spokesperson said. "A ransomware attack happened," an Eskenazi spokesperson told The Daily Beast, confirming that all of Eskenazi Health's locations -- its hospital, its inpatient facilities, and its community health centers -- are impacted. The spokesperson added that Eskenazi Health was working to contain the ransomware by shutting down some services and operations in order to try to keep the malware from spreading through its systems.

"They took all of our systems down so they wouldn't get breached," the spokesperson said, confirming email systems and electronic medical records were still down as of Thursday evening. Eskenazi Health is not alone. Sanford Health, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota-headquartered health system which includes 46 hospitals and care locations in 26 states and 10 countries, said in a statement Thursday it had been hit with a cyberattack in recent days as well. Sanford Health did not confirm whether it was the victim of ransomware, but president and CEO Bill Gassen confirmed to The Daily Beast it was working to "contain" the impact. In both the Sanford Health and Eskenazi Health cases, patient data and employee data were not affected, officials said.

Encryption

Facebook's WhatsApp Takes Aim At Apple Over Child Safety Software Plan (wsj.com) 51

Facebook's WhatsApp messaging unit blasted Apple's plan to monitor sexually exploitative images of children on iPhones as bad for privacy, opening a new front in the battle between two of the world's biggest tech companies. From a report: "This approach introduces something very concerning into the world," Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, said Friday. "We will not adopt it at WhatsApp." Apple a day earlier said it planned to release an update for U.S. users later this year designed to identify and report collections of sexually exploitative images of children, as part of a series of changes it is preparing for the iPhone to protect children from sexual predators.

WhatsApp's position deepens the battle between Facebook and Apple about data. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has long bemoaned what he sees as too much power Apple has over the social-media giant's business. Apple has made the protection of user information on the iPhones and some other devices a key part of its pitch to consumers and taken shots at Facebook for its data-collection practices. Tensions have intensified in recent months as Apple rolled out a new privacy feature for the iPhone that restricts Facebook's ability to collect data. Mr. Zuckerberg said Apple was using its platform to interfere with how Facebook apps work. At the heart of the latest dispute is the question of whether tech companies can insert software that identifies inappropriate or illegal content without compromising privacy. Apple claims to have found a way to do this. WhatsApp, and Apple's critics, liken this software to a surveillance system.

Security

Motherboard Vendor GIGABYTE Hit By RansomExx Ransomware Gang (therecord.media) 34

Taiwanese computer hardware vendor GIGABYTE has suffered a ransomware attack, and hackers are currently threatening to release more than 112 GB of business data on the dark web unless the company agrees to their ransom demands. An anonymous reader shares a report: The Taiwanese company, primarily known for its high-performance motherboards, confirmed the attack in a phone call and in a message on its (now-down) Taiwanese website. A spokesperson said the incident did not impact production systems. Only a few internal servers at its Taiwanese headquarters have been affected and have now been taken down and isolated. The company is currently in the process of investigating how the hackers breached its systems, stole files, and encrypted local copies. Local law enforcement has also been notified.
Privacy

Apple Confirms It Will Begin Scanning iCloud Photos for Child Abuse Images (techcrunch.com) 135

Apple will roll out a technology that will allow the company to detect and report known child sexual abuse material to law enforcement in a way it says will preserve user privacy. From a report: Apple told TechCrunch that the detection of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is one of several new features aimed at better protecting the children who use its services from online harm, including filters to block potentially sexually explicit photos sent and received through a child's iMessage account. Another feature will intervene when a user tries to search for CSAM-related terms through Siri and Search.

Most cloud services -- Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft to name a few -- already scan user files for content that might violate their terms of service or be potentially illegal, like CSAM. But Apple has long resisted scanning users' files in the cloud by giving users the option to encrypt their data before it ever reaches Apple's iCloud servers. Apple said its new CSAM detection technology -- NeuralHash -- instead works on a user's device, and can identify if a user uploads known child abuse imagery to iCloud without decrypting the images until a threshold is met and a sequence of checks to verify the content are cleared. News of Apple's effort leaked Wednesday when Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, revealed the existence of the new technology in a series of tweets. The news was met with some resistance from some security experts and privacy advocates, but also users who are accustomed to Apple's approach to security and privacy that most other companies don't have.

Microsoft

Microsoft Announces 'Super Duper Secure Mode' for Edge (therecord.media) 51

Microsoft said this week it plans to run an experiment in its Edge web browser where it will intentionally disable an important performance and optimization feature in order to enable more advanced security upgrades in what the company is calling Edge Super Duper Secure Mode. From a report: Announced today by Johnathan Norman, Microsoft Edge Vulnerability Research Lead, the idea behind the new Super Duper Secure Mode is to disable support for JIT (Just-In-Time) inside V8, the Edge browser's JavaScript engine. JIT, while unknown to most end-users, plays a crucial role in all of today's web browsers. JIT works by taking JavaScript and compiling it to machine code ahead of time. If the browser needs the code, it gains a significant speed boost. If it doesn't, the code is discarded.

However, JIT support in V8 is complex. Norman said JIT-related security issues amounted to 45% of all V8 vulnerabilities in 2019. Furthermore, more than half of the "in the wild" Chrome exploits rely on JIT-related bugs. Norman said that recent tests carried out by the Edge team have shown that despite its pivotal role in speeding up browsers in the early and mid-2010s, JIT is not a crucial feature anymore to Edge's performance.

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