stopped now that they have been caught.

The details are interesting, and worth reading in detail:

Tracking code that Meta and Russia-based Yandex embed into millions of websites
is de-anonymizing visitors by abusing legitimate Internet protocols, causing
Chrome and other browsers to surreptitiously send unique identifiers to native
apps installed on a device, researchers have discovered. Google says itΓÇÖs
investigating the abuse, which allows Meta and Yandex to convert ephemeral web
identifiers into persistent mobile app user identities.

The covert tracking -- implemented in the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica trackers
-- allows Meta and Yandex to bypass core security and privacy protections
provided by both the Android operating system and browsers that run on it.
Android sandboxing, for instance, isolates processes to prevent them from
interacting with the OS and any other app installed on the device, cutting off
access to sensitive data or privileged system resources. Defenses such as state
partitioning and storage partitioning, which are built into all major browsers,
store site cookies and other data associated with a website in containers that
are unique to every top-level website domain to ensure theyΓÇÖre off-limits for
every other site.

Washington Post article.

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Airlines Secretly Selling Passenger Data to the Government

[2025.06.12] This is news:

A data broker owned by the countryΓÇÖs major airlines, including Delta, American
Airlines, and United, collected U.S. travellersΓÇÖ domestic flight records, sold
access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the
contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal
CBP documents obtained by 404 Media. The data includes passenger names, their
full flight itineraries, and financial details.

Another article.

EDITED TO ADD (6/14): Ed Hausbrook reported this a month and a half ago.

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Paragon Spyware Used to Spy on European Journalists

[2025.06.13] Paragon is an Israeli spyware company, increasingly in the news
(now that NSO Group seems to be waning). ΓÇ£GraphiteΓÇ¥ is the name of its
product. Citizen Lab caught it spying on multiple European journalists with a
zero-click iOS exploit:

On April 29, 2025, a select group of iOS users were notified by Apple that they
were targeted with advanced spyware. Among the group were two journalists that
consented for the technical analysis of their cases. The key findings from our
forensic analysis of their devices are summarized below:

Our analysis finds forensic evidence confirming with high confidence that both a
prominent European journalist (who requests anonymity), and Italian journalist
Ciro Pellegrino, were targeted with ParagonΓÇÖs Graphite mercenary spyware.
We identify an indicator linking both cases to the same Paragon operator. Apple
confirms to us that the zero-click attack deployed in these cases was mitigated
as of iOS 18.3.1 and has assigned the vulnerability CVE-2025-43200. Our analysis
is ongoing.

The list of confirmed Italian cases is in the reportΓÇÖs appendix. Italy has
recently admitted to using the spyware.

TechCrunch article. Slashdot thread.

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Upcoming Speaking Engagements

[2025.06.14] This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:

IΓÇÖm speaking at the International Conference on Digital Trust, AI and the
Future in Edinburgh, Scotland on Tuesday, June 24 at 4:00 PM. The list is
maintained on this page.

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Since 1998, CRYPTO-GRAM has been a free monthly newsletter providing summaries,
analyses, insights, and commentaries on security technology. To subscribe, or to
read back issues, see Crypto-Gram's web page.

You can also read these articles on my blog, Schneier on Security.

Please feel free to forward CRYPTO-GRAM, in whole or in part, to colleagues and
friends who will find it valuable. Permission is also granted to reprint
CRYPTO-GRAM, as long as it is reprinted in its entirety.

Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a
security guru by the Economist. He is the author of over one dozen books --
including his latest, A HackerΓÇÖs Mind -- as well as hundreds of articles,
essays, and academic papers. His newsletter and blog are read by over 250,000
people. Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard University; a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy
School; a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AccessNow, and the
Tor Project; and an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the Chief of Security Architecture at
Inrupt, Inc.

Copyright © 2025 by Bruce Schneier.

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