Andrew Orr's photo

Andrew Orr

Since 2015 Andrew has been writing about Apple, privacy, security, and at one point even Android. You can find him most places online under the username @andrewornot.

Get In Touch:

Articles by Andrew Orr

Link

IBM Releases Homomorphic Encryption Toolkit for iOS, macOS

Andrew Orr ·

IBM has released a toolkit for iOS and macOS to help developers to easily add homomorphic encryption into their programs.

While the technology holds great potential, it does require a significant shift in the security paradigm. Typically, inside the business logic of an application, data remains decrypted, Bergamaschi explained. But with the implementation of FHE, that’s no longer the case — meaning some functions and operations will change.

In other words, “There will be a need to rewrite parts of the business logic,” Bergamaschi said. “But the security that you gain with that, where the data is encrypted all the time, is very high.”

If you haven’t added homomorphic encryption to your technology watch list, be sure to do so. As I wrote in the past, this type of encryption lets a company perform computations on data while still keeping that data encrypted.

Link

UK Government Releases NHS COVID Contracts With Private Companies

Andrew Orr ·

Faced with pressure, the UK government has released its contracts with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Faculty, Palantir, and others.

The contracts show that companies involved in the NHS datastore project, including Faculty and Palantir, were originally granted intellectual property rights (including the creation of databases), and were allowed to train their models and profit off their unprecedented access to NHS data.

The REAL reason why they wanted to avoid Apple and Google’s privacy solution.

Link

Apple Streams ‘Just Mercy’ Film Starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx

Andrew Orr ·

Apple is making “Just Mercy” available to stream free for customers. Based on a true story, it stars Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.

The Warner Bros. film is based on a true-story of a young lawyer who decides to use his Harvard law degree in Alabama to fight against racial inequality in the context of those wrongly convicted of crimes (free streaming for “Just Mercy” may just be in the US).

A good film recommendation for the weekend.

‘CamTag’ is a set of Reusable Privacy Camera Stickers
Cool Stuff Found

‘CamTag’ is a set of Reusable Privacy Camera Stickers

Andrew Orr ·

CamTag is a set of reusable privacy camera stickers for your devices. These stickers are a way to make sure that you aren’t being spied upon by malicious third parties. These stickers are glue-free so you can reuse them on your iPhone, iPad, and Macs. They come in different designs and you can customize it with your own design or branding. It’s a Kickstarter campaign and it’s been fully funded. Estimated delivery is October 2020. Pledge US$9 or more to get the first reward tier, which gives you 25 privacy stickers in 5 sizes.

‘Mirage’ Helps You Detect Edited Photos Using Machine Learning
Cool Stuff Found

‘Mirage’ Helps You Detect Edited Photos Using Machine Learning

Andrew Orr ·

Mirage is a cool app I discovered today that uses machine learning to detect edited photos. Not only that, it can also undo the editing. However, it requires a face to be present in the photo, so it won’t work on any image. It’s based on this research paper [PDF]:

We present a method for detecting one very popular Photoshop manipulation – image warping applied to human faces – using a model trained entirely using fake images that were automatically generated by scripting Photoshop itself. We show that our model outperforms humans at the task of recognizing manipulated images, can pre- dict the specific location of edits, and in some cases can be used to “undo” a manipulation to reconstruct the original, unedited image.

App Store: Mirage – US$2.99

Link

Private Messenger ‘Signal’ Now Automatically Blurs Faces

Andrew Orr ·

Private messenger app Signal added a feature that lets it automatically blur faces in your images.

Thousands of people are protesting against police brutality and to support the Black Lives Matters cause. If you are a part of the protests, you might post photos of the demonstration around you on social media or send them to your friends — and that’s not entirely safe, because it could help identify people there and put them in danger.

A great feature. I’ve been trying to create a shortcut that can obfuscate faces.

Link

That Time Steve Jobs Taught Bill Atkinson About Rounded Rectangles

Andrew Orr ·

Here’s a humorous little story from Andy Hertzfeld, a member of Apple’s original Macintosh team. Bill Atkinson did some clever programming to draw circles and ovals quickly on a Mac. But Steve Jobs had something else in mind.

Bill fired up his demo and it quickly filled the Lisa screen with randomly-sized ovals, faster than you thought was possible. But something was bothering Steve Jobs. “Well, circles and ovals are good, but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners? Can we do that now, too?”

Link

How the ‘Untappd’ Beer App Was Used to Track Military, CIA Movements

Andrew Orr ·

Researchers were able to use beer rating app Untappd to track the location history of military and CIA personnel.

Examples of users that can be tracked this way include a U.S. drone pilot, along with a list of both domestic and overseas military bases he has visited, a naval officer, who checked in at the beach next to Guantanamo’s bay detention center as well as several times at the Pentagon, and a senior intelligence officer with over seven thousand check-ins, domestic and abroad. Senior officials at the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force are included as well.

Not even the CIA is safe against the data industrial complex.

Link

Security Researcher Believes Mac Backdoor ‘Tiny Shell” Still Being Used

Andrew Orr ·

Mac security researcher Jaron Bradley says he believes hackers are still using an open source macOS backdoor called “Tiny SHell.”

Tinyshell is an open source tool that operates like a shady version of SSH. It’s been a while since I’ve encountered a new sample, but I fully believe attackers are still out there using it. If you watched the Macdoored talk then you’ve seen what attackers are doing “post mortem” with this tool. However, no technical details have been discussed about the malware itself.