Meeting the stars

Image from Pixabay

 

I've met stars. Bruce Schneier gave a speech, Adi Shamir and Whitfield Diffie were on a panel, Ron Rivest was an arm's length away and Dave Maasland was sitting next to me in the pub.

You probably only know these names if you are in my line of business – although Dutch readers might know Dave Maasland from his tv appearances. Keep reading anyway, because even without knowing these people you can learn something here.

Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir are the 'R' and the 'S' in RSA. You may know that name from your two-factor authentication, the extra security step you sometimes have to take to log in somewhere. RSA is now a company that makes these (and other) kinds of tools, but originally RSA is a cryptographic algorithm that is important for the encryption of our data exchange. The 'A' is for Len Adleman, by the way, but I didn't see him at this conference – the RSA Conference! Whitfield Diffie, who was on the same panel as Adi Shamir, is known for another cryptographic algorithm (Diffie-Hellman).

In that panel, a number of cryptographers gave their view of the world. Shamir sneered at bitcoin and its ilk: the world would be better off without cryptocurrencies. Diffie noted that consumer products are apparently considered good enough for high-security applications – Signalgate, the affair in which high-ranking American officials were using Signal, was still fresh in the memory. Incidentally, Diffie agreed that Signal's security is well put together. The panel also discussed the threat of quantum computing, which in short means that the security offered by RSA, among others, can be cracked in the future. Moreover, foreign regimes are already stealing our data, in order to run it through the quantum computer in due course. That is why it is important to develop replacement crypto algorithms as quickly as possible, but that is not easy. Diffie: "It's like having to develop an algorithm in 1945 that still works today." Shamir advised, in line with a European recommendation, to use double encryption for the time being.

Bruce Schneier is also famous in our world. He has been distributing his free newsletter all over the world for years, providing insights and opinions on new developments. His speech was about trusting artificial intelligence. Trust is a complicated concept, he argued, especially when it comes to trusting strangers ('social trust'). We tend to considering AI as a friend, but it is a service. Moreover, it is a double agent: it serves both you and its provider. But we have no choice; we have to entrust ourselves to AI. The era of agentic AI is dawning: you’ll have a personal assistant who arranges things for you. The AI agent has access to your email and your calendar and knows everything about you. You do want this, because that way it can support you best. Schneier used a dining reservation as an example. In the past, you called the restaurant, nowadays you make a reservation via their website and soon you let the AI agent find a restaurant and make a reservation. It knows what food you like and when you have time.

So we need trustworthy AI. Integrity will be the main issue, according to Schneier, because most attacks on AI are about the correctness of data. He gave the example of stickers placed on lampposts to trick self-driving cars. Legislation is needed to achieve trustworthy AI, but current legislation (such as the European AI Act) regulates the AI itself instead of the people behind the AI, and that is the wrong way to go, Schneier says. He advocates a public AI model with political accountability, as a counterbalance to corporate AI.

Information security officers are only human, which is why the organization also brought a number of 'real' stars on stage. Such as filmmaker Ron Howard (Apollo 13 and A beautiful mind (two Oscars), just to name two), who was interviewed by his daughter and colleague. Or basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, who won over the audience with his openness and a motivating story. And finally there was actor/singer/comedian Jamie Foxx, who provided a comical closing note. But he also gave us a pat on the back: “What you do is perhaps the most important job in the history of mankind.” According to him, community is the magic word.

After that, my three colleagues and I, and 44 thousand other conference attendees, returned to our own time zone. Together we made it an interesting and fun week. And the bond between our team and the SOC has also become closer. You did a good job there, JW.

 

And in the big bad world…

• Bruce Schneier was interviewed following his RSA speech.
• Schneier praises advice from the British NCSC on advanced cryptography.
• a safety mark for AI is impossible. [DUTCH]
• Signalgate now revolves around an insecure – even hacked – clone of the Signal app.
• the Chinese cyber threat is greater than the Russian one.
• a US intelligence chief lacked basic password hygiene.
• AI is great at geo-guessing.

Fatbike brakes

 

Image from bol.com

Fatbikes. Even the word gives me the creeps. I'll stay away from the broad discussion about this young phenomenon on the road (see here why this is a problem in the Netherlands). But I do want to talk about something that I see associated with riding one of these things: braking à la Fred Flintstone.

You know how Fred slows down his car, don’t you. Literally by digging his heels in. And lately I see more and more young fatbikers trying to stop their two-wheeler just like Fred by putting both feet on the ground. Often they swing back and forth dangerously. Eventually they come to a stop just in time.

Is there anyone in the audience who has experience riding one of these things? Are the brakes really so bad that you have to do like Fred to stop in time? Or are we talking about tuned-up models, where the brakes, which barely meet the regulations, fall short as soon as the bike goes faster than intended and allowed?

Something else now; you'll soon understand why I'm bringing this up. Earlier this week I was passing through Gouda by train. At the station my eye was caught by the open-air bike parking place. On either side of the place – which is only two bike lengths plus an aisle wide – there were security cameras set up about every ten meters (roughly 30 ft). I didn't count them, but there were an absurd number of them. You'd almost think the cameras were myopic.

Here are two examples of security measures that are taken in situations where the actual measures – brakes and locks – have proven insufficient in practice. We also have measures like these in information security. Usually, this involves technology that does not fully deliver what you hope for. For example, a virus scanner that still lets that very latest virus through, or that mail scanner that does not recognize a particular phishing mail. In these situations, the problem becomes an end user thing.

And that is why we need your commitment, dear reader. You are the brake shoe that can intervene at the last moment, when all else has failed. You are our last line of defense. And that is exactly why I put so much energy into keeping your knowledge of my field up to date. You don’t have to know all the ins and outs, but you do need to know the things that can be – literally – of vital importance to the organization, such as recognizing phishing email.

I know, it can be difficult. I can't ask more of you than alertness. Help us to bring our fatbike to a stop in time.

There will be no Security (b)log for the next two weeks.

 

And in the big bad world…

• Not all awareness campaigns are equally effective. [DUTCH]
• Now your Android phone will also reboot if you don't touch it for three days.
• Ahold Delhaize suffered a major data leak last year due to a cyber attack.
• Google blocked over five billion ads last year, many of which were AI-generated.
• The end of CVEs was near.
• a facial scan will determine if you are old enough for Discord.
• the Dutch police did a bad redacting job for fourteen years. [DUTCH]
• It is better not to download cracked computer programs.
• the CISO Mindmap 2025 has been published.

On deaf ears

Image from Pixabay

“Have you ever written a blog about the tension between security and usability?”, a colleague asked. “Probably,” I replied, “but what’s your reason for asking about it?” “My wife.”

I understood what he meant straight away. Not that my family doesn’t understand it all, mind you. But we recently had some people over, including a couple whose ages sum up to my age. She asked for the wifi password, and I told her our guest network password. That is easy to remember and therefore not very complicated (something like bicycle3oven) – it is just the guest network and you can’t access our data with it. To my surprise, she responded with: “ Wow, that’s a complex password!” And she spontaneously mentioned their own wifi password, which I would classify as “20^th century”.

I couldn’t avoid a disapproving look, but then I made a cautious, extremely friendly attempt to explain that a password like theirs is not a good choice. And I’m really not inexperienced or clumsy in explaining those things. But in this case, my explanation fell on deaf ears. “Oh, nothing ever happens to us anyway,” said the young lady. But it was her look that spoke volumes: what is this man so worried about? I took another run-up and started talking about passwords for other, perhaps more important accounts – knowing that people who act unwisely on the left side, usually do so on the right side as well. However, the wall of incomprehension was so high that, despite all my experience, I couldn’t tear it down. And I realized that I had to leave it at that; these people were here for fun & family, not to be lectured.

My wife and daughter, who had witnessed all this, didn’t know where to look. Apart from the fact that teenagers can't stand it when their father does something like that, the two ladies had realized much faster than I had that I was on a mission impossible. Their relief was great when I dropped the subject and we switched to small talk.

Security and ease of use are at odds with each other. Just think: if you lock your house, you will be standing in the rain a little longer when you get home. However, everyone understands that this measure is intended to keep outsiders out – there’s a reason they’re called that. It works the same way with information security: you don’t want to put any obstacles in the way of legitimate users, but because most systems are simply not intended for everyone, there has to be a lock on the door.

Some of these locks are more annoying than others, and sometimes they can be downright annoying, for example because they lock often. When it becomes annoying, people tend to circumvent security measures. It should be clear that the organization does not appreciate such creativity. That is it is important to me that people understand why a certain measure is in place. And so I have made inquiries for two measures I was wondering about.

In both cases the answer was: it shouldn’t be like that. Followed by technical explanations stating that there is no security measure at all in play, or at least: no measure that explains what I experience. There is probably just something wrong. That’s always a possibility: you think that something is a crooked security measure, but meanwhile something else is going on.

Hopefully that colleague can convince his wife that some measures are important. And hopefully he recognizes situations where something is simply broken and the behavior is not on security.

 

And in the big bad world…

• Some high-ranking officials don't understand that they shouldn't use personal email for work.
• Gmail's end-to-end encryption is not true E2EE.
• Counterfeit phones with malware are around. [DUTCH]
• Last year's major disruption to the Dutch Defense network was inevitable. [DUTCH]
• Crisis communication is a profession in its own right.
• The Swedish Tax Authority is summoned to court for selling citizens' data.
• someone really wants to hack Chinese domains.

The phone isn't working

Image from Pixabay

My grandparents' phone number was 1331. Those four digits were all you needed to reach them. If you called from further away, there was also the area code 04454.

In those days you knew the numbers of family and friends by heart. Other numbers were kept in a special telephone directory: you set a slider to the first letter of the surname, pressed a button and the thing popped open and showed a card with all the names and numbers that belonged to that letter. Handwritten.

At home we didn't have a telephone at all for a long time. You could live with that in the seventies. And the one time you really had to call someone, you knocked on the neighbours' door and gave them a quarter (of the old Dutch currency, the guilder). Or you went to the telephone box in the village. You needed quarters there too. Those were important coins. Too bad they don't exist anymore.

When we finally got a phone, four digits were still enough. Ours were 4006. PTT was the monopolist and everyone had the same device: the T65, with a rotary dial and a curly cord. It sat in the living room and if you were busy in the kitchen, with the door closed, you would sometimes miss a call. And you only knew that when the caller tried again later ("Weren’t you at home?"). That's why my parents had that same PTT install an extra bell in the hall. You paid rent for that, just like for the T65.

Many years later I bought – hesitantly – my first mobile phone. A Panasonic, with an antenna that stuck out about two centimeters above the device. The device had a small LCD display and physical keys. You could call and text with it. Compared to the T65, the number of functions was doubled. Wow!

Look where we are now. Almost everyone walks around all day with a computer in their pocket, which you also happen to be able to make phone calls with. This can be done in various ways. Via your SIM card (the old-fashioned way of calling, with a phone number of ten digits nowadays), but also – with or without live video – via other apps. You can even use it to hold meetings, as we know since the covid pandemic – if necessary with people in all corners of the world. Most people have thrown their landline out the door. Or never had one.

But what if all of that suddenly stops working? No one is reachable anymore, at least not by phone. You can only communicate with each other indirectly. By email or via chat apps. What impact would that have on our social and professional existence? Many subjects benefit from live interaction; if they have to be done via email, the 'conversation' can easily go the wrong way because one person misunderstands the other.

If telephony and video conferencing were to fail for a long time, we would undoubtedly go back to the office more often. Then it would be like it used to be: working from home for a maximum of one day. Everyone has their own personal preference, but I cherish working from home. One day a week in the pandemonium (and, admittedly, also joining in the chatter) is enough for me.

What do we do to prevent a company-wide blackout? Diversity plays a key role. In the Netherlands, there are three mobile networks (Vodafone, Odido (elsewhere still known as T Mobile) and KPN (the heir to PTT!)). All other providers piggyback on these networks. It is financially and from a management perspective attractive for organizations to place their telephony with one provider. But if something goes seriously wrong there, the entire organization immediately has a blackout. So it would be better to spread your chances. You should even make sure that the employees of a team are not all with the same provider. I see a nice administrative challenge…

But is it worth it? We never have long-term failures, do we? In the current climate, I no longer dare blindly assume that it will remain that way. There are strange forces at work in the world. At some point, those forces could benefit from a country becoming paralyzed. We would rather not think about that. And that is precisely why we have to do it.

 

And in the big bad world…

• The Atlantic 's editor-in-chief was invited to join a US government Signal group.
• This is the original article from The Atlantic about US plans to bomb the Houthis.
• Lower-ranking officials cannot afford to make mistakes like this one.
• SignalGate is not about Signal.
• Signal is benefiting from SignalGate.
• One of the SignalGate participants also leaked information on Venmo.
• Signal has a handy feature to prevent you from adding the wrong person.
• you can check if your online accounts have been hacked.
• An airport under attack can always switch to whiteboards.
• ChatGPT is addictive.
• Troy ‘Havibeenpwned’ Hunt is also not safe from phishing.
• the Dutch Government Cloud is one step closer. [DUTCH]

 

Number 2

Image from Pixabay

“Up for number 2? Please do it at home, because our toilet gets clogged quickly.”

On our way home from a short vacation we stopped at a cafeteria close to home, because we had no food in the house. And there, on the otherwise neat toilet, I spotted that note. The text reminded me of Belgian roads. Instead of repairing the sometimes abominable road surface, they put a sign next to it: degraded road.

Of course, placing a sign is much cheaper than fixing the problem. At least, at first glance. Perhaps hungry guests will avoid this cafeteria in the future, because after a long walk in the area they still have to go somewhere with their number 2 before they eat their fries. That means loss of turnover. And in Belgium, cars wear out faster. Moreover, I can imagine that a bad road surface causes more accidents: you lose control of the steering wheel when you drive through a pothole, or you try to avoid the pothole and collide with another car. All of that causes extra costs, and perhaps even human suffering.

And if our southern neighbours were to halve the excessive lighting of the country's roads, wouldn't they have any money left to repair those same roads? That's a bit more complicated. My physics teacher from a long time ago once explained why the Belgians have so many street lamps. That was due to the construction of nuclear power stations. They gave the country overcapacity. You have to go somewhere with that electricity, and that's why all those lamps were planted. Even then, there was already talk of grid congestion; the generated electricity had to be used up immediately. By the way, I have no idea whether that argument still holds true decades later, but I always liked this fascinating - because unexpected - connection.

If you have a problem, you want to solve it. For example, by removing the cause. If that isn’t possible, because you have no influence on it, you can take measures to compensate for the negative consequences. And if that isn’t possible either, for example because you do not have the money for it, then… Well, then you can always put up warning signs.

An example where it is difficult to remove the cause is cybercrime. Sure, these criminals are arrested with some regularity – just like their analogue colleagues – but there are simply too many of them and they often operate from safe foreign countries, where the Dutch strong arm has little control over them (although there are rare cases known in which the Russian justice system cooperated with foreign requests for assistance, for example in the case in which a meter-long file, translated into Russian, was delivered to Moscow).

Because eliminating the cause is so difficult, we have all kinds of measures to detect and neutralize malicious actions. Think of virus scanners, mail filters and people who keep an eye on things. But because all that is not enough, we have to ask everyone to be alert. Phishing is the number 1 point of attention, because one wrong mouse click can ruin an entire organization. That sounds dramatic, but it’s still true. And there are more subjects that all users need to know something about to ensure healthy business operations.

Fortunately, there is a hunger for information about this. In the coming period, I will again be a guest speaker at various organizational units that have asked me to treat their employees to a presentation. I always ask the organizers what is on their minds, what they want to hear about. Such a conversation sometimes provides surprising insights into the success of awareness efforts. Like earlier this week, when I spoke to a colleague about a presentation in their team. The team members are loyal readers of the Security (b)log. Nevertheless, even there, very occasionally someone forgets to lock their workstation when they walk away for a moment. And then their colleagues shout: “Oh, if Patrick sees this…!” It is nice to see that the message is getting across.

 

And in the big bad world…

• a phishing campaign is going around targeting crypto investors.
• hallucinating artificial intelligence can be very harmful.
• the British appear to have pushed back the timeline for quantum-safe cryptography.
• North Korea is going to adopt AI-enabled hacking.
• Others will also abuse AI.
• hackers can easily exploit old vulnerabilities.
• we trust our colleagues, until proven otherwise.
• the American press is realizing that Europe is working on digital sovereignty.
• Athletic soldiers should get off Strava. [DUTCH]
• For the time being, European data may still be sent to the US. [DUTCH]

 

Ouch!

 

Image from Pixabay

Snap. The sound of a withered twig giving way under the footsteps of a forest walker. Only this time it wasn’t in the forest. And it certainly wasn’t a twig.

We’ve lived in this house for exactly ten years now, and the bed has been in the same spot for just as long. But when I walked into the bedroom recently, the bed must have taken a step forward. Snap. The leg of the bed showed no damage. That could only mean one thing: the sound came from my little toe. Most accidents happen in a small corner, we say here. Or in a small toe, I now know. Oh well, that bone will grow back together. (But it’s annoying.)

A day later, Maarten van Rossem, the always cheerfully grumbling Dutch tv personality, had an unfortunate fall. The historian had tripped over a curb in Utrecht, right in front of the building that served as the headquarters of the fascist National Socialist Movement during the war and which now houses a childcare centre. He was lost in historical and ironic reflections on the fate of the building. Consequences: a black and blue face and a hurt knee. So I was in good company that week, in terms of being a victim of one’s own carelessness.

Shouldn't we have been more careful? Absolutely! But one does a lot of things on autopilot. As I said, nothing has changed in the layout of our bedroom for ten years. And that curb has probably been there for a long time too. You can blindly walk a route like these a thousand times without any accidents. And on that one day you put your foot down just a little differently. There’s no footage, I can't analyze it. But there was a deviation, that's for sure.

I once heard someone say: walking is like fall in a controlled way. You lean slightly forward and prevent a fall by putting one leg forward. Seen in this light, walking is a rather clumsy activity for bipeds. Does it surprise you that we sometimes take a misstep? No doubt, thick books have been written about this that may or may not be worth reading, but this is not a blog about kinematics, so I will leave this subject alone for now.

In presentations I have sometimes made my audience think about the way they cross a road. If you see a car approaching, you make an assessment of whether you can still cross. You base this on the distance to the car and on its and your speed. If you give yourself a green light, you start walking. But now we are going to do this risk analysis again – because that is what it is – but in more detail. You not only consider distance and speed, but you also take into account the possibility that you stumble. Does the driver have enough time to brake? Can he see you at all, or is he hindered by darkness or the low sun? Or is he perhaps fiddling with his phone while driving?

If you include those factors in your analysis, you will probably increase the minimum distance that the car must have at a certain speed, in order to be able to cross the road in confidence. But who does something like that? I can tell you: people who have just had an accident. Because they have personally experienced how things can go wrong and what the consequences are. And after a while, that increased vigilance wanes again, and with that the chance of accidents increases again.

In information security, it is no different. If nothing ever happens, attention lapses. And then it becomes easier for malicious actors – our standard term for anyone who deliberately wants to do something with our systems and data that we do not agree with – to do their thing. Practicing helps against lapses in attention. Developing scenarios also helps. You have a certain interest that you want to protect and you try to think of how a malicious actor would carry out an attack on it. This can lead to surprising insights and solutions.

My bed was not malicious. Bad (!) luck, most people would say. For the time being, I walk past it with increased respect. I also put my feet down much more consciously in other places. That takes quite a bit of energy. Actually, I am already looking forward to my attention slackening a bit. Although I sincerely hope the bed will stay where it is.

 

And in the big bad world…

• AI surprisingly often misses the mark.
• the US government no longer considers Russia a cyber threat.
• Your Pokémon Go location data may be flowing to Saudi Arabia.
• Twitter/X poses a threat to countries outside the US according to this Australian article.
• The new Dutch government workstations only store metadata in the cloud. [DUTCH]
• Apple is protesting the British backdoor.
• Signal’s CEO warns of AI agents.
• Apple seems to have implemented a good idea in a messy way.
• Many Chromecasts have an expired certificate, which means the device will no longer work.
• Instagram's teenage accounts offer only a false sense of security. [DUTCH]

 

The monkey is loose

Image from Pixabay

Despite the fact that they aren’t ducks, I am inclined to call them Huey, Dewey and Louie: the three monkeys that escaped from Apenheul last week. They had only been living in this Apeldoorn zoo for a week, but apparently they were so unhappy with this accommodation that made an escape plan. Tranquilizer darts and a firm jet of water from the fire brigade were needed to get them back into their cage.

Which brings me to the expression: having a monkey on your back. I only know it with a negative connotation, because it means that you have a job to do or a problem to solve that you are not really happy with. The search engine returns this for the search “monkey back”, from an educational institute: “Monkey on your back? Learn the art of giving back.” A competitor is a bit more aggressive: “Watch out! Avoid the monkey on your back.” In short: having a monkey on your back is not a pleasant thing.

In this context too, there are sometimes monkeys that break out and end up in places where they don’t belong. Those monkeys are not sitting on the back of the right keeper. How does it end up there? Sometimes in a very strange way. For example, I once heard this remarkable statement: “Information security starts with an i, so the IT department owns it.” Can you imagine a worse reason to assign a subject to a certain department? I can’t.

By the way, it is not at all unusual – but therefore not necessarily wise – for an IT department to be promoted to the owner of information security. Because, well, information security is about computers, isn’t it? And computers belong to IT. Right?

What does 'ownership' actually mean? In private life, it usually has something positive: you are the proud owner of a beautiful house or a trendy bike. It also means that you have to take good care of it if you want to enjoy it for a long time. In business terms, you can also be proud of things that you own. Perhaps you derive a certain status from it. However, when it comes to maintenance, the story is somewhat different than in your private situation. There you could still decide for yourself whether to do maintenance, but in business terms you bear responsibility towards the organization. You cannot just let things take their course, because that could mean that people elsewhere in the organization will experience problems as a result. Or more definitely, actually: sooner or later someone will suffer from poor ownership.

Fortunately, many people in our organization are aware that information security is not an IT thing. You can see that, for example, from the fact that we have business security officers (BSOs). These are security officers who work for the business departments. And yes, in IT we also have security officers (also called information security officers (ISOs)), but they only deal with the items and services that IT makes available to the organization – and not with whatever the organization (‘the business’) actually does with them.

For many employees, the BSOs are fairly invisible. I know this because we, the ISOs, often receive questions that actually belong to the BSOs. An employee who encounters a security issue or simply has a question, goes looking for someone who can take the monkey on their back. They often knock on my specific door: "You are the only information security officer I know, because of your blog." No problem at all, I am happy to refer them to their own BSO. Many times I prefer this to a question or report remaining unanswered.

Do you know your BSO? If not, go and find them and have a chat. Even if nothing is wrong. They are very nice people.

 

And in the big bad world…

• Signal is really more secure than WhatsApp. [DUTCH]
• Apple faces an impossible choice due to UK legislation requiring a crypto backdoor.
• Of course the Americans are not at all happy with that British law.
• France also wants a backdoor.
• Dutch cloud pessimism is attracting international attention.
• North Korea has stolen $1.5 billion in a digital bank robbery.
• we have a new word: vacancy fraud. [DUTCH]
• AI chatbots gobble up information that was accidentally briefly exposed.
• Many Dutch companies avoid using AI for privacy reasons. [DUTCH]