http://phrack.org/issues/71/1.html new Phrack is out!

it you would like to read ~10k words about going from "a 12kb binary that fell off a truck" to "a disassembler that knows the whole instruction set except like five opcodes", all without running a single instruction, phrack 71 is up and has a treat from me to you: http://phrack.org/issues/71/3.html#article

The Minuteman III missile (1970) is America's land-based nuclear deterrent, with 400 missiles ready to launch. The missile used a complex guidance system with over 17,000 electronic and mechanical parts that cost $4.5 million in current dollars. Let's take a look at the guidance system and computer. 1/N

thanks to @gsuberland's excellent work, we now have an in-depth dive into the technical details of the #GlasgowInterfaceExplorer hardware published on the website!

you can read them at https://glasgow-embedded.org/latest/revisions/revC3.html

Recently, a Dutch hacker found a vulnerability allowing him to shut down 4 million solar power installations. A handful of mostly non-European places manage perhaps 100 GW of solar power in the EU. Any mishap there, or heaven forbid, a compromise, could easily shut down so much power that the European electricity grid would collapse. Shockingly, we regulate these massive control panels as if they are online birthday calendars. And that must change. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-power-plants-in-the-cloud/

r2 script to symbolicate #ios kernels using the json files generated by the IPSW tool from @blacktop https://github.com/radareorg/radare2/blob/master/scripts/ipsw-kernel-symbolicate.r2.js

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR Critical Vulnerability (CERT-EU Security Advisory 2024-083)

On August 15, 2024, Palo Alto Networks released a security advisory for a critical command injection vulnerability, CVE-2024-5914, in Cortex XSOAR. This flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands within the context of an integration container, potentially compromising the system. The vulnerability affects the product's CommonScripts Pack and is rated as high severity with a CVSS score of 9.0.

https://www.cert.europa.eu/publications/security-advisories/2024-083/

I feel like if Google was in charge of Bell Labs, they would have cancelled the transistor project because it wouldn’t make as much money in six months as punch card machines

One of the simplest reverse engineering tricks I use daily is the fact that a lot of functions in a compile binary will be in the same (or reversed) order that they were in the original code.

If you find an encryption function, you usually don't need to keep reversing the code flow until you find the decryption function. The developer probably wrote them both at the same time, so they'll probably be adjacent in the code. If you know what a function does, there's a good chance the function directly above and below it are related, so will be easy to figure out.

This says that Windows still has low-level OS support for punch card readers.

https://kevinboone.me/cpm-c.html

Not documented here though: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/naming-a-file

Could someone with Windows handy try `echo test > PUN` and see what happens?

I recently became aware of a true abomination: https://github.com/open-abap/open-abap-ssh

Someone seriously looked at a problem and went "I know, I'll implement an SSH client as a script running on my ERP system".

I don't know what problem they could have possibly had, and I hope to never find out.

My colleague @nickmalcolm made a pretty cool vuln explainer video

https://youtu.be/ydg95R2QKwM

this is an absolutely fantastic license and i will certainly use it for some of my software https://github.com/meithecatte/bashfuck/blob/master/LICENSE

Part 2 of our new series on identifying and exploiting router vulnerabilities, including practical examples from real-world cases is now out:
https://medium.com/@odedvk/identify-and-exploit-vulnerabilities-in-routers-an-introductory-guide-technical-case-studies-d0f1a24d35ef

I do realize I'm screaming into a void, but writing this email was cathartic.

Top articles from this week: White hat hacker shines spotlight on vulnerability of solar panels installed in Europe http://dlvr.it/TBvXRM?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

MIT gets rid of their Elsevier contracts:

“For MIT to continue to pay millions of dollars to corporations that lock up the scholarship that comes out of our own campus was just inconsistent with MIT’s history of supporting open education and research,” said Chris Bourg, Director of Libraries at MIT.

https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-knowledge-base/unbundling-profiles/mit-libraries/

@fafo presents: Gardena zu Rasterelektronmikroskop Adapter

OpenAI: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation
OpenAI announced Friday (16 August 2024) that they identified and took down a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that were generating content for a covert Iranian influence operation identified as Storm-2035. The operation used ChatGPT to generate content focused on a number of topics—including commentary on candidates on both sides in the U.S. presidential election – which it then shared via social media accounts and websites.

The operation generated content about several topics: mainly, the conflict in Gaza, Israel’s presence at the Olympic Games, and the U.S. presidential election—and to a lesser extent politics in Venezuela, the rights of Latinx communities in the U.S. (both in Spanish and English), and Scottish independence. They interspersed their political content with comments about fashion and beauty, possibly to appear more authentic or in an attempt to build a following.

IOC provided.

See related The Hacker News reporting: OpenAI Blocks Iranian Influence Operation Using ChatGPT for U.S. Election Propaganda

#threatintel #Iran #influenceoperations #openai #chatgpt #disinformation #propaganda #IOC