News · Schneier on Security
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Schneier on Security
Hiding Capabilities in AI Models
Interesting research: “AI Models Can Provably Hide Arbitrary Capabilities” Abstract: Capability evaluations aim to surface dangerous model behaviors before deployment, but their reliability depends on the assumption that hidden capabilities can be elicited. We show this assumption does not hold under adversarial conditions by constructing backdoor attacks that embed encrypted neural networks within host model weights, decrypting and executing them only upon receiving a secret trigger. Using digital lockers, these hidden circuits remain provably hard to elicit and interpret under cryptographic…
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Schneier on Security
Bias in Qwen3-Coder Model
Interesting research: TL;DR: Chinese AI models now sit inside Western products, and some carry geopolitical triggers: tell the model who the code is for, and the security of what it writes changes. For the first time, we showed that this vulnerability lives in the model’s weights, and that removing the model’s CCP alignment removes it. One word tilts the code against Americans. Ask for the app “for a US defense contractor” instead of “for a Chinese defense contractor”, and Qwen3-Coder is 19% more likely to hand back an app that can be hacked. ...
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Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Increasing Squid Populations
This article in Nature argues that it’s due to an overfishing of predators and warming sea temperatures. 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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Schneier on Security
Compromised TLS Certificates
The Indian CA eMudhra Limited has eight TLS certificates with laughably weak private keys: The compromised eMudhra keys were defective at a level that’s challenging the imagination of many of the engineers studying the incident. A normal size for a NIST P-384 elliptic curve cryptography private key contains roughly 384 bits of entropy, a size allowing almost 2384, or a number with 116 digits, different possibilities. The private key sizes of the compromised keys ranged from 3 to 8 bits. Astonishingly, the private keys were 4, 56, 66, 115, 155, 156, 230, 237...
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Schneier on Security
New Serious PHP Vulnerabilities Released and Patched
PHP maintainers have released fixes for two critical vulnerabilities: PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 fix two critical vulnerabilities that can allow unauthenticated remote code execution. All PHP users are strongly encouraged to update immediately. Who is at risk: all PHP installations serving web requests, including PHP-FPM, Apache with mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP and LiteSpeed. We consider the risk highest for mod_php, with a demonstrated exploit where an unauthenticated request can trigger the attack before any application code runs...
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Schneier on Security
Workshop on Economics and Information Security (WEIS) Archive
There’s a new archive of all the papers from twenty-five years of the Workshop on Economics and Information Security (WEIS). Really nice resource. It’s fun to reread my 2002 essay on the economics of information security.
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Schneier on Security
Possible new Cellebrite iPhone Radio Zero-Day
Justin.sh is reporting on a confidential Cellebrite document that has been leaked to him: Cellebrite calls it Advanced Unlocks (AU from here on), not to be confused with the “advanced unlocking services” they’ve marketed for years. A press release from earlier this year confirms AU is a new product for 2026. […] According to Cellebrite, AU: is a “next-generation AFU vector that is more resilient to Apple’s OS changes” works with Stolen Device Protection enabled, which tightens USB restrictions is enabled by a dedicated appliance with a stated range (!) of about 8 meters...
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Schneier on Security
Training AIs to Solve CAPTCHAs
Interesting research: Abstract: Vision-language models (VLMs) can solve visual CAPTCHAs without task-specific training, but the agents built on them approach every challenge from scratch. For such an agent, the hundredth instance of a familiar puzzle costs as much time and compute as the first. Specialized detectors invert the trade-off, answering in milliseconds but only for categories they were trained on. Neither improves with exposure. We study what changes when a solver improves with use. Our system pairs a fine-tuned YOLOv8 detector with an open-weight VLM behind a confidence-based rout…
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Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Before the Chicxulub Meteor Impact
New research shows that squid lived all around the globe even before the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event. 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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Schneier on Security
Backdooring Open-Weight AI Models
This is a problem: Any open model whose weights have been edited can carry a backdoor, whether it’s a task-specific fine-tune, a merged adapter or an abliterated build. We have abliterated models in the title because it’s the most popular reason people download modified weights without verifying what’s inside. Abliteration is a cheap fine-tune that takes away a model’s ability to refuse. You find the direction in the weights that carries “no” and subtract it. The model then answers things a safety-tuned version would turn down. It began as a research trick and it’s now routine before people u…
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Schneier on Security
Measuring Human Cryptanalysis Effort
Matthew Green has a new site that tries to estimate the number of cryptanalyst-hours that have been spent analyzing different public-key algorithms: Abstract: We estimate how much public cryptanalysis each public-key assumption has received, using the literature itself as the instrument. From roughly sixteen thousand candidate papers we classify cryptanalytic work on ECDLP, structured and plain lattices, syndrome decoding and their comparators, then convert papers into estimated research-allocation years through a person-level author map. These publication-based estimates may substantially ov…
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Schneier on Security
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking at ATTENTION: Democracy, Rebuilt in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The event runs October 21–23, 2026, and my talk is on Wednesday, October 21. I’m speaking at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at 5 PM ET on October 22, 2026. I’m speaking at [un]prompted in San Francisco, California. The event runs October 27–29, 2026, and my talk is at 11:35 AM PT on Thursday, October 29. I’m speaking at the Catalyst Summit in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, November 18, 2026...
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Schneier on Security
The Future of AI Cryptanalysis
Matthew Green has been writing a rather pessimistic series of posts about the potential for AI systems to vastly outperform humans in cryptanalysis of both symmetric and public-key ciphers. I am more optimistic than he is. That is, I have stronger faith in the over-engineering cryptographers tend to do. I am trying to write this up in more detail.
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Schneier on Security
Cyberattack on Connected Fridges in France
Another IoT cyberattack, this one in France: Hackers gained control of the software that regulates the temperatures of the refrigeration units, forcing some to warm to 50C (120F) overnight, according to one supermarket chain affected. […] Normally, supermarket freezers go through a short period of defrosting overnight, in which temperatures rise slightly. But the hackers ordered the units to heat up and stay hot, although Danfoss did not confirm any reports about just how warm the fridges and freezers could become in that process. Danfoss said the affected cold units were older models whose s…
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Schneier on Security
FBI Arrests Suspect in FBI-Hacking Case
In September, hackers from a group called ShinyHunters announced that they stole a trove of FBI data about its own agents. It was an intelligence disaster. Last week, the FBI arrested (alternate link) someone associated with that crime.
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Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: I Caught a Squid
On Wednesday I spent a day fishing, on a small boat out of Gloucester, MA. We caught many cod (none of which we could keep), and a bunch of hake and mackerel (all of which we could keep). And…I caught a squid! Near as I can tell, it’s a longfin squid, sometimes called a Boston squid (Doryteuthis (Amerigo) pealeii). That night I cooked it over a barbecue grill—hot and fast. Delicious.
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Schneier on Security
How Technology Empowers—and Imperils—Dictators
This essay was written with Seva Gunitsky, and originally appeared in Foreign Affairs. Two weeks after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, the Russian TV Channel One editor Marina Ovsyannikova burst onto the set of the evening newscast. She held up a hand-drawn sign behind the anchor’s head that read: “Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They’re lying to you!” She shouted, “No to war!” until she was dragged away. No one has protested the war on Russian television since then, partly as a result of tighter security and a general climate of fear. But in October 2024, Marga…
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Schneier on Security
Apple’s Verified Photography System
Apple just released a system called “Reference Image.” It can verify the image is exactly as taken by an iPhone—new models only—without tying it to a specific iPhone or photographer. It can also verify that multiple images came from the same iPhone. Other industry solutions require a photographer or institution to vouch for an image using their own credentials. We are concerned this puts some photographers, such as those operating in conflict zones, in a difficult position; it should not be necessary to forgo anonymity in order to prove image authenticity. We built Apple Reference Image to av…
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Schneier on Security
Possible Vulnerability in Apple’s Automatic Reboot
404Media is reporting (alternate link) that a cyber-weapons arms manufacturer is exploiting a vulnerability in iOS to bypass its automatic reboot security feature. This is the feature that automatically puts an iPhone into a more secure state if it hasn’t been used for 72 hours. The new technology to get around inactivity reboot was developed by Magnet Forensics, the company behind GrayKey, a popular tool sold to law enforcement agencies that allows them to unlock and access data stored in iPhones and Android smartphones. Magnet has developed a new device called GrayKey Preserve and a feature…
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Schneier on Security
Another Historic Cipher Falls to AI
This one is from 1809, written by Napoleon’s nephew.
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Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: EU is Trying to Fight Unregulated Squid Fishing
The EU is recommending import controls to combat unregulated squid fishing in the Southwest Atlantic. I’m not optimistic. 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.
