Swans on Tea

Compromising your keyboard by sniffing the EM radiation signature.
We found 4 different ways (including the Kuhn attack) to fully or partially recover keystrokes from wired keyboards at a distance up to 20 meters, even through walls. We tested 11 different wired keyboard models bought between 2001 and 2008 (PS/2, USB and laptop). They are all [...]

Because if the plan is crazy, the enemy won’t have installed countermeasures.
Via Schneier, a bit of crazy-like-a-fox counterintelligence
Having lost many troops and civilians to bombings, the Brits decided they needed to determine who was making the bombs and where they were being manufactured. One bright fellow recommended they operate a laundry and when asked “what [...]

Cory Doctorow’s Cipher Wheel Wedding Rings
Cory Doctorow wanted a secret decoder wedding ring, and he asked me to help design it.
[…]
[N]ow it’s time to create some cryptographic applications for the rings. Cory and I are holding an open contest for the cleverest application.
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

Full Disclosure and the Boston Farecard Hack
This preference for secrecy comes from confusing a vulnerability with information about that vulnerability. Using secrecy as a security measure is fundamentally fragile. It assumes that the bad guys don’t do their own security research. It assumes that no one else will find the same vulnerability. It assumes that [...]

Phone conversation overheard in Hell’s IT department:
Sir, I have to get you to change your password to comply with the new protocols.
It’s to keep our servers safe, sir. We’re at risk. There are a lot of hackers out there.
Well, yes, sir, many of them are hellraisers, and ultimately that’s a good thing, but [...]

Kill Switches and Remote Control at Schneier.
Don’t be fooled by the scare stories of wireless devices on airplanes and in hospitals, or visions of a world where no one is yammering loudly on their cellphones in posh restaurants. This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not [...]

The War on Photography
Photographers being treated as security threats, because that’s how Hollywood portrays things
A movie-plot threat is a specific threat, vivid in our minds like the plot of a movie. You remember them from the months after the 9/11 attacks: anthrax spread from crop dusters, a contaminated milk supply, terrorist scuba divers armed with [...]