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cybergibbons

139 karma · joined May 29, 2014

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cybergibbons··on Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications
The problem is, people are using solely what3words for location. Every single call recording to emergency services doesn't use any other information.

The odds are around 1 in 24 that you hit one of these squares in London.

cybergibbons··on What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for sharing an alternative
Yeah, that's not true.

https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-su...

cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
Yes, that's pretty much the definition of incorrect.
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
Old skool! Those were the days :)
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
A design requirement of the app is it works offline.
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
Your surface area is totally incorrect.
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
Only with a ridiculously long word list containing plurals and words people can't spell.
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
Yeah, multiple MRT members have contacted me to say this is a real struggle. If someone is on the move, it's virtually impossible to work out what direction they are going.
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
It's promoted for use in search and rescue, so other bands are in use.
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
Why 3 words? Why not 4?
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
You would still get high densities of cells which share two words being present close together, leading to any issue with the third word causing a confusing location.
cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
No, I went from the patent and using the API instead:

https://twitter.com/cybergibbons/status/1386344576856825858

https://twitter.com/cybergibbons/status/1386393951276609539

https://twitter.com/cybergibbons/status/1386867562554793984

https://twitter.com/cybergibbons/status/1387164507705860097

cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
The word list already is 40k long. That's beyond most people's vocab and includes really awkward to spell words.

IMO, if the solution is to use words, then What4Words would have had a word list of less than 3000, resulting in a word list with less confusable words and more accessible to children and people who struggle to read or write.

cybergibbons··on What3Words – The Algorithm
Two reasons: 1. It needs to be reversible so you can go from words to lat/lon. 2. They wanted to use shorter words in cities, so the distribution of low n didn't want to cover the full range of m. (this could probably be solved by some sort of banding though).
cybergibbons··on Why is unauthenticated encryption insecure?
Yes, sorry, added that bit on my phone when out and about and made a mistake. Corrected.
cybergibbons··on Why is unauthenticated encryption insecure?
RTCs are actually quite rare, especially in a lot of the lower power RF SoCs.

Drift would also be an issue - most move at least 10 minutes a year. That's with good temperatures, not being left in a hot car or at body temp.

If you could solve the drift issue then it would be pretty good I think, it's an interesting idea.

cybergibbons··on Why is unauthenticated encryption insecure?
Is CTR more common?
cybergibbons··on Why is unauthenticated encryption insecure?
I've added a section on padding oracle attacks towards the bottom.

I don't think there's a significant different in ease of understanding between most of the modes. I used CBC as it's one of the most common and familiar modes, and because it's where I have seen this issue many times. I don't see CTR used in the wild very often.

I also tend to use CBC for other demos as well, so it makes things consistent.

cybergibbons··on Why is unauthenticated encryption insecure?
I considered using a padding oracle attack in the post, but it's aimed at a very basic level of understanding. I find padding oracles are much harder to describe to newcomers.

Also, the XOR malleability issue is present in lots of block modes of operation.

cybergibbons··on How to force manufacturers to take IoT security seriously?
Why do you need to spend money to use HTTPS with IoT?
cybergibbons··on A quick look at the Ikea Trådfri lighting platform
Less well tested than OpenSSL, but historically has been relatively secure.
cybergibbons··on A quick look at the Ikea Trådfri lighting platform
Specifically, in the case of the firmware running on the Trådfri gateway, it already supports TLS.
cybergibbons··on Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats
No, unfortunately not. We had to do it all black box as it was on sale or return, so couldn't inspect the firmware to find vulns.

It was runnign Tizen, which makes things a lot harder than Android.

We did get some minor vulns on the LG air conditioner.

cybergibbons··on Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats
I did the work on this.

Yes, the much bigger threat is taking control of these devices and using them as a pivot. We've done this for IP cameras, DVRs etc. It doesn't seem to engage the media or the public.

The ransomware has though.

cybergibbons··on Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware for Smart Thermostats
I did the work on this.

It wasn't really meant to be a practical attack. It was largely because there has been speculation around this for the last few years, so we thought we'd actually do it.

It's largely to raise awareness that IoT security is poor and we don't have the control to do much about it.

cybergibbons··on Backdoor in DVR firmware sends CCTV camera snapshots to email address in China
Yes - his GitHub actually had the repo for this in the past.

Someone reported the issue on there before I found it.

cybergibbons··on Backdoor in DVR firmware sends CCTV camera snapshots to email address in China
Yes, the device has reference to Esee and IIRC it sends XML data to their server.

I didn't look into that as the other stuff meant it was game over.

cybergibbons··on Backdoor in DVR firmware sends CCTV camera snapshots to email address in China
Thanks, updated the post.
cybergibbons··on Backdoor in DVR firmware sends CCTV camera snapshots to email address in China
Possibly.

Part of the problem though is that there is not a full toolchain. You could replace the DVR app, but the OS is still going to be crap.

I had a very quick go at updating the firmware with Juantech and it failed. There is some check in place to prevent this.

cybergibbons··on Backdoor in DVR firmware sends CCTV camera snapshots to email address in China
Yeah, I tried juantech. Not the password, unfortunately.

openssl passwd -salt a0 juantech a0hDjN2cjQ1hI

I've bruteforced all alphanumeric for the descrypt hash, and not found anything. Trying the whole space now, but it will be weeks.

I think mine was regularly rebooting, but I've put it away so need to check.

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