Camera and microphone attack on smartphones

Albert Zenkoff
2013-11-13
Technology, attack, attack path, camera, microphone, mobile, PIN, security, side-channel, smart phone, technology

The researches at the University of Cambridge have published a paper titled “PIN Skimmer: Inferring PINs Through The Camera and Microphone” describing a new approach to recovering PIN codes entered on a mobile on-screen keyboard. We had seen applications use the accelerometer and gyroscope before to infer the buttons pressed. This time, they use the ...

Can I interest you in more security, sir?

Albert Zenkoff
2013-11-12
Society, business, companies, hypocrisy, idealistic principles, internet, less security, more security, NSA, privacy, social

The last week’s meeting of the IETF discussed security of the Internet and the recent revelations that the NSA turned the Internet into a giant surveillance machine. While the sentiment was clear that the Internet should not allow itself to such abuse, there is little evidence that anything at all could be done about it. ...

Guard your secrets

Albert Zenkoff
2013-11-10
Management, careless, corporate intelligence, corporate spying, intelligence, leak, management, Physical security, social, spy

I meant to write about the subject of spying and corporate information security for a while now but got around to it only now. The article Confessions of a Corporate Spy has provided an excellent background for the discussion and is absolutely worth a read. Twenty years ago the corporate spying was already abound and ...

Google bots subversion

Albert Zenkoff
2013-11-09
Technology, application security, attack, bots, Development, firewall, Google, philosophy, secure by design, software, software design, software security, subversion, technology, unexpected

There is a lot of truth in saying that every tool can be used by good and by evil. There is no point in blocking the tools themselves as the attacker will turn to new tools and subvert the very familiar tools in unexpected ways. Now Google crawler bots were turned into such a weapon ...

Camera and microphone attack on smartphones