Recent articles
October 16, 2026
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Before the Chicxulub Meteor Impact
New research shows that squid lived all around the globe even before the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in...
www.schneier.com
October 16, 2026
Backdooring Open-Weight AI Models
This is a problem:
Any open model whose weights have been edited can carry a backdoor, whether it’s a task-specific fine-tune, a merged adapter or an abliterated build. We have abliterated models i...
www.schneier.com
October 15, 2026
Measuring Human Cryptanalysis Effort
Matthew Green has a new site that tries to estimate the number of cryptanalyst-hours that have been spent analyzing different public-key algorithms:
Abstract: We estimate how much public cryptanaly...
www.schneier.com
October 14, 2026
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
I’m speaking at ATTENTION: Democracy, Rebuilt in Montreal, Canada. The event runs October 21–23, 2026, and my talk is on Wednesday...
www.schneier.com
October 14, 2026
The Future of AI Cryptanalysis
Matthew Green has been writing a rather pessimistic series of posts about the potential for AI systems to vastly outperform humans in cryptanalysis of both symmetric and public-key ciphers.
I am mo...
www.schneier.com
October 14, 2026
Cyberattack on Connected Fridges in France
Another IoT cyberattack, this one in France:
Hackers gained control of the software that regulates the temperatures of the refrigeration units, forcing some to warm to 50C (120F) overnight, accordi...
www.schneier.com
October 12, 2026
FBI Arrests Suspect in FBI-Hacking Case
In September, hackers from a group called ShinyHunters announced that they stole a trove of FBI data about its own agents. It was an intelligence disaster.
Last week, the FBI arrested (alternate li...
www.schneier.com
October 8, 2026
How Technology Empowers—and Imperils—Dictators
This essay was written with Seva Gunitsky, and originally appeared in Foreign Affairs.
Two weeks after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, the Russian TV Channel One editor Marin...
www.schneier.com
October 7, 2026
Apple’s Verified Photography System
Apple just released a system called “Reference Image.” It can verify the image is exactly as taken by an iPhone—new models only—without tying it to a specific iPhone or photographer. It can also ve...
www.schneier.com
October 6, 2026
Possible Vulnerability in Apple’s Automatic Reboot
404Media is reporting (alternate link) that a cyber-weapons arms manufacturer is exploiting a vulnerability in iOS to bypass its automatic reboot security feature. This is the feature that automati...
www.schneier.com
October 5, 2026
Another Historic Cipher Falls to AI
This one is from 1809, written by Napoleon’s nephew.
www.schneier.com
October 2, 2026
Friday Squid Blogging: EU is Trying to Fight Unregulated Squid Fishing
The EU is recommending import controls to combat unregulated squid fishing in the Southwest Atlantic. I’m not optimistic.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stori...
www.schneier.com
October 2, 2026
Unidentified Flock Cameras in Florida
St. Lucie County in Florida discovered (alt link) a dozen Flock cameras whose ownership it can’t identify, and that the county government had not permitted.
I am reminded of the decade-old story of...
www.schneier.com
October 2, 2026
How American Political Campaigns Are Using AI—and What They’re Spending on the Tools
This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian.
New campaign finance disclosure data shines a light on which US political campaigns are using AI tools and ho...
www.schneier.com
October 1, 2026
Connected Cars Are a Surveillance Platform
Researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with Consumer Reports, evaluated how much modern cars spy in their drivers:
To determine this, CR dug through thousands of pages of automake...
www.schneier.com
September 30, 2026
I Want Better Reporting on AI Genie Behavior
AI systems are regularly completing tasks in ways that their prompters don’t want or intend. Some of them are disturbing, and some of them are dangerous. This is something I’ve been calling “genie ...
www.schneier.com
September 29, 2026
Using Device Linking to Eavesdrop on WhatsApp and Signal
Modern messaging apps allow users to link their phone accounts to their computer desktop. Eavesdroppers are taking advantage of this capability:
Apps such as WhatsApp Web and Signal Desktop allow p...
www.schneier.com
September 28, 2026
New Attack Against RSA
ArsTechnica is reporting on a “new” attack against RSA, one that bypasses factoring.
First, this attack isn’t new. The original research is from 2007. What is new is the implementation.
Second, it ...
www.schneier.com
September 25, 2026
Friday Squid Blogging: Participatory Squid Dissection in October in Tennessee
I feel like someone who reads this blog will want to go to this:
Families are invited to dive into the fascinating world of marine biology during an exciting, hands-on Family Squid Dissection at th...
www.schneier.com
September 25, 2026
On Anthropic’s AI Misuse Report
Earlier this month, Anthropic published a long report detailing all of the Claude misuses it detected. Daniel Meissler usefully summarized the report into 117 findings.
A few of the highlights:
AI...
www.schneier.com
September 24, 2026
Malicious npm Packages That Evade Defenses
This is an impressive piece of malware. Its sophistication says nation-state to me, but there is no direct evidence and certainly no attribution.
www.schneier.com
September 23, 2026
Research on Models Engaging in Genie-Like Behavior
New paper: “Self-Jailbreaking: Language Models Can Reason Themselves Out of Safety Alignment After Benign Reasoning Training.”
Abstract: We discover a novel and surprising phenomenon of unintention...
www.schneier.com
September 22, 2026
GPT-6 Astra Breaks an Old Enigma Message
This is pretty amazing:
However, the most astonishing thing about this break is that the GPT6 Astra did it entirely on its own. Carter Leffer only directed GPT6 Astra to see if it could break any...
www.schneier.com
September 21, 2026
Reverse-Engineering Flock Cameras
Hackers captured a Flock camera and got a look (alternate link) at the software:
While much of the automatic license plate reader’s (ALPR) most sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible...
www.schneier.com
September 18, 2026
Friday Squid Blogging: On Squid Egg Sacs
Short essay about squid egg sacs.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Blog moderation policy.
www.schneier.com
September 18, 2026
Are AIs Still Struggling with CAPTCHAs?
Anthropic’s recent security-incident document contains a bit about how CAPTCHAs are still frustrating Claude.
In the transcript, the Claude model that is so powerful that Anthropic is gatekeeping a...
www.schneier.com
September 17, 2026
How Candidates Could Use AI for Good
This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian.
There are plenty of signs that AI will make all of our experiences of the US midterm elections worse. Voters ...
www.schneier.com
September 16, 2026
Fake CAPTCHA Scams
New variant of an old scam: Use the framing of a CAPTCHA to get an unsuspecting user to download and run a malicious program.
www.schneier.com
September 15, 2026
25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough
This essay was written with Cindy Cohn, and originally appeared in Lawfare.
One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is the government-wide shift from targeted surveillance—suc...
www.schneier.com
September 15, 2026
On the NSA’s Supercomputer from the 1960s
Really interesting story about Harvest, a specialized code breaking computer built in the 1960s by IBM for the NSA.
www.schneier.com