Bruce Schneier:
iPhones and iPads Approved for NATO Classified Data
Apple announcement:…iPhone and iPad are the first and only consumer devices in compliance with the information assurance requirements of NATO nations. This enables iPhone and iPad to be used with classified information up to the NATO restricted level without requiring special software or settings—a level of government certification no other consumer mobile device has met.This is out of the box, no modifications required.Boing Boing post.
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iPhones and iPads Approved for NATO Classified Data
Apple announcement:…iPhone and iPad are the first and only consumer devices in compliance with the information assurance requirements of NATO nations. This enables iPhone and iPad to be used with classified information up to the NATO restricted level without requiring special software or settings—a level of government certification no other consumer mobile device has met.This is out of the box, no modifications required.Boing Boing post.
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Apple Newsroom
iPhone and iPad approved to handle classified NATO information
Today, Apple announced iPhone and iPad are the first and only consumer devices in compliance with information assurance requirements of NATO nations.
Bruce Schneier:
Friday Squid Blogging: Increased Squid Population in the Falklands
Some good news: squid stocks seem to be recovering in the waters off the Falkland Islands.As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.Blog moderation policy.
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Friday Squid Blogging: Increased Squid Population in the Falklands
Some good news: squid stocks seem to be recovering in the waters off the Falkland Islands.As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.Blog moderation policy.
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Undercurrent News
Encouraging scientific survey boosts hopes for South Atlantic squid fishery - Undercurrent News
A recent scientific survey in Falklands waters has sparked optimism for Spanish squid fishermen, with early catches suggesting the stock may be recovering
B. Schneier:
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:I’m giving the Ross Anderson Lecture at the University of Cambridge’s Churchill College at 5:30 PM GMT on Thursday, March 19, 2026.I’m speaking at RSAC 2026 in San Francisco, California, USA, on Wednesday, March 25, 2026.I’m part of an event on “Canada and AI Sovereignty,” hosted by the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, which will be held online via Zoom at 4:00 PM ET on Monday, March 30, 2026.I’m speaking at DemocracyXChange 2026 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on April 18, 2026.I’m speaking at the SANS AI Cybersecurity Summit 2026 in Arlington, Virginia, USA, at 9:40 AM ET on April 20, 2026.I’m speaking at the Nemertes [Next] Virtual Conference Spring 2026, a virtual event, on April 29, 2026.I’m speaking at RightsCon 2026 in Lusaka, Zambia, on May 6 and 7, 2026.The list is maintained on this page.
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Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:I’m giving the Ross Anderson Lecture at the University of Cambridge’s Churchill College at 5:30 PM GMT on Thursday, March 19, 2026.I’m speaking at RSAC 2026 in San Francisco, California, USA, on Wednesday, March 25, 2026.I’m part of an event on “Canada and AI Sovereignty,” hosted by the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, which will be held online via Zoom at 4:00 PM ET on Monday, March 30, 2026.I’m speaking at DemocracyXChange 2026 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on April 18, 2026.I’m speaking at the SANS AI Cybersecurity Summit 2026 in Arlington, Virginia, USA, at 9:40 AM ET on April 20, 2026.I’m speaking at the Nemertes [Next] Virtual Conference Spring 2026, a virtual event, on April 29, 2026.I’m speaking at RightsCon 2026 in Lusaka, Zambia, on May 6 and 7, 2026.The list is maintained on this page.
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Churchill College
The Churchill College Computer Science Lecture in memory of Professor Ross Anderson 2026 delivered by Bruce Schneier - Churchill…
This year's talk is delivered by Bruce Schneier and is entitled 'AI and Trust'
Bruce Schneier:
Possible New Result in Quantum Factorization
I’m skeptical about—and not qualified to review—this new result in factorization with a quantum computer, but if it’s true it’s a theoretical improvement in the speed of factoring large numbers with a quantum computer.
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Possible New Result in Quantum Factorization
I’m skeptical about—and not qualified to review—this new result in factorization with a quantum computer, but if it’s true it’s a theoretical improvement in the speed of factoring large numbers with a quantum computer.
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www.preprints.org
A Novel Hybrid Quantum Circuit for Integer Factorization: End-to-End Evaluation in Simulation and Real Quantum Hardware
The literature indicates that the qubit requirements for factoring RSA-2048 remain on the order of 1 million, under commonly assumed architectures and error-correction models, leaving a substantial gap between current resource estimates and near-term practical…
Bruce Schneier:
South Korean Police Accidentally Post Cryptocurrency Wallet Password
An expensive mistake:Someone jumped at the opportunity to steal $4.4 million in crypto assets after South Korea’s National Tax Service exposed publicly the mnemonic recovery phrase of a seized cryptocurrency wallet.The funds were stored in a Ledger cold wallet seized in law enforcement raids at 124 high-value tax evaders that resulted in confiscating digital assets worth 8.1 billion won (currently approximately $5.6 million).When announcing the success of the operation, the agency released photos of a Ledger device, a popular hardware wallet for crypto storage and management.However, the images also showed a handwritten note of the wallet recovery phrase, which serves as the master key that allows restoring the assets to another device.The authorities failed to redact that info, allowing anyone to transfer into their account the assets in the cold wallet.Reportedly, shortly after the press release was published, 4 million Pre-Retogeum (PRTG) tokens, worth approximately $4.8 million at the time, were transferred out of the confiscated wallet to a new address.
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South Korean Police Accidentally Post Cryptocurrency Wallet Password
An expensive mistake:Someone jumped at the opportunity to steal $4.4 million in crypto assets after South Korea’s National Tax Service exposed publicly the mnemonic recovery phrase of a seized cryptocurrency wallet.The funds were stored in a Ledger cold wallet seized in law enforcement raids at 124 high-value tax evaders that resulted in confiscating digital assets worth 8.1 billion won (currently approximately $5.6 million).When announcing the success of the operation, the agency released photos of a Ledger device, a popular hardware wallet for crypto storage and management.However, the images also showed a handwritten note of the wallet recovery phrase, which serves as the master key that allows restoring the assets to another device.The authorities failed to redact that info, allowing anyone to transfer into their account the assets in the cold wallet.Reportedly, shortly after the press release was published, 4 million Pre-Retogeum (PRTG) tokens, worth approximately $4.8 million at the time, were transferred out of the confiscated wallet to a new address.
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BleepingComputer
$4.8M in crypto stolen after Korean tax agency exposes wallet seed
South Korea's National Tax Service accidentally exposed the mnemonic recovery phrase of a seized cryptocurrency wallet in an official press release, allowing hackers to steal 6.4 billion won ($4.8M) worth in cryptocurrency.
Bruce Schneier:
Meta’s AI Glasses and Privacy
Surprising no one, Meta’s new AI glasses are a privacy disaster.I’m not sure what can be done here. This is a technology that will exist, whether we like it or not.Meanwhile, there is a new Android app that detects when there are smart glasses nearby.
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Meta’s AI Glasses and Privacy
Surprising no one, Meta’s new AI glasses are a privacy disaster.I’m not sure what can be done here. This is a technology that will exist, whether we like it or not.Meanwhile, there is a new Android app that detects when there are smart glasses nearby.
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AppleInsider
Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses are a privacy nightmare, with footage of naked people, sensitive information, and violent acts captured and seen by Meta's AI and an army of employees.
Bruce Schneier:
Hacking a Robot Vacuum
Someone tries to remote control his own DJI Romo vacuum, and ends up controlling 7,000 of them from all around the world.The IoT is horribly insecure, but we already knew that.
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Hacking a Robot Vacuum
Someone tries to remote control his own DJI Romo vacuum, and ends up controlling 7,000 of them from all around the world.The IoT is horribly insecure, but we already knew that.
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The Verge
The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them
DJI may have fixed it now.
Bruce Schneier:
Proton Mail Shared User Information with the Police
404 Media has a story about Proton Mail giving subscriber data to the Swiss government, who passed the information to the FBI.It’s metadata—payment information related to a particular account—but still important knowledge. This sort of thing happens, even to privacy-centric companies like Proton Mail.
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Proton Mail Shared User Information with the Police
404 Media has a story about Proton Mail giving subscriber data to the Swiss government, who passed the information to the FBI.It’s metadata—payment information related to a particular account—but still important knowledge. This sort of thing happens, even to privacy-centric companies like Proton Mail.
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404 Media
Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ Protester
A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the FBI.
Bruce Schneier:
Friday Squid Blogging: Jumbo Flying Squid in the South Pacific
The population needs better conservation.As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.Blog moderation policy.
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Friday Squid Blogging: Jumbo Flying Squid in the South Pacific
The population needs better conservation.As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.Blog moderation policy.
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www.pew.org
Jumbo Flying Squid Need Conservation Action
Jumbo flying squid, commonly referred to as Humboldt squid, is a culinary favorite, but insufficient management of its stock in the South Pacific could leave chefs and diners in the United States, Europe and other major markets without the flavors they crave.
Bruce Schneier:
Microsoft Xbox One Hacked
It’s an impressive feat, over a decade after the box was released:Since reset glitching wasn’t possible, Gaasedelen thought some voltage glitching could do the trick. So, instead of tinkering with the system rest pin(s) the hacker targeted the momentary collapse of the CPU voltage rail. This was quite a feat, as Gaasedelen couldn’t ‘see’ into the Xbox One, so had to develop new hardware introspection tools.Eventually, the Bliss exploit was formulated, where two precise voltage glitches were made to land in succession. One skipped the loop where the ARM Cortex memory protection was setup. Then the Memcpy operation was targeted during the header read, allowing him to jump to the attacker-controlled data.As a hardware attack against the boot ROM in silicon, Gaasedelen says the attack in unpatchable. Thus it is a complete compromise of the console allowing for loading unsigned code at every level, including the Hypervisor and OS. Moreover, Bliss allows access to the security processor so games, firmware, and so on can be decrypted.
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Microsoft Xbox One Hacked
It’s an impressive feat, over a decade after the box was released:Since reset glitching wasn’t possible, Gaasedelen thought some voltage glitching could do the trick. So, instead of tinkering with the system rest pin(s) the hacker targeted the momentary collapse of the CPU voltage rail. This was quite a feat, as Gaasedelen couldn’t ‘see’ into the Xbox One, so had to develop new hardware introspection tools.Eventually, the Bliss exploit was formulated, where two precise voltage glitches were made to land in succession. One skipped the loop where the ARM Cortex memory protection was setup. Then the Memcpy operation was targeted during the header read, allowing him to jump to the attacker-controlled data.As a hardware attack against the boot ROM in silicon, Gaasedelen says the attack in unpatchable. Thus it is a complete compromise of the console allowing for loading unsigned code at every level, including the Hypervisor and OS. Moreover, Bliss allows access to the security processor so games, firmware, and so on can be decrypted.
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Tom's Hardware
Microsoft’s ‘unhackable’ Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss' — the 2013 console finally fell to voltage glitching, allowing the…
This console had remained a fortress since its launch over a decade ago.
Bruce Schneier:
Sen. Wyden Warns of Another Section 702 Abuse
Sen. Ron Wyden is warning us of an abuse of Section 702:Wyden took to the Senate floor to deliver a lengthy speech, ostensibly about the since approved (with support of many Democrats) nomination of Joshua Rudd to lead the NSA. Wyden was protesting that nomination, but in the context of Rudd being unwilling to agree to basic constitutional limitations on NSA surveillance. But that’s just a jumping off point ahead of Section 702’s upcoming reauthorization deadline. Buried in the speech is a passage that should set off every alarm bell:There’s another example of secret law related to Section 702, one that directly affects the privacy rights of Americans. For years, I have asked various administrations to declassify this matter. Thus far they have all refused, although I am still waiting for a response from DNI Gabbard. I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information.Over the decades, we have learned to take Wyden’s warnings seriously.
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Sen. Wyden Warns of Another Section 702 Abuse
Sen. Ron Wyden is warning us of an abuse of Section 702:Wyden took to the Senate floor to deliver a lengthy speech, ostensibly about the since approved (with support of many Democrats) nomination of Joshua Rudd to lead the NSA. Wyden was protesting that nomination, but in the context of Rudd being unwilling to agree to basic constitutional limitations on NSA surveillance. But that’s just a jumping off point ahead of Section 702’s upcoming reauthorization deadline. Buried in the speech is a passage that should set off every alarm bell:There’s another example of secret law related to Section 702, one that directly affects the privacy rights of Americans. For years, I have asked various administrations to declassify this matter. Thus far they have all refused, although I am still waiting for a response from DNI Gabbard. I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information.Over the decades, we have learned to take Wyden’s warnings seriously.
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Techdirt
The Wyden Siren Goes Off Again: We’ll Be “Stunned” By What the NSA Is Doing Under Section 702
Senator Ron Wyden says that when a secret interpretation of Section 702 is eventually declassified, the American public “will be stunned” to learn what the NSA has been doing. If you…
Bruce Schneier:
As the US Midterms Approach, AI Is Going to Emerge as a Key Issue Concerning Voters
In December, the Trump administration signed an executive order that neutered states’ ability to regulate AI by ordering his administration to both sue and withhold funds from states that try to do so. This action pointedly supported industry lobbyists keen to avoid any constraints and consequences on their deployment of AI, while undermining the efforts of consumers, advocates, and industry associations concerned about AI’s harms who have spent years pushing for state regulation.Trump’s actions have clarified the ideological alignments around AI within America’s electoral factions. They set down lines on a new playing field for the midterm elections, prompting members of his party, the opposition, and all of us to consider where we stand in the debate over how and where to let AI transform our lives.In a May 2025 survey of likely voters nationwide, more than 70% favored state and federal regulators having a hand in AI policy. A December 2025 poll by Navigator Research found similar results, with a massive net +48% favorability for more AI regulation. Yet despite the overwhelming preference of both voters and his party’s elected leaders—Congress was essentially unanimous in defeating a previous state AI regulation moratorium—Trump has delivered on a key priority of the industry. The order explicitly challenges the will of voters across blue and red states, from California to South Dakota, scrambling political positions around the technology and setting up a new ideological battleground in the upcoming race for Congress.There are a number of ways that candidates and parties may try to capitalize on this emerging wedge issue before the midterms.In 2025, much of the popular debate around AI was cast in terms of humans versus machines. Advances in AI and the companies it is associated with, it is said, come at the expense of humans. A new model release with greater capabilities for writing, teaching, or coding means more people in those disciplines losing their jobs.This is a humanist debate. Making us talk to an AI customer-support agent is an affront to our dignity. Using AI to help generate media sacrifices authenticity. AI chatbots that persuade and manipulate assault our liberty. There is philosophical merit to these arguments, and yet they seem to have limited political salience.Populism versus institutionalism is a better way to frame this debate in the context of US politics. The MAGA movement is widely understood to be a realignment of American party politics to ally the Republican party with populism, and the Democratic party with defenders of traditional institutions of American government and their democratic norms.This frame is shattered by Trump’s AI order, which unabashedly serves economic elites at the expense of populist consumer protections. It is part of an ongoing courting process between MAGA and big tech, where the Trump political project sacrifices the interests of consumers and its populist credentials as it cozies up to tech moguls.We are starting to see populist resistance to this government/big tech alignment emerge on the local scale. People in Maryland, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and many other states are vigorously opposing AI datacenters in their communities, based on environmental and energy-affordability impacts. These centers of opposition are politically diverse; both progressives and Trump-supporting voters are turning out in force, influencing their local elected officials to resist datacenter development.This opposition to the physical infrastructure of corporate AI is so far staying local, but it may yet translate into a national and politically aligned movement that could divide the MAGA coalition.Any policy discussions about AI should include the individual harms associated with job loss, as employers seek to replace laborers with machines. It should also include the systemic economic risks associated with concentrated and supercharged…
As the US Midterms Approach, AI Is Going to Emerge as a Key Issue Concerning Voters
In December, the Trump administration signed an executive order that neutered states’ ability to regulate AI by ordering his administration to both sue and withhold funds from states that try to do so. This action pointedly supported industry lobbyists keen to avoid any constraints and consequences on their deployment of AI, while undermining the efforts of consumers, advocates, and industry associations concerned about AI’s harms who have spent years pushing for state regulation.Trump’s actions have clarified the ideological alignments around AI within America’s electoral factions. They set down lines on a new playing field for the midterm elections, prompting members of his party, the opposition, and all of us to consider where we stand in the debate over how and where to let AI transform our lives.In a May 2025 survey of likely voters nationwide, more than 70% favored state and federal regulators having a hand in AI policy. A December 2025 poll by Navigator Research found similar results, with a massive net +48% favorability for more AI regulation. Yet despite the overwhelming preference of both voters and his party’s elected leaders—Congress was essentially unanimous in defeating a previous state AI regulation moratorium—Trump has delivered on a key priority of the industry. The order explicitly challenges the will of voters across blue and red states, from California to South Dakota, scrambling political positions around the technology and setting up a new ideological battleground in the upcoming race for Congress.There are a number of ways that candidates and parties may try to capitalize on this emerging wedge issue before the midterms.In 2025, much of the popular debate around AI was cast in terms of humans versus machines. Advances in AI and the companies it is associated with, it is said, come at the expense of humans. A new model release with greater capabilities for writing, teaching, or coding means more people in those disciplines losing their jobs.This is a humanist debate. Making us talk to an AI customer-support agent is an affront to our dignity. Using AI to help generate media sacrifices authenticity. AI chatbots that persuade and manipulate assault our liberty. There is philosophical merit to these arguments, and yet they seem to have limited political salience.Populism versus institutionalism is a better way to frame this debate in the context of US politics. The MAGA movement is widely understood to be a realignment of American party politics to ally the Republican party with populism, and the Democratic party with defenders of traditional institutions of American government and their democratic norms.This frame is shattered by Trump’s AI order, which unabashedly serves economic elites at the expense of populist consumer protections. It is part of an ongoing courting process between MAGA and big tech, where the Trump political project sacrifices the interests of consumers and its populist credentials as it cozies up to tech moguls.We are starting to see populist resistance to this government/big tech alignment emerge on the local scale. People in Maryland, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and many other states are vigorously opposing AI datacenters in their communities, based on environmental and energy-affordability impacts. These centers of opposition are politically diverse; both progressives and Trump-supporting voters are turning out in force, influencing their local elected officials to resist datacenter development.This opposition to the physical infrastructure of corporate AI is so far staying local, but it may yet translate into a national and politically aligned movement that could divide the MAGA coalition.Any policy discussions about AI should include the individual harms associated with job loss, as employers seek to replace laborers with machines. It should also include the systemic economic risks associated with concentrated and supercharged…
Nytimes
Trump Signs Executive Order to Neuter State A.I. Laws
The order would create one federal regulatory framework for artificial intelligence, President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Bruce Schneier:
Friday Squid Blogging: Bioluminescent Bacteria in Squid
The Hawaiian bobtail squid has bioluminescent bacteria.
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Friday Squid Blogging: Bioluminescent Bacteria in Squid
The Hawaiian bobtail squid has bioluminescent bacteria.
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phys.org
Bioluminescent bacterial partner proves essential for squid development
The Hawaiian bobtail squid, a small, multi-colored native of coastal waters in Hawai'i, uses bioluminescence to camouflage itself and evade predators. However, the costume change is only possible through ...
Bruce Schneier:
Apple’s Camera Indicator Lights
A thoughtful review of Apple’s system to alert users that the camera is on. It’s really well-designed, and important in a world where malware could surreptitiously start recording.The reason it’s tempting to think that a dedicated camera indicator light is more secure than an on-display indicator is the fact that hardware is generally more secure than software, because it’s harder to tamper with. With hardware, a dedicated hardware indicator light can be connected to the camera hardware such that if the camera is accessed, the light must turn on, with no way for software running on the device, no matter its privileges, to change that. With an indicator light that is rendered on the display, it’s not foolish to worry that malicious software, with sufficient privileges, could draw over the pixels on the display where the camera indicator is rendered, disguising that the camera is in use.If this were implemented simplistically, that concern would be completely valid. But Apple’s implementation of this is far from simplistic.
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Apple’s Camera Indicator Lights
A thoughtful review of Apple’s system to alert users that the camera is on. It’s really well-designed, and important in a world where malware could surreptitiously start recording.The reason it’s tempting to think that a dedicated camera indicator light is more secure than an on-display indicator is the fact that hardware is generally more secure than software, because it’s harder to tamper with. With hardware, a dedicated hardware indicator light can be connected to the camera hardware such that if the camera is accessed, the light must turn on, with no way for software running on the device, no matter its privileges, to change that. With an indicator light that is rendered on the display, it’s not foolish to worry that malicious software, with sufficient privileges, could draw over the pixels on the display where the camera indicator is rendered, disguising that the camera is in use.If this were implemented simplistically, that concern would be completely valid. But Apple’s implementation of this is far from simplistic.
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Daring Fireball
Apple Exclaves and the Secure Design of the MacBook Neo’s On-Screen Camera Indicator
“What that means in practice is that even a kernel-level exploit would not be able to turn on the camera without the light appearing on screen.”
Bruce Schneier:
Inventors of Quantum Cryptography Win Turing Award
Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard have won the 2026 Turing Award for inventing quantum cryptography.I am incredibly pleased to see them get this recognition. I have always thought the technology to be fantastic, even though I think it’s largely unnecessary. I wrote up my thoughts back in 2008, in an <a href+https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/10/quantum_cryptography.html”>essay titled “Quantum Cryptography: As Awesome As It Is Pointless.”Back then, I wrote:While I like the science of quantum cryptography—my undergraduate degree was in physics—I don’t see any commercial value in it. I don’t believe it solves any security problem that needs solving. I don’t believe that it’s worth paying for, and I can’t imagine anyone but a few technophiles buying and deploying it. Systems that use it don’t magically become unbreakable, because the quantum part doesn’t address the weak points of the system.Security is a chain; it’s as strong as the weakest link. Mathematical cryptography, as bad as it sometimes is, is the strongest link in most security chains. Our symmetric and public-key algorithms are pretty good, even though they’re not based on much rigorous mathematical theory. The real problems are elsewhere: computer security, network security, user interface and so on.Cryptography is the one area of security that we can get right. We already have good encryption algorithms, good authentication algorithms and good key-agreement protocols. Maybe quantum cryptography can make that link stronger, but why would anyone bother? There are far more serious security problems to worry about, and it makes much more sense to spend effort securing those.As I’ve often said, it’s like defending yourself against an approaching attacker by putting a huge stake in the ground. It’s useless to argue about whether the stake should be 50 feet tall or 100 feet tall, because either way, the attacker is going to go around it. Even quantum cryptography doesn’t “solve” all of cryptography: The keys are exchanged with photons, but a conventional mathematical algorithm takes over for the actual encryption.What about quantum computation? I’m not worried; the math is ahead of the physics. Reports of progress in that area are overblown. And if there’s a security crisis because of a quantum computation breakthrough, it’s because our systems aren’t crypto-agile.
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Inventors of Quantum Cryptography Win Turing Award
Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard have won the 2026 Turing Award for inventing quantum cryptography.I am incredibly pleased to see them get this recognition. I have always thought the technology to be fantastic, even though I think it’s largely unnecessary. I wrote up my thoughts back in 2008, in an <a href+https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/10/quantum_cryptography.html”>essay titled “Quantum Cryptography: As Awesome As It Is Pointless.”Back then, I wrote:While I like the science of quantum cryptography—my undergraduate degree was in physics—I don’t see any commercial value in it. I don’t believe it solves any security problem that needs solving. I don’t believe that it’s worth paying for, and I can’t imagine anyone but a few technophiles buying and deploying it. Systems that use it don’t magically become unbreakable, because the quantum part doesn’t address the weak points of the system.Security is a chain; it’s as strong as the weakest link. Mathematical cryptography, as bad as it sometimes is, is the strongest link in most security chains. Our symmetric and public-key algorithms are pretty good, even though they’re not based on much rigorous mathematical theory. The real problems are elsewhere: computer security, network security, user interface and so on.Cryptography is the one area of security that we can get right. We already have good encryption algorithms, good authentication algorithms and good key-agreement protocols. Maybe quantum cryptography can make that link stronger, but why would anyone bother? There are far more serious security problems to worry about, and it makes much more sense to spend effort securing those.As I’ve often said, it’s like defending yourself against an approaching attacker by putting a huge stake in the ground. It’s useless to argue about whether the stake should be 50 feet tall or 100 feet tall, because either way, the attacker is going to go around it. Even quantum cryptography doesn’t “solve” all of cryptography: The keys are exchanged with photons, but a conventional mathematical algorithm takes over for the actual encryption.What about quantum computation? I’m not worried; the math is ahead of the physics. Reports of progress in that area are overblown. And if there’s a security crisis because of a quantum computation breakthrough, it’s because our systems aren’t crypto-agile.
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Nytimes
Turing Award Goes to Inventors of Quantum Cryptography
In the 1980s, Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard created a new kind of encryption that would be impregnable.
Bruce Schneier:
A Taxonomy of Cognitive Security
Last week, I listened to a fascinating talk by K. Melton on cognitive security, cognitive hacking, and reality pentesting. The slides from the talk are here, but—even better—Menton has a long essay laying out the basic concepts and ideas.The whole thing is important and well worth reading, and I hesitate to excerpt. Here’s a taste:The NeuroCompiler is where raw sensory data gets interpreted before you’re consciously aware of it. It decides what things mean, and it does this fast, automatic, and mostly invisible. It’s also where the majority of cognitive exploits actually land, right in this sweet spot between perception and conscious thought.This is my term for what Daniel Kahneman called System 1 thinking. If the Sensory Interface is the intake port, the NeuroCompiler is what turns that input into “filtered meaning” before the Mind Kernel ever sees it. It takes raw signal (e.g., photons, sound waves, chemical gradients, pressure) and translates it into something actionable based on binary categories like threat or safe, familiar or novel, trustworthy or suspicious.The speed is both an evolutionary feature and a modern bug. Processing here is fast enough to get you out of the way of a thrown object before you’ve consciously registered it. But “good enough most of the time” means “predictably wrong some of the time….A critical architectural feature: the NeuroCompiler can route its output directly back to the Sensory Interface and out as behavior, skipping the conscious awareness of the Mind Kernel entirely. Reflex and startle responses use this mechanism, making this bypass pathway enormously useful for survival. Yet it leaves a wide-open backdoor. If the layer that holds access to skepticism and deliberate evaluation can be bypassed completely, a host of exploits become possible that would otherwise fail.That’s just one of the five levels Melton talks about: sensory interface, neurocompiler, mind kernel, the mesh, and cultural substrate.Melton’s taxonomy is compelling, and her parallels to IT systems are fascinating. I have long said that a genius idea is one that’s incredibly obvious once you hear it, but one that no one has said before. This is the first time I’ve heard cognition described in this way.
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A Taxonomy of Cognitive Security
Last week, I listened to a fascinating talk by K. Melton on cognitive security, cognitive hacking, and reality pentesting. The slides from the talk are here, but—even better—Menton has a long essay laying out the basic concepts and ideas.The whole thing is important and well worth reading, and I hesitate to excerpt. Here’s a taste:The NeuroCompiler is where raw sensory data gets interpreted before you’re consciously aware of it. It decides what things mean, and it does this fast, automatic, and mostly invisible. It’s also where the majority of cognitive exploits actually land, right in this sweet spot between perception and conscious thought.This is my term for what Daniel Kahneman called System 1 thinking. If the Sensory Interface is the intake port, the NeuroCompiler is what turns that input into “filtered meaning” before the Mind Kernel ever sees it. It takes raw signal (e.g., photons, sound waves, chemical gradients, pressure) and translates it into something actionable based on binary categories like threat or safe, familiar or novel, trustworthy or suspicious.The speed is both an evolutionary feature and a modern bug. Processing here is fast enough to get you out of the way of a thrown object before you’ve consciously registered it. But “good enough most of the time” means “predictably wrong some of the time….A critical architectural feature: the NeuroCompiler can route its output directly back to the Sensory Interface and out as behavior, skipping the conscious awareness of the Mind Kernel entirely. Reflex and startle responses use this mechanism, making this bypass pathway enormously useful for survival. Yet it leaves a wide-open backdoor. If the layer that holds access to skepticism and deliberate evaluation can be bypassed completely, a host of exploits become possible that would otherwise fail.That’s just one of the five levels Melton talks about: sensory interface, neurocompiler, mind kernel, the mesh, and cultural substrate.Melton’s taxonomy is compelling, and her parallels to IT systems are fascinating. I have long said that a genius idea is one that’s incredibly obvious once you hear it, but one that no one has said before. This is the first time I’ve heard cognition described in this way.
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GitHub
presos/26-03-17_CSI-103 __Reality Pentesting A Conceptual Cognitive Field Topology.pdf at main · cptkj42/presos
Presentation assets & resources. Contribute to cptkj42/presos development by creating an account on GitHub.
Bruce Schneier:
Is “Hackback” Official US Cybersecurity Strategy?
The 2026 US “Cyber Strategy for America” document is mostly the same thing we’ve seen out of the White House for over a decade, but with a more aggressive tone.But one sentence stood out: “We will unleash the private sector by creating incentives to identify and disrupt adversary networks and scale our national capabilities.” This sounds like a call for hackback: giving private companies permission to conduct offensive cyber operations.The Economist noticed (alternate link) this, too.I think this is an incredibly dumb idea:In warfare, the notion of counterattack is extremely powerful. Going after the enemy—its positions, its supply lines, its factories, its infrastructure—is an age-old military tactic. But in peacetime, we call it revenge, and consider it dangerous. Anyone accused of a crime deserves a fair trial. The accused has the right to defend himself, to face his accuser, to an attorney, and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.Both vigilante counterattacks, and preemptive attacks, fly in the face of these rights. They punish people before who haven’t been found guilty. It’s the same whether it’s an angry lynch mob stringing up a suspect, the MPAA disabling the computer of someone it believes made an illegal copy of a movie, or a corporate security officer launching a denial-of-service attack against someone he believes is targeting his company over the net.In all of these cases, the attacker could be wrong. This has been true for lynch mobs, and on the internet it’s even harder to know who’s attacking you. Just because my computer looks like the source of an attack doesn’t mean that it is. And even if it is, it might be a zombie controlled by yet another computer; I might be a victim, too. The goal of a government’s legal system is justice; the goal of a vigilante is expediency.We don’t issue letters of marque on the high seas anymore; we shouldn’t do it in cyberspace.
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Is “Hackback” Official US Cybersecurity Strategy?
The 2026 US “Cyber Strategy for America” document is mostly the same thing we’ve seen out of the White House for over a decade, but with a more aggressive tone.But one sentence stood out: “We will unleash the private sector by creating incentives to identify and disrupt adversary networks and scale our national capabilities.” This sounds like a call for hackback: giving private companies permission to conduct offensive cyber operations.The Economist noticed (alternate link) this, too.I think this is an incredibly dumb idea:In warfare, the notion of counterattack is extremely powerful. Going after the enemy—its positions, its supply lines, its factories, its infrastructure—is an age-old military tactic. But in peacetime, we call it revenge, and consider it dangerous. Anyone accused of a crime deserves a fair trial. The accused has the right to defend himself, to face his accuser, to an attorney, and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.Both vigilante counterattacks, and preemptive attacks, fly in the face of these rights. They punish people before who haven’t been found guilty. It’s the same whether it’s an angry lynch mob stringing up a suspect, the MPAA disabling the computer of someone it believes made an illegal copy of a movie, or a corporate security officer launching a denial-of-service attack against someone he believes is targeting his company over the net.In all of these cases, the attacker could be wrong. This has been true for lynch mobs, and on the internet it’s even harder to know who’s attacking you. Just because my computer looks like the source of an attack doesn’t mean that it is. And even if it is, it might be a zombie controlled by yet another computer; I might be a victim, too. The goal of a government’s legal system is justice; the goal of a vigilante is expediency.We don’t issue letters of marque on the high seas anymore; we shouldn’t do it in cyberspace.
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Bruce Schneier:
Possible US Government iPhone Hacking Tool Leaked
Wired writes (alternate source):Security researchers at Google on Tuesday released a report describing what they’re calling “Coruna,” a highly sophisticated iPhone hacking toolkit that includes five complete hacking techniques capable of bypassing all the defenses of an iPhone to silently install malware on a device when it visits a website containing the exploitation code. In total, Coruna takes advantage of 23 distinct vulnerabilities in iOS, a rare collection of hacking components that suggests it was created by a well-resourced, likely state-sponsored group of hackers.[…]Coruna’s code also appears to have been originally written by English-speaking coders, notes iVerify’s cofounder Rocky Cole. “It’s highly sophisticated, took millions of dollars to develop, and it bears the hallmarks of other modules that have been publicly attributed to the US government,” Cole tells WIRED. “This is the first example we’ve seen of very likely US government toolsbased on what the code is telling usspinning out of control and being used by both our adversaries and cybercriminal groups.”TechCrunch reports that Coruna is definitely of US origin:Two former employees of government contractor L3Harris told TechCrunch that Coruna was, at least in part, developed by the company’s hacking and surveillance tech division, Trenchant. The two former employees both had knowledge of the company’s iPhone hacking tools. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about their work for the company.It’s always super interesting to see what malware looks like when it’s created through a professional software development process. And the TechCrunch article has some speculation as to how the US lost control of it. It seems that an employee of L3Harris’s surviellance tech division, Trenchant, sold it to the Russian government.
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Possible US Government iPhone Hacking Tool Leaked
Wired writes (alternate source):Security researchers at Google on Tuesday released a report describing what they’re calling “Coruna,” a highly sophisticated iPhone hacking toolkit that includes five complete hacking techniques capable of bypassing all the defenses of an iPhone to silently install malware on a device when it visits a website containing the exploitation code. In total, Coruna takes advantage of 23 distinct vulnerabilities in iOS, a rare collection of hacking components that suggests it was created by a well-resourced, likely state-sponsored group of hackers.[…]Coruna’s code also appears to have been originally written by English-speaking coders, notes iVerify’s cofounder Rocky Cole. “It’s highly sophisticated, took millions of dollars to develop, and it bears the hallmarks of other modules that have been publicly attributed to the US government,” Cole tells WIRED. “This is the first example we’ve seen of very likely US government toolsbased on what the code is telling usspinning out of control and being used by both our adversaries and cybercriminal groups.”TechCrunch reports that Coruna is definitely of US origin:Two former employees of government contractor L3Harris told TechCrunch that Coruna was, at least in part, developed by the company’s hacking and surveillance tech division, Trenchant. The two former employees both had knowledge of the company’s iPhone hacking tools. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about their work for the company.It’s always super interesting to see what malware looks like when it’s created through a professional software development process. And the TechCrunch article has some speculation as to how the US lost control of it. It seems that an employee of L3Harris’s surviellance tech division, Trenchant, sold it to the Russian government.
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WIRED
A Possible US Government iPhone-Hacking Toolkit Is Now in the Hands of Foreign Spies and Criminals
A highly sophisticated set of iPhone hijacking techniques has likely infected tens of thousands of phones or more. Clues suggest it was originally built for the US government.
Bruce Schneier:
US Bans All Foreign-Made Consumer Routers
This is for new routers; you don’t have to throw away your existing ones:The Executive Branch determination noted that foreign-produced routers (1) introduce “a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and national defense” and (2) pose “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”More information:Any new router made outside the US will now need to be approved by the FCC before it can be imported, marketed, or sold in the country.In order to get that approval, companies manufacturing routers outside the US must apply for conditional approval in a process that will require the disclosure of the firm’s foreign investors or influence, as well as a plan to bring the manufacturing of the routers to the US.Certain routers may be exempted from the list if they are deemed acceptable by the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security, the FCC said. Neither agency has yet added any specific routers to its list of equipment exceptions.[…]Popular brands of router in the US include Netgear, a US company, which manufactures all of its products abroad.One exception to the general absence of US-made routers is the newer Starlink WiFi router. Starlink is part of Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.Presumably US companies will start making home routers, if they think this policy is stable enough to plan around. But they will be more expensive than routers made in China or Taiwan. Security is never free, but policy determines who pays for it.
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US Bans All Foreign-Made Consumer Routers
This is for new routers; you don’t have to throw away your existing ones:The Executive Branch determination noted that foreign-produced routers (1) introduce “a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and national defense” and (2) pose “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”More information:Any new router made outside the US will now need to be approved by the FCC before it can be imported, marketed, or sold in the country.In order to get that approval, companies manufacturing routers outside the US must apply for conditional approval in a process that will require the disclosure of the firm’s foreign investors or influence, as well as a plan to bring the manufacturing of the routers to the US.Certain routers may be exempted from the list if they are deemed acceptable by the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security, the FCC said. Neither agency has yet added any specific routers to its list of equipment exceptions.[…]Popular brands of router in the US include Netgear, a US company, which manufactures all of its products abroad.One exception to the general absence of US-made routers is the newer Starlink WiFi router. Starlink is part of Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.Presumably US companies will start making home routers, if they think this policy is stable enough to plan around. But they will be more expensive than routers made in China or Taiwan. Security is never free, but policy determines who pays for it.
via Schneier on Security https://ift.tt/qDTrB4H