Developer Matt Callaghan claims he caught Alibaba trying to track web users by playing sounds through browsers vulnerable to audio fingerprinting. The software engineer drew attention to the issue late last week after investigating why his Bluetooth headphones stopped playing music whenever he visited Alibaba's website. “Recently I ran into a strange problem with my Bluetooth headphones,” Callaghan wrote. “They support multipoint Bluetooth audio, so they can be connected to my PC and phone at the same time. Normally, the PC takes priority playing audio, with my phone being able to play audio when nothing is playing on the PC. “Usually I listen to music on my phone but with notifications or YouTube playing through the PC, this works reliably until I open an AliExpress page in Firefox or Chrome. “Shortly after loading the AliExpress homepage, audio from my phone would stop playing. Closing the AliExpress tab fixes it immediately. Muting the tab/Firefox/Windows does not help, and there is no visible video, music, or other media playing on the page.” Callaghan tried to find any hidden conventional media elements but found nothing. Further digging revealed two audio scripts that he said were “extremely obfuscated” within Alibaba’s browser security and anti-abuse tooling. He said the scripts built a WebAudio graph that introduced a sawtooth oscillator to generate a waveform, an analyzer to measure the result after the waveform passes through a browser’s audio implementation, and a script to read the associated frequency data. The scripts set the audio’s gain to zero, meaning the end user won’t hear anything, but the WebAudio graph will still be processed by the browser. “This is very different from an autoplaying video,” said Callaghan. “There is no media element for the browser's normal tab mute control to stop. As far as the page is concerned, it is performing live audio processing. “In my case, that appears to have been enough for Firefox or Windows to keep the Bluetooth audio path active, preventing my multipoint headphones from switching cleanly back to the phone.” Callaghan found further evidence in the code of Alibaba looking for data related to screen dimensions, device memory, browser plugins, WebGL rendering, mouse events, and more. As well as signs that Alibaba is encrypting data and sending it to its telemetry services, the developer said all of it amounts to “a fairly comprehensive browser and device fingerprint.” The Register has asked Alibaba to comment. Despite Callaghan saying he could reliably reproduce this issue on both Firefox and Chrome, Firefox issued a Xtatement saying its anti-fingerprinting technology thwarts Alibaba’s tracking tricks. It pointed to a blog post from Tom Ritter, a security engineer on the Firefox team, who explained that as of version 118 (September 2023), the protections it introduced eliminated the efficacy of WebAudio-based fingerprinting. These protections are not designed to stifle fingerprinting efforts at the source. Instead, they work to group all users together, making it look like all fingerprinted users are the same, effectively nullifying the tracking attempts. For 99.24 percent of users, they fall into one of three “buckets” – user categories delineated by types of hardware. The vast majority fall into buckets one and two: Bucket one: x86/x64 CPUs lacking FMA (Fused Multiply-Add) instructions Bucket 2: x64 CPUs with FMA instructions And for the remaining 0.76 percent, the fingerprinting script failed entirely, according to Firefox’s data. However, Ritter said there are 48 users worldwide who do not fall into the three buckets, or the 0.76 percent whose machines did not allow the scripts to run. These 48 users fell into 23 other minuscule buckets, which means they are not grouped into the masses like the rest, and so fingerprinting is more effective on this vast minority of users. “This is very unfortunate, as it makes these users completely unique, but it is also not terribly unusual - computers are weird and these results could have been caused by bad RAM, a CPU bug, or possibly some crazy architecture (LoongArch??),” said Ritter. “But at the end of the day, WebAudio fingerprinting is nearly useless. I don't expect browser fingerprinting to disappear from websites entirely (unless some regulatory action occurs, fingers crossed) - it's still going to be effective against a majority of users on the web, but at least for privacy-focused browsers, it should be wildly less effective.” Brave, maker of the eponymous privacy-centric browser, also Xeeted a response to Calalghan’s findings, saying it has protected users from fingerprinting for six years. “Brave injects random data into the browser's output so you show a different fingerprint to different sites. This fingerprint also resets across sessions. “For added protection, we also block the specific scripts used by AliExpress for the tracking method mentioned above. Again, this is done by default for all Brave users. You don't have to change any settings to be shielded from this audio fingerprinting.” Ritter said Chrome and Safari “probably have defenses against this [brand of fingerprinting].” Safari deploys Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection to prevent WebAudio-based tracking and other methods of fingerprinting. It works differently to Firefox, though, injecting audio errors into an audio buffer, instead of trying to lump all users into an identical bucket. Chrome, on the other hand, does not aggressively protect users from fingerprinting, as privacy consultant Alexander Hanff said earlier in the year. "There are at least thirty distinct fingerprinting techniques that work in Chrome right now, today, as you read this," he wrote. "Not theoretical attacks from academic papers that might work under laboratory conditions – real, production techniques deployed on millions of websites to identify and track you without your knowledge or consent." ®

Are you sick and tired of maintaining a password manager? Struggling with choosing the right one for you? Well, readers who live Down Under can get themselves down to their local AusPost branch where they can pick up an old-school alternative for just AU$4.90 (US$3.51). Password books are something of a historical relic, phased out largely because of the scrutiny associated with using one and the now-gray-haired elders who once scoffed at the mere notion of such an opsec crime. They might not be able to suggest a strong password for each of your many online accounts, and they won’t do you much good if your house is burgled, but you could argue that there is still value to be found in a pen-and-paper password vault. That’s exactly the conclusion drawn by the thousands of social media users who flocked to a post this week from one Australian who found stacks of password books for sale in their local post office. Small books are priced at AU$4.90 (US$3.51), while larger options will set you back a dollar extra. Granted, there are myriad issues associated with relying on a physical document for digital account security. For one, it’s a single point of failure. Lose the book or have it stolen, and it’s a painful road to restoring access to all your accounts. One could argue that if it’s kept inside the home and it’s stolen, then you’ve got bigger problems on your hands, but perhaps that’s not as true nowadays, when so many of our valuables are either stored or primarily accessed online. That said, it might bring a quick end to a hostage scenario – the type that is becoming all the more common as crypto wealth becomes increasingly common. Password books are also not as easily manageable as a modern password manager. The technological equivalent can auto-fill credentials, auto-update them if they’re found in public breaches, and suggest unique, strong strings to minimize the risk of compromise. You can’t store a passkey in a password book, either – a major issue now that the world is transitioning toward the new authentication standard. But using a password book no longer carries the same stigma as it once did among infosec types. The general consensus, gleaned from the hundreds of social media comments on the post, now seems to be that there's little wrong with storing passwords on paper at home. It’s certainly more secure than reusing the same weak password across multiple accounts, provided the book contains strong strings unique to each website. With the prevalence of infostealers nowadays, it's far more likely that crims will use a weak, reused, seldom-changed password to break into an online account than burgle a house to gain access to someone’s online banking. Plus, as many pointed out, it’s a much better route than writing passwords in a cloud document, which can be accessed by any device that has access to it – think Apple Notes, Google Docs, etc. At work, though, it’s probably best to stick to the password manager, the IT guys say. Mistakes by staff working at even the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder could lead to multimillion-dollar cyberattacks should that password book fall into the wrong hands. Pentesting consultants often send hired white hats to breach a company’s office and extract whatever value they can, sometimes through piss corridors. Such access can lead to malicious USB sticks dropping malware, bugs planted near the water fountain, and even someone stealing the password book from your desk drawer. Don’t believe it’s real? Security consultant Alethe Denis told us two years ago that’s exactly how her pentest team was able to surreptitiously extract corporate data over a company’s own Wi-Fi for over a week. They went dumpster diving, got the Wi-Fi creds, walked straight into a conference room, and deployed a data-stealing implant. In and out, all using physically stolen secrets. Helpful in the worst of times So, yes, password books contain plenty of potential pitfalls, Poignantly, however, they often prove invaluable in the event of a loved one’s passing. Having access to a password book, or at least some sort of plan to share passwords in the event of a death, is vital to ensuring family and friends have space to grieve without going through the arduous process of recovering an account through a platform provider, or via the courts. A slew of Redditors agreed, saying it made the whole process so much easier. One shared the tale of how their mother’s own special way of storing passwords resulted in a treasured family investigation. After password books spent years as outcasts of the cybersecurity world, they’re now having a second moment in the sun. And while the leading minds in cybersecurity are busy working on ways to stop phisherfolk from hacking into your accounts, or rogue AI agents from doing the same, there’s still something to celebrate in the safeguards of yesteryear, both in life and death. ®

AI agents excel at hacking organizations, as they’ve demonstrated in real-life attacks multiple times over the past few weeks. They also expose a whole new attack surface for organizations trying to protect against both human and AI intrusions. As if defenders needed more worries to keep them up at night, agents introduce new data-integration channels that attackers can abuse. They also introduce a new type – and ever growing number – of non-human identities that are difficult to manage and can bypass traditional, static security policies. “There is tremendous risk associated with agentic AI and machine identities,” Matt Hartman, former acting head of cyber of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told The Register. “As AI moves from generating content – yesterday's use case – to taking actions, it is inevitable that agents are going to receive access to sensitive systems and sensitive data,” Hartman said. “One area where organizations are struggling today is that they're going to need to treat every agent as a privileged identity.” Enterprises also face agentic threats from outside their organization, he added. “AI-enabled or AI-amplified identity and social engineering attacks are increasing significantly by the minute,” Hartman said. “We're seeing very highly personalized phishing, very good impersonation, automated reconnaissance. That really makes traditional indicators of trust increasingly unreliable.” For defenders, this means a “continued focus on strong identity, on phishing-resistant authentication, on behavioral signals, and on zero-trust principles therein,” he added. “Nothing deeply new here - but it is a whole new attack surface.” Meanwhile, on the attackers’ side, agents don’t take time off, and they remain singularly focused on completing a task, whether that’s finding vulnerabilities and exploit chains or mapping networks and identifying sensitive files. All of this makes these near-autonomous attack bots a gift from the heavens for financially motivated criminals and government-backed cyber operatives. It also presents a security use case for defenders: agentic red teaming. As former NSA cyber boss Rob Joyce said during a talk at RSAC: if you aren’t using AI agents to attack your own organizations, you can bet that someone else is. “You are going to be red-teamed whether you pay for it or not,” Joyce said. “The only difference is, you know who gets the results delivered to them.” Hartman echoed Joyce’s words. “What we are seeing as the leading capabilities to help defenders – there is a burgeoning market for continuous, AI-native, AI-enabled, automated red teaming and pen-testing,” he told us. After spending nearly two decades in the federal government at CISA, Hartman joined Merlin Group in October as its chief strategy officer. In his new private-sector role, he helps determine which early- to growth-stage cybersecurity and emerging technology companies the group invests in, and then works with these firms to navigate government, critical infrastructure, and other highly regulated markets. The goal is to integrate and scale “promising technologies” into critical environments, Hartman said. Right now, most of these technologies use AI agents to fight AI agents. “Organizations are just inundated with vulnerabilities, and adversaries are able to leverage AI to find vulnerabilities and exploit them in seconds when it used to take days,” he said. Agentic red teaming “is a category of products that every organization, including federal agencies, absolutely needs in the near term just to keep pace.” 'Largest controlled live AI cyberattack on record' Mandiant founder and former CEO Kevin Mandia has a new company, Armadin, which launched in March with a startling $190 million in seed and Series A funding. The firm builds and trains autonomous attacker swarms – thousands of AI agents that run 24/7 in organizations’ infrastructure to simulate real-life attackers. Ahead of Black Hat earlier this month, the startup said it and Tenex.ai, an agentic security operations provider, executed what they called the “largest controlled live AI cyberattack on record” for an unnamed “leading” global institution. Over the three-day attack, Armadin's swarm generated 17 million offensive actions, discovered 38 validated attack paths, and produced 238 security findings. Tenex.ai's agentic platform separately triaged 100 percent of 101,169 alerts and reconstructed the entire attack across 231 billion raw events. This exercise, we’re told, would have taken a five-person analyst team about 2,400 hours – or four months – to pull off. Co-founder and Chief Offensive Security Officer Evan Peña was the global red-team lead at Mandiant before co-founding Armadin. At Mandiant, he led a 210-person team whose members spanned the globe. “The problem was it was 100 percent human-led security assessments, and that would generally limit the amount of time that we would have,” Peña told The Register. His red team “would do a couple weeks or a one-month engagement, and then we would report on the engagement, give them a PDF file, walk away, and they would hire us again in a year. In today’s age of AI, it’s very archaic to think about that when we can scale so significantly with AI.” Attack yourself before someone else does At Armadin, Peña leads the human team that trains the AI agents. One of the lessons learned from OpenAI’s models autonomously attacking Hugging Face, according to Peña, is that organizations need to perform safe offensive AI attacks against their own systems. "Safe" is the keyword here: remember OpenAI’s rogue models intentionally didn’t have any guardrails in place. Yes, his statement is self-serving as it's core to Armadin's business. But he’s not wrong. “Organizations can cover so much more attack surface because we are able to leverage these agents at scale, and we have three things that we didn’t have before,” he said. “We have more time, because agents don’t sleep and they don’t take holidays. There’s no workforce requirements for them.” Number two, he said, is expertise. Attack agents need pre-training before they are set loose on organizations’ infrastructure. They need to know how to code, and perform source-code review. They need to know how to do application security, how to spot network misconfigurations, and hack into different systems and networks. “And then you add post-training to that from human expertise,” Peña said. “Number three is coverage,” he said. “We were only able to cover a finite amount of attack surface in the past. So if you had 10,000 external systems with a limited amount of time and humans, you could maybe cover 2,000 or 1,000 of those within that particular period of time. Now we can cover all 10,000 in probably hours.” Armadin’s AI agents have broken into every single customer’s environment, according to Peña. “We have found over 50 zero-days, and by zero-days, I don't just mean this zero-day allowed you to deface a web page. That’s cool, but I want to break into your network from the internet,” he said. “The zero-days I'm referring to allow an attacker to get remote code execution on an actual system. They're very high-impact zero-days. We don't care about noise, we care about impact.” Quarterly pen-testing doesn't cut it anymore The biggest challenge these days for defenders is the scale and speed AI brings to previously manual attackers’ dirty work – like scoping potential victims, performing reconnaissance, identifying vulnerable systems and exploits, and reading logs. Now all of these tasks can be automated. Penetration testing needs to keep up, Jay Bavisi, founder and group president of EC-Council, told The Register. The largest and best organizations do pen-testing once a year to meet compliance requirements, and “the better ones” run these exercises quarterly, Bavisi said. This is largely because human-led pen-tests take about three months. “So you have a serious problem with speed,” he said in an interview. “Then comes the second problem, which is scope. Nobody pen tests the entire organization.” There’s also what Bavisi calls a “sophistication problem,” because different human pen-testers will produce varied results, and organizations can’t hire hundreds of thousands of humans to try to break into their networks on a continuous basis. “The bad guys are already using AI to get rid of the speed problem. You pen-test once a year for compliance. They do it all the time because you're a gold mine. They don't have a scope problem because they're not just looking at the crown jewels - they're looking at your entire organization. And they don't have a sophistication problem because they're using algorithmic systems.” In June, the global cybersecurity training organization began offering pen-testing professionals a sponsored attempt to take the CPENT AI examination, and upskill themselves for the AI era. For every participant who passes, the council donates $1,000 in cybersecurity training and certification credits to nonprofit partners. For every completed training program, regardless of an exam pass or fail, the nonprofits get $250, and all of this has a $1 million max. “The traditional model of pen-testing once a year or once a quarter, that’s going away, and AI will take over with automated pen-testing,” Bavisi said. “But will the role of pen testers vanish? No, it will not. It will evolve into something much bigger and something far more important.” AI systems and AI-integrated applications mean there’s a lot more for security professionals to try to break and break into, and humans need to determine: What is the result of this system breaking? What’s the business impact? What do I prioritize fixing? “The present pen-testers have to be reskilled into understanding business impact and being able to make those important engineering decisions,” Bavisi said. Meanwhile, “offensive AI security professionals are the ones that are going to have to test the robustness of AI systems, because AI systems will become the heartbeat of organizations,” he added. “Pen-testers have to become masters of testing LLMs, understanding agentic behavior, thinking about what is the harm taxonomy, figuring out what kind of guardrails did we put in place.” The job of pen-testers has changed, in other words. “It now has a far wider scope.” ®