Kenn White

Graph of current local forecast, showing temperature of 2°F that feels like -5°F with the wind chill

Stay safe out there friends. You can find me bundled under thick blankets enjoying a nice piping hot bowl of soup and tea.

~this week in security~ a weekly cybersecurity newsletter by Zack Whittaker, plus articles and more.

Want to catch up with this week's top cyber news? Sign up (or RSS) for my newsletter this.weekinsecurity.com, which has:

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🐈‍⬛ a reader-submitted cyber-cat
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Out Sundays!

This weekend for snowmageddon I'm giving a try at this yummy dish:
www.vincenzosplate.com/pasta-with-c...

youtu.be/R3HQr5Dhmfc?...

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the OG: “This is the updated recipe for real Bolognese sauce, filed on 17 October 1982 by the Bolognese delegation of the Italian Academy of Cuisine at the Bologna Chamber of Commerce. Category: Sauces”. Had to do some translation tweaking, but it was very good 🙂

And therein lies the rub:
“Users [can] store those keys on a device they own, but MSFT recommends BitLocker users store their keys on its servers for convenience. While that means someone can access their data if they forget their pwd…it…makes them vulnerable to law enforcement subpoenas & warrants”

Microsoft Gave FBI BitLocker Encryption Keys, Exposing Privacy Flaw The tech giant said providing encryption keys was a standard response to a court order. But companies like Apple and Meta set up their systems so such a privacy violation isn’t possible.

Microsoft is handing over Bitlocker keys to law enforcement. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

ICE detained a 2-year-old girl in Minneapolis and put the child on a flight to a detention center in Texas, despite a court ordering her release: www.startribune.com/agents-detai...

US Judge Rules ICE Raids Require Judicial Warrants, Contradicting Secret ICE Memo The ruling in federal court in Minnesota lands as Immigration and Customs Enforcement faces scrutiny over an internal memo claiming judge-signed warrants aren’t needed to enter homes without consent.

NEW: A federal court ruling in Minnesota, which notes ICE agents broke the Fourth Amendment by entering a family's home sans warrant, lands as ICE faces scrutiny over a secret memo claiming their agents can enter homes w/ administrative paperwork alone.

Giant Saint Bernard sitting on a patio couch looking up with a happy tongue wag. The grass and trees in the background suggest a spring or summer season. (Photo was taken August 2025)

Popped up today on my phone. Sebastian says hey.

it's always so strange that Ben Affleck is a well-spoken, erudite person because every other aspect of his personality seems like the only words out of his mouth should be slurs muttered through broken teeth

ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering A look at how I used shape vectors to achieve sharp, high-quality ASCII rendering.

This is a perfect piece of technical writing. alexharri.com/blog/ascii-r...

With each successive paragraph I think my jaw dropped slightly more agape than before. I love passion projects like this in the general case, but when I got to the part about GPU acceleration, I was *gobsmacked*. I mean the amount of time and dedication this guy showed… just wow. Great piece.

This is a great explainer to lawyers (or otherwise curious people) on what quantum computing is and is not. Via my colleague @aumasson.jp, a prolific cryptographer and advisor to some of the largest banks in the world.

AI is reshaping persuasion and content generation by scale. LLMs can flood recipients with plausible, evidence-flavored claims. Accuracy appears to matter less than information density. Experiments show short chats shift vote intent. www.kcl.ac.uk/weaponising-ai

This piece by @lukaszolejnik.bsky.social is worth a read. Insightful perspective on the current landscape of "continuous campaigns" and the sophisticated AI tools that rival political campaigns (and nation states) are using to carry out influence operations.

On cold wintry nights like tonight, a hearty piping hot batch of Colombian chicken stew hits the spot.

Tesla loses title as world's biggest electric vehicle maker as sales fall for second year in a row Tesla lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker on Friday as a customer revolt over Elon Musk’s right-wing politics and stiff overseas competition pushed sales down for a second year in a row.

BREAKING: Tesla loses its crown as the world's bestselling electric vehicle maker to Chinese rival BYD as sales fall for a second year in a row.

Mekka didn't just call this years ago, he's been reminding us every year. BYD and other major Chinese car brands embraced electric *decades* ago, and the market there for both luxury & budget EV vehicles continues to innovate and is highly competitive. You don't see any silly cybertrucks there.

Meanwhile in Nova Scotia

Great post by Mark Dastmalchi-Round. I too have a love/hate relationship (mostly hate) with middleboxes/TLS inspection and the bad security practices we're training our users to follow.

www.markround.com/blog/2025/12...

I don't love that birth date is now required to use the app. Wonder if anyone will notice the unusual frequency of Jan 1, 1970.

Internships in MPC available, for both recent PhD graduates and current PhD students...

mpcinthewild.github.io

This is a project funded by the Zama Cryptanalysis Grant program

Great post: “[T]his makes our job predicting the future of which [cryptographic] algorithm is likely to break and which ones are likely to last, very, very hard. We are not looking at nice, predictable trends, but instead are mostly looking at a process that jumps in huge steps every few decades.”

COVID Vaccines Slashed Kids’ ER Visits by 76 Percent, Study Finds A report published by the CDC reaffirms the effectiveness of COVID vaccines at preventing severe disease in children

COVID Vaccines Slashed Kids’ ER Visits by 76 Percent, Study Finds www.scientificamerican.com/article/covi...

As Key Talent Abandons Apple, Meet the New Generation of Leaders Taking On the Old Guard With “hardware guy” John Ternus as front-runner for the next CEO, can Apple overtake its ex-employees at OpenAI and Meta?

Mass exodus of veteran senior leaders at Apple, including Jony Ive and the creators of many major products, over to OpenAI. Also, Tim Cook is rumored to be retiring soon, with his successor to be 25-year veteran John Ternus who currently reports to Cook.

This thread is eye opening and hysterical. AI is still in its infancy when it comes to security and safety.

Banning TP-Link won't save America from its own terrible cybersecurity TP-Link routers face a ban in the U.S. over the company's alleged links to China, but shoddy cybersecurity is the real insider threat to the United States.

New, by me at this.weekinsecurity.com: Router maker TP-Link faces a potential U.S.-wide ban over its alleged links to China.

In my latest analysis, I dive into why a TP-Link ban is unlikely to make America meaningfully safer from Chinese cyberthreats (or anywhere).

Please share!

From the Satisfyingasfuck community on Reddit: Restoring a rusty antique game Explore this post and more from the Satisfyingasfuck community

One of the coolest videos I've seen in a while. v.redd.it/porl3bihlh3g1

Adult St Bernard lounging in the backseat of a car, happy tongue showing

Sebastian says happy Tuesday