While we know that many of you are reading Hackaday via our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, we suspect that most people on the street wouldn’t know that it underlies a lot of the modern internet. [A. McNamee] and [A. Service] have created an illustrated history of RSS that proudly proclaims RSS is (not) dead (yet)!

While tens of millions of users used Google Reader before it was shut down, social media and search companies have tried to squeeze independent blogs and websites for an increasingly large part of their revenue, making it more and more difficult to exist outside the walled gardens of Facebook, Apple, Google, etc. Despite those of you that remember, RSS has been mostly forgotten.

RSS has been the backbone of the podcast industry, however, quietly serving feeds to millions of users everywhere with few of them aware that an open protocol from the 90s was serving up their content. As with every other corner of the internet where money could be made, corporate raiders have come to scoop up creators and skim the profits for themselves. Spotify has been the most egregious actor here, but the usual suspects of Apple, Google, and Amazon are also making plays to enclose the podcast commons.

If you’d like to learn more about how big tech is sucking the life out of the internet (and possibly how to reverse the enshittification) check out Cory Doctorow’s keynote from our very own Supercon.

hackaday.com/2025/07/10/long-l…

We love 3D printing. We’ll print brackets, brackets for brackets, and brackets to hold other brackets in place. Perhaps even a guilty-pleasure Benchy. But 3D printed shoes? That’s where we start to have questions.

Every few months, someone announces a new line of 3D-printed footwear. Do you really want your next pair of sneakers to come out of a nozzle? Most of the shoes are either limited editions or fail to become very popular.

First World Problem

You might be thinking, “Really? Is this a problem that 3D printing is uniquely situated to solve?” You might assume that this is just some funny designs on some of the 3D model download sites. But no. Adidas, Nike, and Puma have shoes that are at least partially 3D printed. We have to ask why.

We are pretty happy with our shoes just the way that they are. But we will admit, if you insist on getting a perfect fitting shoe, maybe having a scan of your foot and a custom or semi-custom shoe printed is a good idea. Zellerfield lets you scan your feet with your phone, for example. [Stefan] at CNC Kitchen had a look at those in a recent video. The company is also in many partnerships, so when you hear that Hugo Boss, Mallet London, and Sean Watherspoon have a 3D-printed shoe, it might actually be their design from Zellerfield.

youtube.com/embed/4id0-vvu-u0?…

Or, try a Vivobiome sandal. We aren’t sold on the idea that we can’t buy shoes off the rack, but custom fits might make a little sense. We aren’t sure about 3D-printed bras, though.

Maybe the appeal of 3D-printed shoes lies in their personalizability? Creating self-printed shoes might make sense, so you can change their appearance or otherwise customize them. Maybe you’d experiment with different materials, colors, or subtle changes in designs. Nothing like 30 hours of printing and three filament changes to make one shoe. And that doesn’t explain why the majors are doing it.

Think of the Environment!

There is one possible plus to printing shoes. According to industry sources, more than 20 billion pairs of shoes are made every year, and almost all will end up in landfills. Up to 20% of these shoes will go straight to the dump without being worn even once.

So maybe you could argue that making shoes on demand would help reduce waste. We know of some shoe companies that offer you a discount if you send in an old pair for recycling, although we don’t know if they use them to make new shoes or not. Your tolerance for how much you are willing to pay might correlate to how much of a problem you think trash shoes really are.

But mass-market 3D-printed shoes? What’s the appeal? If you’re desperate for status, consider grabbing a pair of 3D-printed Gucci shoes for around $1,300. But for most of us, are you planning on dropping a few bucks on a pair of 3D-printed shoes? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

If you are imagining the big guys printing shoes on an Ender 3, that’s probably not the case. The shoes we’ve seen are made on big commercial printers.

hackaday.com/2025/07/10/ask-ha…

ChatGPT si è rivelato ancora una volta vulnerabile a manipolazioni non convenzionali: questa volta ha emesso chiavi di prodotto Windows valide, tra cui una registrata a nome della grande banca Wells Fargo. La vulnerabilità è stata scoperta durante una sorta di provocazione intellettuale: uno specialista ha suggerito che il modello linguistico giocasse a indovinelli, trasformando la situazione in un aggiramento delle restrizioni di sicurezza.

L’essenza della vulnerabilità consisteva in un semplice ma efficace bypass della logica del sistema di protezione. A ChatGPT 4.0 è stato offerto di partecipare a un gioco in cui doveva indovinare una stringa, con la precisazione che doveva trattarsi di un vero numero di serie di Windows 10.

Le condizioni stabilivano che il modello dovesse rispondere alle ipotesi solo con “sì” o “no” e, nel caso della frase “Mi arrendo”, aprire la stringa indovinata. Il modello ha accettato il gioco e, seguendo la logica integrata, dopo la frase chiave ha effettivamente restituito una stringa corrispondente alla chiave di licenza di Windows.

L’autore dello studio ha osservato che la principale debolezza in questo caso risiede nel modo in cui il modello percepisce il contesto dell’interazione. Il concetto di “gioco” ha temporaneamente superato i filtri e le restrizioni integrati, poiché il modello ha accettato le condizioni come uno scenario accettabile.

Le chiavi esposte includevano non solo chiavi predefinite disponibili al pubblico, ma anche licenze aziendali, tra cui almeno una registrata a Wells Fargo. Ciò è stato possibile perché avrebbe potuto causare la fuga di informazioni sensibili che avrebbero potuto finire nel set di addestramento del modello. In precedenza, si sono verificati casi di informazioni interne, incluse le chiavi API, esposte pubblicamente, ad esempio tramite GitHub, e di addestramento accidentale di un’IA.

Screenshot di una conversazione con ChatGPT (Marco Figueroa)

Il secondo trucco utilizzato per aggirare i filtri era l’uso di tag HTML . Il numero di serie originale veniva “impacchettato” all’interno di tag invisibili, consentendo al modello di aggirare il filtro basato sulle parole chiave. In combinazione con il contesto di gioco, questo metodo funzionava come un vero e proprio meccanismo di hacking, consentendo l’accesso a dati che normalmente sarebbero stati bloccati.

La situazione evidenzia un problema fondamentale nei modelli linguistici moderni: nonostante gli sforzi per creare barriere protettive (chiamati guardrail), il contesto e la forma della richiesta consentono ancora di aggirare il filtro. Per evitare simili incidenti in futuro, gli esperti suggeriscono di rafforzare la consapevolezza contestuale e di introdurre la convalida multilivello delle richieste.

L’autore sottolinea che la vulnerabilità può essere sfruttata non solo per ottenere chiavi, ma anche per aggirare i filtri che proteggono da contenuti indesiderati, da materiale per adulti a URL dannosi e dati personali. Ciò significa che i metodi di protezione non dovrebbero solo diventare più rigorosi, ma anche molto più flessibili e proattivi.

L'articolo Hai bisogno di una Product Key per Microsoft Windows? Nessun problema, chiedilo a Chat-GPT proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Il plugin @docusaurus/plugin-content-docs, vanta numeri impressionanti: oltre 1,36 milioni di download solo nell’ultimo mese, più di 56.000 stelle su GitHub e circa 8.560 fork, a dimostrazione di una community globale estremamente attiva.

Lanciato quasi quattro anni fa, oggi conta 85 pacchetti che lo utilizzano come dipendenza, più di 14.800 repository che lo includono e addirittura 2,7 milioni di download Docker, segno di una crescente adozione anche in ambienti containerizzati.

Nel mondo dei plugin open source, anche un singolo errore può trasformarsi in una falla catastrofica. È il caso di docusaurus-plugin-content-gists, un plugin che permette di mostrare in una pagina del proprio sito tutti i gist pubblici di un utente GitHub.

Secondo la CVE-2025-53624 (score 10/10, severity: CRITICAL), nelle versioni precedenti alla 4.0.0 è stata scoperta una vulnerabilità gravissima: il GitHub Personal Access Token, pensato solo per essere usato in fase di build, veniva incluso per errore nei bundle JavaScript distribuiti sul sito.

Risultato? Chiunque poteva leggere il token direttamente dal codice sorgente del sito pubblicato online, con rischi enormi per la sicurezza. Il problema, corretto nella release 4.0.0, riguarda un errore banale ma letale nella gestione della configurazione: un campo contenente la chiave privata non veniva filtrato correttamente e finiva nel codice client.

Con una complessità di attacco bassa, bastava semplicemente visitare il sito e aprire la console del browser per rubare la chiave. Questo caso dimostra, ancora una volta, quanto sia fondamentale trattare con cura ogni informazione sensibile nelle configurazioni, soprattutto in plugin open source e ambienti come WordPress o Docusaurus, che spesso vengono dati per scontati ma gestiscono dati critici.

La popolarità del plugin rende ancora più preoccupante la recente scoperta di una vulnerabilità critica (score 10/10) nel plugin docusaurus-plugin-content-gists per WordPress, che poteva esporre GitHub Personal Access Tokens nei bundle JavaScript destinati al client, rendendoli visibili a chiunque visualizzasse il codice sorgente del sito.

L'articolo Il plugin per WordPress Docusaurus ha una RCE da 10 su 10 di score ed espone le chiavi segrete proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Attacks that leverage malicious open-source packages are becoming a major and growing threat. This type of attacks currently seems commonplace, with reports of infected packages in repositories like PyPI or npm appearing almost daily. It would seem that increased scrutiny from researchers on these repositories should have long ago minimized the profits for cybercriminals trying to make a fortune from malicious packages. However, our investigation into a recent cyberincident once again confirmed that open-source packages remain an attractive way for attackers to make easy money.

Infected out of nowhere

In June 2025, a blockchain developer from Russia reached out to us after falling victim to a cyberattack. He’d had around $500,000 in crypto assets stolen from him. Surprisingly, the victim’s operating system had been installed only a few days prior. Nothing but essential and popular apps had been downloaded to the machine. The developer was well aware of the cybersecurity risks associated with crypto transactions, so he was vigilant and carefully reviewed his every step while working online. Additionally, he used free online services for malware detection to protect his system, but no commercial antivirus software.

The circumstances of the infection piqued our interest, and we decided to investigate the origins of the incident. After obtaining a disk image of the infected system, we began our analysis.

Syntax highlighting with a catch

As we examined the files on the disk, a file named extension.js caught our attention. We found it at %userprofile%\.cursor\extensions\solidityai.solidity-1.0.9-universal\src\extension.js. Below is a snippet of its content:

A request sent by the extension to the server

This screenshot clearly shows the code requesting and executing a PowerShell script from the web server angelic[.]su: a sure sign of malware.

It turned out that extension.js was a component of the Solidity Language extension for the Cursor AI IDE, which is based on Visual Studio Code and designed for AI-assisted development. The extension is available in the Open VSX registry, used by Cursor AI, and was published about two months ago. At the time this research, the extension had been downloaded 54,000 times. The figure was likely inflated. According to the description, the extension offers numerous features to optimize work with Solidity smart contract code, specifically syntax highlighting:

The extension’s description in the Open VSX registry

We analyzed the code of every version of this extension and confirmed that it was a fake: neither syntax highlighting nor any of the other claimed features were implemented in any version. The extension has nothing to do with smart contracts. All it does is download and execute malicious code from the aforementioned web server. Furthermore, we discovered that the description of the malicious plugin was copied by the attackers from the page of a legitimate extension, which had 61,000 downloads.

How the extension got on the computer

So, we found that the malicious extension had 54,000 downloads, while the legitimate one had 61,000. But how did the attackers manage to lull the developer’s vigilance? Why would he download a malicious extension with fewer downloads than the original?

We found out that while trying to install a Solidity code syntax highlighter, the developer searched the extension registry for solidity. This query returned the following:

Search results for “solidity”: the malicious (red) and legitimate (green) extensions

In the search results, the malicious extension appeared fourth, while the legitimate one was only in eighth place. Thus, while reviewing the search results, the developer clicked the first extension in the list with a significant number of downloads – which unfortunately proved to be the malicious one.

The ranking algorithm trap

How did the malicious extension appear higher in search results than the legitimate one, especially considering it had fewer downloads? It turns out the Open VSX registry ranks search results by relevance, which considers multiple factors, such as the extension rating, how recently it was published or updated, the total number of downloads, and whether the extension is verified. Consequently, the ranking is determined by a combination of factors: for example, an extension with a low number of downloads can still appear near the top of search results if that metric is offset by its recency. This is exactly what happened with the malicious plugin: the fake extension’s last update date was June 15, 2025, while the legitimate one was last updated on May 30, 2025. Thus, due to the overall mix of factors, the malicious extension’s relevance surpassed that of the original, which allowed the attackers to promote the fake extension in the search results.

The developer, who fell into the ranking algorithm trap, didn’t get the functionality he wanted: the extension didn’t do any syntax highlighting in Solidity. The victim mistook this for a bug, which he decided to investigate later, and continued his work. Meanwhile, the extension quietly installed malware on his computer.

From PowerShell scripts to remote control

As mentioned above, when the malicious plugin was activated, it downloaded a PowerShell script from https://angelic[.]su/files/1.txt.

The PowerShell script contents

The script checks if the ScreenConnect remote management software is installed on the computer. If not, it downloads a second malicious PowerShell script from: https://angelic[.]su/files/2.txt. This new script then downloads the ScreenConnect installer to the infected computer from https://lmfao[.]su/Bin/ScreenConnect.ClientSetup.msi?e=Access&y=Guest and runs it. From that point on, the attackers can control the infected computer via the newly installed software, which is configured to communicate with the C2 server relay.lmfao[.]su.

Data theft

Further analysis revealed that the attackers used ScreenConnect to upload three VBScripts to the compromised machine:

• a.vbs
• b.vbs
• m.vbs

Each of these downloaded a PowerShell script from the text-sharing service paste.ee. The download URL was obfuscated, as shown in the image below:

The obfuscated URL for downloading the PowerShell script

The downloaded PowerShell script then retrieved an image from archive[.]org. A loader known as VMDetector was then extracted from this image. VMDetector attacks were previously observed in phishing campaigns that targeted entities in Latin America. The loader downloaded and ran the final payload from paste.ee.

Our analysis of the VBScripts determined that the following payloads were downloaded to the infected computer:

• Quasar open-source backdoor (via a.vbs and b.vbs),
• Stealer that collected data from browsers, email clients, and crypto wallets (via m.vbs). Kaspersky products detect this malware as HEUR:Trojan-PSW.MSIL.PureLogs.gen.

Both implants communicated with the C2 server 144.172.112[.]84, which resolved to relay.lmfao[.]su at the time of our analysis. With these tools, the attackers successfully obtained passphrases for the developer’s wallets and then syphoned off cryptocurrency.

New malicious package

The malicious plugin didn’t last long in the extension store and was taken down on July 2, 2025. By that time, it had already been detected not only by us as we investigated the incident but also by other researchers. However, the attackers continued their campaign: just one day after the removal, they published another malicious package named “solidity”, this time exactly replicating the name of the original legitimate extension. The functionality of the fake remained unchanged: the plugin downloaded a malicious PowerShell script onto the victim’s device. However, the attackers sought to inflate the number of downloads dramatically. The new extension was supposedly downloaded around two million times. The following results appeared up until recently when users searched for solidity within the Cursor AI development environment (the plugin is currently removed thanks to our efforts).

Updated search results for “solidity”

The updated search results showed the legitimate and malicious extensions appearing side-by-side in the search rankings, occupying the seventh and eighth positions respectively. The developer names look identical at first glance, but the legitimate package was uploaded by juanblanco, while the malicious one was uploaded by juanbIanco. The font used by Cursor AI makes the lowercase letter l and uppercase I appear identical.

Therefore, the search results displayed two seemingly identical extensions: the legitimate one with 61,000 downloads and the malicious one with two million downloads. Which one would the user choose to install? Making the right choice becomes a real challenge.

Similar cyberattacks

It’s worth noting that the Solidity extensions we uncovered are not the only malicious packages published by the attackers behind this operation. We used our open-source package monitoring tool to find a malicious npm package called “solsafe”. It uses the URL https://staketree[.]net/1.txt to download ScreenConnect. In this campaign, it’s also configured to use relay.lmfao[.]su for communication with the attackers.

We also discovered that April and May 2025 saw three malicious Visual Studio Code extensions published: solaibot, among-eth, and blankebesxstnion. The infection method used in these threats is strikingly similar to the one we described above. In fact, we found almost identical functionality in their malicious scripts.

Scripts downloaded by the VS Code extension (left) vs. Solidity Language (right)

In addition, all of the listed extensions perform the same malicious actions during execution, namely:

• Download PowerShell scripts named 1.txt and 2.txt.
• Use a VBScript with an obfuscated URL to download a payload from paste.ee.
• Download an image with a payload from archive.org.

This leads us to conclude that these infection schemes are currently being widely used to attack blockchain developers. We believe the attackers won’t stop with the Solidity extensions or the solsafe package that we found.

Takeaways

Malicious packages continue to pose a significant threat to the crypto industry. Many projects today rely on open-source tools downloaded from package repositories. Unfortunately, packages from these repositories are often a source of malware infections. Therefore, we recommend extreme caution when downloading any tools. Always verify that the package you’re downloading isn’t a fake. If a package doesn’t work as advertised after you install it, be suspicious and check the downloaded source code.

In many cases, malware installed via fake open-source packages is well-known, and modern cybersecurity solutions can effectively block it. Even experienced developers must not neglect security solutions, as these can help prevent an attack in case a malicious package is installed.

Indicators of compromise

Hashes of malicious JS files
2c471e265409763024cdc33579c84d88d5aaf9aea1911266b875d3b7604a0eeb
404dd413f10ccfeea23bfb00b0e403532fa8651bfb456d84b6a16953355a800a
70309bf3d2aed946bba51fc3eedb2daa3e8044b60151f0b5c1550831fbc6df17
84d4a4c6d7e55e201b20327ca2068992180d9ec08a6827faa4ff3534b96c3d6f
eb5b35057dedb235940b2c41da9e3ae0553969f1c89a16e3f66ba6f6005c6fa8
f4721f32b8d6eb856364327c21ea3c703f1787cfb4c043f87435a8876d903b2c

Network indicators
https://angelic[.]su/files/1.txt
https://angelic[.]su/files/2.txt
https://staketree[.]net/1.txt
https://staketree[.]net/2.txt
https://relay.lmfao[.]su
https://lmfao[.]su/Bin/ScreenConnect.ClientSetup.msi?e=Access&y=Guest
144.172.112[.]84

securelist.com/open-source-pac…

If you’re into Macs, you’ll always remember your first. Maybe it was the revolutionary classic of 1984 fame, perhaps it was the adorable G3 iMac in 1998, or even a shiny OS X machine in the 21st century. Whichever it is, you’ll find it emulated in [Marcin Wichary]’s essay “Frame of preference: A history of Mac settings, 1984–2004” — an exploration of the control panel and its history.
That’s not a photograph, it’s an emulator. (At least on the page. Here, it’s a screenshot.)
[Marcin] is a UI designer as well as an engineer and tech historian, and his UI chops come out in full force, commenting and critiquing Curputino’s coercions. The writing is excellent, as you’d expect from the man who wrote the book on keyboards, and it provides a fascinating look at the world of retrocomputing through the eyes of a designer. That design-focused outlook is very apropos for Apple in particular. (And NeXT, of course, because you can’t tell the story of Apple without it.)

There are ten emulators on the page, provided by [Mihai Parparita] of Infinite Mac. It’s like a virtual museum with a particularly knowledgeable tour guide — and it’s a blast, getting to feel hands-on, the design changes being discussed. There’s a certain amount of gamification, with each system having suggested tasks and a completion score when you finish reading. There are even Easter eggs.

This is everything we wish the modern web was like: the passionate deep-dives of personal sites on the Old Web, but enhanced and enabled by modern technology. If you’re missing those vintage Mac days and don’t want to explore them in browser, you can 3D print your own full-size replica, or a doll-sized picoMac.

hackaday.com/2025/07/10/an-emu…