December 24, 2024

Archives for March 2015

On compromising app developers to go after their users

In a recent article by Scahill and Begley, we learned that the CIA is interested in targeting Apple products. I largely agree with the quote from Steve Bellovin, that “spies gonna spy”, so of course they’re interested in targeting the platform that rides in the pockets of many of their intelligence collection targets. What could […]

Threshold signatures for Bitcoin wallets are finally here

Today we are pleased to release our paper presenting a new ECDSA threshold signature scheme that is particularly well-suited for securing Bitcoin wallets. We teamed up with cryptographer Rosario Gennaro to build this scheme. Threshold signatures can be thought of as “stealth multi-signatures.”

FREAK Attack: The Chickens of ‘90s Crypto Restriction Come Home to Roost

Today researchers disclosed a new security flaw in TLS/SSL, the protocol used to secure web connections. The flaw is significant in itself, but it is also a good example of what can go wrong when government asks to build weaknesses into security systems. Back in the early 1990s, it was illegal to export most products […]