Jan 24, 2023

Always a good time to rewatch Mickens

Fascinating story from @MarshallProj about how some prisoners in the U.S. use contraband cell phones to better their lives.

themarshallproject.orgTikTok, WebMD and University: How People Use Cell Phones Behind BarsIncarcerated people say contraband phones can improve lives, despite the risks.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/01/19/cell-phones-in-prisons-tiktok-education

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expose-nuclear-weapons-secrets-via-flashcard-apps/

Report from Ukraine on how the Russian cyber offensive is integrated into the “special military operation.”

https://cip.gov.ua/en/news/kiberataki-artileriya-propaganda-zagalnii-oglyad-vimiriv-rosiiskoyi-agresiyi

And an article on the report:

https://therecord.media/ukraine-says-russia-is-coordinating-missile-strikes-cyberattacks-and-information-operations/

WiFi Routers Used to Produce 3D Images of Humans

https://vpnoverview.com/news/wifi-routers-used-to-produce-3d-images-of-humans/

Michael von Herff @vonHerff

Heyyy... wasn't there something about the NY FBI office personnel being engaged in some weird stuff during the 2016 election? I vaguely remember something about that.

Lachlan Markay @lachlan

The former top counterintelligence officer in the FBI's New York office has been charged with illegally working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska https://t.co/2LgQrPpfTG

Lachlan Markay @lachlan

The former top counterintelligence officer in the FBI's New York office has been charged with illegally working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/f…

People have been asking me about Bitwarden ever since LastPass has been breached. While I never took an in-depth look, I now at least evaluated the claims regarding their encryption:
https://palant.info/2023/01/23/bitwarden-design-flaw-server-side-iterations/
While the password manager being completely open-source with the option to self-host is great, otherwise I’m not too impressed.

https://infosec.exchange/@WPalant/109738234628007024

Pwning Google phone using a bug in Mali

https://github.blog/2023-01-23-pwning-the-all-google-phone-with-a-non-google-bug/

Activation Context Cache Poisoning: ZDI Sr Vuln Research Simon Zuckerbraun details this new class of privilege escalation vulnerabilities that has already been used in the wild. He also looks at the code changes #Microsoft has introduced in response. https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2023/1/23/activation-context-cache-poisoning-exploiting-csrss-for-privilege-escalation

https://infosec.exchange/@thezdi/109739468540296922

…

@dave_aitel@mastodon.social @thezdi@infosec.exchange though I'd argue it wasn't entirely new in 2022 ;-)
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1749

https://infosec.exchange/@tiraniddo/109742312584095479

pourmecoffee @pourmecoffee

Folks, it's time once again to spin the Wheel of News: 🎰 Miami man 🎰 injured 🎰 by falling iguana 🎰 during outdoor yoga class miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-m…

miaminewtimes.comMiami Man Injured by Falling Iguana During Outdoor Yoga Class“I didn’t see it coming. It felt like a sandbag hit me in the face.”

Perplexity AI @perplexity_ai

Announcing Perplexity Ask, a new search interface that uses OpenAI GPT 3.5 and Microsoft Bing to directly answer any question you ask. perplexity.ai discord.com/invite/kWJZsxP…

jmill @jmilldotdev

@perplexity_ai hackerman

A thought provoking thread.

Some security thoughts on a super strange topic: how rationalists and nihilists have it wrong, and why the infosec community is ahead of the curve.
This is going to be a weird thread tying together an epic James Mickens USENIX Security keynote, Ken Thompson's classic Turing Award speech, Chapman's insights on the failure of modernity and rationalism and postmodernity, and more. So, let's begin.

https://ioc.exchange/@invisv/109740474201888576

Paper on undefined behavior in C.

https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~akcheung/papers/apsys12.pdf

did you know you can infer what version of Windows an executable was built on (or at least what version of the Windows SDK was targeted) by how many fields its load configuration directory has?
the structure remained unchanged from WinXP, until Win8.1 Update 3 when they added new fields for Control Flow Guard support. the same fields were used in the initial Win10 release (version 1507)
the structure was iteratively expanded in versions 1511, 1607, 1703, 1709, 1803, 1809, 21H1, 21H2, and 22H2.

https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/109742258125501238

China is inviting experts to come to China and provide consultations to the gov. Apparently it was consultations with foreigners that led to the removal of all Covid restrictions in December.

If you want a full or part time contract with China they prefer STEM academics in Health, International Relations, and Security. Meetings take place face to face in China. Oh, and no US persons.