The RISC Deprogrammer

I should write up a larger technical document on this, but in the meanwhile is this short (-ish) blogpost. Everything you know about RISC is... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 1 year ago

Secret Dots from Printer Outed NSA Leaker (2017)

Today, The Intercept released documents on election tampering from an NSA leaker. Later, the arrest warrant  request for an NSA contractor ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 1 year ago

Errata Security: That Alfa-Trump Sussman Indictment

Five years ago, online magazine Slate broke a story about how DNS packets showed secret communications between Alfa Bank in Russia and the ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 2 years ago

Errata Security: Of course you can't trust scientists on politics

Many people make the same claim as this tweet. It's obviously wrong. Yes,, the right-wing has a problem with science, but this isn't it. If ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 2 years ago

Some Quick Notes on SDR

I'm trying to create perfect screen captures of SDR to explain the world of radio around us. In this blogpost, I'm going to discuss some of ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 2 years ago

Programming languages infosec professionals should learn (2019)

Code is an essential skill of the infosec professional, but there are so many languages to choose from. What language should you learn? As a... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 2 years ago

Anatomy of how you get pwned

Today, somebody had a problem: they kept seeing a popup on their screen, and obvious scam trying to sell them McAfee anti-virus. Where was t... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

How CEOs Think (2020)

Recently, Twitter was hacked. CEOs who read about this in the news ask how they can protect themselves from similar threats. The following... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

Deconstructing That $69M NFT

"NFTs" have hit the mainstream news with the sale of an NFT based digital artwork for $69 million. I thought I'd write up an explainer. Spec... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

Perlroth's book on the cyberarms market

New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth has written a book on zero-days and nation-state hacking entitled “ This Is How They Tell Me The W... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

Review: Perlroth's Book on the Cyberarms Market

New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth has written a book on zero-days and nation-state hacking entitled “ This Is How They Tell Me The W... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

Errata Security: No, 1k engineers were not needed for SolarWinds

Microsoft estimates it would take 1,000 to carry out the famous SolarWinds hacker attacks . This means in reality that it was probably fewer... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

The deal with DMCA 1201 reform

There are two fights in Congress now against the DMCA, the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act". One is over Section 512 covering "takedowns" ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

No, that's not how warrantee expiration works

The NYPost Hunter Biden story has triggered a lot of sleuths obsessing on technical details trying to prove it's a hoax. So far, these cla... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

Yes, we can validate leaked emails

When emails leak, we can know whether they are authenticate or forged. It's the first question we should ask of today's  leak of emails  of ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

Cliché: Security through obscurity (yet again)

Infosec is a largely non-technical field. People learn a topic only as far as they need to regurgitate the right answer on a certification t... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

Falsehoods programmers believe about networks

Inspired by falsehoods programmers believe about time and usernames , I thought I'd start collecting falsehoods programmers have about netw... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

The shockingly obsolete code of bash

One of the problems with bash is that it's simply obsolete code. We have modern objective standards about code quality, and bash doesn't mee... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 3 years ago

Huawei Backdoors Explanation, Explained

Today Huawei published a video explaining the concept of "backdoors" in telco equipment. Many are criticizing the video for being tone deaf.... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 4 years ago

How to decrypt WhatsApp end-to-end media files

At the center of the "Saudis hacked Bezos" story is a mysterious video file investigators couldn't decrypt, sent by Saudi Crown Prince MBS t... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 4 years ago

Finally the Year of the ARM Server

"RISC" was an important architecture from the 1980s when CPUs had fewer than 100,000 transistors. By simplifying the instruction set, they f... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 4 years ago

We Fight for Crypto

This last week, the Attorney General  William Barr called for crypto backdoors . His speech is a fair summary of law-enforcement's side of t... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 4 years ago

Threat Model Is Wrong

Several subjects have come up with the past week that all come down to the same thing: your threat model is wrong. Instead of addressing the... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 4 years ago

Almost One Million Vulnerable to BlueKeep Vuln (CVE-2019-0708)

Microsoft announced a vulnerability in it's "Remote Desktop" product that can lead to robust, wormable exploits. I scanned the Internet to a... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 4 years ago

A Lesson in Journalism vs. Cybersecurity

A recent NYTimes article blaming the NSA for a ransomware attack on Baltimore is typical bad journalism. It's an op-ed masquerading as a ne... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 4 years ago

Assange Indicted for Breaking a Password

In today's news, after 9 years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, Julian Assange has finally been arrested. The US DoJ accuses Assange for ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Bezo's dick pics might've been exposed

In the news, the National Enquirer has extorted Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by threatening to publish the sext-messages/dick-pics he sent to his m... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Passwords in a file

My dad is on some sort of committee for his local home owners association. He asked about saving all the passwords in a file stored on Micro... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Some notes for journalists about cybersecurity

The recent Bloomberg article about Chinese hacking motherboards is a great opportunity to talk about problems with journalism. Journalis... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Some notes about HTTP/3

HTTP/3 is going to be standardized. As an old protocol guy, I thought I'd write up some comments. Google (pbuh) has both the most popular ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Brian Kemp is bad on cybersecurity

I'd prefer a Republican governor, but as a cybersecurity expert, I have to point out how bad Brian Kemp (candidate for Georgia governor) is ... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Systemd is bad parsing DHCPv6 packets and its programmers should feel bad

Systemd has a remotely exploitable bug in it's DHCPv6 client. That means anybody on the local network can send you a packet and take control... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

How to irregular cyber warfare

Somebody ( @thegrugq ) pointed me to this article on " Lessons on Irregular Cyber Warfare ", citing the masters like Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

So Slate  is doubling-down on their discredited story of a secret Trump server. Tip for journalists: if you are going to argue against an e... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Bogus story: no Chinese backdoor in military chip (2012)

Today's big news is that researchers have found proof of Chinese manufacturers putting backdoors in American chips that the military uses. T... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

That XKCD on voting software is wrong

The latest XKCD comic on voting machine software is wrong, profoundly so. It's the sort of thing that appeals to our prejudices, but mistake... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Your IoT security concerns are stupid

Lots of government people are focused on IoT security, such as this bill or this  recent effort . They are usually wrong. It's a typical cy... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

The First Lady's bad cyber advice

First Lady Melania Trump announced a guide to help children go online  safely. It has problems. Melania's guide is full of outdated, impra... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

Errata Security: C is too low level

I'm in danger of contradicting myself, after previously pointing out that x86 machine code is a high-level language , but this article claim... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago

C is to(sic) low level

I'm in danger of contradicting myself, after previously pointing out that x86 machine code is a high-level language , but this article claim... | Continue reading


@blog.erratasec.com | 5 years ago