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Greg Linares (Laughing Mantis)
laughing_mantis@bird.makeup
There have been great women in malware writing and the VX scene:
First and foremost: Gigabyte, she was a pioneer for many other women to get into VX. She was my best friend for many years, I owe so much of my VX years and introduction into cyber security because of her. She was always and inspiration and a huge reason why I encourage women to get into cyber. She went to jail for virus writing and never ratted any of us out. Also a very and capitol Fuck you Graham Cluely for being an asshole to a teenage girl and personally making sure she went to jail because you were offended by her viruses (she made fun of him after he said girls should not be writing viruses and should be doing girly things). She wrote a ton of HLL (high level language) viruses like Sharp, Parrot, Scrambler, And My favorite, Scooter (it was an inside joke for me and her). She recent got married and I wish her nothing but the best in life.
There was Nex: she was a virus author originally from Arizona who specialized in macro viruses, she wrote one of the first viruses to bypass office 97 SP1 which was made to protect against macro viruses. She got in a car accident and was hit by a police officer with no lights and no siren on and lost her ability to walk. After she sued the hell out of the police department she got out of VXing. She's currently living back in Arizona and no longer in the scene.
VxFaerie was another women in VX who was well respected. She wrote one of the first python infectors ever. She was very nice and was always kind to people in the scene.
And we have modern day women who are studying viruses and should be respected just as much as the old VXers like @nikaroxanne - she is doing legit work that would have made heralded in the scene.
Women in VX was always a thing, a few others I know never revealed they were women because of how they were feared they would be treated. If they are still around, I hope they see this and know their work was equal. Most of the VX scene never cared at all about this, we only cared that you put up or shut up. And put the fuck up they did. #respect
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Mari0n
pinkflawd@mastodon.social
The lovely folk of @WEareTROOPERS are hosting @Blackhoodie_RE for another two days of training, brought to you by Cora, Anso and @Car0line_Le about malware, OSINT and reverse engineering š Registration is now open https://blackhoodie.re/Troopers2025/
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Trend Zero Day Initiative
thezdi@infosec.exchangeBuilding an electric vehicle simulator to research EVSEs: At #Pwn2Own Automotive, we built a custom device to let the EV chargers "charge". ZDI researcher Thanos Kaliyanakis explains how to put one together for your research. https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2025/3/14/building-an-electric-vehicle-simulator-to-research-evses
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David Gerard
davidgerard@circumstances.runāGuys, Iām under attackā ā AI āvibe codingā in the wild
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/03/18/guys-im-under-attack-ai-vibe-coding-in-the-wild/ - text
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBL_tD_x3OA - video, which came out very well
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Misty
misty@digipres.clubI really can't get over how irresponsible it is for MS to tell people to throw away or recycle perfectly working computers. There are so many machines people *could* keep using for much longer if not for Windows 11.
https://mastodon.social/@dosnostalgic/114184937238415364
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The Verge
theverge@flipboard.comThe future of search isnāt Google ā and itās $10 a month
https://www.theverge.com/web/631636/kagi-review-best-search-engine?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Tech News @tech-news-theverge
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hackaday
hackaday@hackaday.socialReviving a Maplin 4600 DIY Synthesizer From the 1970s
https://hackaday.com/2025/03/19/reviving-a-maplin-4600-diy-synthesizer-from-the-1970s/
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Computer History Museum šøš®
muzej@mastodon.socialš The museum is seeking stories about Slovenians who cracked copy protections on cassette software in the 1980s š®š¾ (games for Spectrum, Commodore, etc.). Share your experiences in the comments below! ā¬ļøš
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404 Media
index@www.404media.coShow content
Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI attempted to purchase hundreds of millions of arrest records including social security numbers, mugshots, and even email addresses to incorporate into its product, 404 Media has learned.Ā
For years, Clearview AI has collected billions of photos from social media websites including Facebook, LinkedIn and others and sold access to its facial recognition tool to law enforcement. The collection and sale of user-generated photos by a private surveillance company to police without that personās knowledge or consent sparked international outcry when it was first revealed by the New York Times in 2020.Ā
New documents obtained by 404 Media reveal that Clearview AI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase ā690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photosā from all 50 states from an intelligence firm. The contract further describes the records as including current and former home addresses, dates of birth, arrest photos, social security and cell phone numbers, and email addresses. Clearview attempted to purchase this data from Investigative Consultant, Inc. (ICI) which billed itself as an intelligence company with access to tens of thousands of databases and the ability to create unique data streams for its clients. The contract was signed in mid-2019, at a time when Clearview AI was quietly collecting billions of photos off the internet and was relatively unknown at the time.Ā
Ultimately, the entire deal fell apart after Clearview and ICI clashed about the utility of the data with each company filing breach of contract claims. The dispute ultimately went into arbitration where it is common for disputes to be settled privately. The arbiter ultimately sided with Clearview AI in 2024 and ordered ICI to return the contract money. To date, ICI has not paid Clearview, with the company now seeking a court order to enforce the arbiterās ruling. The president of ICI, Donald Berlin, has been previously accused in a lawsuit of fabricating intelligence reports and libel. Clearview currently advertises to customers that its technology āincludes the largest known database of 50+ billion facial images sourced from public-only web sources, including news media, mugshot websites, public social media, and many other open sources,ā and Clearview has previously told customers that it was āworking to acquire all U.S. mugshots nationally from the last 15 years.ā
ICI and Clearview did not return to multiple requests for comment.Ā
These court records show that while Clearview AI was building a database of images it was simultaneously attempting to purchase sensitive information such as social security numbers, email addresses or other data. Both in the US and internationally, Clearview AI has faced scrutiny for collecting images from social media websites with the company claiming it hoped to collect enough images to āensure 'almost everyone in the world will be identifiableā according to an investor deck reviewed by the Washington Post. The same investor report describes Clearview AI spending millions of dollars on data purchases but the court records reviewed by 404 Media do not make it clear if the purchase of social security numbers were part of the same plans. Clearview has contracts with local, state, and federal law enforcement and government agencies.Ā
Purchasing booking photos for a facial recognition system raises serious privacy risks according to Jeramie Scott, Senior Counsel & Director of EPICās Project on Surveillance Oversight. He points to both the algorithmic biases built into facial recognition systems and the potential for human bias by the police who would review the images. Numerous innocent people have been arrested based on facial recognition technology that misidentified them. This has happened almost exclusively to Black people, in part because the technology is less accurate on Black and brown faces.
āIf Clearview AIās search results not only return the data from its web scraping but also connect individuals to their supposed mugshots and related data then that will bias the human reviewers,ā Scott told 404 Media. āWhen looking at Clearview AI search results and seeing multiple hits, the reviewer will likely be biased toward the person with the mugshot, which will disproportionately impact Black and brown people who are over represented in our criminal justice system.ā
The purchase of highly personal data such as SSNs and location data has drawn the attention of regulators and Congress. As weāve previously reported, access to highly personal data can be easily found online with authorities charging some sellers of the data with crimes. The Department of Justice has previously seized websites linked to the purchase of social security numbers and other personal data online and convicted a Ukrainian national of operating the sites.Ā
Ultimately, Clearview AI is facing an uncertain future after a barrage of lawsuits against the company and fines from regulators across the globe. It has stated that it expects its business to grow under the second Trump administration, especially with a new CEO at its helm. At the same time, Clearview may be forced to turn over nearly a quarter of its ownership to settle at least one complex class-action biometrics lawsuit. Internationally, regulators have fined it multi-millions of dollars for privacy violations, and Clearview AI has also won cases on appeal. Clearview AI may also never recover the over one million dollars from ICI or its president: instead of wiring the money to an escrow service, Clearview instead deposited it directly into Berlinās personal checking account.Ā
Freddy Martinez is the co-executive director of Lucy Parsons Labs where he writes about policing, its harms, public records and abolition.
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thaddeus e. grugq
thegrugq@bird.makeupThere are a lot of people who are wrong and have picked something other than Sneakers. Iām very disappointed in yāall
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Thom, United Europe šŖšŗ
thomholwerda@exquisite.socialDo not travel to the US. Under any circumstance. Think you're safe because your paperwork is in order? Fuck you, it does not matter.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-detained-us-immigration-jasmine-mooney
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Caitlin Condon
catc0n@infosec.exchangeHas anyone actually confirmed real-world compromises from the supposed Apache Tomcat exploitation (CVE-2025-24813) going on? Breathless headlines seem to be quoting a single vague source, and this bug isn't exploitable in anywhere close to a default config https://attackerkb.com/assessments/1a24556d-24fb-4017-be67-e4ab39c76566
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Julia Evans
b0rk@jvns.caone thing I've learned about teaching over the years is that if I make a negative statement (like āgit commits aren't stored as diffs"), it doesn't really work -- often people will just ignore it, especially if it contradicts their current mental model
so I always have to figure out how to make a positive statement, and make it in a way that will convince people whose mental model is different right now
convincing people to adjust their mental models is really hard!
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buherator
buherator
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~swapgs
swapgs@infosec.exchangeLast year, I had a few weeks between jobs and decided to look at the infrastructure security of random Linux distributions with the good friends at Fenrisk.
We ended up getting code execution on the Fedora Git forge hosting all package sources and on the Open Build Service instance of openSUSE. Nothing technically fancy (the usual silly argument injection bugs), but we could have effectively backdoored all their packages :Ā°)
We finally presented the details last week at @1ns0mn1h4ck: https://fenrisk.com/assets/media/Don't%20let%20Jia%20Tan%20have%20all%20the%20fun_%20hacking%20into%20Fedora%20and%20OpenSUSE.pdf.
Also now available on the blog:
- Our approach: https://fenrisk.com/supply-chain-attacks
- Pagure: https://fenrisk.com/pagure
- OBS: https://fenrisk.com/open-build-service
Big kudos to distro maintainers, this was one of the most efficient disclosures of my life!
(now let's do kernel.org?)
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David Gerard
davidgerard@circumstances.runThe EFF has shit the bed again. This is a stirring cry to encourage startups ... specifically, AI startups. This ain't it chief.
occasionally the EFF reminds us it was founded by a republican libertarian and funded by SV tech cos
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buherator
buheratorhttps://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/fgyh0q/transform_internal_keyboard_to_external_usb/
This build seems especially nice:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4169964
RE: https://mastodon.social/@recantha/114184031395472987
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Alec Muffett
alecmuffett@mastodon.socialāIāve just closed the forum of a small classic car club because we donāt have the time or capacity to ensure compliance with only volunteers. Meta will benefit, because we will, reluctantly, move to using a Facebook pageā
https://alecmuffett.com/article/112834
#OnlineSafetyAct #ofcom
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