Crypto-Gram
June 15, 2022

by Bruce Schneier
Fellow and Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School
schneier@schneier.com
https://www.schneier.com

A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer and
otherwise.

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In this issue:

If these links don't work in your email client, try reading this issue of Crypto-Gram on the web.

The NSA Says that There are No Known Flaws in NISTs Quantum-Resistant Algorithms
Attacks on Managed Service Providers Expected to Increase
iPhone Malware that Operates Even When the Phone Is Turned Off
Websites that Collect Your Data as You Type
Bluetooth Flaw Allows Remote Unlocking of Digital Locks
The Onion on Google Map Surveillance
Forging Australian Drivers Licenses
The Justice Department Will No Longer Charge Security Researchers with Criminal Hacking
Manipulating Machine-Learning Systems through the Order of the Training Data
Malware-Infested Smart Card Reader
Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2022
The Limits of Cyber Operations in Wartime
Clever -- and Exploitable -- Windows Zero-Day
Remotely Controlling Touchscreens
Me on Public-Interest Tech
Long Story on the Accused CIA Vault 7 Leaker
Leaking Military Secrets on Gaming Discussion Boards
Smartphones and Civilians in Wartime
Twitter Used Two-Factor Login Details for Ad Targeting
Cryptanalysis of ENCSecuritys Encryption Implementation
Hacking Teslas Remote Key Cards
Upcoming Speaking Engagements

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The NSA Says that There are No Known Flaws in NISTs Quantum-Resistant Algorithms

[2022.05.16] Rob Joyce, the director of cybersecurity at the NSA, said so in an interview:

The NSA already has classified quantum-resistant algorithms of its own that it developed over many years, said
Joyce. But it didnt enter any of its own in the contest. The agencys mathematicians, however, worked with NIST to
support the process, trying to crack the algorithms in order to test their merit.

Those candidate algorithms that NIST is running the competitions on all appear strong, secure, and what we need for
quantum resistance, Joyce said. Weve worked against all of them to make sure they are solid.

The purpose of the open, public international scrutiny of the separate NIST algorithms is to build trust and
confidence, he said.

I believe him. This is what the NSA did with NISTs candidate algorithms for AES and then for SHA-3. NISTs Post-Quantum
Cryptography Standardization Process looks good.

I still worry about the long-term security of the submissions, though. In 2018, in an essay titled Cryptography After
the Aliens Land, I wrote:

...there is always the possibility that those algorithms will fall to aliens with better quantum techniques. I am
less worried about symmetric cryptography, where Grovers algorithm is basically an upper limit on quantum improvements,
than I am about public-key algorithms based on number theory, which feel more fragile. Its possible that quantum
computers will someday break all of them, even those that today are quantum resistant.

It took us a couple of decades to fully understand von Neumann computer architecture. Im sure it will take years of
working with a functional quantum computer to fully understand the limits of that architecture. And some things that we
think of as computationally hard today will turn out not to be.

EDITED TO ADD (6/14): Since I wrote this, flaws were found in at least four candidates.

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Attacks on Managed Service Providers Expected to Increase

[2022.05.17] CISA, NSA, FBI, and similar organizations in the other Five Eyes countries are warning that attacks on
MSPs -- as a vector to their customers -- are likely to increase. No details about what this prediction is based on.
Makes sense, though. The SolarWinds attack was incredibly successful for the Russian SVR, and a blueprint for future
attacks.

News articles.

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iPhone Malware that Operates Even When the Phone Is Turned Off

[2022.05.18] Researchers have demonstrated iPhone malware that works even when the phone is fully shut down.

t turns out that the iPhones Bluetooth chip -- which is key to making features like Find My work -- has no
mechanism for digitally signing or even encrypting the firmware it runs. Academics at Germanys Technical University of
Darmstadt figured out how to exploit this lack of hardening to run malicious firmware that allows the attacker to track
the phones location or run new features when the device is turned off.

[...]

The research is the first -- or at least among the first -- to study the risk posed by chips running in low-power
mode. Not to be confused with iOSs low-power mode for conserving battery life, the low-power mode (LPM) in this
research allows chips responsible for near-field communication, ultra wideband, and Bluetooth to run in a special mode
that can remain on for 24 hours after a device is turned off.

The research is fascinating, but the attack isnt really feasible. It requires a jailbroken phone, which is hard to pull
off in an adversarial setting.

Slashdot thread.

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Websites that Collect Your Data as You Type

[2022.05.19] A surprising number of websites include JavaScript keyloggers that collect everything you type as you type
it, not just when you submit a form.

Researchers from KU Leuven, Radboud University, and University of Lausanne crawled and analyzed the top 100,000
websites, looking at scenarios in which a user is visiting a site while in the European Union and visiting a site from
the United States. They found that 1,844 websites gathered an EU users email address without their consent, and a
staggering 2,950 logged a US users email in some form. Many of the sites seemingly do not intend to conduct the
data-logging but incorporate third-party marketing and analytics services that cause the behavior.

After specifically crawling sites for password leaks in May 2021, the researchers also found 52 websites in which
third parties, including the Russian tech giant Yandex, were incidentally collecting password data before submission.
The group disclosed their findings to these sites, and all 52 instances have since been resolved.

If theres a Submit button on a form, the reasonable expectation is that it does something -- that it will submit
your data when you click it, says Günes Acar, a professor and researcher in Radboud Universitys digital security group
and one of the leaders of the study. We were super surprised by these results. We thought maybe we were going to find a
few hundred websites where your email is collected before you submit, but this exceeded our expectations by far.

Research paper.

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Bluetooth Flaw Allows Remote Unlocking of Digital Locks

[2022.05.20] Locks that use Bluetooth Low Energy to authenticate keys are vulnerable to remote unlocking. The research
focused on Teslas, but the exploit is generalizable.

In a video shared with Reuters, NCC Group researcher Sultan Qasim Khan was able to open and then drive a Tesla
using a small relay device attached to a laptop which bridged a large gap between the Tesla and the Tesla owners phone.

This proves that any product relying on a trusted BLE connection is vulnerable to attacks even from the other side
of the world, the UK-based firm said in a statement, referring to the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol -- technology
used in millions of cars and smart locks which automatically open when in close proximity to an authorised device.

Although Khan demonstrated the hack on a 2021 Tesla Model Y, NCC Group said any smart locks using BLE technology,
including residential smart locks, could be unlocked in the same way.

Another news article.

EDITED TO ADD (6/14): A longer version of the demo video.

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The Onion on Google Map Surveillance

[2022.05.20] Google Maps Adds Shortcuts through Houses of People Google Knows Arent Home Right Now.

Excellent satire.

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Forging Australian Drivers Licenses

[2022.05.23] The New South Wales digital drivers license has multiple implementation flaws that allow for easy
forgeries.

This file is encrypted using AES-256-CBC encryption combined with Base64 encoding.

A 4-digit application PIN (which gets set during the initial onboarding when a user first instals the application)
is the encryption password used to protect or encrypt the licence data.

The problem here is that an attacker who has access to the encrypted licence data (whether that be through
accessing a phone backup, direct access to the device or remote compromise) could easily brute-force this 4-digit PIN
by using a script that would try all 10,000 combinations....

[...]

The second design flaw that is favourable for attackers is that the Digital Driver Licence data is never validated
against the back-end authority which is the Service NSW API/database.

This means that the application has no native method to validate the Digital Driver Licence data that exists on the
phone and thus cannot perform further actions such as warn users when this data has been modified.

As the Digital Licence is stored on the clients device, validation should take place to ensure the local copy of
the data actually matches the Digital Drivers Licence data that was originally downloaded from the Service NSW API.

As this verification does not take place, an attacker is able to display the edited data on the Service NSW
application without any preventative factors.

Theres a lot more in the blog post.

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The Justice Department Will No Longer Charge Security Researchers with Criminal Hacking

[2022.05.24] Following a recent Supreme Court ruling, the Justice Department will no longer prosecute good faith
security researchers with cybercrimes:

The policy for the first time directs that good-faith security research should not be charged. Good faith security
research means accessing a computer solely for purposes of good-faith testing, investigation, and/or correction of a
security flaw or vulnerability, where such activity is carried out in a manner designed to avoid any harm to
individuals or the public, and where the information derived from the activity is used primarily to promote the
security or safety of the class of devices, machines, or online services to which the accessed computer belongs, or
those who use such devices, machines, or online services.

[...]

The new policy states explicitly the longstanding practice that the departments goals for CFAA enforcement are to
promote privacy and cybersecurity by upholding the legal right of individuals, network owners, operators, and other
persons to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information stored in their information systems.
Accordingly, the policy clarifies that hypothetical CFAA violations that have concerned some courts and commentators
are not to be charged. Embellishing an online dating profile contrary to the terms of service of the dating website;
creating fictional accounts on hiring, housing, or rental websites; using a pseudonym on a social networking site that
prohibits them; checking sports scores at work; paying bills at work; or violating an access restriction contained in a
term of service are not themselves sufficient to warrant federal criminal charges. The policy focuses the departments
resources on cases where a defendant is either not authorized at all to access a computer or was authorized to access
one part of a computer -- such as one email account -- and, despite knowing about that restriction, accessed a part of
the computer to which his authorized access did not extend, such as other users emails.

News article.

EDITED TO ADD (6/14): Josephine Wolff writes about this update.

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Manipulating Machine-Learning Systems through the Order of the Training Data

[2022.05.25] Yet another adversarial ML attack:

Most deep neural networks are trained by stochastic gradient descent. Now stochastic is a fancy Greek word for
random; it means that the training data are fed into the model in random order.

So what happens if the bad guys can cause the order to be not random? You guessed it -- all bets are off. Suppose
for example a company or a country wanted to have a credit-scoring system thats secretly sexist, but still be able to
pretend that its training was actually fair. Well, they could assemble a set of financial data that was representative
of the whole population, but start the models training on ten rich men and ten poor women drawn from that set then let
initialisation bias do the rest of the work.

Does this generalise? Indeed it does. Previously, people had assumed that in order to poison a model or introduce
backdoors, you needed to add adversarial samples to the training data. Our latest paper shows thats not necessary at
all. If an adversary can manipulate the order in which batches of training data are presented to the model, they can
undermine both its integrity (by poisoning it) and its availability (by causing training to be less effective, or take
longer). This is quite general across models that use stochastic gradient descent.

Research paper.

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Malware-Infested Smart Card Reader

[2022.05.26] Brian Krebs has an interesting story of a smart ID card reader with a malware-infested Windows driver, and
US government employees who inadvertently buy and use them.

But by all accounts, the potential attack surface here is enormous, as many federal employees clearly will purchase
these readers from a myriad of online vendors when the need arises. Saicoos product listings, for example, are replete
with comments from customers who self-state that they work at a federal agency (and several who reported problems
installing drivers).

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Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2022

[2022.05.31] Today is the second day of the fifteenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, hosted by Ross Anderson
and Alice Hutchings at the University of Cambridge. After two years of having this conference remotely on Zoom, its
nice to be back together in person.

SHB is a small, annual, invitational workshop of people studying various aspects of the human side of security,
organized each year by Alessandro Acquisti, Ross Anderson, Alice Hutchings, and myself. The forty or so attendees
include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, criminologists,
neuroscientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, geographers, business school professors, and a
smattering of others. Its not just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are individually
interdisciplinary.

For the past decade and a half, this workshop has been the most intellectually stimulating two days of my professional
year. It influences my thinking in different and sometimes surprising ways -- and has resulted in some unexpected
collaborations.

Our goal is always to maximize discussion and interaction. We do that by putting everyone on panels, and limiting talks
to six to eight minutes, with the rest of the time for open discussion. Because everyone was not able to attend in
person, our panels all include remote participants as well. The hybrid structure is working well, even though our
remote participants arent around for the social program.

This years schedule is here. This page lists the participants and includes links to some of their work. As he does
every year, Ross Anderson is liveblogging the talks.

Here are my posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth,
thirteenth, and fourteenth SHB workshops. Follow those links to find summaries, papers, and occasionally audio/video
recordings of the various workshops. Ross also maintains a good webpage of psychology and security resources.

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The Limits of Cyber Operations in Wartime

[2022.05.31] Interesting paper by Lennart Maschmeyer: The Subversive Trilemma: Why Cyber Operations Fall Short of
Expectations:

Abstract: Although cyber conflict has existed for thirty years, the strategic utility of cyber operations remains
unclear. Many expect cyber operations to provide independent utility in both warfare and low-intensity competition.
Underlying these expectations are broadly shared assumptions that information technology increases operational
effectiveness. But a growing body of research shows how cyber operations tend to fall short of their promise. The
reason for this shortfall is their subversive mechanism of action. In theory, subversion provides a way to exert
influence at lower risks than force because it is secret and indirect, exploiting systems to use them against
adversaries. The mismatch between promise and practice is the consequence of the subversive trilemma of cyber
operations, whereby speed, intensity, and control are negatively correlated. These constraints pose a trilemma for
actors because a gain in one variable tends to produce losses across the other two variables. A case study of the
Russo-Ukrainian conflict provides empirical support for the argument. Qualitative analysis leverages original data from
field interviews, leaked documents, forensic evidence, and local media. Findings show that the subversive trilemma
limited the strategic utility of all five major disruptive cyber operations in this conflict.

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Clever -- and Exploitable -- Windows Zero-Day

[2022.06.01] Researchers have reported a still-unpatched Windows zero-day that is currently being exploited in the
wild.

Heres the advisory, which includes a work-around until a patch is available.

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Remotely Controlling Touchscreens

[2022.06.02] Researchers have demonstrated controlling touchscreens at a distance, at least in a laboratory setting:

The core idea is to take advantage of the electromagnetic signals to execute basic touch events such as taps and
swipes into targeted locations of the touchscreen with the goal of taking over remote control and manipulating the
underlying device.

The attack, which works from a distance of up to 40mm, hinges on the fact that capacitive touchscreens are
sensitive to EMI, leveraging it to inject electromagnetic signals into transparent electrodes that are built into the
touchscreen so as to register them as touch events.

The experimental setup involves an electrostatic gun to generate a strong pulse signal thats then sent to an
antenna to transmit an electromagnetic field to the phones touchscreen, thereby causing the electrodes which act as
antennas themselves to pick up the EMI.

Paper: GhostTouch: Targeted Attacks on Touchscreens without Physical Touch:

Abstract: Capacitive touchscreens have become the primary human-machine interface for personal devices such as
smartphones and tablets. In this paper, we present GhostTouch, the first active contactless attack against capacitive
touchscreens. GhostTouch uses electromagnetic interference (EMI) to inject fake touch points into a touchscreen without
the need to physically touch it. By tuning the parameters of the electromagnetic signal and adjusting the antenna, we
can inject two types of basic touch events, taps and swipes, into targeted locations of the touchscreen and control
them to manipulate the underlying device. We successfully launch the GhostTouch attacks on nine smartphone models. We
can inject targeted taps continuously with a standard deviation of as low as 14.6 x 19.2 pixels from the target area, a
delay of less than 0.5s and a distance of up to 40mm. We show the real-world impact of the GhostTouch attacks in a few
proof-of-concept scenarios, including answering an eavesdropping phone call, pressing the button, swiping up to unlock,
and entering a password. Finally, we discuss potential hardware and software countermeasures to mitigate the attack.

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Me on Public-Interest Tech

[2022.06.03] Back in November 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I gave a virtual talk at the International
Symposium on Technology and Society: The Story of the Internet and How it Broke Bad: A Call for Public-Interest
Technologists. It was something I was really proud of, and its finally up on the net.

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Long Story on the Accused CIA Vault 7 Leaker

[2022.06.06] Long article about Joshua Schulte, the accused leaker of the WikiLeaks Vault 7 and Vault 8 CIA data.

Well worth reading.

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Leaking Military Secrets on Gaming Discussion Boards

[2022.06.08] People are leaking classified military information on discussion boards for the video game War Thunder to
win arguments -- repeatedly.

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Smartphones and Civilians in Wartime

[2022.06.09] Interesting article about civilians using smartphones to assist their militaries in wartime, and how that
blurs the important legal distinction between combatants and non-combatants:

The principle of distinction between the two roles is a critical cornerstone of international humanitarian law --
the law of armed conflict, codified by decades of customs and laws such as the Geneva Conventions. Those considered
civilians and civilian targets are not to be attacked by military forces; as they are not combatants, they should be
spared. At the same time, they also should not act as combatants -- if they do, they may lose this status.

The conundrum, then, is how to classify a civilian who, with the use of their smartphone, potentially becomes an
active participant in a military sensor system. (To be clear, solely having the app installed is not sufficient to lose
the protected status. What matters is actual usage.) The Additional Protocol I to Geneva Conventions states that
civilians enjoy protection from the dangers arising from military operations unless and for such time as they take a
direct part in hostilities. Legally, if civilians engage in military activity, such as taking part in hostilities by
using weapons, they forfeit their protected status, for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities that
affect[s] the military operations, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the traditional impartial
custodian of International Humanitarian Law. This is the case even if the people in question are not formally members
of the armed forces. By losing the status of a civilian, one may become a legitimate military objective, carrying the
risk of being directly attacked by military forces.

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Twitter Used Two-Factor Login Details for Ad Targeting

[2022.06.09] Twitter was fined $150 million for using phone numbers and email addresses collected for two-factor
authentication for ad targeting.

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Cryptanalysis of ENCSecuritys Encryption Implementation

[2022.06.13] ENCSecurity markets a file encryption system, and its used by SanDisk, Sony, Lexar, and probably others.
Despite it using AES as its algorithm, its implementation is flawed in multiple ways -- and breakable.

The moral is, as it always is, that implementing cryptography securely is hard. Dont roll your own anything if you can
help it.

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Hacking Teslas Remote Key Cards

[2022.06.14] Interesting vulnerability in Teslas NFC key cards:

Martin Herfurt, a security researcher in Austria, quickly noticed something odd about the new feature: Not only did
it allow the car to automatically start within 130 seconds of being unlocked with the NFC card, but it also put the car
in a state to accept entirely new keys -- with no authentication required and zero indication given by the in-car
display.

The authorization given in the 130-second interval is too general... [its] not only for drive, Herfurt said in an
online interview. This timer has been introduced by Tesla...in order to make the use of the NFC card as a primary means
of using the car more convenient. What should happen is that the car can be started and driven without the user having
to use the key card a second time. The problem: within the 130-second period, not only the driving of the car is
authorized, but also the [enrolling] of a new key.

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Upcoming Speaking Engagements

[2022.06.14] This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:

Im speaking at the Dublin Tech Summit in Dublin, Ireland, June 15-16, 2022.

The list is maintained on this page.

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Since 1998, CRYPTO-GRAM has been a free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on
security technology. To subscribe, or to read back issues, see Crypto-Gram's web page.

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Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a security guru by the Economist. He is the
author of over one dozen books -- including his latest, We Have Root -- as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and
academic papers. His newsletter and blog are read by over 250,000 people. Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Klein
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; a board
member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AccessNow, and the Tor Project; and an Advisory Board Member of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc.

Copyright 2022 by Bruce Schneier.

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Bruce Schneier Harvard Kennedy School 1 Brattle Square Cambridge, MA 02138 USA


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