When a Loch Ness Monster story appears at the start of April, it pays to check the date on the article just to avoid red faces. But there should be no hoax with this one published on the last day of March, scientists from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre were conducting underwater robotics tests in Scotland’s Loch Ness, and stumbled upon a camera trap lost by Nessie-hunters in the 1970s. Just to put the cherry on the cake of a perfect news story, the submarine in question is the famous “Boaty McBoatface”, so named as a consolation after the British Antarctic Survey refused to apply the name to their new ship when it won an online competition.

The Most Extreme Instamatic in The World

Sadly the NOC haven’t released close-ups of the inner workings of the device.
The camera trap has survived five decades underwater thanks to a sturdy glass housing, and appears to be quite an ingenious device. A humble Kodak Instamatic camera with a 126 film and a flash bulb is triggered and has its film advanced by a clockwork mechanism, in turn operated by a bait line. Presumably because of the four flash bulbs in the Kodak’s flash cube, it’s reported that it could capture four images. The constant low temperature at the bottom of a very deep loch provided the perfect place to store exposed film, and they have even been able to recover some pictures. Sadly none of then contain a snap of Nessie posing for the camera.

An underwater photographic blind used in the 1970s. Immanuel Giel, Public domain.
We are not cryptozoologists here at Hackaday so we’re not postulating any theories about Nessie’s existence, but there is some interest to be found in the history of Nessie-hunting, and the complex array of technologies fielded by those who would seek to bag themselves a monster. There have been extensive sonar surveys of the loch, a variety of home-made and more professional submarines have probed its depths, many metres of film and videotape have been shot by Nessie-hunters with long lenses, and of course experts have pored over all the various photographs which over the years have claimed to prove the monster’s existence. Perhaps the epicentre for the world of Nessie-hunting has been the Loch Ness Project, whose website details a variety of the survey efforts. Surprisingly, though they had a connection with the Instamatic camera trap they don’t feature it on their website, something we expect to change now it has become newsworthy.

Where Cryptozoology Tourism Is A Thing

The metamorphosis of a legendary beast into a modern-day phenomenon has certainly gripped the tourist industry of the Great Glen, as you’ll see if you take the drive from Inverness to Fort William. Even if you’re not a true believer, it’s still fun to indulge in a bit of touristic gawping at the various Nessie-themed attractions, though on the occasions Hackaday writers have passed by those waters there’s been a marked lack of monstrous life forms. The Nessie-hunters bring a bit of pseudoscientific thrill to the experience, something the Loch Ness Centre in Drumandrochit positively encourage: they even recruit visitors into their annual Nessie-spotting event. After all, as the camera discovery shows, there is doubtless plenty more to be found in those waters, even the occasional (non-Nessie) monster.

Header image: Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0 .

hackaday.com/2025/04/01/the-ev…

Henry VIII clauses are delegated legislative powers that allow the government to override or amend primary legislation as it was enacted by Parliament.

The Data Use and Access Bill makes extensive use of delegated legislative powers and Henry VIII powers: if the Data Bill were to be approved as it is, it would provide 87 quasi-arbitrary powers that the government and its Ministers could use to modify key aspects of UK data protection law via Statutory Instrument.

Briefing

Read ORG’s briefing on executive powers in the Data Use and Access Bill.
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The Data Bill’s delegated legislative powers are ripe for abuse:

• They lack meaningful parliamentary scrutiny: “no SI has been rejected by the House of Commons since 1979”.¹

• The 3rd Report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee stated that they “are not satisfied that the case has been sufficiently made to entrust the powers in these clauses to secondary legislation.”²

• In general, Henry VIII powers do, in the words of the House of Lords, “make it harder for Parliament to scrutinise the policy aims of the bill and can raise concerns about legal certainty”.³ The same report also states that these powers should, “be recognised as constitutionally anomalous”, and their use acceptable “only where there is an exceptional justification and no other realistic way of ensuring effective governance”.

This would allow governments to change primary legislation according to the politics of the day, undermining trust in digital verification services and endangering democratic safeguards. It would also introduce significant risks for the retaining of the UK adequacy status: either these powers would never be used, and thus they don’t need be provided, or they would be used in ways that would guarantee the invalidation of the UK adequacy decision.

Digital Verification Services: mission creep and enforced state monopoly

Clauses 28 and 29 give the government the power to prepare and publish “the DVS trust framework” and “supplementary codes”, which sets out rules concerning the provision of digital verification services, Further, Clause 34 provides the power to refuse registration in the DVS register, and Clause 45 allows to mandate data sharing from public bodies to registered DVS providers.

In a previous iteration of the Bill, Clause 45 would have required Ministers to use their powers to force public bodies to disclose to a DVS provider whether a person had changed their sex. This provision has been removed from the Bill, but the arbitrary nature of this power means that Ministers couldrequire at their sole discretion disclosure of sensitive characteristics such as gender, ethnicity or health conditions. This includes data sharing mandates with the Department of Work and Pension, the Home Office or HM Revenue Service to run background checks on any kind of information or attribute held by public bodies or DVS providers.

Likewise, there is nothing in the Data Bill that would prevent Ministers from imposing burdensome, unreasonable or otherwise arbitrary requirements on DVS providers. This, for instance, could happen if the government was interested in favouring the adoption of its public digital identity system, such as One Login or GOV.UK Wallet, over private providers of DVS services.

Erosion of democratic safeguards and integrity of elections

Clause 70 introduce new legal bases for processing, known as “recognised legitimate interests”, while Clause 71 would introduce exemptions to the purpose limitation principle, known as “list of compatible purposes”.

These powers could be used to undermine the integrity of our elections. Any party in power could change the rules around how electoral data is used just months before an election takes place. Opposition parties might worry Labour (whose election database runs on Experian, the credit agency servers) might use these powers to self-preference themselves and obtain even more access to commercial data.

These powers could also be used to enable and legalise a US-style mass seizure of government data by an unconstitutional agency like DOGE. Whereas DOGE’s misappropriation of government datasets is being successfully challenged on privacy law grounds in the US, a future, “rogue” UK government would only need to lay Statutory Instruments that authorise the illegal appropriation of government data to make their misuse legal. This weakens UK data protection law’s ability to protect the public during the event of a constitutional crisis, and make it easier to by-pass Whitehall departmental decision-making processes that operate under a cabinet style of Government.

Endangering UK adequacy and relationships with the EU

Clause 74 would empower the government to designate categories of data which are not to be considered as “special categories data”, also known as sensitive data. Further, schedule 7 would empower the government to authorise transfers of personal data to third countries on a purely discretionary basis.

If these powers were to be used, at any time, to authorise personal data transfers to a country that does not enjoy adequacy status from the EU, or to restrict the definition of special category data, this would guarantee the revocation or annulment of the UK adequacy status.

These powers were also identified by the EU stakeholders as a main source of concern regarding the continuation of the UK adequacy decision, whose review is due in December 2025. The House of Lords inquiry into UK adequacy concluded that “lawful bases for data processing and the ability to designate legitimate interests by secondary legislation made by Ministers” constituted a significant concern for EU stakeholders and the continuation of the UK adequacy decision.⁴ Henry VIII powers were also identified by the European Parliament review of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement as a potential barrier to the functioning of such agreement.⁵

Conclusion and recommendations

Henry VIII clauses introduce unacceptable risks, and are being introduced in the absence of a meaningful justification.

The government has generally argued that these powers would allow ministers to update the law and to adapt it to technological progress. This statement does not hold to scrutiny: the UK GDPR is already principle based and allows both the ICO and the Court System to adapt the interpretation of UK data protection law to a changing reality. Independent regulators and Courts are better suited than the government at doing that, since they are independent and non-partisan. Further, Henry VIII clauses allow Ministers to override Primary legislation: the stated intent of using such a wide-ranging power to merely update legal provisions is suspicious and should be rejected as an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the role of Parliament.

We recommend MPs to reject Clauses 70, 71, 74, 80, 85 and Schedule 7. Further, we recommend MPs to bring Clauses 28, 29, 34 and 45 back to the drawing board in order to introduce meaningful limits to the government discretion when regulating DVS providers.

¹ The Hansard Society, Delegated legislation: the problems with the process, p.16, at: hansardsociety.org.uk/publicat…

² House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, 3rd Report of Session 2024–25, Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL], p.4 paragraph 13, at: publications.parliament.uk/pa/…

³ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, Democracy Denied? The urgent need to rebalance power between Parliament and the Executive, at: publications.parliament.uk/pa/…

⁴ Lord Ricketts, Letter to Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP re: UK-EU data adequacy, at: committees.parliament.uk/publi…

⁵ Opinion of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (10.10.2023) within REPORT on the implementation of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, at: europarl.europa.eu/doceo/docum…

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Come abbiamo visto, Apple ha rilasciato aggiornamenti di sicurezza per i vecchi modelli di iPhone e iPad, correggendo tre vulnerabilità critiche che venivano sfruttate attivamente. Sono state aggiunte correzioni alle versioni precedenti di iOS, iPadOS e macOS, consentendo di correggere le vulnerabilità anche su dispositivi che da tempo non erano supportati.

Il primo problema risolto è un errore di tipo use-after-free nel componente Core Media ( CVE-2025-24085 ), che ha consentito a un’applicazione dannosa di ottenere privilegi elevati. Sebbene il punteggio CVSS sia 7,8, la presenza di un exploit in un attacco reale ne aumenta significativamente la pericolosità. Il problema è stato risolto in macOS Sonoma 14.7.5, Impresa 13.7.5 e Versione iPadOS 17.7.6 .

Il secondo bug, il CVE-2025-24200, con CVSS: 6.1 è associato al componente Accessibilità. Il bug consentiva a un aggressore di disattivare la modalità con restrizioni USB su un dispositivo bloccato. Ciò ha aperto la porta ai cosiddetti attacchi cyber fisici, che implicano l’accesso ai dati tramite il contatto fisico con il dispositivo. Sono stati rilasciati aggiornamenti che risolvono il problema per le versioni iOS e iPadOS 15.8.4 E 16.7.11 .

La vulnerabilità riconosciuta come la più grave è il CVE-2025-24201 (CVSS: 8.8) relativo al componente WebKit. Questo bug consente la diffusione di contenuti dannosi al di fuori dell’ambiente isolato del browser, il che può portare all’esecuzione di codice arbitrario all’apertura di un sito web appositamente predisposto. Gli aggiornamenti iOS includono anche delle correzioni. 15.8.4, 16.7.11 e le versioni corrispondenti di iPadOS.

Apple non solo ha corretto le vulnerabilità presenti nelle versioni correnti del sistema operativo, ma ha anche rilasciato patch per i dispositivi che da tempo non ricevevano aggiornamenti regolari. Tra questi rientrano l‘iPhone 6s, l’iPhone 7, l’SE di prima generazione, l’iPad Air 2, l’iPad mini di quarta generazione e persino l’iPod touch di settima generazione. Anche gli iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X, diversi modelli di iPad Pro e gli iPad di quinta e sesta generazione hanno ricevuto aggiornamenti.

Contemporaneamente, Apple ha introdotto importanti aggiornamenti ai suoi sistemi principali. iOS 18.4 e iPadOS 18.4 includono correzioni per 62 vulnerabilità, macOS Sequoia 15.4 ne include 131, tvOS 18.4 ne include 36, visionOS 2.4 ne include 38 e Safari 18.4 ne include 14. Sebbene nessuna di queste vulnerabilità sia stata ancora sfruttata dagli aggressori, l’azienda consiglia di installare gli aggiornamenti il ​​prima possibile.

Il rilascio di aggiornamenti come questi dimostra che anche i dispositivi da tempo fuori supporto continuano a essere sotto l’attenzione di Apple, soprattutto quando si tratta di problemi di sicurezza critici. Ciò evidenzia anche l’importanza di aggiornare regolarmente il software, anche se il dispositivo sembra obsoleto: negli attacchi nel mondo reale, sono proprio questi i modelli a diventare gli obiettivi prioritari.

L'articolo Tre Zeroday critici sfruttati attivamente minacciano i device Apple proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

While there’s still a vaguely robot-shaped hole in our heart from the loss of the New York World Maker Faire, we do take comfort in the fact that smaller Maker Faire events are still happening all over the world, and some of them have managed to gain quite a bit of momentum over the last few years.

If you’re in the Northeast US, the Philadelphia Maker Faire is your best bet to scratch that peculiar itch that only seems to respond to a healthy blend of art, technology, and the occasional flamethrower. It will be returning to the Cherry Street Pier this Sunday, April 6th, and pay-what-you-can tickets are on sale now. The organizers encourage each attendee to only pay what they are able to afford, with several options ranging from zero to the $25 supporter level.

A look through the exhibits shows the sort of eclectic mix one would expect from a Maker Faire. Where else could you practice picking locks, learn how biodiesel is made, see a display of kinetic sculptures, and stitch together a felt plush monster, all under one roof?

There’s even a few projects on the list that regular Hackaday readers may recognize, such as the ultra-portable Positron 3D printer and the DirectTV dish turned backyard radio telescope built by Professor James Aguirre.

We’ve made the trip to the Philadelphia Maker Faire several times since its inception in 2019, and although it had the misfortune of starting right before COVID-19 came along and screwed up all of our carefully laid plans, the event has managed to find a foothold and continues to grow each year.

hackaday.com/2025/04/01/philad…

Il 18 marzo il parlamento ungherese ha approvato un emendamento alla legge sul diritto di assemblea, che di fatto vieta l'organizzazione pubblica del Pride.

In caso di trasgressione gli eventuali partecipanti potranno essere sanzionati con multe fino a 500 euro. La loro identificazione potrà avvenire tramite registrazione delle immagini e utilizzo di software di riconoscimento facciale.

Nel mio servizio uscito su Valigia Blu, parto da questa storia di straordinario restringimento delle libertà civili per raccontarvi il momento storico che sta vivendo l'Ungheria. Mentre Orbán lancia cupe dichiarazioni, il suo partito si trova per la prima volta in difficoltà nei sondaggi. A un anno dalle elezioni la partita è aperta.

Per capire dove siamo e come siamo arrivati fin qui è utile riavvolgere il nastro degli ultimi 15 anni.

Buona lettura.

valigiablu.it/ungheria-orban-d…

Ungheria: storia di una democrazia sempre più illiberale (e della sua possibile fine) - Valigia Blu

La decisione del governo ungherese di vietare il Pride si inserisce in un contesto di crescente repressione da parte di Orbán. Le elezioni del 2026 saranno una sfida cruciale per il futuro democratico dell’Ungheria.

^{Fabio Turco (Valigia Blu)}

History is rather dull and unexciting to most people, which naturally invites exciting flights of fancy that can range from the innocent to outright conspiracies. Nobody truly believes that the astounding finds and (fully functioning) ancient mechanisms in the Indiana Jones & Uncharted franchises are real, with mostly intact ancient cities waiting for intrepid explorers along with whatever mystical sources of power, wealth or influence formed the civilization’s foundations before its tragic demise. Yet somehow Plato’s fictive Atlantis has taken on a life of its own, along with many other ‘lost’ civilizations, whether real or imagined.

Of course, if these aforementioned movies and video games were realistic, they would center around a big archaeological dig and thrilling finds like pot shards and cuneiform clay tablets, not ways to smite enemies and gain immortality. Nor would it involve solving complex mechanical puzzles to gain access to the big secret chamber, prior to walking out of the readily accessible backdoor. Reality is boring like that, which is why there’s a major temptation to spruce things up. With the Egyptian pyramids as well as similar structures around the world speaking to the human imagination, this has led to centuries of half-baked ideas and outright conspiracies.

Most recently, a questionable 2022 paper hinting at structures underneath the Pyramid of Khafre in Egypt was used for a fresh boost to old ideas involving pyramid power stations, underground cities and other fanciful conspiracies. Although we can all agree that the ancient pyramids in Egypt are true marvels of engineering, are we really on the cusp of discovering that the ancient Egyptians were actually provided with Forerunner technology by extraterrestrials?

The Science of Being Tragically Wrong

A section of the ‘runes’ at Runamo. (Credit: Entheta, Wikimedia)
In defense of fanciful theories regarding the Actual Truth about Ancient Egypt and kin, archaeology as we know it today didn’t really develop until the latter half of the 20th century, with the field being mostly a hobbyist thing that people did out of curiosity as well as a desire for riches. Along the way many comical blunders were made, such as the Runamo runes in Sweden that turned out to be just random cracks in dolerite.

Less funny were attempts by colonists to erase Great Zimbabwe (11th – ~17th century CE) and the Kingdom of Zimbabwe after the ruins of the abandoned capital were discovered by European colonists and explored in earnest by the 19th century. Much like the wanton destruction of local cultures in the Americas by European colonists and explorers who considered their own culture, religion and technology to be clearly superior, the history of Great Zimbabwe was initially rewritten so that no thriving African society ever formed on its own, but was the result of outside influences.

In this regard it’s interesting how many harebrained ideas about archaeological sites have now effectively flipped, with mystical and mythical properties being assigned and these ‘Ancients’ being almost worshipped. Clearly, aliens visited Earth and that led to pyramids being constructed all around the globe. These would also have been the same aliens or lost civilizations that had technology far beyond today’s cutting edge, putting Europe’s fledgling civilization to shame.

Hence people keep dogpiling on especially the pyramids of Giza and its surrounding complex, assigning mystical properties to their ventilation shafts and expecting hidden chambers with technology and treasures interspersed throughout and below the structures.

Lost Technology

The Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. (Credit: code poet, Wikimedia)
The idea of ‘lost technology’ is a pervasive one, mostly buoyed by the axiom that you cannot disprove something, only find evidence for its absence. Much like the possibility of a teapot being in orbit around the Sun right now, you cannot disprove that the Ancient Egyptians did not have hyper-advanced power plants using zero point energy back around 3,600 BCE. This ties in with the idea of ‘lost civilizations‘, which really caught on around the Victorian era.

Such romanticism for a non-existent past led to the idea of Atlantis being a real, lost civilization becoming pervasive, with the 1960s seeing significant hype around the Bimini Road. This undersea rock formation in the Bahamas was said to have been part of Atlantis, but is actually a perfectly cromulent geological formation. More recently a couple of German tourists got into legal trouble while trying to prove a connection between Egypt’s pyramids to Atlantis, which is a theory that refuses to die along with the notion that Atlantis was some kind of hyper-advanced civilization and not just a fictional society that Plato concocted to illustrate the folly of man.

Admittedly there is a lot of poetry in all of this when you consider it from that angle.
Welcome to Shangri-La… or rather Shambhala as portrayed in Uncharted 3.
People have spent decades of their life and countless sums of money on trying to find Atlantis, Shangri-La (possibly inspired by Shambhala), El Dorado and similar fictional locations. The Iram of the Pillars which featured in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is one of the lost cities mentioned in the Qur’an, and is incidentally another great civilization that saw itself meet a grim end through divine punishment. Iram is often said to be Ubar, which is commonly known as Atlantis of the Sands.

All of this is reminiscent of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, and corresponding area at Fingal’s Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa, where eons ago molten basalt cooled and contracted into basalt columns in a way that is similar to how drying mud will crack in semi-regular patterns. This particular natural formation did lead to many local myths, including how a giant built a causeway across the North Channel, hence the name.

Fortunately for this location, no ‘lost civilization’ tag became attached, and thus it remains a curious demonstration of how purely natural formations can create structures that one might assume to have required intelligence, thus providing fuel for conspiracies. So far only ‘Young Earth’ conspiracy folk have put a claim on this particular site.

What we can conclude is that much like the Victorian age that spawned countless works of fiction on the topic, many of these modern-day stories appear to be rooted in a kind of romanticism for a past that never existed, with those affected interpreting natural patterns as something more in a sure sign of confirmation bias.

Tourist Traps

Tomb of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di, Xi’an, China (Credit: Aaron Zhu)
One can roughly map the number of tourist visits with the likelihood of wild theories being dreamed up. These include the Egyptian pyramids, but also similar structures in what used to be the sites of the Aztec and Maya civilizations. Similarly the absolutely massive mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang in China with its world-famous Terracotta Army has led to incredible speculation on what might still be hidden inside the unexcavated tomb mound, such as entire seas and rivers of mercury that moved mechanically to simulate real bodies of water, a simulated starry sky, crossbows set to take out trespassers and incredible riches.

Many of these features were described by Sima Qian in the first century BCE, who may or may not have been truthful in his biography of Qin Shi Huang. Meanwhile, China’s authorities have wisely put further excavations on hold, as they have found that many of the recovered artefacts degrade very quickly once exposed to air. The paint on the terracotta figures began to flake off rapidly after excavation, for example, reducing them to the plain figures which we are familiar with.

Tourism can be as damaging as careless excavation. As popular as the pyramids at Giza are, centuries of tourism have taken their toll, with vandalism, graffiti and theft increasing rapidly since the 20th century. The Great Pyramid of Khufu had already been pilfered for building materials over the course of millennia by the local population, but due to tourism part of its remaining top stones were unceremoniously tipped over the side to make a larger platform where tourists could have some tea while gazing out over the the Giza Plateau, as detailed in a recent video on the History for Granite channel:

youtube.com/embed/1Cs1k_j49MQ?…

The recycling of building materials from antique structures was also the cause of the demise of the Labyrinth at the foot of the pyramid of Amenemhat III at Hawara. Once an architectural marvel, with reportedly twelve roofed courts and spanning a total of 28,000 m², today only fragments remain of its existence. This sadly is how most marvels of the Ancient World end up: looted ruins, ashes and shards, left in the sand, mud, or reclaimed by nature, from which we can piece together with a lot of patience and the occasional stroke of fortune a picture what it once may have looked like.

Pyramid Power

Cover of The Giza Power Plant book. (Credit: Christopher Dunn)
When in light of all this we look at the claims made about the Pyramid of Khafre and the persistent conspiracies regarding this and other pyramids hiding great secrets, we can begin to see something of a pattern. Some people have really bought into these fantasies, while for others it’s just another way to embellish a location, to attract more rubes tourists and sell more copies of their latest book on the extraterrestrial nature of pyramids and how they are actually amazing lost technologies. This latter category is called pseudoarcheology.

Pyramids, of course, have always held magical powers, but the idea that they are literal power plants seems to have been coined by one Christopher Dunn, with the publication of his pseudo-archeological book The Giza Power Plant in 1998. That there would be more structures underneath the Pyramid of Khafre is a more recent invention, however. Feeding this particular flight of fancy appears to be a 2022 paper by Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga, in which synthetic aperture radar (SAR) was used to examine said pyramid interior and subsurface features.

Somehow this got turned into claims about multiple deep vertical wells descending 648 meters along with other structures. Shared mostly via conspiracy channels, it widely extrapolates from claims made in the paper by Biondi et al., with said SAR-based claims never having been peer-reviewed or independently corroborated. On the Rational Wiki entry for these and other claims related to the Giza pyramids are savagely tossed under the category of ‘pyramidiots’.
The art that conspiracy nuts produce when provided with generative AI tools. (Source: Twitter)
Back in the real world, archaeologists have found a curious L-shaped area underneath a royal graveyard near Khufu’s pyramid that was apparently later filled in, but which seems to lead to a deeper structure. This is likely to be part of the graveyard, but may also have been a feature that was abandoned during construction. Currently this area is being excavated, so we’re likely to figure out more details after archaeologists have finished gently sifting through tons of sand and gravel.

There is also the ScanPyramids project, which uses non-destructive and non-invasive techniques to scan Old Kingdom-era pyramids, such as muon tomography and infrared thermography. This way the internal structure of these pyramids can be examined in-depth. One finding was that of a number of ‘voids’, which could mean any of a number of things, but most likely do not contain world-changing secrets.

To this day the most credible view is still that the pyramids of the Old Kingdom were used as tombs, though unlike the mastabas and similar tombs, there is a credible argument to be made that rather than being designed to be hidden away, these pyramids would be eternal monuments to the pharaoh. They would be open for worship of the pharaoh, hence the ease of getting inside them. Ironically this would make them more secure from graverobbers, which was a great idea until the demise of the Ancient Egyptian civilization.

This is a point that’s made succinctly on the History for Granite channel, with the conclusion being that this goal of ‘inspiring awe’ to worshippers is still effective today, simply judging by the millions of tourists each year to these monuments, and the tall tales that they’ve inspired.

hackaday.com/2025/04/01/on-egy…

Apple ha rilasciato inaspettatamente e prima del previsto un importante aggiornamento iOS 18.4 per iPhone, affermando che ora il sistema è ancora più comodo e sicuro da usare. L’aggiornamento è ora disponibile per tutti i modelli di iPhone Xs dal 2018 in poi, inclusi iPhone SE di seconda e terza generazione, nonché la serie iPhone 16 fino al 16e. Sull’iPhone 16 Pro Max pesa circa 3,76 GB e l’intero processo richiede circa 10 minuti.

Le principali novità di iOS 18.4 riguardano le nuove funzionalità di Apple Intelligence. Le notifiche prioritarie ora trovano automaticamente le notifiche importanti e le portano in primo piano, aiutandoti a non perdere informazioni davvero preziose. Image Playground ha aggiunto lo stile Sketch oltre ad Animazione e Illustrazione, e il supporto di Apple Intelligence è stato esteso ad altre otto lingue, tra cui francese, tedesco, italiano, giapponese, coreano, portoghese, spagnolo e inglese per gli utenti in India e Singapore.

Sono stati aggiunti anche nuovi emoji, il più noto dei quali, secondo molti, è la faccina sorridente con le borse sotto gli occhi, poiché riflette ironicamente il ritmo di vita moderno. Apparivano anche un’impronta digitale, uno schizzo, una radice vegetale, un albero senza foglie, un’arpa, una vanga e la bandiera dell’isola di Sark. Vale la pena sottolineare l’installazione automatica dell’app complementare per Apple Vision Pro, che aiuta a trovare contenuti aggiuntivi per il visore e ne semplifica l’utilizzo.

Molti sono soddisfatti dell’aggiornamento dell’app Foto, che ora offre ancora più modi per ordinare e filtrare le foto; inoltre, le foto nascoste con protezione Face ID abilitata non vengono più trasferite automaticamente al computer. Gli abbonati ad Apple News+ troveranno più contenuti sulla cucina e Safari semplifica la consultazione delle ricerche precedenti. I genitori apprezzeranno la nuova e più chiara procedura per la configurazione di un account per bambini e le migliori restrizioni relative al tempo trascorso davanti allo schermo. Ora i bambini non potranno più aggirare i limiti eliminando e reinstallando le applicazioni. È diventata utile anche la funzione di mettere in pausa un download sull’App Store, con la possibilità di riprenderlo in un secondo momento senza perdere i progressi. Ora è possibile accedere alla musica ambientale per iPhone direttamente dal Centro di controllo e gli aspirapolvere robot compatibili con Matter possono essere aggiunti alla Home e integrati in scene e automazioni.

È importante sottolineare che con iOS 18.4 Apple anche corretto un elenco completo di 62 vulnerabilità, invitando gli utenti a installare l’aggiornamento il prima possibile. L’azienda cerca di non divulgare i dettagli di ogni bug risolto, in modo da dare agli utenti il ​​tempo di aggiornare i propri dispositivi prima che gli aggressori trovino delle falle. Tra l’altro, diversi sono chiusi problemi critici in WebKit, che è alla base di Safari e del kernel stesso dell’iPhone. Quindi, la patch lo risolve vulnerabilità CVE-2025-30432, che consente a un’applicazione dannosa di indovinare una password su un dispositivo bloccato e di estendere artificialmente il tempo di blocco in caso di tentativi non riusciti. È stata chiusa anche la vulnerabilità di cross-site scripting CVE-2025-24208, che consente agli aggressori di iniettare codice dannoso in un sito attendibile utilizzando un iframe dannoso.

Tutto ciò sottolinea che l’aggiornamento iOS 18.4 non solo introduce nuove funzionalità, ma rafforza anche significativamente la sicurezza del sistema. La data di rilascio anticipata è stata una piacevole sorpresa per molti, poiché ora i dispositivi degli utenti sono ancora più sicuri e possono vantare funzionalità aggiuntive.

L'articolo Apple rilascia iOS 18.4 a sorpresa: novità e sicurezza al top! proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Digital rights campaigners, Open Rights Group (ORG) have responded to the publication of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.

ORG’s Platform Power Programme Manager James Baker said:

“ORG welcomes legislation to protect and improve the UK’s cyber security. But a key component of any cyber security strategy has to be the promotion of strong encryption for both the state and the public.

“The UK cannot claim to be strengthening the country’s cyber defences while at the same time issuing notices to companies like Apple and demanding that they reduce the security of the services they offer.

“This Bill is also an opportunity to assess and reduce the UK’s dependence on large US corporations for vital government infrastructure. Other countries – such as France and the Netherlands – are already debating how to do this, through open source software for example. The UK is subject to the same risks so needs to assess our dependence in the same way.”

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