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UAE to play a key role in cryptographic hardness estimation

Mohammed Fahad

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September 12, 2023

UAE to play a key role in cryptographic hardness estimation

CryptographicEstimators addresses the need for a reliable point of access for concrete security estimates by consolidating existing estimators and providing the foundation for newly designed ones.
The library can also be easily extended by researchers to accommodate various other types of cryptographic assumptions.

UAE is set to play a key role as an important stakeholder in advancing the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) ecosystem with the establishment of world’s first open-source software library for cryptographic hardness estimation – CryptographicEstimators, including key exchange methods, public key encryption and signatures.

The Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a leading scientific research centre and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC) was the main pillar.

Today, cryptographic estimations are often performed in an ad-hoc manner, producing non-standardised estimation scripts that deliver varying outcomes for the same problems. This method posts an obstacle to reaching a consensus around the hardness of cryptographic problems.

Secure parametres

As TII’s latest contribution to cryptographic research and standardisation, CryptographicEstimators addresses the need for a reliable point of access for concrete security estimates by consolidating existing estimators and providing the foundation for newly designed ones.

This approach helps public key scheme designers select secure parameters and it supports cryptanalysts in assessing their findings against established benchmarks.

Moreover, unlike similar projects that only evaluate single classes of hardness assumptions, such as lattice-based assumptions, CryptographicEstimators aims at the full spectrum of post-quantum secure foundations, currently including multivariate and code-based problems, along with some of their variants.

The library can also be easily extended by researchers to accommodate various other types of cryptographic assumptions.

Dr. Najwa Aaraj, Chief Researcher at TII’s Cryptography Research Centre (CRC), said that the introduction of the CryptographicEstimators library is particularly important in this critical moment, amid the ongoing efforts of the American National Institute of Standard and Technologies (NIST) in standardising PQC.

“CryptographicEstimators, a unique cryptographic tool, positions TII as a prime mover in the PQC domain and solidifies the UAE’s role as an important stakeholder in advancing the PQC ecosystem.”

CryptographicEstimators complements TII’s other initiatives in the cryptography sphere, such as the TII-McEliece Challenges, the new digital signatures submitted to NIST, and the creation of the first PQC software library in the UAE, on top of ongoing research on PQC.

A pressing need

The estimation of the computational complexity of hard problems is essential for determining secure parameters for cryptographic systems.

To date, those estimations are often performed in an ad-hoc manner. This led to a scattered landscape of available estimation scripts, with multiple scripts for the same problem with varying outputs.

Overall, this complicates the task of reaching consensus on the hardness of cryptographic problems. Furthermore, for designers it makes it difficult to gather precise information on the concrete difficulty of the underlying problems.

Especially in the light of the still ongoing NIST PQC standardisation effort and the upcoming call for post-quantum secure digital signature schemes there is a pressing need for a reliable point of access for concrete security estimates.

The main goal of this library is to consolidate existing estimators, become established as a collaborative community project and, hence, be the basis for newly designed estimators.

CryptographicEstimators is available on the web (https://estimators.crypto.tii.ae/) and as an open-source software with a GPLv3 license (https://github.com/Crypto-TII/CryptographicEstimators).

Main contributions of the library:

Accessibility. The CryptographicEstimators library provides an essential tool for cryptographic system design. They serve as a single point of access for designers to obtain reliable estimates on the hardness of chosen parameters. For an even wider adaptation, a fully automated graphical user interface, accessible via a web application, is provided.

Dependencies. Dependencies between the hardness of problems can be modelled ideally in the CryptographicEstimators library. Already in the initial state, some included estimators use other estimators to obtain computational estimates for certain subroutines.

Consensus. Even if not all estimators’ initial states should reflect the consensus of the whole community, the collaborative nature of the project provides an ideal platform for consensus-building. Furthermore, the CryptographicEstimators library encourages open discussions and welcomes contributions from the wider community, which leads to further refined estimates and improved reliability.

Collaboration. The CryptographicEstimators library is the first project launched intentionally as a collaborative estimator project. The impact that such a community driven project can have on the understanding of the hardness of a computational problem is witnessed by the LWE (now lattice) estimator.

Software Design. The library is build according to modern software-design principles. It follows a sophisticated object-oriented architecture and is fully modular. All basic functionalities are provided by the base (or parent) classes making the integration of new estimators and the extension of existing ones especially simple.

Cautious pricing strategy

“Perhaps more importantly, restricted use of iPhones among government employees could negatively impact sales among consumers (related family members; general populace) and could be part of a broader move by the Chinese government to promote usage of domestic technology,” Sacconaghi said.

In light of the global economic downturn, Apple is contemplating a cautious pricing strategy to preserve its sales volumes.

While the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus boast 48MP main cameras, they’ll inherit the A16 processor from the iPhone 14 Pro series, with no other significant upgrades. Hence, their starting prices are projected to be aggressively competitive.

The iPhone 15 Pro may sport several enhancements that inflate costs, yet these are anticipated to be offset by cost reductions in other components.

Overall, TrendForce predicts a stable pricing landscape for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, and iPhone 15 Pro, largely mirroring last year’s figures.

The Pro Max, however, is a different story. Equipped with an exclusive high-cost periscope lens, it’s expected to command a premium—likely a bump of up to $100—to reflect its increased production costs.

Joins USB Type-C bandwagon

Should this price adjustment materialise, it would mark the first such move since the era of the iPhone X.

In regard to specifications for the iPhone 15 series, several noteworthy hardware upgrades have been made. Compliance with EU regulations has led Apple to jump on the USB Type-C bandwagon this year.

The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus will come with significant camera upgrades, sporting a 48MP main sensor to align with the Pro series.

Furthermore, they will also be featuring Apple’s Dynamic Island. On the other hand, the Pro series promises cutting-edge processor upgrades, increased Dram capacity, and introduces a titanium-aluminum alloy frame.

The Pro Max also intends to elevate mobile photography to the next level with its exclusive periscope lens.

Advances in technology, while exciting, can also ratchet up the intricacies of mass production. Reports of component snags and assembly issues have surfaced as production of the new iPhone models revs up in the third quarter.

The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, in particular, have been grappling with lower-than-expected yield rates for their new 48MP cameras. Meanwhile, the Pro series is confronting challenges with panel and titanium alloy frame assembly.

However, evidence suggests that the Pro series is likely to overcome its obstacles more swiftly than its non-Pro counterparts.

Exploiting the trend

In total, 60 per cent of the scam pages created in this scheme, which peaked in activity in December 2022, targeted users from the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.

Based on Group-IB’s estimations, this scam campaign caused roughly $280,000 in financial damages for internet users between March and June 2023.

In total, 884 unique scam pages were created and registered by the scammers since the start of the campaign. The peak in activity was registered in December 2022, when 308 new pages were created.

Throughout the entire duration of the scam campaign, 60 per cent of scam pages targeted users in the MEA region, with the bulk of these adverts containing text written in the Arabic language.

Users in Latin America were targeted on 9.2 per cent of the scam pages, and 4.8 per cent of scam pages were geared towards users in the Asia-Pacific region, while 25 per cent of the resources had no specific geographic focus.

Sharef Hlal, Head of Group-IB’s Digital Risk Protection Analytics Team, MEA, said that retail investing is becoming increasingly popular among individuals who are looking for ways to diversify their income, but this has created opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit this trend.

Due to the sector’s seemingly easy integration with investment opportunities, 30 per cent of scam pages discovered during this campaign impersonated legitimate financial and insurance companies.

Other highly targeted sectors were transportation (25 per cent of all scam pages), stock trading (8.6 per cent), oil and gas (5.3 per cent), and construction (5.3 per cent).

Personal scammers

A typical victim will first encounter this scam by seeing an advertisement placed by the cybercriminals on their social media feeds. Group-IB researchers found adverts placed in multiple languages, most notably English, Arabic, and Spanish.

On Arabic-language advertisements and scam sites created for this campaign, the scammers entice individuals with claims that they could earn millions by investing a mere $200. These adverts may also use the words “news”, “media”, “investment”, and “digital”, either in English or in Arabic. Spanish-language adverts offer users the chance to earn money each month.

If the user clicks on the advertisement, they are redirected to a scam page that contains the logo and branding of a prominent company, imploring the user to register for the possibility to make quick, easy money by investing.

The scammers request the name, email address, and phone number from the user.

Don’t fall prey

Once the user has completed this form, they will receive daily emails claiming to be from a trading portal. These emails implore the user to sign up for the chance to begin trading stocks, and the first email contains an account number, login information, password, and server name for their supposed account on this platform.

Users are then urged to deposit money into their trading account to begin buying stocks.

If, after a period of time, the user does not place a deposit, they will receive a call from a person claiming to be a customer service representative. This individual begins pressuring the victim to deposit funds, promising the chance to earn immediate dividends.

Should the victim agree, they are asked for information about their bank card, desired investment amount and place of residence. Additionally, they will then receive an email asking for their ID and passport.

Group-IB researchers examined multiple user testimonies of the investment portal posted online. Users frequently complain that representatives of the portal stop communicating once they transfer money. Users are also blocked on messaging platforms once they request a refund.

“This particular scam is notable as the cybercriminals leverage multiple communication channels, such as email and direct phone calls, as part of their social engineering efforts. Investment scams have the potential to cause great financial damage to victims, given the potential large sums of money involved, and we urge individuals to never share personal information or money with third parties unless you are certain of their legitimacy,” Hlal said.

Growth opportunity

As organisations look to keep up with the pace of innovation, Tarkan Maner, chief commercial officer at Nutanix, said that they need an integrated hardware and software platform to support application deployment anywhere.

“This partnership will deliver an expanded market opportunity for both organisations as they tackle the challenges of standardising, simplifying, and securing environments across the data centre, in public cloud and the edge.”

Following the announcement, Cisco and Nutanix will enable their global sales teams and partners worldwide to offer an exciting new solution combining technologies and collaborative go-to-market support, driven by the Cisco team. Solution availability is expected in the next 90 days.

OpenAI finds itself in an unenviable position against Microsoft

Naushad K. Cherrayil

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September 1, 2023

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OpenAI finds itself in an unenviable position against Microsoft

Microsoft’s continuous introduction of OpenAI-driven business solutions on Azure, including Bing Chat Enterprise, poses a challenge.
The overlap in AI offerings might prompt some of OpenAI’s clientele to consider Microsoft’s integrated alternatives, potentially leading to customer migration.

OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft seems to be hitting a rocky period due to internal competition in the Generative AI field.

OpenAI and Microsoft partnered up from a commercial standpoint. The history of the partnership started in 2016 and consolidated in 2019, with Microsoft investing a billion dollars into the partnership and now Microsoft’s cumulative investment in OpenAI has reportedly swelled to $13 billion.

The partnership is widely perceived as a remarkable achievement, with the release of ChatGPT last year not only seeing resounding success but also sparking fresh conversations and opportunities around AI.

Nonetheless, OpenAI now grapples with the double-edged sword of its alliance with the industry titan, triggering both favourable outcomes and challenges, according to GlobalData.

Faces stiff competition

Beatriz Valle,Technology Analyst at GlobalData, said that the OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft seems to be hitting a rocky period.

Not only is Microsoft Azure locked in as OpenAI’s cloud provider, but Microsoft also plans to sell a new version of data firm Databricks’ software that helps customers make AI apps for their businesses, placing it in direct competition against OpenAI’s offerings.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s forthcoming AI-driven collaborative software, Copilot, will also compete with ChatGPT Premium.

“Microsoft Azure is OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider, powering workloads across research, products, and API services. This arrangement restricts OpenAI’s ability to partner with other public cloud providers, as its competitors have done. In addition, despite revenue growth from the premium ChatGPT release, substantial operational costs have rendered OpenAI increasingly dependent on financial benefactors,” she said.

Unenviable position

The potential internal competition is particularly troubling for OpenAI. For example, OpenAI customers currently paying $20 per month for the premium version of ChatGPT may decide to opt for the $30-worth version of Copilot by Microsoft when it is released.

Valle said that OpenAI has just released a powerful enterprise version of ChatGPT, targeting market expansion.

However, she said that Microsoft’s continuous introduction of OpenAI-driven business solutions on Azure, including Bing Chat Enterprise, poses a challenge.

“Microsoft’s strategy to seamlessly integrate Copilot with Office365 is appealing to its users. The overlap in AI offerings might prompt some of OpenAI’s clientele to consider Microsoft’s integrated alternatives, potentially leading to customer migration.”

Despite these challenges, OpenAI has been seeing some growth. Its solutions have been adopted by Duolingo, Morgan Stanley, the government of Iceland, Be My Eyes, Waymark, and Stripe.

In addition, OpenAI has made GPT-3.5 Turbo available for businesses to fine tune using their proprietary data and has just released an enterprise version of ChatGPT.

“OpenAI finds itself in an unenviable position, both collaborating and competing against its powerful backer, Microsoft. However, it is still early days in the generative AI market, and it will take some time to gauge the level of adoption of offerings such as ChatGPT Enterprise. In the meantime, OpenAI remains in a somehow vulnerable position due to revenue imbalances resulting from the massive spend of its cloud computing usage,” Valle said.

Classiscam will remain one of the major global scam operations this year

Mohammed Fahad

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September 1, 2023

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Classiscam will remain one of the major global scam operations this year

$64.5m scam-as-a-service operation scales to target brands in 15 MEA countries
Classiscammers have introduced new innovations, such as phishing schemes designed to harvest the credentials of victim’s online bank accounts, and some groups have begun to use information stealers.
The automated scheme uses Telegram bots to assist with the creation of ready-to-use phishing pages impersonating companies in a range of industries,

Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Group-IB revealed that the scam-as-a-service operation Classiscam is continuing its worldwide campaign well into 2023.

Classiscam originally appeared in Russia, where the scheme was tried and tested before being launched across the globe.

The scam-as-a-service affiliate program surged in popularity in spring 2020 with the emergence of Covid-19 and the subsequent uptick in remote working and online shopping.

The automated scheme uses Telegram bots to assist with the creation of ready-to-use phishing pages impersonating companies in a range of industries, including online marketplaces, classified sites, and logistics operators.

These phishing pages are designed to steal money, payment data, and recently in some cases, bank login credentials from unsuspecting internet users.

According to Group-IB’s findings, 251 unique brands in a total of 79 countries were featured on Classiscam phishing pages from first half of 2021 to first half of 2023.

Brings new innovations

In addition, the phishing templates created for each brand can be localised to different countries by editing the language and currency featured on the scam pages.

As a result, one particular logistics brand was impersonated by “Classiscammers” targeting users in as many as 31 countries.

Since the second half of 2019, when the Group-IB Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-GIB) in cooperation with the company’s Digital Risk Protection unit first identified Classiscam’s operations, 1,366 separate groups leveraging this scheme have been discovered on Telegram.

Group-IB experts examined Telegram channels containing information pertaining to 393 Classiscam groups with more than 38,000 members that operated between first half of 2020 and first half of 2023. During this period, these groups made combined estimated earnings of $64.5 million.

Group-IB has noted how the threat actors behind Classiscam have worked, since inception, to formalise and expand the scam model’s operations.

From 2022 onwards, Classiscammers have introduced new innovations, such as phishing schemes designed to harvest the credentials of victim’s online bank accounts, and some groups have begun to use information stealers.

Group-IB experts noticed how the scam scheme was exported first to Europe, before entering other global regions, such as the United States, the Asia-Pacific region, and the Middle East and Africa (MEA).

Low barrier of entry

“Classiscam shows no sign of slowing down and over the past year, we have seen scam groups adopt a new, expanded hierarchy, and roles within organisations are becoming increasingly specialised,” Sharef Hlal, Head of Group-IB’s Digital Risk Protection Analytics Team (MEA), at Group-IB, said.

Furthermore, he said that Classiscam will likely remain one of the major global scam operations throughout 2023 due to the scheme’s full automation and low technical barrier of entry.

As of first half of 2021, Classiscammers had targeted internet users in 30 countries as of first half of this year, the figure has risen to 79. In the same time period, the number of targeted brands on the global market has increased from 38 to 251.

More than 61 per cent of the Classiscam resources analysed by Group-IB experts that were created between first half of 2021 and first half of 2023 targeted users in Europe. Other heavily targeted regions were the Middle East and Africa (18.7% of resources) and the Asia-Pacific region (12.2%).

With the MEA region being the second most targeted by Classiscam, countries in the region encountered challenges with targeted brand activities. The UAE was no exception to this, with its emphasis on technological innovation and many large and prominent brands operating in the country.

“In response to the rising amount of cyberattacks in recent years, the UAE has introduced a multifaceted approach to cybersecurity erected by five pillars. By fortifying global collaboration, encouraging Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), reinforcing cybersecurity measures, nurturing innovation, and promoting a cyber-literate society, the UAE is actively remediating the impact of cyber incidents,” Dr. Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of Cybersecurity for the UAE Government, said.