Complex systems/network science. Former physicist, fled academia. No business communications. Direct all work-related inquiries through official channels only.
NYC, USA
Joined February 2010
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George Furbish retweeted
China has established its first overseas air force base in Laos, making this Beijing’s third foreign military base and its second in Southeast Asia. foreignpolicy.com/2026/10/07…
George Furbish retweeted
A BBC Verify investigation found that Apple Maps' censoring of Chinese Military and Government sites has included arbitrary detention sites in Xinjiang, including the prison where Ilham Tohti is detained.
Tech companies need a clear framework for obscuring imagery that balances security concerns with public interest. Here, Apple has clearly become a barrier to accountability.
I was honoured to lend some thoughts during this investigation, and I'm very glad it's been released. This is an unambiguous example of the need for a more structured approach.
Watch the investigation.
George Furbish retweeted
The company which leaked data is IDScan. IDScan does not list all of their customers, however some are publicly known. If you have ever used these companies (and provided an ID) your data has been leaked:
- Shell
- AMC Theaters
- DraftKings
- Dutchie
- FedEx
- Hertz
- Chevrolet (General Motors)
- GameStop
- Jack Henry
- MRI (Checkpoint ID)
- Polaris
- Simmons Bank
- LendingUSA
- Circa Resort & Casino
- Planet 13
- Rouses Market
- US Coast Guard Academy
- Caesars Entertainment
- Motorola
I really recommending reading this.
In summary, a company which does ID verification for in-person interactions (hotels, car rentals, ID verification for alcohol or marijuana, etc) has some how exposed over 153,000,000 drivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada.
It is a catastrophic data breach, probably one of the worse I've ever seen. If you're in the United States and have traveled, gotten a hotel, purchased marijuana or alcohol, there is a high probability you're in this.
Unlike other breaches, this includes a photo of the person (from the license), making verification you've identified the person significantly easier.
This poses a significant threat to celebrities (musicians, YouTubers, streamers, adult entertainers, actors, etc), politicians, lawyers, wealthy people (CEOs, investors, people of public interest), Law Enforcement Officers, etc
Krebs himself, and several other security researchers, have already confirmed they're in the data leak.
tl;dr gah damn dawg this company is going to be sued into oblivion
krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/…
George Furbish retweeted
I really recommending reading this.
In summary, a company which does ID verification for in-person interactions (hotels, car rentals, ID verification for alcohol or marijuana, etc) has some how exposed over 153,000,000 drivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada.
It is a catastrophic data breach, probably one of the worse I've ever seen. If you're in the United States and have traveled, gotten a hotel, purchased marijuana or alcohol, there is a high probability you're in this.
Unlike other breaches, this includes a photo of the person (from the license), making verification you've identified the person significantly easier.
This poses a significant threat to celebrities (musicians, YouTubers, streamers, adult entertainers, actors, etc), politicians, lawyers, wealthy people (CEOs, investors, people of public interest), Law Enforcement Officers, etc
Krebs himself, and several other security researchers, have already confirmed they're in the data leak.
tl;dr gah damn dawg this company is going to be sued into oblivion
krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/…
George Furbish retweeted
This is pretty embarrassing 🙈
Microsoft has a signed Defender driver that can be abused to kill Defender/EDR and modify protected files and registry settings
We also can’t really solve this the usual way by adding the driver to the vulnerable driver blocklist. It’s Microsoft’s own Defender component!!
MSRC says it doesn’t require immediate servicing because you already need admin privileges 😏
Which probably means this MS-signed EDR killer will stay usable for a while. Nice 🫶
Microsoft’s signed Windows Defender Boot-Time Removal driver (BTR.sys) is a one-shot kernel component that decrypts an RC4-encrypted transaction list from an Alternate Data Stream and performs Ring-0 operations.
An attacker with SeLoadDriverPrivilege can craft a valid encrypted config and load it early via a transient “Boot Bus Extender” service, abusing it as a trusted kernel primitive to bypass Tamper Protection, delete EDR/AV components before they start, drop malicious drivers, and gain persistence, without any vulnerability or BYOVD. No in-the-wild abuse has been observed.
research.checkpoint.com/2026…
George Furbish retweeted
Researchers pulled a 256-bit encryption key out of a device by filming its power LED.
The status light on a smart card reader flickers in sync with the chip's power draw, and that power draw leaks the key. They recovered a full ECDSA key from 16 meters away, through a window, using a hijacked security camera. No malware, no contact, just video of a status light.
The trick: a camera's rolling shutter turns 60 frames per second into 60,000 brightness samples per second.
The light that tells you a device is on tells an attacker what it is computing.
Proof, Ben-Gurion University 2023: nassiben.com/video-based-cry…
George Furbish retweeted
I hate to repeat the overused Orwell 1984 phrase, but I can't think of a better example.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
George Furbish retweeted
A major result in post-quantum cryptography. A key security assumption behind Classic McEliece, a public-key encryption system considered to resist quantum computers, has been undermined. Researchers found a provable quasipolynomial-time method for detecting the hidden mathematical structure in its public keys. The attack is still astronomically expensive and cannot yet decrypt messages, but this is a serious weakening of one of the oldest post-quantum cryptosystems. McEliece is not broken practically today, but an important assumption underlying its theoretical security has been broken. For the Classic McEliece parameter sets, the estimated cost of the best known structural distinguisher drops from roughly 2^298-2^691 operations to about 2^114-2^124. That is huge. eprint.iacr.org/2026/1630.pd…
Can you imagine the audacity a person would have to have to believe that a game is good, but the people who created it from nothing are the problem? Negative review, then continued to play the game for more than 3 hours per day.
(Censored to avoid giving jerks free eyeballs.)
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Imagine writing reports that start with a clear and concise summary... We live at a point in history where it's more realistic to ask that a language machine working at hundreds of teraflops generate a summary instead.
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George Furbish retweeted
BREAKING: The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of alleged involvement in abductions of Ukrainian children. apnews.com/article/icc-putin…
There's nothing more dangerous than finding a folded note in a drawer full of things you've been saving that you haven't checked in years.
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George Furbish retweeted
The ICC says it has made a breakthrough in its Darfur war crimes probe, allowing prosecutors to link alleged atrocities to leadership based on evidence from victims in eastern Chad reut.rs/4aKSbIM
George Furbish retweeted
Almost a year and a half since I walked out of USAID's headquarters for the last time. I spoke with @NPR about the grief — for the 15,000 people who served faithfully, for the programs that were saving lives, for the brand of American goodwill that took 60+ years to build. And about the hope that it can be rebuilt. Full interview here: npr.org/2026/07/03/nx-s1-587…
George Furbish retweeted
This incredible map also dismantles the idea that today's anti-immigration movement isn't wholly centred on racism. The proportion of immigrants isn't markedly different from 1910; it's just the composition of America's migrant communities that's changed.
Could spend hours studying this map, which captures the main thing worth celebrating about America, now more than ever, in an exceptional level of detail. nytimes.com/interactive/2026…
George Furbish retweeted
China added over 543 Gigawatts to their grid last year. 434 GW was renewables because they are faster to build. The U.S. added a paltry 53 GW. We are losing the “AI race” to China because these idiots hate green energy. This is suicide by stupid.
George Furbish retweeted
Something they don't tell you when you sign up for academia: budget constraints are the anonymous referees of most decisions
George Furbish retweeted
Doctors 25% more likely to miss a diagnosis on a patient within 3 months after Ai is implemented. The results indicate Ai has an immediate negative effect on professionals skillsets vs prolonged reliance.
nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
George Furbish retweeted
Utah is the first state to enact a limited VPN ban to enforce its age-check law. Other states could follow suit.
Banning them would make it harder for journalists to protect themselves, their reporting, and their confidential sources. See why.
freedom.press/issues/how-jou…
