SIGINT During World War II
August 13 2025The NSA and GCHQ have jointly published a history of World War II SIGINT: “Secret Messengers: Disseminating SIGINT in the Second World War.” This is the story of the...
Read moreMeasuring the Attack/Defense Balance
July 30 2025“Who’s winning on the internet, the attackers or the defenders?”
I’m asked this all the time, and I can only ever give a qualitative hand-wavy answer. But Jason Healey...
Read moreReport from the Cambridge Cybercrime Conference
July 15 2025The Cambridge Cybercrime Conference was held on 23 June. Summaries of the presentations are here.
Read moreSurveillance Used by a Drug Cartel
July 3 2025Once you build a surveillance system, you can’t control who will use it:
A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone...
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Chinese-Owned VPNs
May 27 2025One one my biggest worries about VPNs is the amount of trust users need to place in them, and how opaque most of them are about who owns them...
Read moreIn response to a FOIA request, the NSA released “Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937-1987),” by Glenn F. Stahly, with a lot of redactions. Weirdly, this is the second time...
Read moreNCSC Guidance on “Advanced Cryptography”
May 2 2025The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre just released its white paper on “Advanced Cryptography,” which it defines as “cryptographic techniques for processing encrypted data, providing enhanced functionality over...
Read moreReport on Paragon Spyware
March 25 2025Citizen Lab has a new report on Paragon’s spyware:
Key Findings:
- Introducing Paragon Solutions. Paragon Solutions was founded in Israel in 2019 and sells spyware called Graphite. The company differentiates... Read more
NIST Recommends Some Common-Sense Password Rules
September 27 2024NIST’s second draft of its “SP 800-63-4“—its digital identify guidelines—finally contains some really good rules about passwords:
The following requirements apply to passwords:
- lVerifiers and CSPs SHALL require passwords to... Read more
Long Analysis of the M-209
September 5 2024Really interesting analysis of the American M-209 encryption device and its security.
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