Category Archives: academicpapers

New Research: "Privacy Threats in Intimate Relationships"

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I just published a new paper with Karen Levy of Cornell: "Privacy Threats in Intimate Relationships." Abstract: This article provides an overview of intimate threats: a class of privacy threats that can arise within our families, romantic partnerships, close friendships, and caregiving relationships. Many common assumptions about privacy are upended in the context of these relationships, and many otherwise effective… Continue reading New Research: "Privacy Threats in Intimate Relationships"→

Password Changing After a Breach

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This study shows that most people don’t change their passwords after a breach, and if they do they change it to a weaker password. Abstract: To protect against misuse of passwords compromised in a breach, consumers should promptly change affected passwords and any similar passwords on other accounts. Ideally, affected companies should strongly encourage this behavior and have mechanisms in… Continue reading Password Changing After a Breach→

Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and France SIGINT Alliance

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This paper describes a SIGINT and code-breaking alliance between Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and France called Maximator: Abstract: This article is first to report on the secret European five-partner sigint alliance Maximator that started in the late 1970s. It discloses the name Maximator and provides documentary evidence. The five members of this European alliance are Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the… Continue reading Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and France SIGINT Alliance→

Fooling NLP Systems Through Word Swapping

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MIT researchers have built a system that fools natural-language processing systems by swapping words with synonyms: The software, developed by a team at MIT, looks for the words in a sentence that are most important to an NLP classifier and replaces them with a synonym that a human would find natural. For example, changing the sentence "The characters, cast in… Continue reading Fooling NLP Systems Through Word Swapping→

Friday Squid Blogging: On Squid Communication

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They can communicate using bioluminescent flashes: New research published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents evidence for a previously unknown semantic-like ability in Humboldt squid. What’s more, these squid can enhance the visibility of their skin patterns by using their bodies as a kind of backlight, which may allow them to convey messages of surprising… Continue reading Friday Squid Blogging: On Squid Communication→

Hacking Voice Assistants with Ultrasonic Waves

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I previously wrote about hacking voice assistants with lasers. Turns you can do much the same thing with ultrasonic waves: Voice assistants — the demo targeted Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby — are designed to respond when they detect the owner’s voice after noticing a trigger phrase such as ‘Ok, Google’. Ultimately, commands are just sound waves, which other researchers… Continue reading Hacking Voice Assistants with Ultrasonic Waves→

Voatz Internet Voting App Is Insecure

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This paper describes the flaws in the Voatz Internet voting app: "The Ballot is Busted Before the Blockchain: A Security Analysis of Voatz, the First Internet Voting Application Used in U.S. Federal Elections." Abstract: In the 2018 midterm elections, West Virginia became the first state in the U.S. to allow select voters to cast their ballot on a mobile phone… Continue reading Voatz Internet Voting App Is Insecure→

Voatz Internet Voting App Is Insecure

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This paper describes the flaws in the Voatz Internet voting app: "The Ballot is Busted Before the Blockchain: A Security Analysis of Voatz, the First Internet Voting Application Used in U.S. Federal Elections." Abstract: In the 2018 midterm ele… Continue reading Voatz Internet Voting App Is Insecure→

Friday Squid Blogging: An MRI Scan of a Squid’s Brain

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This paper is filled with brain science that I do not understand (news article), but fails to answer what I consider to be the important question: how do you keep a live squid still for long enough to do an MRI scan on them? As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in… Continue reading Friday Squid Blogging: An MRI Scan of a Squid’s Brain→