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Sociotechnical Aspects of Tor Relay Rejection
User study and simulations of Tor's relay end-of-life rejection policy find operators favor it; network churn affects anonymity more than EoL exclusions.
The study examines the Tor Project's 2019 end-of-life policy that rejects outdated relays, which constitute a notable fraction of consensus weight. A user study of 26 relay operators found they generally view the policy favorably despite limited awareness, though operational practices occasionally exclude newly installed relays. Historical-data-driven simulations show the policy gives adversaries only marginal advantage, with network churn exerting a more pronounced effect on user anonymity. Analysis of four exclusion rounds shows a minority of rejected relays typically account for over 50% of the security provided by all excluded relays, informing EoL policy recommendations.
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Differential Trust: Dynamic Multi-Authority Anonymous Credentials with Epoch-Weighted Updates
Researchers propose MA-ACEW, the first multi-authority anonymous credential model with epoch-weighted issuance and efficient cross-epoch credential updates.
The paper introduces MA-ACEW, a multi-authority anonymous credential scheme that weights authorities differently during credential issuance, targeting decentralized systems such as Proof-of-Stake networks. Its core primitive, Epoch-Bound Pointcheval-Sanders Signatures (EB-PS), binds signatures to time epochs, enabling non-interactive credential updates when authority weight distributions change. The authors formalize EUF-eCMA unforgeability and prove unforgeability, anonymity, and blindness under a novel STB-GPS assumption. Aggregating a credential from 128 partial credentials takes about 10.68 ms on average.
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Getting a stranger’s phone kicked off the cellular network costs a few dollars
Researchers show attackers can remotely block strangers' phones and alarm gateways on US cellular networks by abusing lost/stolen IMEI reporting for $2.50-$4 per device.
Researchers from Michigan State University and three partner schools found six weaknesses in the lost/stolen device reporting ecosystem spanning devices, carrier systems, and cross-carrier block-list sharing. They demonstrated blocking unopened Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 phones and home alarm gateways on three major US carriers, with each block costing $2.50-$4 and taking roughly 20-80 seconds. The attacks exploit thin identity and ownership checks in prepaid accounts, IMEI leakage from vulnerable cellular chipsets used by two vendors with over 40% global market share, and pre-release IMEI databases purchasable for $600. Victims receive no notification, and restoring service requires proving device ownership to the carrier.
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When the Whole Company Adopts AI: What It Does to Your SOC
Analysis of 16.9 million SOC alerts finds AI-related alerts at 0.43%, growing 685% since February, with 94.1% noise and 0.02% real attacks.
A review of roughly 16.9 million SOC alerts found about 73,000 (0.43%) were AI-related, a share that grew 685% between February and June 2026. Of AI-related alerts, 94.1% were noise, 5.8% genuine risks, and 0.02% real attacks; 79.8% received benign verdicts, 81.7% were automatically suppressed, and only 5.4% reached a human analyst. The only confirmed attacks were phishing campaigns that weaponized AI brand names as lures, while developer coding agents spawning shells and reading credential stores routinely tripped detections written before AI agents existed.
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Zombie Card Attack Can Revive Expired Visa Cards for Contactless Payments
UMass Amherst researchers demonstrate Zombie Card, an NFC relay attack that revives expired Visa contactless cards for in-store purchases without breaking cryptography.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst presented the Zombie Card attack at USENIX Security 2026, showing that Visa's Kernel 3 does not cryptographically bind the Application Expiration Date (tag 5F24) the terminal reads with the Track 2 expiry seen by the issuer. By positioning an NFC man-in-the-middle relay, an attacker can rewrite the terminal-facing expiration date of an expired card and complete contactless purchases, provided the account remains open under the same PAN and the bank does not independently re-check expiry. Testing across five major US banks found three distinct policies; Visa Kernel 3 accepted the modified date, while Mastercard, American Express, and Discover kernels declined modified transactions. Findings were disclosed to Visa and affected banks in May 2025, no CVE has been assigned, and no exploitation has been reported.
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Hacking Public Wi-Fi DNS to Steal Credentials
Attackers can hijack public Wi-Fi DNS to redirect users to credential-stealing fake login pages; commenters debate HTTPS limits and mitigations like encrypted DNS.
The discussion examines how an attacker controlling DNS on shared or public Wi-Fi networks can redirect requests for legitimate services to attacker-controlled servers to steal credentials. Commenters analyze whether HTTPS and certificates mitigate the attack, noting attackers often rely on HTTP or browser trust quirks. Suggested defenses include encrypted DNS (DoH), DNSSEC, and travel routers running OpenWRT. No specific campaign, victims, or indicators are provided.
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Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
Apple introduces Reference Image, hardware-backed verifiable photography on iPhone 18 Pro using sensor signing and Private Cloud Compute to counter AI-generated fakes.
Apple announced Reference Image, an opt-in camera mode debuting on the main sensor of iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that produces securely timestamped, verifiable photographs. The design splits into two phases: a secure digital negative created by cryptographically signing pixel data at the sensor immediately after capture (preventing injection or tampering), then developing that negative into a reference image. Private Cloud Compute handles processing without exposing image contents to anyone, including Apple, and fraudulent reference images can be revoked without revealing the photographer's identity. Apple positions the system as stronger than C2PA-based approaches, which sign metadata after capture, are vulnerable to editing-chain compromise, and can tie images to a device or individual.
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Trends in Web Threats: Attackers Were More Active During Holiday Season
Unit 42 tracked 533,000 malicious landing URL incidents from October-December 2021, showing web threats peaked during the holiday shopping season.
Unit 42 detected 533,452 malicious landing URL incidents (120,753 unique) and 2,906,875 malicious host URL incidents (165,255 unique) from October through December 2021. Threat activity peaked in November, likely tied to Black Friday in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. Most malicious domains appeared to originate in the United States, followed by Russia and Germany. Personal sites, blogs, business sites, and shopping sites were the most common apparently benign entry points for attacks.
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Automobile Camouflage to Hide from Flock Cameras
Schneier on Security highlights a printed vehicle-camouflage pattern tested to defeat Flock surveillance cameras and Axon body cameras.
The post discusses covering cars with printed patterns designed to fool Flock automated license-plate recognition software, with testing reportedly done against Flock and Axon body cameras. Reader comments question effectiveness against other ALPR vendors, Flock's RF MAC-address upgrade, and whether such camouflage might become regulated. The page also contains off-topic comment threads about anti-bot over-blocking and privacy.
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Introducing Unit 42’s Attribution Framework
Unit 42 releases its Attribution Framework, a systematic method using Diamond Model and Admiralty scores to attribute activity clusters to named threat actors.
Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 introduced a structured framework for threat actor attribution built on the Diamond Model of Intrusion Analysis and Admiralty reliability/credibility scoring. The framework tracks activity at three levels: activity clusters (named CL-STA, CL-CRI, CL-UNK, or CL-MIX), temporary threat groups, and named threat actors using the constellation naming schema. Analysts score evidence across TTPs, tooling, malware code, OPSEC, infrastructure, timelines, and victimology to decide when to merge or elevate clusters, avoiding premature group naming.
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