What I Am Reading 9/17/2020 - Cryptography is Hard

 BBC - Revenge porn 'new normal' after cases surge in lockdown -

There has been a surge in reports of revenge porn this year, with campaigners saying the problem has been exacerbated by lockdown.

Around 2,050 reports have been made to a government-funded helpline, a 22% rise from last year.

As cases have remained high despite coronavirus restrictions easing, those that run the service fear this is "the new normal."

Al-Jazeera - As Europe's China scepticism grows, a glimmer of hope for Taiwan -

The pandemic brought to light the differences in Taiwan and China's political systems: Critics accuse China of suppressing news of the disease when it was first detected in the city of Wuhan, thereby allowing the virus to spread across borders, but Taiwan won plaudits for mobilising quickly, closing its borders and setting in place a stringent quarantine and testing system – moves that have kept the island's COVID-19 cases below 500 and fatalities at just seven.

"The COVID crisis has really put Taiwan in a very positive light. There have never been that many discussions on Taiwan in the European media," Duchatel said. "It's amazing how people talk about Taiwan, not for Cross-Strait relations and security; they talk about Taiwan as a successful model of effective democratic governance to manage such a huge public health crisis. The contrast is this creates space for Taiwan."

Sophos - Zerologon – hacking Windows servers with a bunch of zeros -

Nevertheless, Zerologon is a fascinating story that reminds us all of two very important lessons, namely that:

1. Cryptography is hard to get right.
2. Cryptographic blunders can take years to spot.

The gory details of the bug weren’t disclosed by Microsoft back in August 2020, but researchers at Dutch cybersecurity company Secura dug into the affected Windows component, Netlogon, and figured out a bunch of serious cryptographic holes in the unpatched version, and how to exploit them.