The Parkside range of tools as sold in European Lidl stores may be reasonably priced, but it contains some products of far better quality than their modest cost would suggest. This means that Parkside hacking has become as much of a cottage industry as IKEA hacking, and they’re a firm favorite for modifications. [Gabriel-LG] has taken a Parkside robot mower, and converted it from a relatively mundane device to a fully-connected smart robot, with the aid of an ESP32.

The hardware is surprisingly simple, as all that’s really needed is a stop/go command. This can be readily found by hooking up to the input from the mower’s rain sensor, allowing the ESP to control its operation. Then there’s an accelerometer to allow it to count motion, and a hookup tot he battery to measure voltage. The firmware uses ESPHome, resulting in a mower now connected to home automation.

This isn’t the first time we’ve shown you someone upgrading the smarts on robot mover, and of course we’ve also taken a tour through the history of lawn mowers in general.

Cisco sta risolvendo una vulnerabilità di command injection zero-day in NX-OS. Ad aprile, questo bug è stato sfruttato dal gruppo di hacker di spionaggio informatico legato alla Cina Velvet Ant, installando malware con diritti di root sugli switch vulnerabili.

La vulnerabilità è stata identificata come CVE-2024-20399 colpisce l’interfaccia della riga di comando di NX-OS, consentendo a un utente malintenzionato locale di eseguire comandi arbitrari con diritti di root.

“Questa vulnerabilità è dovuta alla convalida errata degli argomenti passati a determinati comandi di configurazione della CLI. Un utente malintenzionato potrebbe sfruttare la vulnerabilità utilizzando i dati modificati come argomento per un comando CLI vulnerabile“, ha affermato Cisco.

Si sottolinea che per sfruttare con successo questo bug, l’aggressore dovrà prima autenticarsi come amministratore sul dispositivo vulnerabile. Il CVE-2024-20399 interessa gli switch Cisco MDS 9000, Nexus 3000, Nexus 5500, Nexus 5600, Nexus 6000, Nexus 7000 e Nexus 9000. Versioni firmware aggiornate sono attualmente disponibili per tutti i dispositivi.

Il rapporto dell’azienda rileva inoltre che Cisco è a conoscenza dello sfruttamento di questo problema nell’aprile 2024. Inizialmente la vulnerabilità e i relativi attacchi sono stati scoperti dagli specialisti della società di sicurezza informatica Sygnia, i quali sottolineano che questa attività era collegata allo spionaggio informatico e al gruppo di hacker cinese Velvet Ant.

Ricordiamo che il mese scorso i ricercatori di Sygnia avevano avvertito che Velvet Ant installava da molti anni malware personalizzati sui dispositivi F5 BIG-IP per ottenere un accesso costante alla rete interna dell’azienda presa di mira e rubare dati.

Come è ormai noto, il gruppo di hacker ha utilizzato un bug di Cisco NX-OS per lanciare malware precedentemente sconosciuti su dispositivi vulnerabili, connettersi ad essi da remoto, scaricare file aggiuntivi ed eseguire codice.

“Dato che la maggior parte degli switch Nexus non hanno accesso diretto a Internet, per sfruttare questa vulnerabilità, gli hacker devono prima ottenere l’accesso alla rete interna di un’organizzazione. Di conseguenza, il rischio complessivo per le organizzazioni è ridotto a causa delle difficoltà legate all’ottenimento dell’accesso necessario”, scrivono i ricercatori di Sygnia.

Tuttavia, l’azienda ha anche osservato che, nonostante le difficoltà nello sfruttare vulnerabilità come CVE-2024-20399, gruppi come Velvet Ant utilizzano solitamente dispositivi di rete scarsamente protetti per garantire un accesso costante agli ambienti aziendali.

L'articolo Cisco Risolve Vulnerabilità 0Day in NX-OS. Gli Hacker Cinesi di Velvet Ant la sfruttavano da Aprile proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Eccoci qui. Dopo aver trascorso gli ultimi anni leggendo tra il fediverso e il web alternativo, ho deciso di creare il mio posto dove le persone orientate alla libertà possano discutere di libertà nell'informatica e nella società. Lo scopo generale è ricreare le vibrazioni familiari dell'era BBS mettendo insieme strumenti vecchi e moderni, da IRC a Mastodon. Ecco dove spiego tutto:

- [ENG] dmi.unict.it/nfarceri/articles…
- [ITA] dmi.unict.it/nfarceri/articles…

Benvenuti a casa... vostra!

Questo è il primo articolo di questo sito, dove vengono introdotti gli scopi del sito stesso. In sintesi, il sito ha lo scopo di ricreare il feeling familiare e comunitario delle BBS degli anni '80 e '90 aggregando insieme più strumenti, vecchi e mod…

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Throughout history, clean and potable water has been one of the most prized possessions, without which no human civilization could have ever sustained itself. Not only is water crucial for drinking and food preparation, but also for agriculture, cleaning and the production of countless materials, chemicals and much more. And this isn’t a modern problem: good water supplies and the most successful ancient cultures go hand in hand.

For instance, the retention and management of fresh water in reservoirs played a major role in the Khmer Empire, with many of its reservoirs (baray) surviving to today. Similarly, the Anuradhapure Kingdom in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) featured massive reservoirs like Kala Wewa that was constructed in 460 CE with a capacity of 123 million m3. In the New World, the Maya civilization similarly created reservoirs with intricate canals to capture rainwater before the dry season started, as due to the karst landscape wells were not possible.

Keeping this water fresh and free from contaminants and pollution was a major problem for especially the Maya, with a recent perspective by Lisa J. Lucera in PNAS Anthropology suggesting that they used an approach similar to modern day constructed wetlands to keep disease and illness at bay, while earlier discoveries also suggest the use of filtration including the use of zeolite.

Resource Management

In climates where rainfall is plentiful, and where wells can fill in gaps, extensive water management is not a major concern. This is where the civilizations of Mesoamerica provide good illustrations of the effects this can have on societies, with the Aztec and Inca using aqueducts to bring mountain spring water to their cities, while the Maya in their region with a karst topography had to capture every drop of rainwater before it would vanish within the hollowed-out structures that are a distinctive feature of these soluble carbonate rock landscapes.

This meant that the only time when the Maya could refill their reservoirs was when it rained, which also placed significant restrictions on how much water would be available to any population. It is postulated that it was a drought and reservoir pollution led to the eventual abandonment of the Mayan city of Tikal (ti ak’al in Yucatac Maya, but Yax Mutal (‘First Mutal’) according to inscriptions within the city) after the Late Classic Period (~900 CE). This preceded the Terminal Classic period, during which much of the lowlands were abandoned.

There is strong palaeoclimatological evidence for a sustained drought between 800 – 1000 CE (likely related to the Medieval Warm Period) in and around the Yucatán Peninsula, coinciding when archeological evidence shows a reduced human presence in these lowlands by the Maya. It’s thought that these droughts coincided with epidemic diseases in combination with dense populations and intensification of agriculture with associated ecological destruction. The post-classical Maya period featured far less dense cities, and despite the often used term of ‘Classic Maya Collapse’, Mayan society was only regionally affected and persists to this day, despite efforts by European invaders and associated occupation over the centuries.

Filtration

Hypothetical scheme of the ancient water purification system at Tikal. Macro-crystalline quartz crystal sand and zeolite filtration system positioned just upstream of, or within the reservoir ingress. (Credit: Kenneth Barnett Tankersley et al, 2020, Scientific Reports)
Water filtration is something that happens not just with man-made structures and mechanisms, as anyone who uses water from springs and wells uses knows. The granular structure of soil serves to filter out larger and smaller contaminants as well as bacteria and other potential disease carriers. This same principle can be applied with artificial water filtration systems, with the Corriental water reservoir at the city of Tikal providing evidence that the Mayans even used the zeolite mineral for its water purification properties.

This was discovered by Kenneth Barnett Tankersley and colleagues, and published in 2020 in the journal Scientific Reports. They discovered that the water in this reservoir was filtered through a mixture of zeolite and coarse crystalline quartz. Zeolite is interesting, as it has adsorbent and ion-exchange properties which make it a popular choice even today for water purification to the point where most zeolite is synthesized for this and other purposes.

As for whether this extensive filtration in Mayan reservoirs was common is unknown, as the authors succinctly point out that the number of excavations of these reservoirs is quite limited. The presence of zeolite would have significantly helped with filtering out contamination from microbial sources like cyanobacteria and toxins such as cinnabar. The latter is both a historically common brilliant red pigment as well as a good source of toxic mercury due to its mercury sulfide composition. Unfortunately this kind of filter does not help against mercury from volcanic sources due to its very small particle size, meaning that this type of contamination would have built up over the years in reservoirs.

Circle Of Life

LiDAR map of Tikal highlighting some of its reservoirs. LiDAR-derived hillshade image created by Francisco Estrada-Belli of the PAQUNAM LiDAR Initiative with additions by Christopher Carr and Nicholas Dunning.
The term ‘constructed wetland‘ pretty much gives away the concept: these create an artificial wetland ecosystem where plant and often also animal life work to treat sewage, greywater, stormwater runoff, and wastewater in general. They provide both a filtration function and a remediation one, with the vegetation along with microbial life serving to break down and process excess elements, while maintaining a healthy pH and nutrient levels.

In the mostly stagnant water reservoirs which the Maya maintained, preventing the build-up of organisms and harmful pollutants was essential, leading to likely extensive use of aquatic plants in these reservoirs. This is reflected in the headdresses, architecture and other elements of Mayan culture where the clean water-loving water lily (nymphaea ampla) is prominently displayed and associated with prosperity and the leadership.

Likely many different aquatic plants were used in combination with water lilies, along with various types of fish. This would have helped to deal with pests like mosquitoes and their aquatic offspring, reduce evaporation and creating a self-sustaining cycle where the waste from the fish would have provided nutrients for the plants, who themselves would have provided shade and food for these fish. Settlement maps show that the Maya did not generally build residences near the reservoirs, likely keeping human waste run-off to a minimum.

This healthy system did however begin to break down during the Late and Terminal Classic period, with the sediment record showing a gradual increase in contamination from cyanobacteria and human waste. This gives a sobering insight into the final years of the city of Tikal and areas like it that got hit worst by the drought.

Lessons For Today

Although we often like to regard droughts and access to potable water as historical problems, even today one in four humans does not have access to safe drinking water, with unsafe water being responsible for about a million deaths each year. Unsafe water can include water that is contaminated with infectious diseases such as cholera, with much of Africa and Asian countries like India heavily affected in this manner, but even wealthy countries like the US seeing its share of drinking water contamination incidents, with that of Flint, Michigan, being just one of many.

Such forms of contamination and lack of access to safe drinking water are obviously issues that ought to be resolved and prevented as well as possible once the cause has been determined. These days we don’t necessarily have to rely on constructed wetlands courtesy of modern technology, but they could be very beneficial as a self-sustaining water purification system.

As the US Geological Survey (USGS) points out, we are dealing with increasing drought since 2000 as well. This doesn’t merely translate into less rain, but also the rain and melting patterns, not to mention the availability of groundwater. This becomes apparent in periods of extreme drought interrupted by extreme rain accompanied with floods. As this makes water availability less predictable for drinking water and agriculture, the creation of reservoirs may be advisable, both to reduce the impact of floods and as buffers for dry periods.

Today we have many reservoirs that were formed due to dams blocking the course of rivers, but something similar could be done for rainwater, not unlike historical cisterns that once used to be extensively used throughout the world, like the famous Basilica Cistern below the city of Istanbul. It’s perhaps ironic that many of such cisterns were abandoned over the years, even as the need for them becomes more apparent today.

How do you talk USB Power Delivery (PD)? Grab a PHY? Use a MCU with one built-in? Well, if you’re hardcore enough, you can do it with just a few resistors and GPIOs. [eeucalyptus] shows you their implementation of USB-PD on a CH32V003, which has no PD peripheral, building a PD trigger, everything is open source, and they walk you through the entire thing including low-level PD basics, too!

It helps that CH32V003 is a 32-bit MCU with a good few resources and peripherals, for instance, an internal comparator. Other than that, you don’t need much in terms of hardware resources, but you do need a steady hand — parts of the firmware had to be written in assembly to keep up with PD timing. Want to tinker with the fruit of this research, perhaps, further build upon the code? There’s an example board on GitHub, too!

Want to try your own luck with this method? There’s a schematic, and logic analyzer captures, and a board to refer to. Again, more than enough information on every single low-level detail! Otherwise, grab an MCU pre-programmed to talk PD, maybe a trigger board chip, or maybe even a PD PHY and implement PD communications with it directly – it’s pretty easy!

We thank [Julianna] for sharing this with us!

The EU is falling short of meeting its 2030 digital targets, particularly in connectivity and digital skills, states the European Commission's latest report on the State of the Digital Decade, released Tuesday (2 July).

euractiv.com/section/digital-i…

Il quotidiano di sinistra tedesco ND ha pubblicato recentemente un articolo che racconta l’esperienza dei lavoratori del collettivo di fabbrica della ex GKN di Campi Bisenzio (Firenze), licenziati nel luglio 2021 e da allora in assemblea permanente, a partire da un’iniziativa di solidarietà alla lotta dei lavoratori promossa in Germania da Tobi Rosswog, un attivista tedesco nella lotta per il clima e per la trasformazione dell’intera industria automobilistica: https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1183320.konversion-lastenrad-aus-besetzter-fabrik-auf-deutschlandtour.html .

La didascalia dell'immagine dice: "Una cargo-bike della fabbrica occupata in giro per la Germania"

Tobi Rosswog usando una cargo-bike elettrica prodotta dal collettivo di fabbrica della ex GKN ha fatto un giro di sette giorni, per alcune città tedesche, partendo da Wolfsburg, la città della Volkswagen per arrivare a Stoccarda, la città della Mercedes Benz e l’ha chiamato “Konversiontour”, in questo suo tour è stato accompagnato da Anton Benz, un giornalista di ND.
Questo è il link alla home page del suo sito: tobi-rosswog.de/

Il collettivo di fabbrica della ex Gkn dopo il licenziamento collettivo, si è costituito in cooperativa, ha lanciato una campagna di azionariato popolare e ha presentato un piano industriale che prevede una riconversione della fabbrica per la produzione di cargo-bike e di pannelli solari, al momento questo piano non ha ricevuto alcuna risposta dalle autorità di governo e dagli amministratori regionali.

Quando Tobi Rosswog parte per il suo tour (metà giugno), i lavoratori dell’ex GKN sono già da 165 giorni senza stipendio, ogni sera l’attivista arriva in una città diversa, lo aspetta un incontro assemblea sulla situazione della fabbrica di Firenze, fa provare agli interessati la cargo-bike e raccoglie i pre-ordini, in una settimana ne ha raccolti circa 25. Il denaro è destinato a finanziare l'ulteriore produzione di cargo bike, e in alcuni casi può essere utilizzato anche per pagare gli stipendi. Dopo una settimana, due compagni sostituiscono Rosswog e girano la Germania per un'altra settimana.
Qui sotto l'immagine di due cargo-bike prodotte dalcollettivodi fabbrica,lo slogan dilangio è "La cargo-bike con la lotta attorno".

La cargo -bike con la lotta attorno

La cargo - bike si può pre-ordinare anche in Italia: ecco la pagina del sito del collettivo di fabbrica da cui è possibile farlo:
insorgiamo.org/cargo-bike/

Qui sotto invece una foto dall’incontro tenuto a Braunschweig, città sede di una delle fabbriche della VolksWagen, lo striscione dice: "Conversione della ex GKN subito. La lotta per il lavoro è lotta per il clima".

Foto di gruppo dell'incontro di Braunschweig

Un grosso grazie a Tobi Rosswog e a ND 🙂✊

#GKNFirenze #lavoro #CargoBike #solidarietà #Germania #MobiitàSostenibile #CrisiClimatica
@nd.Aktuell @macfranc @lgsp