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The post Cloudflare Says ‘Non C’è Modo’ (No Way) In Defiance of Italy Piracy Shield Law appeared first on Security Boulevard.
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Explore how Russia's efforts to control the probiv market highlight the challenges of data leaks, insider threats, and the conflict between control and security.
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Driving Passwordless Adoption with FIDO and Biometric Authentication
madhav
Tue, 01/13/2026 - 06:13
For decades, passwords have been the default mechanism for securing digital access. They are deeply embedded in enterprise systems and workflows, yet they were never designed to withstand today’s threat landscape.
Cybersecurity Sarah Lefavrais | IAM Product Marketing Manager
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The Passwordless Imperative
For decades, passwords have been the default mechanism for securing digital access. They are deeply embedded in enterprise systems and workflows, yet they were never designed to withstand today’s threat landscape.
Passwords are easy to steal, easy to reuse, and costly to manage at scale. Despite years of awareness training and layered defenses, credential-based attacks remain one of the most common causes of security breaches. At the same time, password resets continue to consume a disproportionate share of IT support resources, slowing productivity across the organization.
These challenges have pushed enterprises toward a turning point. Regulatory bodies increasingly call for phishing-resistant authentication. Cyber-insurance providers scrutinize identity controls more closely. Business leaders demand stronger security without operational friction. And employees, accustomed to unlocking personal devices instantly, expect the same simplicity at work.
Taken together, these pressures make one conclusion unavoidable: passwords are no longer fit for purpose. Moving beyond them is no longer a question of innovation, but of necessity.
However, necessity alone does not guarantee success.
Where Passwordless Initiatives Often StallMany organizations recognize the urgency of going passwordless. They invest in modern authentication technologies, launch pilot programs, and define clear security objectives. Yet despite these efforts, initiatives frequently lose momentum during deployment.
This is rarely because the security model itself is insufficient. More often, it is because the user experience has not been fully considered.
When new authentication methods introduce friction, uncertainty, or unfamiliar behaviors, users hesitate. They worry about losing access, being slowed down during critical tasks, or having to change long-standing habits. Even small inconveniences can lead to resistance or workarounds, weakening adoption over time.
At the same time, organizations cannot afford to lower their security standards. Phishing remains highly effective precisely because it targets human behavior. Enterprises therefore face a dual requirement that is difficult to balance.
The real challenge is not choosing between stronger security and user adoption. It is delivering authentication that significantly increases security while remaining simple enough to be adopted naturally, at scale.
This is where the combination of FIDO standards and biometrics fundamentally changes the dynamics of passwordless authentication.
Why FIDO and Biometrics Unlock Adoption
FIDO2 addresses the core weaknesses of passwords by eliminating shared secrets altogether. Instead of relying on something that can be guessed or stolen, authentication is based on public-key cryptography. No reusable credential exists for attackers to phish, replay, or compromise.
Biometrics complete this security model by removing friction from the user experience. A fingerprint or facial recognition gesture is intuitive, familiar, and already embedded in everyday digital behavior. There is nothing to remember, nothing to type, and nothing to retrieve.
Together, FIDO and biometrics deliver what enterprises have long sought but rarely achieved: stronger security that feels easier than passwords. Authentication becomes faster, more reliable, and more natural, encouraging consistent use rather than resistance.
With the support of Thales, organizations can deploy FIDO and biometric authentication across multiple form factors to adapt to different people, roles, and environments. Whether authentication is delivered through hardware-based security keys with the SafeNet eToken Fusion Bio , and SafeNet IDPrime FIDO Bio Smart Card , or mobile applications with the Mobile Protector, the experience remains consistent: phishing-resistant security combined with effortless user interaction.
Industry Use Cases: Passwordless That Fits the Real World Banking and Financial ServicesBanking environments are characterized by frequent authentication, strict regulatory oversight, and a mix of modern and legacy systems. Employees move constantly between applications, making long login cycles a drain on productivity, while sensitive activities such as transaction approval and digital signing demand the highest level of assurance. In this context, biometric-based FIDO authentication enables fast, phishing-resistant access for daily workforce workflows, while hardware-based methods combining modern passwordless standards with certificate-backed authentication support regulated operations.
At the same time, banks face growing pressure on the consumer side to fight online fraud and account takeover. Passwords are no longer sufficient to protect digital banking customers. By introducing passkeys based on FIDO standards, banks can offer their customers a passwordless experience secured by device-bound cryptographic credentials. Consumers can authenticate using the biometrics on their smartphones, such as fingerprint or facial recognition, or choose hardware security keys with built-in fingerprint verification for higher-assurance use cases. This approach dramatically reduces phishing risk while delivering a seamless, modern digital banking experience.
Manufacturing and Industrial EnvironmentsManufacturing and industrial organizations rely on frontline workers who frequently access shared desktops and critical systems containing sensitive operational data. In these environments, authentication must be fast, reliable, and secure, without introducing friction that slows down operations.
FIDO-based biometric authentication using hardware security keys is particularly well suited to these scenarios. Workers can authenticate instantly by inserting a USB token and verifying their fingerprint, gaining secure access to applications and systems without passwords. Because authentication is device-bound and phishing-resistant, access remains secure even in shared workstation environments. This approach enables quick shift transitions, protects sensitive industrial data, and ensures that strong authentication does not disrupt productivity on the factory floor.
Government and Public SectorPublic-sector organizations must meet high assurance requirements while supporting diverse user populations and long technology lifecycles. Employees often require access to both modern cloud services and legacy or regulated systems, sometimes alongside physical access controls.
In this environment, FIDO and biometric authentication enable agencies to modernize without breaking existing workflows. Biometric-based FIDO authentication provides intuitive, phishing-resistant access to modern applications, while hardware authenticators that combine FIDO with PKI continue to support legacy use cases such as certificate-based authentication, digital signing, and regulated system access. This hybrid approach allows government organizations to adopt modern passwordless standards while preserving critical PKI investments, enabling a secure and gradual transition toward a future-ready identity model.
When Security and Adoption Move TogetherWhen authentication aligns with how people actually work, security stops being perceived as a barrier. Users authenticate naturally. IT teams regain efficiency. Compliance becomes easier to enforce and demonstrate.
Passwordless authentication succeeds when strong security and easy adoption reinforce each other. That balance is what makes FIDO and biometric authentication sustainable at scale.
Now is the time to move beyond passwords in practice, not just in strategy.
January 13, 2026
The post Driving Passwordless Adoption with FIDO and Biometric Authentication appeared first on Security Boulevard.
Overview Recently, NSFOCUS CERT detected that Apache issued a security bulletin to fix the Apache Struts external entity (XXE) injection vulnerability S2-069 (CVE-2025-68493); Because the XWork component of Apache Struts does not perform effective validation when parsing XML configuration, attackers can inject external entities by constructing malicious XML data to read sensitive server files, perform […]
The post Apache Struts External Entity (XXE) Injection Vulnerability S2-069 (CVE-2025-68493) appeared first on NSFOCUS, Inc., a global network and cyber security leader, protects enterprises and carriers from advanced cyber attacks..
The post Apache Struts External Entity (XXE) Injection Vulnerability S2-069 (CVE-2025-68493) appeared first on Security Boulevard.
Are Your Non-Human Identities at Risk? Where cybersecurity concerns are front and center for organizations across many sectors, the question of how to manage Non-Human Identities (NHIs) and secrets cannot be overlooked. Machine identities, often composed of an encrypted password, token, or key, play an indispensable role in interconnected digital environments. Yet, the approach to […]
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How Can Organizations Build Cybersecurity Confidence with Agentic AI? What if there was a way to seamlessly integrate cybersecurity protocols into the very fabric of your organization without compromising on efficiency? Agentic AI fuels this potential, redefining how Non-Human Identities (NHIs) and their secrets are managed securely across industries like financial services, healthcare, and DevOps. […]
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The Importance of Secure Management of Non-Human Identities (NHIs) Are machine identities, or Non-Human Identities (NHIs), truly as secure as they should be within your organization? Many businesses across various industries grapple with understanding and properly managing these digital passports that permeate their systems, and this lack of clarity can lead to significant security risks. […]
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What Makes Smart NHIs the Key to Advanced Threat Detection? How can organizations ensure their systems are shielded from invisible threats? One crucial element is the efficient management of Non-Human Identities (NHIs). While we delve into the complexities of NHIs, it’s vital to grasp their strategic role in threat detection and mitigation. The Anatomy of […]
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Session 8C: Hard & Firmware Security
Authors, Creators & Presenters: Vasudev Gohil (Texas A&M University), Matthew DeLorenzo (Texas A&M University), Veera Vishwa Achuta Sai Venkat Nallam (Texas A&M University), Joey See (Texas A&M University), Jeyavijayan Rajendran (Texas A&M University)
PAPER
LLMPirate: LLMs for Black-box Hardware IP Piracy
The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) has enabled the ability to effectively analyze and generate code nearly instantaneously, resulting in their widespread adoption in software development. Following this advancement, researchers and companies have also begun integrating LLMs across the hardware design and verification process. However, these highly potent LLMs can also induce new attack scenarios upon security vulnerabilities across the hardware development process. One such attack vector that has not been explored so far is intellectual property (IP) piracy. Given that this attack can manifest as rewriting hardware designs to evade piracy detection, it is essential to thoroughly evaluate LLM capabilities in performing this task and assess the mitigation abilities of current IP piracy detection tools. Therefore, in this work, we propose LLMPirate, the first LLM-based technique able to generate pirated variations of circuit designs that successfully evade detection across multiple state-of-the-art piracy detection tools. We devise three solutions to overcome challenges related to integration of LLMs for hardware circuit designs, scalability to large circuits, and effectiveness, resulting in an end-to-end automated, efficient, and practical formulation. We perform an extensive experimental evaluation of LLMPirate using eight LLMs of varying sizes and capabilities and assess their performance in pirating various circuit designs against four state-of-the-art, widely-used piracy detection tools. Our experiments demonstrate that LLMPirate is able to consistently evade detection on 100% of tested circuits across every detection tool. Additionally, we showcase the ramifications of LLMPirate using case studies on IBEX and MOR1KX processors and a GPS module, that we successfully pirate. We envision that our work motivates and fosters the development of better IP piracy detection tools.
ABOUT NDSS
The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security. The target audience includes those interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system security, with a focus on actual system design and implementation. A major goal is to encourage and enable the Internet community to apply, deploy, and advance the state of available security technologies.
Our thanks to the Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium for publishing their Creators, Authors and Presenter’s superb NDSS Symposium 2025 Conference content on the Organizations' YouTube Channel.
The post NDSS 2025 – LLMPirate: LLMs For Black-box Hardware IP Piracy appeared first on Security Boulevard.
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via the comic artistry and dry wit of Randall Munroe, creator of XKCD
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Here is the ugly truth about security incidents today. The bad guys don’t storm the castle breaking down the walls. Most attacks start with a login that was obtained. Once inside they see where they can go and what they can do. They enter the front door with working keys. And now, because the universe..
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Session 8C: Hard & Firmware Security
Authors, Creators & Presenters: René Helmke (Fraunhofer FKIE), Elmar Padilla (Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany), Nils Aschenbruck (University of Osnabrück)
PAPER
Mens Sana In Corpore Sano: Sound Firmware Corpora for Vulnerability Research
Firmware corpora for vulnerability research should be scientifically sound. Yet, several practical challenges complicate the creation of sound corpora: Sample acquisition, e.g., is hard and one must overcome the barrier of proprietary or encrypted data. As image contents are unknown prior analysis, it is hard to select high-quality samples that can satisfy scientific demands. Ideally, we help each other out by sharing data. But here, sharing is problematic due to copyright laws. Instead, papers must carefully document each step of corpus creation: If a step is unclear, replicability is jeopardized. This has cascading effects on result verifiability, representativeness, and, thus, soundness. Despite all challenges, how can we maintain the soundness of firmware corpora? This paper thoroughly analyzes the problem space and investigates its impact on research: We distill practical binary analysis challenges that significantly influence corpus creation. We use these insights to derive guidelines that help researchers to nurture corpus replicability and representativeness. We apply them to 44 top tier papers and systematically analyze scientific corpus creation practices. Our comprehensive analysis confirms that there is currently no common ground in related work. It shows the added value of our guidelines, as they discover methodical issues in corpus creation and unveil minuscule step stones in documentation. These blur visions on representativeness, hinder replicability, and, thus, negatively impact the soundness of otherwise excellent work. Finally, we show the feasibility of our guidelines and build a new corpus for large-scale analyses on Linux firmware: LFwC. We share rich meta data for good (and proven) replicability. We verify unpacking, deduplicate, identify contents, provide ground truth, and demonstrate LFwC's utility for research.
ABOUT NDSS
The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security. The target audience includes those interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system security, with a focus on actual system design and implementation. A major goal is to encourage and enable the Internet community to apply, deploy, and advance the state of available security technologies.
Our thanks to the Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium for publishing their Creators, Authors and Presenter’s superb NDSS Symposium 2025 Conference content on the Organizations' YouTube Channel.
The post NDSS 2025 – Mens Sana In Corpore Sano: Sound Firmware Corpora For Vulnerability Research appeared first on Security Boulevard.
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