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USENIX Security

USENIX Security is a leading academic conference publishing peer-reviewed research on computer and network security, cryptography, and privacy.

Known aliases

  • USENIX security conference

Current stories

buildOne report1 publisher

Expired contactless cards still clear in-store payments at banks that trust the terminal's expiry date

UMass Amherst researchers showed at USENIX Security 2026 that an expired contactless card still pays in stores once a relay rewrites its expiry date. Issuers that trust the terminal's reported expiry approve the sale, a dev.to write-up says, so a reissued card leaves the old chip usable.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence30
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives40
Confidence30
buildOne report1 publisher

Code-writing LLMs repeat invented package names often enough for squatters to register them first

USENIX Security 2025 researchers found 19.7% of packages suggested by 16 LLMs were fake, and 43% of those names recurred on every re-run. Names that repeat can be registered ahead of time, so a team has to vet a suggested dependency before installing it, even when the install succeeds.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption20
Hype gap+25
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
securityConfirmed5 publishers

Zombie cards: expired plastic still pays because nobody owns the expiry check

UMass Amherst researchers bought groceries with an expired contactless card. The date that is supposed to kill it is unsigned, zeroed out before the issuer sees it, and checked by nobody in particular.

Perspective Coverage

5 publishers
Builder
Builder 42%
Operator
Operator 51%
Investor
Investor 7%

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+25
Incentives30
Confidence70
productOne report1 publisher

MIT's TONTOU attack reaches protected Linux memory through a two-instruction window

CSAIL researchers timed an interrupt to land inside the gap AMD's saferet defense leaves open, then pulled the root password file off a current Linux kernel. AMD has shipped a mitigation. Intel's picture is messier.

Reality

Evidence38
Adoption30
Hype gap+26
Incentives55
Confidence44
buildOne report1 publisher

A 100,000-file leak moves Geedge from suspected censorship vendor to matched Great Firewall part

Academics rebuilt Tiangou Secure Gateway firmware from leaked Git history and matched its filtering to the Great Firewall. One of three DNS injectors matched, and that ratio is the interesting part.

Publishers:news.risky.biz

Reality

Evidence68
Adoption66
Hype gap+8
Incentives42
Confidence58
securityOne report1 publisher

Source-code match ties a shipping Chinese appliance to the Great Firewall

Academics rebuilt Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway firmware from a 100,000-file leak and matched its filtering to China's censorship system. The same box has been exported.

Publishers:news.risky.biz

Reality

Evidence66
Adoption68
Hype gap+12
Incentives32
Confidence58
securityOne report1 publisher

The dependency gate moves upstream: why post-commit SCA misses hallucinated packages

A vendor essay on AI package hallucination makes a defensible case: a package name that does not exist yet cannot be scanned, so the control has to sit at selection.

Reality

Evidence24
Adoption22
Hype gap+41
Incentives88
Confidence45