Category Archives: academicpapers

Detecting Adblocker Blockers

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Interesting research on the prevalence of adblock blockers: "Measuring and Disrupting Anti-Adblockers Using Differential Execution Analysis": Abstract: Millions of people use adblockers to remove intrusive and malicious ads as well as protect themselves against tracking and pervasive surveillance. Online publishers consider adblockers a major threat to the ad-powered "free" Web. They have started to retaliate against adblockers by employing anti-adblockers… Continue reading Detecting Adblocker Blockers→

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Populations Are Exploding

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New research: "Global proliferation of cephalopods" Summary: Human activities have substantially changed the world’s oceans in recent decades, altering marine food webs, habitats and biogeochemical processes. Cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish and octopuses) have a unique set of biological traits, including rapid growth, short lifespans and strong life-history plasticity, allowing them to adapt quickly to changing environmental conditions. There has been growing… Continue reading Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Populations Are Exploding→

Acoustical Attacks against Hard Drives

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Interesting destructive attack: "Acoustic Denial of Service Attacks on HDDs": Abstract: Among storage components, hard disk drives (HDDs) have become the most commonly-used type of non-volatile storage due to their recent technological advances, including, enhanced energy efficacy and significantly-improved areal density. Such advances in HDDs have made them an inevitable part of numerous computing systems, including, personal computers, closed-circuit television… Continue reading Acoustical Attacks against Hard Drives→

Tracking People Without GPS

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Interesting research: The trick in accurately tracking a person with this method is finding out what kind of activity they’re performing. Whether they’re walking, driving a car, or riding in a train or airplane, it’s pretty easy to figure out when you … Continue reading Tracking People Without GPS→

Tracking People Without GPS

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Interesting research: The trick in accurately tracking a person with this method is finding out what kind of activity they’re performing. Whether they’re walking, driving a car, or riding in a train or airplane, it’s pretty easy to figure out when you know what you’re looking for. The sensors can determine how fast a person is traveling and what kind… Continue reading Tracking People Without GPS→

Security Vulnerabilities in Certificate Pinning

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New research found that many banks offer certificate pinning as a security feature, but fail to authenticate the hostname. This leaves the systems open to man-in-the-middle attacks. From the paper: Abstract: Certificate verification is a crucial stage in the establishment of a TLS connection. A common security flaw in TLS implementations is the lack of certificate hostname verification but, in… Continue reading Security Vulnerabilities in Certificate Pinning→

Security Vulnerabilities in Certificate Pinning

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New research found that many banks offer certificate pinning as a security feature, but fail to authenticate the hostname. This leaves the systems open to man-in-the-middle attacks. From the paper: Abstract: Certificate verification is a crucial stage … Continue reading Security Vulnerabilities in Certificate Pinning→

Google’s Data on Login Thefts

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This is interesting research and data: With Google accounts as a case-study, we teamed up with the University of California, Berkeley to better understand how hijackers attempt to take over accounts in the wild. From March 2016 to March 2017, we analyzed several black markets to see how hijackers steal passwords and other sensitive data. […] Our research tracked several… Continue reading Google’s Data on Login Thefts→