We’ve all done it at some time — made an electrical connection by twisting together the bare ends of some wires. It’s quick, and easy, but because of how little force required to part it, not terribly reliable. This is why electrical connectors from terminal blocks to crimp connectors and everything else in between exist, to make a more robust join.

But what if there was a way to make your twist connections stronger? [Ibanis Sorenzo] may have the answer, in the form of an ingenious 3D printed clamp system to hold everything in place. It’s claimed to result in a join stronger than the wire itself.

The operation is simple enough, a spring clamp encloses the join, and a threaded outer piece screws over it to clamp it all together. There’s a pair of 3D printable tools to aid assembly, and a range of different sizes to fit different wires. It looks well-thought-out and practical, so perhaps it could be a useful tool in your armoury. We can see in particular that for those moments when you don’t have the right connectors to hand, a quick 3D print could save the say.

A few years ago we evaluated a set of different ways to make crimp connections. It would be interesting to subject this connection to a similar test. Meanwhile you can see a comprehensive description in the video below the break.

youtube.com/embed/ZSGpUEHWeTg?…

Thanks [George Graves] for the tip.

hackaday.com/2025/09/09/give-y…

Over a year ago, we took a look at importing a .step file of a KiCad PCB into FreeCAD, then placing a sketch and extruding it. It was a small step, but I know it’s enough for most of you all, and that brings me joy. Today, we continue building a case for that PCB – the delay is because I stopped my USB-C work for a fair bit, and lost interest in the case accordingly, but I’m reviving it now.

Since then, FreeCAD has seen its v 1.0 release come to fruition, in particular getting a fair bit of work done to alleviate one of major problems for CAD packages, the “topological naming problem”; we will talk about it later on. The good news is, none of my tutorial appears to have been invalidated by version 1.0 changes. Another good news: since version 1.0, FreeCAD has definitely become a fair bit more stable, and that’s not even including some much-needed major features.

High time to pick the work back up, then! Let’s take a look at what’s in store for today: finishing the case in just a few more extrusions, explaining a few FreeCAD failure modes you might encounter, and giving some advice on how to make FreeCAD for you with minimum effort from your side.

As I explained in the last article, I do my FreeCAD work in the Part workbench, which is perfectly fine for this kind of model, and it doesn’t get in your way either. Today, the Part and Sketcher workbenches are all we will need to use, so you need not be overwhelmed by the dropdown with over a dozen entries – they’re there for a reason, but just two will suffice.

Last time, I drew a sketch and extruded it into a box. You’ll want your own starting layer to look different from that, of course, and so do I. In practice, I see two options here. Either you start by drawing some standoffs that the board rests on, or you start by offsetting your sketch then drawing a floor. The first option seems simpler to me, so let’s do that.

You can tie the mounting holes to external geometry from the STEP file, but personally, I prefer to work from measurements. I’d like to be easily able to substitute the board with a new version and not have to re-reference the base sketches, resulting in un-fun failure modes.

So, eyeballing the PCB, the first sketch will have a few blocks that the PCB will be resting on. Let’s just draw these in the first sketch – four blocks, with two of them holding mounting holes. For the blocks with holes, if your printer nozzle size is the usual 0.4 mm, my understanding is that you’ll want to have your thinnest structure be around 1.2 mm. So, setting the hole diameter (refer to the toolbar, or just click D to summon the diameter tool), and for distances between points, you can use the general distance tool (K,D, click K then click D). Then, exit the sketch.

To The Floor And Beyond

Perfect – remember, the first sketch is already extruded, so when we re-drew the sketch, it all re-extruded anew, and we have the block we actually want. Now, remember the part about how to start a sketch? Single click on a surface so it gets highlighted green, press “New sketch”, and click “ok” on the box that asks if you want to do it the “Plane X-Y” way. That’s it, that’s your new sketch.

Now, we need to draw the box’s “floor”. That’s simple too – just draw a big rectangle. You’ll want to get some dimensions going, of course. Here, you can use the general distance constraint (K,D, click K then click D), or constrain even quicker by clicking I (vertical dimension) and L (horizontal dimension). Now, for the fun part – filleting! Simply put, you want to round the box corners for sure, nobody wants a box with jagged sharp holes.

You might have seen the Fillet tool in the Part workbench. Well, most of the time, it isn’t even needed, and frankly, you don’t want to use it if a simpler option exists. Instead, here, just use a sketch fillet – above in the toolbar; sadly, no keybind here. Then, click on corners you want rounded, exit the tool, then set their radius with diameter tool (D), as default radii are way too large at our scale. The sketch fillet tool basically just creates arcs for you – you can always draw the arcs yourself too, but it’s way easier this way.

You got yourself a rounded corners rectangle, which, naturally, means that you’ll be getting a cease and desist from multiple smartphone makers shortly. You might notice that the rectangle is offset, and really, you’d want it aligned. Fortunately, we placed our STEP-imported board approximately in the center of the screen, which makes the job very easy, you just need the rectangle centered. Draw two construction lines (G,N) from opposite corners of the sketch. Then, click on one of the lines, click on the sketch center point, and make them coincident (C). Do the same with the second line, and you’ll have the sketch center point on the intersection of the two lines, which will make the whole sketch centered.

Extrude that to 1 mm, or your favourite multiple of your layer height when slicing the print, and that’s the base of your case, the part that will be catching the floor. Honestly, for pin insulation purposes, this already is more than enough. Feel free to give it ears so that it can be mounted with screws onto a surface, or maybe cat ears so it can bring you joy. If you’re not intimidated by both the technical complexity and the depravity of it, you can even give it human ears, making your PCB case a fitting hacking desk accessory for a world where surveillance has become ubiquitous. In case you unironically want to do this, importing a 3D model should be sufficient.

Build Up This Wall!

Make a sketch at the top of the floor, on the side that you’ll want the walls to “grow out of”. For the walls, you’ll naturally want them to align with the sides of the floor. This is where you can easily use external geometry references. Use the “Create external geometry” tool (G, X) and click on all the 8 edges (4 lines and 4 arcs) of the floor. Now, simply draw over these external geometry with line and arc tool, making sure that your line start and end points snap to points of external geometry.

Make an inset copy of the edges, extrude the sketch, and you’re good to go. Now, did you happen to end up with walls that are eerily hollowed out? There’s two reasons for that. The first reason is, your extruded block got set to “solid: false” in its settings. Toggle that back, of course, but mistaken be not, it’s no accident, it happens when you extrude a sketch and some of the sketch lines endpoints are not as coincident as you intended them to be. Simply put, there are gaps in the sketch — the same kind of gaps you get if you don’t properly snap the Edge.Cuts lines in KiCad.

To fix that, you can go box-select the intersection points with your mouse, and click C for a coincident constraint. Sometimes the sketch will fail. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a weird bug in KiCad, and it tends to happen specifically where external geometry to other solids is involved. Oh well, you can generally make it work by approaching it a few times. If everything fails, you can set distance (K,D) to 0, and if that fails, set vertical distance (I) and then horizontal distance (L) to zero, that should be more than good enough.

And with that, the wall is done. But it still needs USB-C socket holes. Cutting holes in FreeCAD is quite easy, even for a newcomer. You make a solid block that goes “into” your model exactly in the way you want the cut to be made. Then, in Part workbench, click the base model that you want cut in the tree view, click the solid block model, and use the “Cut” tool. Important note – when using the “Cut” tool, you have to first click on the base object, and then the tool. If you do it in reverse, you cut out the pieces you actually want to save, which is vaguely equivalent to peeling potatoes and then trashing the potatoes instead of the peels.

Want a souvenir? In Part toolbox, click Chamfer, click on the USB-C opening edges, set chamfer distance to something lower than your wall thickness, say, 0.6 mm (important!), and press Ok. Now your case has USB-C openings with chamfers that as if direct the plug into the receptacle – it’s the nicer and more professional way to do USB-C openings, after all.

Stepping Up

Once you get past “Hello World”, and want to speed your FreeCAD work tremendously, you will want to learn the keybinds. Once again, the key to designing quickly and comfortably is having one hand on keyboard and another hand on mouse, doesn’t matter if you’re doing PCBs or 3D models. And the keybinds are very mnemonic: “d” is dimension, “c” is coincident.

Another tip is saving your project often. Yet another one is keeping your FreeCAD models in Git, and even publishing them on GitHub/GitLab – sure, they’re binary files, but revision control is worth it even if you can’t easily diff the files. We could always use more public 3D models with FreeCAD sources. People not publishing their source files has long been a silent killer of ideas in the world of 3D printing, as opposed to whatever theories about patents might be floating around the web. If you want something designed to your needs, the quickest thing tends to be taking someone else’s project and modifying it, which is why we need for sharing culture so that we can all finally stop reinventing all the wheels our projects may require.

This is more than enough to ready you up for basic designs, if you ask me. Go get that case done, throw it on GitHub, and revel in knowing your board is that much less likely to accidentally short-circuit. It’s a very nice addition for a board intended to handle 100 W worth of power, and now it can also serve as a design example for your own needs. Next time, let’s talk about a number of good practices worth attending to if you want your FreeCAD models to last.

hackaday.com/2025/09/09/freeca…

One of the great things about sharing hacks is that sometimes one person’s work inspires someone else to take it even further. A case in point is [Ivor]’s colorimeter hacking (parts two and three), which started with some relatively simple request spoofing to install non-stock firmware, and expanded from there until he had complete control over the hardware.

After reading [Adam Zeloof]’s work on replacing the firmware on a cosmetics spectrophotometer with general-purpose firmware, [Ivor] bought two of these colorimeters, one as a backup. He started with [Adam]’s method for updating the firmware by altering the request sent to an update server, but was only able to find the serial number from a quality-control unit. This installed the quality-control firmware, which encountered an error on the device. More searching led [Ivor] to another serial number, which gave him the base firmware, and let him dump and compare the cosmetic, quality-control, and base firmwares.

After analyzing traffic between the host computer and the colorimeter during an update, he wrote a Python program to upload firmware without using the official companion app. Since the first data sent over is a loading screen, this let him display custom images, such as the DOOM title page.

During firmware upload, the colorimeter switches into a bootloader, the menu of which has some interesting options, such as viewing and editing the NAND. Opening the device revealed a flash chip, an AT91SAM ARM9 chip, and some test pads. After carefully soldering to the test pads, he was able to dump the bootloader, and with some difficulty, the NAND contents. Changing the chip ID and serial number in the NAND let the quality-control firmware work on the cosmetic model; interestingly, only the first digit of the serial number needed to be valid.

Of course, the actual journey wasn’t quite this straightforward, and the device seemed to be bricked several times, one of which required the installation of a jumper to force it into a recovery mode. In the end, though, [Ivor] was able to download and upload content to NAND, alter the bootloader, alter the serial number, and enter boot recovery; in short, to have total control over the device’s software. Thoughtfully, he’s used his findings to write a Python utility library to interact with and edit the colorimeter’s software over USB.

If this makes you interested in seeing more examples of reverse-engineering, we’ve covered some impressive work on a mini console and an audio interface.

hackaday.com/2025/09/09/furthe…

Una falla di sicurezza è stata scoperta nella linea di prodotti FortiDDoS-F di Fortinet, che potrebbe permettere ad un attaccante con privilegi di eseguire comandi proibiti. La vulnerabilità, catalogata come CVE-2024-45325, rappresenta un problema di iniezione di comandi nel sistema operativo, localizzato nell’interfaccia a riga di comando (CLI) del prodotto.

Nonostante i requisiti di privilegi elevati, il potenziale impatto su riservatezza, integrità e disponibilità è elevato. Il problema è stato scoperto internamente e segnalato da Théo Leleu del team Product Security di Fortinet.

La vulnerabilità, identificata come CWE-78, deriva da una neutralizzazione impropria di elementi speciali utilizzati in un comando del sistema operativo. Un aggressore con privilegi elevati e accesso locale al sistema potrebbe sfruttare questa debolezza inviando richieste appositamente predisposte alla CLI.

Fortinet ha confermato che diverse versioni di FortiDDoS-F sono interessate da questa vulnerabilità. L’avviso FG-IR-24-344, pubblicato il 9 settembre 2025, descrive le versioni specifiche e le azioni consigliate per gli amministratori.

Un exploit riuscito consentirebbe all’aggressore di eseguire codice o comandi arbitrari con le autorizzazioni dell’applicazione, portando potenzialmente alla compromissione dell’intero sistema. Alla vulnerabilità è stato assegnato un punteggio CVSSv3 pari a 6,5, classificandola come di gravità media.

Si consiglia vivamente agli amministratori che utilizzano versioni vulnerabili di applicare gli aggiornamenti consigliati o di migrare a una versione con patch per prevenire potenziali sfruttamenti.

Le organizzazioni che utilizzano FortiDDoS-F 7.0 devono effettuare immediatamente l’aggiornamento alla versione 7.0.3, mentre quelle che utilizzano rami più vecchi (da 6.1 a 6.6) devono pianificare una migrazione a una versione sicura.

L'articolo Un bug critico in FortiDDoS-F porta all’esecuzione di comandi non autorizzati proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Con una drammatica inversione di tendenza, il Nepal ha revocato il blackout nazionale sui social media imposto la scorsa settimana dopo che aveva scatenato massicce proteste giovanili e causato almeno 19 morti, secondo i media locali.

La decisione è stata annunciata l’8 settembre dal Ministro delle Comunicazioni e dell’Informazione Prithvi Subba Gurung, che ha affermato che il governo stava rispondendo all’indignazione pubblica e alla tensione nelle strade. Il governo ha inoltre promesso di pagare le cure delle vittime e ha istituito un comitato per indagare sulle cause della tragedia e presentare proposte entro due settimane.

Il blocco ha interessato 26 piattaforme, tra cui Facebook, Instagram, YouTube e X. Le restrizioni erano una diretta prosecuzione della direttiva del 25 agosto: alle piattaforme straniere era stato ordinato di registrare le proprie attività in Nepal e di nominare un rappresentante locale entro sette giorni.

Poiché la maggior parte delle aziende ha ignorato la scadenza, l’accesso ai servizi è stato disattivato la scorsa settimana. Alcune piattaforme non sono state bloccate: TikTok e Viber hanno rispettato i requisiti prima della scadenza e sono state aggiunte al registro.

La cancellazione ha coinciso con il giorno più intenso delle proteste. L’8 settembre, migliaia di persone, molte delle quali adolescenti in uniforme scolastica, hanno riempito le strade delle città di tutto il paese, chiedendo l’accesso ai social media. Le proteste sono degenerate in scontri con le forze di sicurezza; almeno 19 persone sono state uccise e oltre un centinaio sono rimaste ferite, secondo i media nepalesi.

Con l’intensificarsi dei disordini, il Primo Ministro KP Sharma Oli ha affermato che i disordini erano alimentati da “persone esterne”, ma ha sottolineato che il governo non ha respinto le richieste della nuova generazione ed è pronto al dialogo.

Mentre le forze di sicurezza radunavano rinforzi, incendi e manifestazioni violente si sono verificati in città nei pressi di edifici governativi e residenze di politici di alto rango. Secondo quanto riportato dai media locali, i manifestanti sono entrati nel territorio del complesso parlamentare e hanno distrutto edifici lungo la linea di scontro con i partiti al potere.

Anche i feed delle pubblicazioni indiane e nepalesi hanno registrato episodi operativi, dall’evacuazione di funzionari da parte di elicotteri dell’esercito al coordinamento di colonne di manifestanti su piattaforme di messaggistica e chat di gioco. In particolare, alcuni degli inviti all’azione sono stati diffusi tramite Discord e, in serata, un esercito era al lavoro nei pressi del quartiere ministeriale.

L’impatto politico è stato immediato. Prima si è dimesso il Ministro degli Interni Ramesh Lekhak, poi il Primo Ministro KP Sharma Oli, sotto pressione sia dalla piazza che dai suoi alleati della coalizione. Nel mezzo dei disordini, l’amministrazione di Kathmandu ha chiuso l’aeroporto internazionale di Tribhuvan e cancellato tutti i voli, citando rischi per la sicurezza senza precedenti.

La decisione del governo è stata criticata dalle organizzazioni internazionali. L’Alto Commissariato delle Nazioni Unite per i Diritti Umani ha ricordato alle autorità nepalesi la necessità di garantire la libertà di riunione pacifica e di espressione. Amnesty International e altre organizzazioni per i diritti umani avevano avvertito, ancor prima della chiusura dei social, che i filtri di massa e le risposte violente alle proteste compromettono le libertà civili fondamentali.

Nonostante lo sblocco dei social network e il cambio di primo ministro, la fase di tensione non è ancora finita. A Kathmandu, le restrizioni alla circolazione permangono, la polizia e l’esercito presidiano gli snodi chiave e gli attivisti stanno preparando eventi di lutto e chiedendo risposte alle domande sulle morti e sul futuro della regolamentazione delle piattaforme online.

La vicenda del blocco si inserisce nel più ampio tentativo di Kathmandu di inasprire le regole per le piattaforme digitali. In primavera, il governo ha presentato un disegno di legge sui social media, ancora in attesa di approvazione.

Il documento prevede multe e pene detentive per le pubblicazioni che le autorità ritengono “contrarie alla sovranità o agli interessi nazionali”. La Federazione Internazionale dei Giornalisti ha descritto l’iniziativa come una minaccia alla libertà di stampa e all’espressione digitale.

Il pensiero di Red Hot Cyber va alle 19 vittime e ai loro cari.

L'articolo In Nepal si muore per i Social Network! In 19 hanno perso la vita per riavere Facebook proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Over 500 of the world’s leading cryptographers, security researchers, and scientists from 34 countries have today delivered a devastating verdict on the EU’s proposed “Chat Control” regulation. An open letter published this morning declares the plan to mass-scan private messages is “technically infeasible,” a “danger to democracy,” and will “completely undermine” the security and privacy of all European citizens.

The scientific consensus comes just days before a crucial meeting of EU national experts on September 12 and weeks before a final vote planned for October 14. The letter massively increases pressure on a handful of undecided governments—notably Germany—whose votes will decide whether to form a blocking minority to stop the law.What is ‘Chat Control’?

The proposed EU regulation would legally require providers of services like WhatsApp, Signal, Instagram, E-Mail and others to scan all users’ private digital communications and chats—including text messages, photos, and videos. This automated, suspicionless scanning would apply even to end-to-end encrypted chats, forcing companies to bypass or break their own security protections. Any content flagged by the algorithms as potential child sexual abuse material (CSAM) would be automatically reported to authorities, effectively creating a system of constant mass surveillance for hundreds of millions of Europeans.

What the researchers highlight (key points)

The open letter from the scientific community systematically dismantles the core arguments for Chat Control, warning that the technology simply does not work and would create a surveillance infrastructure ripe for abuse:

• A Recipe for Error and False Accusations: The scientists state it is “simply not feasible” to scan hundreds of millions of users’ private photos and messages with “an acceptable level of accuracy.” This would trigger a tsunami of false reports, placing innocent citizens—families sharing holiday photos, teenagers in consensual relationships, even doctors exchanging medical images—under automatic suspicion.
• The End of Secure Encryption: The letter confirms that any form of scanning “inherently undermines the protections that end-to-end encryption is designed to guarantee.” It creates a backdoor on every phone and computer, a single point of failure that the scientists warn will become a “high-value target for threat actors.”
• A Gift to Criminals, a Threat to the Innocent: Researchers confirm that detection algorithms are “easy to evade” by perpetrators with trivial technical modifications. The surveillance system would therefore fail to catch criminals while subjecting the entire population to invasive, error-prone scanning.
• A Blueprint for Authoritarianism: The letter issues a stark warning that the proposal will create “unprecedented capabilities for surveillance, control, and censorship” with an inherent risk of “function creep and abuse by less democratic regimes.”

The Political Battlefield: Undecided Nations Hold the Key

The future of digital privacy in Europe hangs in the balance, with EU member states deeply divided. A blocking minority requires rejection or abstention by at least four Member States representing more than 35% of the EU population. Based on current stances, the population threshold would be reached if Germany joined the “not in favour” group alongside the seven governments already not in favour.

• Pro-Surveillance Bloc (14): A coalition led by Denmark, Ireland, Spain, and Italy is pushing hard for the law. They are joined by Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, and Slovakia.
• The Resistance (7): A firm group of critics includes Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Poland.
• The Kingmakers (7): The deciding votes lie with Estonia, Germany, Greece, Romania, Slovenia, and Sweden. Germany’s position is pivotal. A ‘No’ vote or an abstention from Berlin would kill the bill.

Patrick Breyer, a digital rights advocate and former Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party, urges the undecided governments to heed the scientific evidence:

“This letter is a final, unambiguous warning from the people who build and secure our digital world. They are screaming that this law is a technical and ethical disaster. Any minister who votes for this is willfully ignoring the unanimous advice of experts. The excuse that this can be done without breaking encryption is a lie, and the myth that exempting encrypted services would solve all problems has now been proven wrong.

I am calling on the government of Germany, in particular, to show political courage, but also on France to reconsider its stance. Do not sacrifice the fundamental rights of 500 million citizens for a security fantasy that will not protect a single child. The choice is simple: stand with the experts and defend a free and secure internet for all – including children, or stand with the surveillance hardliners and deploy authoritarian China-style methods. Europe is at a crossroads, and your vote will define its digital future.”

The Pirate Party and the scientific community advocate for investing in proven child protection measures, such as strengthening law enforcement’s targeted investigation capabilities, designing communications apps more securely, funding victim support and prevention programs, and promoting digital literacy, rather than pursuing dangerous mass surveillance technologies.

Suggested questions for competent national ministries:

• Encryption and national security: How will E2EE used by citizens, public authorities, businesses and critical services remain uncompromised under any detection mandates?
• Accuracy and efficacy: What evidence shows image/URL scanning can achieve low false‑positive/negative rates at EU scale and resist trivial evasion? The German Federal Crime agency has reported an error rate of 48% in 2024 (page 18).
• Scope and function creep: How does the government intend to ensure detection cannot be expanded or repurposed to broader surveillance/censorship in future (e.g., text/audio, political content)?
• Child protection outcomes: Which evidence‑based measures (education, digital literacy, trauma‑informed victim support, faster handling of voluntary reports, targeted investigations) will be prioritised?

Key quotes from the open letter:

• “On‑device detection, regardless of its technical implementation, inherently undermines the protections that end‑to‑end encryption is designed to guarantee.”
• “Existing research confirms that state‑of‑the‑art detectors would yield unacceptably high false positive and false negative rates, making them unsuitable for large‑scale detection campaigns at the scale of hundreds of millions of users.”
• “There is no machine‑learning algorithm that can [detect unknown CSAM] without committing a large number of errors … and all known algorithms are fundamentally susceptible to evasion.”

Further Information:

• Open Letter from 500+ Scientists (9 Sept 2025): csa-scientist-open-letter.org/…
• Map of National Positions and background information: www.chatcontrol.eu

Upcoming Dates:

• 12 September 2025: Council working party meeting on the proposal.
• 14 October 2025: Planned final vote by EU home affairs ministers.

patrick-breyer.de/en/danger-to…

The European Commission has made deregulation a top priority for the EU over the next four years. Under the banner of ‘simplifying’ EU rules, we risk seeing the entire digital rulebook – for which we have advocated for years – being stripped away. If the EU wants a healthy, competitive tech market that puts people at its center, then this deregulation push is not only bad for the protection of fundamental rights, but is also an act of self-sabotage which must be reversed.

The post Deregulating digital rights: Why the EU’s war on ‘red tape’ should worry us all appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).