BadNets: Identifying vulnerabilities in the machine learning model supply chain Gu et al., ArXiv 2017 Yesterday we looked at the traditional software packages supply chain. In BadNets, Gu et al., explore the machine learning model supply chain. They demonstrate two attack vectors: (i) if model training is outsourced, then it’s possible for a hard to … Continue reading BadNets: Identifying vulnerabilities in the machine learning model supply chain

CHAINIAC: Proactive software-update transparency via collectively signed skipchains and verified builds Nikitin et al., USENIX Security ‘17 So hopefully you’ve put in place some kind of software supply chain management process that will pick up the availability of new package versions, particularly of course those with fixes for discovered vulnerabilities, and ensure those updates are … Continue reading CHAINIAC: Proactive software update transparency via collectively signed skipchains and verified builds

TrustBase: an architecture to repair and strengthen certificate-based authentication O’Neill et al., USENIX Security 2017 We recently saw that the sorry state of DNSSEC makes it comparatively easy to be sent to the wrong address when looking up a hostname. If certificate-based authentication is messed up as well, then it’s double trouble as you can … Continue reading TrustBase: an architecture to repair and strengthen certificate-based authentication

Pretzel: email encryption and provider-supplied functions are compatible Gupta et al., SIGCOMM’17 While emails today are often encrypted in transit, the vast majority of emails are exposed in plaintext to the mail servers that handle them. Given the sensitive information often contained in email correspondence, why is this? Publicly, email providers have stated that default … Continue reading Pretzel: email encryption and provider-supplied functions are compatible

CLKSCREW: Exposing the perils of security-oblivious energy management Tang et al., USENIX Security '17 This is brilliant and terrifying in equal measure. CLKSCREW demonstrably takes the Trust out of ARM's TrustZone, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if it took the Secure out of SGX too (though the researchers didn't investigate that). It's the … Continue reading CLKSCREW: Exposing the perils of security-oblivious energy management