security

PoC Watermark Attack on Restic

2023 May 20 #security


First off, does this matter to you? No. No it doesn’t. Unless you’re backing up gigabytes of completely attacker controlled data, to an attacker controlled service, and need to ensure they don’t know you’re backing up said data, it Doesn’t Fucking Matter.

With that said, it’s a somewhat neat attack!

A watermarking attack is when an attacker who can get you to store an attacker-controlled piece of data can then detect the presence of that attacker controlled data. It’s not a huge deal, but is a concern if someone is able to inject a watermark into, say, copywritten or leaked content, and then automatically terminate the cloud storage/backup accounts of users that can be shown to have that data on their drive.