Hiding objects in everyday objects....

This is from Atomic Bombing: How to Protect Yourself, published in 1950: Of course, millions of us will go through our lives never seeing a spy or a saboteur going about his business. Thousands of us may, at one time or another, think we see something like that. Only hundreds will be right. It would be foolish for all of...

By Russian spies: Ricci said the steganographic program was activated by pressing control-alt-E and then typing in a 27-character password, which the FBI found written down on a piece of paper during one of its searches. EDITED TO ADD (7/2): More information....

For a while now, I've pointed out that cryptography is singularly ill-suited to solve the major network security problems of today: denial-of-service attacks, website defacement, theft of credit card numbers, identity theft, viruses and worms, DNS attacks, network penetration, and so on. Cryptography was invented to protect communications: data in motion. This is how cryptography was used throughout most of...

From Brazil: the moral, of course, is to choose a strong key and to encrypt the entire drive, not just key files....

Space terrorism? Yes, space terrorism. This article, by someone at the European Space Policy Institute, hypes a terrorst threat I've never seen hyped before. The author waves a bunch of scare stories around, and then concludes that "the threat of 'Space Terrorism' is both real and latent," then talks about countermeasures. Certainly securing our satellites is a good idea, but...

This, from Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas, is about as dumb as it gets: I talked to a retired FBI agent who said that one of the things they were looking at were terrorist cells overseas who had figured out how to game our system. And it appeared they would have young women, who became pregnant, would get them into...

I'm at SHB 2010, the Third Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, at Cambridge University. This is a two-day gathering of computer security researchers, psychologists, behavioral economists, sociologists, philosophers, and others -- all of whom are studying the human side of security -- organized by Ross Anderson, Alessandro Acquisti, and myself. Here is the program. The list of attendees...

The vampire squid can turn itself inside out to avoid predators....

"10 Everyday Items Hackers Are Targeting Right Now" 5. Your Blender. Yes, Your Blender That's right: your blender is under attack! Most mixers are self-contained and not hackable, but Siciliano says many home automation systems tap into appliances such as blenders and coffee machines. These home networks are then open to attack in surprising ways: A hacker might turn on...

Interesting: The experiments offered the crayfish stark decisions -- a choice between finding their next meal and becoming a meal for an apparent predator. In deciding on a course of action, they carefully weighed the risk of attack against the expected reward, Herberholz says. Using a non-invasive method that allowed the crustaceans to freely move, the researchers offered juvenile Louisiana...

It's operational: The idea of hyperspectral sensing is not, however, merely to "see" in the usual sense of optical telescopes, infrared nightscopes and/or thermal imagers. This kind of detection is used on spy satellites and other surveillance systems, but it suffers from the so-called "drinking straw effect" -- that is, you can only view a small area in enough detail...

Long, but interesting, profile of WikiLeaks's Julian Assange from The New Yorker. Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org. Since it went online, three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive...

Chicago chef Rick Bayless photographed this security sign, posted before airport security as people were returning home from the Aspen Food & Wine Festival: No popsicle makers are allowed through security. Anyone have any idea why something like this is so dangerous? Is the TSA prohibiting random things to toy with us? Their blog is silent on this question. EDITED...

In an article on using terahertz rays (is that different from terahertz radar?) to detect biological agents, we find this quote: "High-tech, low-tech, we can't afford to overlook any possibility in dealing with mass casualty events," according to center head Donald Sebastian. "You need multiple methods of detection and response. Terrorism comes in many forms; you have to see, smell,...

The New York Times Room for Debate blog did the topic: "Do We Tolerate Too Many Traffic Deaths?"...

Interesting: ATM skimmers -- or fraud devices that criminals attach to cash machines in a bid to steal and ultimately clone customer bank card data -- are marketed on a surprisingly large number of open forums and Web sites. For example, ATMbrakers operates a forum that claims to sell or even rent ATM skimmers. Tradekey.com, a place where you can...

If you give people enough incentive to cheat, people will cheat: Of all the forms of academic cheating, none may be as startling as educators tampering with children's standardized tests. But investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and elsewhere this year have pointed to cheating by educators. Experts say the phenomenon is increasing as the stakes over standardized testing...

I didn't write about the recent security breach that disclosed tens of thousands of e-mail addresses and ICC-IDs of iPad users because, well, there was nothing terribly interesting about it. It was yet another web security breach. Right after the incident, though, I was being interviewed by a reporter that wanted to know what the ramifications of the breach were....

It's supposed to be a classic, but I've never seen it before....