Up first, go check your machines for the rsync version, and your servers for an exposed rsync instance. While there are some security fixes for clients in release 3.4.0, the buffer overflow in the server-side rsync daemon is the definite standout. The disclosure text includes this bit of nightmare fuel: “an attacker only requires anonymous read access to a rsync server, such as a public mirror, to execute arbitrary code on the machine the server is running on.”

A naive search on Shodan shows a whopping 664,955 results for rsync servers on the Internet. Red Hat’s analysis gives us a bit more information. The checksum length is specified by the remote client, and an invalid length isn’t properly rejected by the server. The effect is that an attacker can write up to 48 bytes into the heap beyond the normal checksum buffer space. The particularly dangerous case is also the default: anonymous access for file retrieval. Red Hat has not identified a mitigation beyond blocking access.

If you run servers or forward ports, it’s time to look at ports 873 and 8873 for anything listening. And since that’s not the only problem fixed, it’s really just time to update to rsync 3.4.0 everywhere you can. While there aren’t any reports of this being exploited in the wild, it seems like attempts are inevitable. As rsync is sometimes used in embedded systems and shipped as part of appliances, this particular bug threatens to have quite the long tail.

My Gmail is My Passport, Verify Me

Here’s an interesting question. What happens to those “Log In With Google” accounts that we all have all over the Internet, when the domain changes hands? And no, we’re not talking about gmail.com. We’re talking about myfailedbusiness.biz, or any custom domain that has been integrated with a Google Workspace. The business fails, the domain reverts back to unclaimed, someone else purchases it, and re-adds the admin@myfailedbusiness.biz Google Workspace account. Surely that doesn’t register as the same account for the purpose of Google SSO, right?

The answer to this question is to look at what actually happens when a user uses Google Oauth to log in. The service sends a message to Google, asking Google to identify the user. Google asks the user for confirmation, and if granted will send an ID token to the service. That token contains three fields that are interesting for this purpose. The domain and email are straightforward, and importantly don’t make any distinction between the original and new users. So when the domain and email change hands, so does ownership of the token.

Oauth does provide a sub (subject) field, that is a unique token for a given user/service combination. Seems like that solves the issue, right? The problem is that while that identifier is guaranteed to be unique, it’s not guaranteed to be consistent, and thus isn’t widely used as a persistent user identifier. Google is aware of the issue, and while they initially closed it as a “Won’t fix” issue, the concept did eventually earn [Dylan Ayrey] a nifty $1337 bounty and a promise that Google is working on unspecified fixes. There is no immediate solution, and it’s not entirely clear that this is strictly a Google problem. Other SSO solutions may have the same quirk.

Fortigate Under Attack

Fortiguard has reported that a vulnerability in FortiOS and FortiProxy is under active exploitation. Fortiguard lists quite a few Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), but as far as the nature of the vulnerability, all we know is that it is an authentication bypass in an Node.js websocket module that allows a remote attacker to gain super-admin privileges. Yoiks.

Actic Wolf has more details on the exploit campaign, which was first found back in early December, but appears to have begun with widespread scanning for the vulnerability as early as November 16. Attackers moved slowly, with the goal of establishing VPN access into the networks protected behind the vulnerable devices. Arctic Wolf has provided additional IoCs, so time to go hunting.

Ivanti Connect, Too

There’s another security device under attack this week, as watchTowr labs has yet another fun romp through vendor mis-security. This time it’s a two-part series on Ivanti Connect Secure, and the two buffer overflows being used in the wild.

Ivanti has already released a patch, so the researchers ran a diff on the strings output for the patched and unpatched binary of interest. Three new error messages are in the new version, complaining about client data exceeding a size limit. The diaphora binary diffing tool found some interesting debbuging data, like Too late for IFT_PREAUTH_INIT. “IF-T” turns out to be an open VPN standard, and that term led to a statement about backwards compatibility in Ivanti code that had terrible “code smell”.

The IF-T protocol includes the optional clientCapabilities field, and Ivanti’s implementation used a fixed length buffer to store it when parsing incoming connections. The client code almost gets it right, using a strlen() check on the data, and strncpy() to ensure the right number of bytes are copied. Except both of those best-practices are completely useless when the result from strlen() is fed directly into strncpy() as the maximum byte count, without checking whether it overflows the buffer.

The second watchTowr article goes through the steps of turning the vulnerability into a real exploit, but doesn’t actually give away any exploit code. Which hasn’t really mattered, as Proof of Concepts (PoCs) are now available. The takeaway is that Ivanti still has security problems with their code, and this particular exploit is both fully known, and being used in the wild.

Pentesting Mushrooms

The folks at Silent Signal have an off-the-beaten-path write-up for us: How to get hired as a pentester. Or alternatively, the story of hacking Mushroom Inc. See, they built an intentionally vulnerable web application, and invited potential hires to find flaws. This application included cross-site scripting potential, SQL injection, and bad password handling, among other problems. The test was to take 72 hours, and find and document problems.

Part of the test was to present the findings, categorize each vulnerability’s severity, and even make recommendations for how the fictional business could roll out fixes. Along the way, we get insights on how to get your job application dismissed, and what they’re really looking for in a hire. Useful stuff.

Bits and Bytes

Secure Boot continues to be a bit of a problem. Microsoft signed a UEFI application that in turn doesn’t actually do any of the Secure Boot validation checks. This is only an issue after an attacker has admin access to a machine, but it does completely defeat the point of Secure Boot. Microsoft is finally rolling out fixes, revoking the signature on the application.

And if compromising Windows 11 is of interest to you, HN Security has just wrapped a four-part series that covers finding a vulnerability in an old Windows kernel driver, and turning it into a real read/write exploit that bypasses all of Microsoft’s modern security hardening.

Do you have a website, and are you interested in how your API is getting probed? Want to mess with attackers a bit? You might be interested in the new baitroute tool. Put simply, it’s a honeypot for web APIs.

And finally, the minds behind Top10VPN have released another vulnerability, this time in tunneling protocols like IPIP, GRE, and 6in4. The problem is a lack of validation on incoming tunnel packets. This allows for easy traffic injection, and using the tunnel servers as easy proxies. One of the worst cases is where this flaw allows accessing an internal network protected behind a consumer router.

hackaday.com/2025/01/17/this-w…

Google sta utilizzando attivamente i propri strumenti basati sull’intelligenza artificiale per modernizzare le proprie basi di codice interne. In un recente articolo scientifico, gli specialisti dell’azienda hanno descritto come i modelli linguistici di grandi dimensioni (LLM) abbiano contribuito a ridurre di centinaia di volte i tempi di migrazione del codice su progetti di grandi dimensioni. Questi processi includevano attività complesse come la migrazione a ID a 64 bit in Google Ads, l’aggiornamento da JUnit3 a JUnit4 e la sostituzione di Joda con Java Time.

Il compito di passare agli identificatori a 64 bit ha richiesto più di 500 milioni di righe di codice in decine di migliaia di file. Un’implementazione manuale avrebbe richiesto centinaia di anni-uomo di lavoro e un coordinamento complesso tra i team. Tuttavia, grazie ai sistemi LLM, Google è riuscita a ridurre significativamente la quantità di lavoro manuale. Gli strumenti di intelligenza artificiale hanno apportato automaticamente modifiche, che sono state poi controllate e riviste dagli ingegneri. I dati finali hanno mostrato che l’80% delle modifiche sono state apportate dall’IA e l’87% di esse è stato accettato senza modifiche.

Ci sono voluti solo tre mesi per migrare da JUnit3 a JUnit4. Durante questo periodo sono stati aggiornati 5.359 file e modificate circa 150mila righe di codice. Allo stesso modo, il passaggio da Joda a Java Time ha consentito di risparmiare l’89% del tempo necessario per completare manualmente l’attività.

Gli autori sottolineano che i LLM non solo accelerano la modernizzazione, ma integrano anche i tradizionali metodi di migrazione come l’uso di alberi di sintassi e script di ricerca. Tuttavia, a causa dei costi elevati legati all’elaborazione di grandi quantità di dati, si consiglia di utilizzare l’intelligenza artificiale insieme ad altri strumenti.

Google rileva che l’uso dell’intelligenza artificiale per tali compiti ha già cambiato l’approccio allo sviluppo: la quantità di codice creato utilizzando l’intelligenza artificiale ora supera la quantità di codice scritto manualmente. Ciò dimostra il potenziale significativo della tecnologia per automatizzare compiti complessi nelle grandi aziende.

L'articolo Da centinaia di anni a un paio di mesi: Google Trasforma lo sviluppo del software con i LLM proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Una vulnerabilità UEFI Secure Boot bypass (CVE-2024-7344) associata a un’applicazione firmata Microsoft può essere utilizzata per installare bootkit nonostante la protezione Secure Boot sia abilitata. L’applicazione UEFI vulnerabile viene utilizzata in diversi strumenti di ripristino del sistema di terze parti.

Il problema è dovuto al fatto che l’applicazione utilizza un bootloader PE personalizzato, che consente di caricare eventuali binari UEFI, anche se non sono firmati. In genere, le applicazioni UEFI si basano su LoadImage e StartImage, che controllano i file binari tramite il database di fiducia (db) e il database di revoca (dbx). Tuttavia, l’applicazione vulnerabile non esegue questa operazione.

In questo contesto, reloader.efi decodifica “manualmente” e carica in memoria i file binari da cloak.dat, che contiene l’immagine PE crittografata XOR. Di conseguenza, un utente malintenzionato può sostituire il bootloader del sistema operativo standard nella partizione EFI con il vulnerabile reloader.efi e inserire il dannoso cloak.dat. All’avvio del sistema, un bootloader personalizzato decodificherà ed eseguirà il file binario dannoso senza controllare il Secure Boot.

È stato segnalato che la vulnerabilità interessa le applicazioni UEFI utilizzate per il ripristino del sistema, la manutenzione del disco e il backup. Come scrivono gli analisti di ESET, i seguenti prodotti sono vulnerabili:

• Howyar SysReturn (prima della versione 10.2.023_20240919);
• Greenware GreenGuard (fino alla versione 10.2.023-20240927);
• Radix SmartRecovery (fino alla versione 11.2.023-20240927);
• Sistema Sanfong EZ-back (fino alla versione 10.3.024-20241127);
• WASAY eRecoveryRX (fino alla versione 8.4.022-20241127);
• CES NeoImpact (fino alla versione 10.1.024-20241127);
• SignalComputer HDD King (fino alla versione 10.3.021-20241127).

Viene sottolineato che anche se questi programmi non sono installati sul computer preso di mira, gli aggressori possono comunque sfruttare CVE-2024-7344 distribuendo separatamente il vulnerabile reloader.efi. Si consiglia agli utenti di questi programmi di aggiornarli alle versioni più recenti il ​​prima possibile.

“Ora sorge la domanda in che misura tali metodi non sicuri siano diffusi tra i produttori di software UEFI di terze parti e quanti altri bootloader strani ma firmati possano esistere”, scrivono gli esperti di ESET. L’azienda ha pubblicato un video che mostra come la vulnerabilità può essere sfruttata anche su un sistema con Secure Boot abilitato.

Il problema è stato scoperto l’8 luglio 2024, dopodiché ESET ha segnalato l’informazione al Centro di coordinamento CERT (CERT/CC). Attualmente, i fornitori di software hanno già rilasciato patch e Microsoft ha revocato i certificati compromessi e corretto CVE-2024-7344 come parte del Patch Tuesday di gennaio.

L'articolo Secure Boot compromesso: vulnerabilità UEFI consente l’installazione di bootkit! proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The Supreme Court today upheld the federal law passed last year to ban TikTok, accepting the government’s arguments that national security threats posed by the foreign ownership of TikTok’s parent company justify the ban.

This is despite U.S. officials acknowledging they have no actual evidence China is using TikTok to spy on Americans, and lawmakers have admitted the real reason for the ban is that they didn’t like what people were saying on TikTok, particularly about the Israel-Gaza war.

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), commented:

“It’s particularly ironic that the Supreme Court is upholding the ban on national security grounds when both the incoming and outgoing presidents are backtracking from their prior support of the ban. Are they implying that neither administration cares about national security? It appears this ban was a political stunt that the Biden administration didn’t expect would ever become law. But now it has, and it might not even be enforced. All we might be left with at the end of the day is a Supreme Court opinion that weakens First Amendment freedoms on the internet.

The Supreme Court cites China’s law requiring Chinese companies to cooperate with government surveillance efforts, but omits that the U.S. Congress passed a law just last year allowing the government to involuntarily enlist U.S. businesses to spy on its behalf. This opinion practically begs foreign governments to ban American apps for the same reasons America banned TikTok. If we don’t like China’s practices on surveillance and censorship we should stop adopting them back home.”

Prior to the TikTok case, the Supreme Court had recognized that Americans are entitled to consume foreign propaganda if they so choose and that hypothetical national security harms are not an adequate justification for censoring speech. The Supreme Court avoided those issues by focusing on data privacy and glossing over free speech concerns.

But Stern said "a ban will not alleviate privacy threats posed by TikTok because the U.S. still does not have a comprehensive data privacy law. It will, however, shut down a platform millions of Americans, including journalists, use to speak freely."

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

freedom.press/issues/tiktok-ba…

Sara Martelli, Consigliera Generale di Associazione Luca Coscioni per la libertà di ricerca scientifica APS, parla di diritto all’IVG, dalla Lombardia all’Europa, all’interno del Convegno sulla Legge 194 sull’interruzione volontaria di gravidanza: attualità e prospettive, organizzata da Sinistra Italiana Lombardia e Sinistra Italiana Milano.

L’appuntamento è per sabato 25 gennaio dalle ore 15.00 alle ore 19.00, in Corso di Porta Vittoria 43, a Milano.

L'articolo In un’iniziativa a Milano Sara Martelli parla di diritto all’IVG, dalla Lombardia all’Europa proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.

La Cellula Coscioni di Monza aderisce alla manifestazione contro il nuovo Codice della Strada.

L’appuntamento è per sabato 18 gennaio alle ore 11.30 presso Piazza Roma.

L'articolo La Cellula Coscioni di Monza aderisce alla manifestazione contro il nuovo codice della strada proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.

Sabato 25 gennaio ore 16.00

Nuovo appuntamento presso la Biblioteca Universitaria Alessandrina con Silvio Raffo, che reciterà le poesie della grande poetessa americana in Sala Bio-bibliografica.

A seguire tè.

alessandrina.cultura.gov.it/re…

Nel 2024 sono state 359 le persone viventi che si sono private di un loro organo (quasi sempre un rene o parte del fegato) per donarle a qualcun altro (grafico a sinistra). Negli ultimi dieci anni (nel 2015 le donazioni furono 325) questi eventi sono gradualmente aumentati.

Chi sono queste persone così straordinariamente generose? La tabella a destra, relativa alle donazioni di rene, ci dice che si tratta di consanguinei (madri, fratelli, sorelle…) e non consanguinei (mogli, mariti, conoscenti…).

C’è addirittura chi un proprio rene lo mette a disposizione di un centro trapianti perché lo utilizzi per salvare la vita a chiunque ne abbia bisogno (donazione “samaritana” ).

L’attività di trapianto da donatore vivente in Italia è regolata da una legge di oltre mezzo secolo fa (Legge 26 giugno 1967, n. 458 ).

Essa prevede che, in ogni caso, la donazione avvenga a titolo gratuito.

Come penso di poter immaginare, la decisione di donare un rene o un pezzo di fegato non deve essere banale, anche perché irreversibile. Se le cose dovessero andare male per il donatore, non sarebbe semplice “restituirglieli”.

Forse leggermente meno impegnativo potrebbe essere per una donna donare, sempre a titolo gratuito, a qualcuno che per varie ragioni non può procreare, la gioia di avere un figlio, sostenendone per lei/lui la gravidanza (maternità surrogata).

E dopo nove mesi, tornare alla propria vita con la felicità di avere dato felicità.

Ma questo, anziché essere considerato un atto di generosità, da incentivare e normare è ora un reato universale per il quale chiunque lo metta in atto, anche in paesi in cui ciò sia permesso, viene punito con la reclusione da tre mesi a due anni e con la multa da 600.000 a un milione di euro.

Perché questa differenza?

Forse perché si teme che i casi di maternità surrogata “commerciale” (dietro compenso) con la mercificazione del corpo delle gestanti sarebbero ben di più dei casi di cessione di un organo.

Ma controllare che non vi siano pratiche commerciali sottostanti è forse più difficile per la maternità surrogata che per la cessione di un rene?

Secondo alcune mie amiche, la differenza maggiore consisterebbe nel fatto che un rene, una volta donato è fuori di te per sempre mentre un bimbo rimane nel ventre di una madre surrogata per nove mesi.

Durante i quali un profondo rapporto affettivo può instaurarsi. Dovrebbe quindi essere esteso il termine entro il quale la madre surrogata possa revocare il consenso al trasferimento del nascituro alla coppia infertile.

Secondo altre mie amiche, una legge che normi questa materia non potrebbe e non dovrebbe essere così rigida e puntuale ma rimanere sufficientemente elastica (legge cosiddetta “gentile”) affinché il giudice eventualmente chiamato a valutare il caso, possa essere libero di decidere nel migliore interesse di tutte le parti (in primis del nascituro).

In ogni caso, con una legge, questo percorso sarebbe ben più sicuro, controllato e regolamentato di come lo sia adesso.

L’Associazione Luca Coscioni, insieme a esperti e altre associazioni, ha elaborato una proposta di legge, depositata lo scorso anno al Senato dal senatore Ivan Scalfarotto (Italia Viva) e alla Camera dei deputati dall’onorevole Riccardo Magi (+Europa), per regolamentare la gravidanza per altri solidale, contro ogni forma di sfruttamento e abuso.

Come per quasi tutte le questioni sui diritti civili (fine vita, aborto, disabilità ed altri) non si dovrebbe prendere posizione solo su base ideologica ma dibattere con sufficiente serenità tutti i risvolti di una pratica che, se da un lato può comportare un qualche rischio di mercificazione del corpo delle donne (ben inferiore tuttavia in termini numerici a quello della prostituzione di cui nessuno in questo governo si preoccupa), dall’altro permetta di sostenere la solidarietà di una sorella, di un’amica, perfino di una sconosciuta.

Proprio come quando si dona un rene.

Altrimenti, di universale resta solo l’intolleranza.

L'articolo Universale proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.

Introduction

This report covers the research of the Mercedes-Benz Head Unit, which was made by our team. Mercedes-Benz’s latest Head Unit (infotainment system) is called Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX). We performed analysis of the first generation MBUX.

MBUX was previously analysed by KeenLab. Their report is a good starting point for diving deep into the MBUX internals and understanding the architecture of the system.

In our research we performed detailed analysis of the first generation MBUX subsystems, which are overlooked in the KeenLab research: diagnostics (CAN, UDS, etc.), connections via USB and custom IPC.

This article would not have been possible without the amazing work of Radu Motspan, Kirill Nesterov, Mikhail Evdokimov, Polina Smirnova and Georgy Kiguradze, who conducted the research, discovered the vulnerabilities, and laid the groundwork for this report.

Special thanks to Mercedes-Benz Group AG for their professionalism and prompt handling of all the identified vulnerabilities.

Diagnostic software

To get a first look at the vehicle architecture, it is helpful to use diagnostic software (which is available to certified users only) to scan the Electronic Control Unit (ECU), identify its version, and test the software’s diagnostic functionality. There are several diagnostic tools which make it possible to connect to the vehicle, using various types of communication. In our research, we used a combination of diagnostic tools: a certain hardware interface and a corresponding software application to communicate with the vehicle through the hardware device. This setup allowed us to establish communication over DoIP (Diagnostic Over Internet Protocol):

Communication between diagnostic software and hardware

The TCP communication between the diagnostic tool and the diagnostic hardware device is performed over Ethernet using custom protocols (Protocol Data Unit, PDU). At the first stage, the diagnostic hardware device uses a custom ASCII-based protocol (CSD). It performs user authentication, version check, configuration setup, and provides the initial environment to process the upper layer protocol (PDU).

The upper layer protocol has a binary format. It is used to send Universal Diagnostic Services (UDS) messages, trigger DoIP communication, and so on. To analyze this protocol, we used a script written in LUA:
[pduparser.lua]. Using this script, UDS commands can be easily distinguished from the regular network traffic of communication between the diagnostic software and hardware:

We examined the diagnostic tool interface and decoded the traffic, which allowed us to find various UDS commands, such as for resetting the ECU, turning off the engine, and locking the doors.

Architecture

The architecture of MBUX is as follows:

The main parts of MBUX are:

• MMB (Multi Media Board) — the main part of the head unit (HU) which contains all the subsystems;
• BB (Base Board) — the part with chips for various network communications;
• CSB (Country Specific Board) — the extended part which communicates with the MMB through internal Ethernet;
• RH850 — the module designed to provide communication between low level buses.

Full information on the MBUX architecture can be found in the KeenLab research.

Test setups

For our research we used two test setups:

• a real car — Mercedes B180;

• a testbed — our own platform for hardware and software testing, which we designed for the purpose of this study.

Anti-Theft

While modeling the testbed, we needed to bypass the original anti-theft feature, because after the actual vehicle is started up, the head unit waits for authentication over the CAN bus. As mentioned in the KeenLab research, specific commands should be sent over CAN to wake up the system. We couldn’t imitate this in our setup, so the head unit was entering anti-theft mode and the user couldn’t communicate with it. Taking an empirical approach, we discovered that some CAN messages force the head unit to reset the anti-theft status. In fact, these messages trigger the anti-theft check. For example, when the head unit tries to turn off the display, the CAN message initiates the anti-theft check, leaving the head unit still accessible for a few seconds. For seamless and stable investigation, we created a script that continuously sent this message in a loop.

As a result, the head unit becomes accessible for a long time, switching between an authenticated state and anti-theft mode.

Firmware

The MMB runs on Linux, and its filesystems are located on the eMMC. We needed to extract the eMMC from the printed circuit board by unsoldering it. Inside, there are several partitions:

MMB files can also be downloaded from a diagnostic tool website that provides updates for specific hardware part numbers.

Unpack update

Nowadays multimedia systems in cars are generally updated over-the-air. Car dealerships are one exception, however, as they can perform offline software updates with the diagnostic tool.

Several outdated update files can still be found online. Update file types can be divided into the following groups by their names:

• files with \*ALL\*, containing *.CFF, *.SMR-F and *.bin files;
• files with \*CFF\*, containing only *.CFF files;
• files with \*SMR-F\*, containing only *.SMR-F files.

In general, *.bin files are containers with a custom file structure. They can be encoded with zlib or other methods.

*.SMR-F files are compressed and they also have a custom file structure. Besides metadata in plaintext, they also contain encrypted data, which the diagnostic tool uses its shared libraries to decrypt. After decryption, the resulting file contains the metadata and a container, just like the *.bin files.

*.CFF files contain the same payload content as the *.SMR-F files, but uncompressed. This format was used for earlier head unit generations.

Custom IPC

Inside the head unit, firmware services use custom IPC protocols for communication between their own threads, other services and other ECUs. There are three main widely used protocols:

• thriftme;
• MoCCA;
• GCF.

These protocols can be used at the same time; moreover, each service can use all of them simultaneously. Knowing the internals and API of these protocols, it’s easier to understand the workflow of the services.

thriftme

This RPC protocol is based on the open-source protocol Apache Thrift. Its main distinctive feature is that thriftme allows subscribers to be notified about particular events. The UNIX socket, TCP, UDP, SSL, and so on can be used as a transport for this protocol. The core functionality of this protocol is implemented in the library libthriftme.so.2.7.2.

The base class in the thriftme RPC is “thrift::TServiceBroker”, which isolates the communication with transports and call interfaces of services and clients. In thriftme, the service broker version is the instance of “thrift::lisa::CTLisaServiceBroker”, which inherits from “thrift::TServiceBroker”.

Services in thriftme are inherited from “thrift::lisa::TLisaServerBase” (which, in turn, inherits from “thrift::TServiceProcessor”). Services are registered in the service broker through “thrift::TServiceProcessor::registerService”. Transport used by clients is registered through “thrift::lisa::CTLisaServiceBroker::addServers” (which wraps “thrift::TServiceBroker::addServer”). Service interface functions are registered through “thrift::TServiceProcessor::tmRegisterCallback”. The handler is passed to this export function in arguments, and it is called while processing the client request. So the instance of the service in memory looks as follows:

The “interface1” field contains functions which process the API of the service and their wrappers previously registered through “thrift::TServiceProcessor::tmRegisterCallback”. The “interface2” field contains functions which are called to notify subscribers of this service.

Clients in thriftme are inherited from “thrift::lisa::TLisaClientBase” (which, in turn, inherits from “thrift::TClient”). In fact, client instances are created by the service broker when the transport is successfully created. In our case, the service broker used the factory of a client, which is registered in the service broker through “thrift::TServiceBroker::tmRegCli”. The factory helps clients register handlers for notification about events through “thrift::TClient::tmRegisterCallback”. The sample instance layout of a thriftme client is the following:

The “interface1” field contains the handler is called after transport connection. Usually this handler is used to trigger a subscribe operation to receive event notifications. The “interface2” field contains functions which send requests to the service API. The “interface3” field contains functions which are called before initiating the “notify subscribers” operation of this service. Their wrappers were previously registered through “thrift::TClient::tmRegisterCallback”.

MoCCA

This RPC framework was developed by Harman and is based on the open-source DSI framework. The core functionality is implemented in the “/opt/sys/lib/libSysMoCCAFrameworkSharedSo.so.11” library. This framework is widely used for interthread communication.

During start-up, the service creates component instances through factory functions, for example “CHBApplicationBuilder::theCDiagnosisComponentCreator”. This instance inherits from the class “CHBComponent”. The global variable “CHBComponentInfo::spMap” contains the mapping between additional information about components and their names. The framework allows components to have their own aliases to access another components through “CHBComponentInfo::addComponentMapping”: “CHBComponentInfo::addComponentMapping(&unk_581498, “FsActionHandler”, “FilesystemMainActionHandler”)”. Components can contain multiple services and clients and can communicate with their own services or other component services. The following is the architecture of components:

For communication the following events are used:

An example of a client object is “CTraceServiceClientBase”, which inherits from “CHBClientBase” and uses the proxy object “CTraceServiceProxy” for transport. The proxy object inherits from “CHBProxyBase” and is created through the factory method “CTraceServiceProxy::findOrCreateInstance”. It tries to reuse already created proxy objects inside this component. The general layout of a client object is as follows:

The “IHBEventConsumer” interface is used to process response events in “CTraceServiceClientBase”. The entry point for processing is the “processEvent” method. It uses two values to find a handler, which are called as follows:

• use the “status” field to identify the response: standard response of a service, failed or invalid response;
• use the “internalID” field to identify the API function.

On the service side in our example we used the “CTraceServiceStub” class. Below is its layout:

The request event is processed in the “processEvent” method. It identifies the API function handler using the “internalID” field and calls the identified handler.

GCF

GCF is a custom protocol, which is used for RPC. It allows the services to be registered in the router. The router handles the following messages from services and clients:

• Control message (“CTRL”):
• “REGS” – used to register service;
• “REGF” – used to register RPC function of service;
• “EVNT” – used by service to notify clients about event;
• “CALL” – used by clients to call functionality of service;
• etc.

So during initialization, the services are registered in the router. The internal router table handles the flow of message processing. Finally, clients can send call requests to the router, which trigger predefined functions of registered services. The format of a call request is as follows:
CALL <ServiceName>:<Number> <ServiceCallName> <Params>

Internal network

As mentioned in the KeenLab research, there are some test points on the head unit, which are used by the CSB for connection to the MMB. We removed the default connection and connected the RJ45 cable to access the internal network of the head unit. This connection, labelled as
eth0, has some restrictions, as stated in the corresponding firewall rules in “firewall_prd.policy”:-A INPUT -s [IP]/32 -d [IP]/32 -i eth0 -m state –state NEW -j ACCEPT
-A OUTPUT -s [IP]/32 -d [IP]/32 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
-A OUTPUT -s [IP]/32 -d [IP]/32 -o eth0 -m state –state NEW -j ACCEPT
Access to services on the MMB is established via an IP address, which is a default address for connecting the CSB to the MMB. The scan results of TCP ports on the MMB are as follows:

After connecting to the test point, we received a huge attack surface and access to the Diagnostic Log and Trace (DLT) subsystem, which is very helpful when testing and debugging:

DLT supports callback injection, which makes it possible to call specific handlers inside services. In the head unit this feature is widely used for product testing.

Identified vulnerabilities

The following findings were used to compromise the testbed. It is necessary for debugging the environment and searching for vulnerabilities in the subsystem that can be exploited in the real car.

CVE-2024-37600 (MoCCA)

The “servicebroker” service is a part of a DSI framework, which is used in MoCCA. This service is used to monitor services and clients.

It sets up HTTP servers using TCP ports. There are several POST commands, which can be processed. One of them is
disconnect, which takes a string as an argument.
The code in the
setup() function tries to parse this command with functions that provide unnecessarily excessive access to memory. According to the disassembled code, it performs read operations using sscanf on a stack buffer. As a result, there can be a stack buffer overflow:

In DLT logs we can identify crashes:

CVE-2023-34404 (GCF)

“MonitorService” is a service which can be accessed over GCF protocol. This service is initialized and started in the “scp” service. The latter, in turn, is a systemd service, which starts with the following configuration:
...

[Service]ExecStart=/opt/comm/swmp/wicome/bin/scp -f /var/opt/swmp/pss_config.cfg -s
wicome_config -r /opt/comm/swmp/wicome/bin -k VerboseLevel=5
ExecStop=/bin/kill $MAINPID
Environment=LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/sys/lib:/opt/comm/swmp/wicome/lib
Environment=LOGNAME=root
EnvironmentFile=/opt/etc/lisa_env
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=2
WatchdogSec=240
...
“MonitorService” uses the following configuration file “/var/opt/swmp/pss_config.cfg” to fine-tune its operation:
MonitorService.TimestampEnable = 1
MonitorService.ReceiveEnable = 1
MonitorService.MonitoringEnable = 1
MonitorService.MessageBufferSize = 1000
MonitorService.MessageBufferMemory = 512000
#1-file, 2-dlt, 3-both
MonitorService.LogMode = 2
#MonitorService.LogMode = 0
MonitorService.LogFileSize = -1
MonitorService.LogFileName = /tmp/wicom.log
MonitorService.LinefeedEnable = 1
MonitorService.HeaderEnable = 1
MonitorService.FileHeaderEnable = 1
#RH
MonitorService.Port = 2021
The “MonitorService.Port” variable handles the number of the TCP port that will be used by the server. The “MonitorService.ReceiveEnable” variable defines whether the server is able to handle requests from clients. Accordingly, “MonitorService”, containing the head unit configuration, can receive GCF messages from the client and transfer them through the GCF router.

The list of registered services in the GCF router includes “NetworkingService”. It has the following registered handlers:

The “NWS_PF_setMacAddrExceptionIP” handler adds rules to the firewall policy. It uses the following arguments:

• macAddress – MAC address for the rule;
• direction – defines the direction of rule: inbound or outbound;
• fate – defines the type of rule: allow or deny;
• command – the action to be performed: add the rule or remove it from the policy.

The control flow for processing this request is located in the following binaries: “MonitorService”, “libwicome_monitorservice.so” and “libwicode_gcf_core.so”. The call stack is the following:
sub_EE6E8 (NWS_PF_setMacAddrExceptionIP)
sub_E9D0C (sNWS_PF_setMacAddrExceptionIP)
sub_F275C (CGCFStub_PF::setMacAddrExceptionIP)
sub_F7AF4 (CGCFStub_PF::_int_setMacAddrExceptionIP)
snprintf
sub_F7EB4 (systemExec)
system
The
sub_F7AF4 function executes the system() call with arguments to the iptables binary:/* ... */
if ( v10 )
{
v11 = (const char *)PAL::CString::raw(direction);
v12 = (const char *)PAL::CString::raw(mac);
if ( snprintf(v22, 0xFFuLL, "iptables -%s %s -m mac --mac-source %s -j
%s ", (const char *)&v21, v11, v12, v20) < 0 )
{
/* ... */
v18 = 0;
}
if ( v18 )
{
if ( (unsigned __int8)systemExec(a1, v22) != 1 )
{
/* ... */
return 0;
}
}
}
/* ... */
When processing the request, the MAC address is neither checked nor restricted. That means an attacker can perform command injection during the
iptables command execution.

Privilege escalation

The head unit uses the outdated system Polkit, which is vulnerable to CVE-2021-4034. This is a local privilege escalation vulnerability that can result in unprivileged users gaining administrative rights on the target machine. There are a lot of publicly available exploits targeting it, enabling the execution of arbitrary commands as the user “phone” of group “comm”.

After successfully exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker can run commands to modify network interfaces, mount filesystems, and perform other privileged activities. Although some restrictions are imposed, a potential attacker can access the systemd command to further escalate their privileges.

The partition with root filesystem was mounted as a read-only filesystem. As mentioned in the KeenLab research, the head unit doesn’t have any enabled disk integrity protection features. That means the filesystem can be remounted with read and write rights, and the bash scripts that are run during start-up can be modified.

USB

USB is the most popular attack vector in terms of physical access. The head unit is built on a microservice architecture, where each service is rather isolated and communicates through an API. Each microservice of the head unit provides some internal functionality and one or more thriftme services, through which other microservices can communicate with it. This fact enables the emulation of a USB subsystem using QEMU user-mode version.

Preparation

The “DeviceManager” service is responsible for handling USB events: adding, removing, mounting or updating. Other services can subscribe to “DeviceManager” and use notify callbacks to perform actions when USB events occur. For example, such a service can start searching for specific files when the USB filesystem is mounted.

The “GDVariantCodingService” service is a frontend of variant coding. Other services use it to identify the parameters of the head unit and car.

Both of these services should be emulated to run a self-hosted USB subsystem. This task can be performed by emulating corresponding thriftme services. So, for successful emulation, we should perform the following actions:

1. Prepare the network for IP addresses used by services.
2. The services “DeviceManager” and “GDVariantCodingService” use UNIX sockets for transport. To emulate them, it’s easier to use TCP sockets so that we aren’t dependent on the filesystem. Perform forwarding using socat.
3. Run the emulated thriftme services. In our case, we created devicemgr.py, vehicle.py and varcoding.py. In devicemgr.py, the mounting of the USB filesystem is emulated to the path “/opt/sys/bin/aaaaa”.
4. Use QEMU user emulation in a “transparent” fashion.
5. In the chroot environment prepare folders and devices.

The USB subsystem is emulated.

Emulation of data export, import and tracing

The head unit has the functionality to import or export user profile files (seat position, favorite radio stations, etc.) to or from a USB storage. This task is handled by the “UserData” service — to be more precisely, by the thriftme service “CSystemProfileServiceImpl”.

The user profiles backup looks like a folder with the following directory structure:
.
└── MyMercedesBackup
├── shared
├── system
│ ├── rse.ud2
│ └── system.ud2
└── udxprofiles
├── profile0
│ ├── commuterroute.ud2
│ ├── emotions.ud2
│ ├── navidata.ud2
│ ├── pud.ud2
│ ├── uapreds.ud2
│ ├── vt_ab.ud2
│ └── vt_tuner.ud2
└── profileindex.xml
Some of the files are generated by “UserData” itself, but most of them are generated and processed by other services, like “CAPServer”. The most important component of data import and export processes is the thriftme service “UserDataExchangeService” in “UserData”. Services subscribe for notifications about data import and export in UserDataExchangeService.

“CSystemProfileServiceImpl” performs the following workflow when exporting the profiles backup:

1. Run timer for 100 seconds.
2. Notify client services through “UserDataExchangeService” using events that request data export. Such events contain the information about the exported data.
3. Services call API functions that verify the success of the data export. Their arguments are a data key and a path to the file.
4. “UserData” collects all received files, encodes them and stores them in the mounted USB filesystem.

The scheme is similar for the profile backup import:

1. “UserData” copies files from the USB to the local system and decodes them.
2. It notifies client services through events that request data import.
3. If the client service is handling the data key, it imports the data.
4. Services call API functions that verify the success of the data import.

The backup contains XML files and binary files. Binary files are considered more useful for vulnerability hunting:

When triggering backup import (restore) and export (backup), the following scripts were created:
triggerRestore.py and triggerBackup.py.
Almost all the services of the head unit support the trace system
HBTracePersistence, which allows tracing to be turned on and off for a specific module or function.
The “hbtc” file contains the tracing system configuration and determines the function tracing method. An example of the “hbtc” file is provided below:
HBTracePersistence 1.0.0
imp 00 08
imp_userdata_private_CSystemProfileManager ff 08
imp_userdata_private_CUserDataVehicleInformationAdapter ff 08
imp_userdata_private_CUserDataIF2Impl ff 08
imp_common_streamhelper_StreamHelper ff 08
imp_userdata_private_CUDXStructure ff 08
As mentioned previously, files in the backup are encoded — the algorithm is proprietary. The “CPUserDataEncodingHandler” class handles it. The script
ud2codec.py was prepared to be able to encode and decode files.

Identified vulnerabilities

The following vulnerabilities were tested on a real car.

CVE-2024-37601

The process of decoding files with the
*.ud2 extension contains the heap buffer overflow vulnerability.
“UserData” represents encoded data through the “CHBString” object, which processes data as a UTF string. Then the UD2-specific decoding characters should be deleted, and their indexes should remain constant. For this task we used the “CHBString::const_iterator::incrementSteps” function to get the pointer on the desired character and “CHBString::remove” to remove the character from the string. “CHBString::const_iterator::incrementSteps” incorrectly processes the character with code
0xe7: it will be decoded as 1 byte. But according to the table “UTF8LookUpTable”, which is used in “CHBString::remove” and “CHBString::CHBString”, the character with code 0xe7 is encoded with 3 bytes.
As a result, when performing the “CHBString::remove” function, the calculated pointer can be outside of the allocated buffer after UTF decoding with “UTF8LookUpTable”. The memmove function will be called with the third argument (size of buffer) equal to -1.
Without further exploitation by the attacker, this vulnerability triggers the crash of the “UserData” service during data import. This puts the system into a frozen state, which can be fixed only through an ECU hard reset.

CVE-2023-34402

As mentioned previously, the
vt_ab.ud2 file was decoded as vt_ab.xml during the profile backup export for vulnerability searching. This file’s contents resemble a binary and it is processed by the text-to-speech service.
The
vt_ab.xml file contains another file, describing which service will be dropped during processing. For this task it contains the name of the file to drop. This action is performed in the “UserDataExchangeServiceClient::unpackVoiceTagArchiveOptimized” function:

• get the content of the file describing what to drop;
• get the name of the file to drop and perform the dropping.

Because the checks are not being performed, an attacker can control the path which is used to write controllable content. As a result, the attacker can access arbitrary file writing with the same rights the service has.

CVE-2023-34399

After decoding, the
uapreds.ud2 file in the profile folder “MyMercedesBackup/udxprofiles/profile0” takes the form of uapreds.db. The system recognizes it as an SQLite database, which is parsed in the service that uses machine learning for creating efficient routes. The decoded file is processed in “capthrift::CapServer::requestImportBinaryData”, then it calls “capthrift::CapServer::setProfile” to load the database.
All values in the SQLite database tables are serialized as an archive to match the boost library. The format of this archive can be either XML or plain text. We used the plain text mode. Here is an example of an archive in the
learning_kernel row of the kvpair_table table:22 serialization::archive 11 0 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
0.00000000000000000e+00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.00000000000000000e+00
...
The last publicly available version of the boost library, 1.81 (at the time of research), contains the integer overflow vulnerability. This vulnerability can be exploited when processing an entity pointer:

In (1), the value
cid was obtained from the attacker-controllable data. After that, in (2), this value is used as an array index to get the cobject_id object. (3.1) and (3.2) introduce restrictions for cid:

• whether the value of cid equals -1;
• whether the value of cid is greater than the size of the cobject_id_vector array.

These restrictions can be bypassed using the assigned value of
cid. This is possible because the definition of class_id_type is assigned an integer:

So if we assign the “–3” value to
cid, then the pointer co.bpis_ptr (2) will be corrupted.
Lastly, the triggered vulnerability in the debugger looks as follows:
Thread 63 hit Breakpoint 2, 0x0000004002f3cea4 in ?? ()
# cid value
(gdb) i r x2
x2 0xfffffffffffffffd -3
# cobject_id_vector size
(gdb) x/1hx $x20 + 0x58
0x405c01b278: 0x000e
# cobject_id_vector pointer
(gdb) x/1gx $x20 + 0x60
0x405c01b280: 0x000000405c017f00
# 1 element in the cobject_id_vector
(gdb) x/3gx *(void **)($x20 + 0x60) + 0 * 0x18
0x405c017f00: 0x000000400147f1c8 0x0000000000000000
0x405c017f10: 0x0000010000000002
# refferenced element
(gdb) x/3gx *(void **)($x20 + 0x60) + -3 * 0x18
0x405c017eb8: 0x5f72696170766b5f 0x00315f656c626174
0x405c017ec8: 0x0000000000000035
(gdb) c
Continuing.

Thread 63 received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.

Exploitation notes

At the first stage, it is assumed that the image base address is fixed and the vulnerability code is loaded to a specific address in the memory. We analyzed the vulnerability code and checked exactly how all the pointers are dereferenced and where the virtual call is performed. Here are the steps:

• By controlling the id, we can move the pointer (by moving it to negative offsets relative to the beginning of the array in the heap);
• By moving the pointer, we will get to an address where another address containing an object for bis_ptr is located;
• The address for bis_ptr should contain the address of the virtual call table.

Controlling only the offset to the corresponding object, we need to get to the address in the heap which contains a pointer to the pointer with the associated virtual table.

We can implement such a scenario using a spray of DDL entries inside the SQLite database that we can control. For such a spray, we need to create a lot of tables with long names. As a result, structures of a proper format will appear in the heap and a negative index will allow us to get to these structures.

Below is an example of such a SQLite-based file (the entry in
sqlite_schema is a table creation request):

So we can create a lot of tables with long names, which gives us a heap spraying primitive.

Using the heap spraying technique, an attacker can fully control the execution:

To import the
uapreds.db database to the “CAPServer” service, we need to copy it to the service’s working directory. Then “CAPServer” tries to load the database from its own working directory. As a result, if an attacker managed to import the database which triggers the vulnerability in the head unit, then each start-up of “CAPServer” will try to load it and crash. The “CAPServer” service gets started by “systemd” and is configured as follows:
[Service]ExecStart=/opt/prediction/bin/CAPServer /var/opt/prediction/
ExecStop=/bin/kill $MAINPID
Environment=LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/sys/lib
EnvironmentFile=/opt/etc/lisa_env
Type=notify
WatchdogSec=30
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=2
This means that after the crash, “systemd” will try to restart “CAPServer”. This triggers an infinite loop of service crashes, which can be helpful when trying to brute force the image base address.

Inside SQLite database, there is a pragma section which contains SQL commands to create tables. This feature can be used to create controllable data out of tables in the database based on the current time. The following script can be used to automate the process of creating an SQLite database, which might trigger this vulnerability according to the current time:
#!/bin/bash
DBPATH=test.db
STOP_TIME=$(date --date='-2 hours +10 seconds' +"%H:%M:%S")

echo "Trigger until < $STOP_TIME, clean after >= $STOP_TIME";

poc_value="CRASH the system"
clean_value="system work"

check() {
sqlite3 $DBPATH << EOF
SELECT strftime ('Time of database: %H:%M:%S', 'now');
select * from target_table;
.exit
EOF
}

rm $DBPATH

sqlite3 $DBPATH << EOF
CREATE VIEW target_table AS SELECT "key" AS varkey, "$poc_value" AS varval
WHERE TIME() < "$STOP_TIME" UNION SELECT "key" AS varkey, "$clean_value" AS
varval WHERE TIME() >= "$STOP_TIME";
.exit
EOF

check

sleep 10

check
As a result, an attacker can run image base address brute forcing for some time.

Attack vectors

During our research, we managed to compromise the testbed of the head unit and found several vulnerabilities for a real car via physical access.

The testbed compromise has three potential use cases:

• a criminal wanting to disable the anti-theft protection in a stolen head unit;
• a car owner tuning and unlocking prepaid services on their vehicle;
• a pentester conducting research to find new vulnerabilities.

In the case of a real car, the identified vulnerabilities can be triggered through an exposed USB service that is available to the general user.

Vulnerability list

During the process of vulnerability disclosure with the vendor, the following CVE IDs were assigned:

CVE-2024-37602
CVE-2024-37600
CVE-2024-37603
CVE-2024-37601
CVE-2023-34406
CVE-2023-34397
CVE-2023-34398
CVE-2023-34399
CVE-2023-34400
CVE-2023-34401
CVE-2023-34402
CVE-2023-34403
CVE-2023-34404

The CVE details will be published here: github.com/klsecservices/Advis….

securelist.com/mercedes-benz-h…

Kids love their Power Wheels and other ride-on electric cars. Indeed, [Ashwin]’s son was digging his little ATV, but soon found that some care was needed on the pedal. It had no proper throttle control, instead turning the motor hard on or off and scaring the poor kid in the process. The solution? A bit of an upgrade from some off-the-shelf electronics.

Inspiration came from—where else—the /r/PowerWheelsMods subreddit. The main tweak was to install an off-the-shelf soft-start circuit to stop the motor banging hard on when the accelerator was pushed. Instead, when the accelerator is pushed, the module gradually ramps up its PWM output to the motor to smooth out the acceleration curve. This would make the ATV much easier to ride.

Implementing this off-the-shelf solution did take some doing, though. The first attempt ended with a short circuit and a blown fuse. However, [Ashwin] wasn’t deterred—a trip back online to do some research did the trick. With some careful wiring that took into account the crude forward and reverse circuit, [Ashwin] had a much smoother running ride-on for his son.

While most of the mods we see for these little ride-ons are all about power and speed, we do appreciate the occasional attempt to make the things a bit safer for younger drivers. If you’re brewing up your own fancy kidmobile at home—don’t hesitate to let us know!

hackaday.com/2025/01/17/moddin…

With the TikTok argument headed for the Supreme Court on Jan. 10, it’s become increasingly common to read about the so-called “easy” path for affirming the TikTok ban: Treat it like a radio station, where foreign ownership has long been prohibited.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Senior Advisor for Advocacy Caitlin Vogus explained in Tech Policy Press why that argument is wrong, as both a legal matter and a policy one.

As Vogus explains:

“The lower First Amendment protections for radio and broadcast television don’t just allow the government to prohibit foreign ownership. They also give the government significant control over the speech allowed on those mediums, control that isn’t currently allowed online or in the real world. That’s why the FCC can punish a radio station for playing George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” but not HBO, or require “equal time” for political candidates on broadcast TV stations when it could never require the same in the pages of a newspaper.

“If we give the government a freer hand to regulate the internet the way they do radio and broadcast TV, it won’t be long before officials are trying to ban speech that embarrasses or criticizes them and stamp out content they disagree with.”

Read the Tech Policy Press article here.

freedom.press/issues/tiktok-sh…

David Lynch per la mia generazione è stato indispensabile, per noi giovani un po' provinciali negli anni novanta, che ci avvicinavamo alla musica al cinema all'arte e che probabilmente avevamo un po' più di curiosità rispetto a quello che avevamo intorno.

Il mio David Lynch inizia con Dune metà degli anni 80: ricordo che diedero il film alla TV.
Mio padre aveva letto il libro e questo film fu strano per me che a dodici anni avevo un approccio alla fantascienza un po' giustamente ingenuo. #Cinema

iyezine.com/david-lynch

David Lynch

David Lynch - David Lynch per la mia generazione è stato indispensabile, per noi giovani un po' provinciali negli anni novanta, che ci avvicinavamo alla musica al cinema all'arte e che probabilmente avevamo un po' più di curiosità rispetto a quello c…

^{Gianluca Perata (In Your Eyes ezine)}

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

President Joe Biden was repeatedly warned that prosecuting WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange under the Espionage Act posed an existential threat to investigative reporting by criminalizing routine journalistic conduct that the First Amendment has long protected.

He ignored those warnings, perhaps believing his administration would remain in the White House and have some say over how prosecutors exercise their new powers. That was a serious mistake. Now, a coalition of press freedom and civil liberties organizations are urging him to use his pardon power to lessen the damage to press freedom caused by Assange’s 2024 conviction pursuant to a plea deal.

As Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Director of Advocacy Seth Stern explained:

“Julian Assange’s case normalized the criminalization of work national security journalists do every day — talking to sources, obtaining documents from them, and publishing those documents. It gives future authoritarians at home and abroad the perfect ‘whataboutism’ to deflect from their own repressive actions, including imprisoning journalists on bogus espionage charges. A pardon won’t undo the harm the case has done to the free press or the chilling effect on journalists who now know their work can land them behind bars at the whim of the Department of Justice. But it will help reduce the damage. If Biden wants to be remembered as the friend of press freedom he claims to be, he needs to put the future of the First Amendment above his personal feelings about Assange and issue this pardon before he leaves office.”

Rebecca Vincent, director of Campaigns for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) added:

“We remain hugely relieved that Julian Assange is now free and in recovery following his 14-year plight, but the terms of the plea deal leave the door open to future threats to journalism. No one should ever again face such treatment for publishing information in the public interest. In these final days of his administration, we urge President Biden to set the record straight and ensure his legacy is one of protecting press freedom by pardoning Assange. The message must be made loud and clear that the U.S. government means what it says when it comes to press freedom, and that the Espionage Act will never again be misused to target a publisher, journalist, or journalistic source.”

Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, said:

“The U.S. government’s pursuit of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange remains one of the most abusive attacks on press freedom in recent memory. Everything from illegal covert actions to criminal prosecutions were deployed to prevent WikiLeaks from publishing, destroy its founder, and send a chilling message to silence independent media broadly. While we are grateful this shameful saga has ended, the plea deal obtained by the government states that a journalist receiving information from a source and publishing it constitutes a criminal conspiracy under the Espionage Act. There may be no legal precedent, but right now the Department of Justice has received the message it can get away prosecuting pure journalism under the Espionage Act. No journalist is safe. President Biden must stand for press freedom and grant Mr. Assange a full, unconditional pardon.”

You can read the coalition’s letter here or below.

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

freedom.press/static/pdf.js/we…

freedom.press/issues/rights-or…