slowforward.net/2024/08/13/the…

slowforward

2024-08-13 08:01:50

bopsecrets.org/

bopsecrets.org/comics/return.h…

_
e ci sono anche…

Testi in Italiano

(Text in Italian)

Riflessioni preliminari sulla Guerra del Vietnam (Ngo Van, 1968)
Sulle lotte del Terzo Mondo (Ngo Van, 1968)
In questo teatro… (1970)
Ode sull’assenza di vera poesia oggi questo pomeriggio (1970)
Doppia riflessione (1974)
Avviso riguardo la società dominante e coloro che la contestano (1974)
I ciechi e l’elefante (1975)
La società del situazionismo (1976)
La realizzazione e la soppressione della religione (1977)
Lettera aperta al gruppo “Libertaire” di Tokio (1977)
La breccia in Iran (1979)
Banalità (1979)
La guerra e lo spettacolo (1991)
Sul film di René Viénet: Può la dialettica spezzare i mattoni? (1992)
Due saggi critici sul buddismo impegnato (1993 & 1999)
Confessioni di un garbato nemico dello stato (1997):
parte 1
parte 2
parte 3
Corrispondenza sulla questione della religione (1997-2000)
Riformismo y politica elettorale (2002)
Introduzione ai film di Guy Debord (2003)
Risposta ad un liberale del Midwest (2003)
Porta d’ingresso ai vasti domini (Introduzione) (2004)
Comprendere Debord dialetticamente (2005/2010)
Riflessioni sulla sollevazione in Francia (2006)
Documenti della sollevazione anti-CPE in Francia (2006)
Opinioni francofone sull’Ufficio dei Segreti Pubblici (2007-2008)
Ken Knabb, l’Internazionale Situazionista e la controcultura nord-americana (Jean-Pierre Depétris, 2008)
Introduzione al libro di Ngo Van In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary (2010)
Nota sullo stalinismo e sul trotskismo (2010)
Il risveglio in America (2011)
Al di là del voto (2012/2016)

slowforward.net/2024/08/13/the…

#000000 #anarchy #archive #bureauOfPublicSecrets #dance #durruti #ffffff #internationalSituationist #KennethRexroth #Situationism #situationistInternational #Situazionismo

the ‘bureau of public secrets’: an astounding (situationist) archive

_ e ci sono anche…

^slowforward

slowforward.net/2024/08/13/the…

slowforward

2024-08-13 07:31:41

bopsecrets.org/rexroth/prelite…

bopsecrets.org/rexroth/prelite…

slowforward.net/2024/08/13/the…

#000000 #anthology #KennethRexroth #poems #poetry #preLiterate

the poetry of pre-literate peoples

 

^slowforward

Gaming laptops often tend towards implementing more desktop-like hardware in the pursuit of pure grunt. But what if you were to simply buy desktop hardware yourself, and build your own gaming laptop? That would be very cool, as [Socket Science] demonstrates for us all.

The project began with lofty goals. The plan wasn’t to build something rough and vaguely laptop-like. [Socket Science] wanted to build something of genuine quality, that for all intents and purposes, looked and worked like a proper commercial-grade laptop. Getting to that point took a full 14 months, but the final results are impressive.

Under the hood lies an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and a XFX Radeon RX6600, hooked into an ITX motherboard with some low-profile RAM sticks. Those components were paired with a thin keyboard, a touchpad, and a portable gaming monitor. Getting all that into a thin laptop case, even a custom one, was no mean feat. Ports had to be cut down to size, weird ribbon cables had to be employed, and heatsinks and coolers had to be rearranged. To say nothing of all the work to 3D print a case that was strong and actually worked!

The full journey is quite the ride. If you want to go right back to the start, you can find part one here.

We’ve seen some builds along these lines before, but seldom few that get anywhere near this level of fit and finish. Oftentimes, it’s that kind of physical polish that is most difficult to achieve. All we can say is “Bravo!” Oh, and… video after the break.

youtube.com/embed/SfUCBTpOvCE?…

Numerose vulnerabilità nell’utilità di trasferimento dati Quick Share possono essere utilizzate per eseguire attacchi MiTM e inviare file a dispositivi Windows senza il permesso del destinatario, hanno affermato gli specialisti di SafeBreach.

Quick Share è un’utilità di condivisione file P2P disponibile per gli utenti di dispositivi con Android, Chrome e Windows. Ti consente di inviare file a dispositivi compatibili nelle vicinanze, supportando Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, WebRTC e NFC.

Sviluppata originariamente per Android con il nome Nearly Share e rilasciata per Windows nel luglio 2023, l’utilità è stata ribattezzata Quick Share nel gennaio 2024 dopo che Google ha unito la sua tecnologia con Quick Share di Samsung. Google sta inoltre collaborando con LG per preinstallare l’utilità su alcuni dispositivi Windows.

Gli specialisti di SafeBreach hanno studiato il protocollo a livello di applicazione utilizzato da Quick Share per trasferire file tra dispositivi e hanno immediatamente scoperto 10 vulnerabilità, inclusi problemi che consentono l’esecuzione di codice remoto in Windows.

I bug rilevati includono due errori di scrittura di file remoti non autorizzati in Quick Share per Windows e Android, nonché otto problemi in Quick Share per Windows relativi alla connessione Wi-Fi forzata, all’attraversamento di directory remote e al Denial of Service (DoS).

Questi errori consentono la scrittura di file sul dispositivo in remoto (senza l’autorizzazione dell’utente), causano l’arresto anomalo, reindirizzano il traffico a un punto di accesso Wi-Fi specifico.
Catena di attacco sviluppata dai ricercatori
Ora tutte le vulnerabilità sono già state corrette con il rilascio della versione 1.0.1724.0 e agli errori rilevati vengono assegnati due identificatori comuni: CVE-2024-38271 (5,9 punti sulla scala CVSS) e CVE-2024-38272 (7,1 punti sulla scala CVSS ) nella scala CVSS.

Secondo SafeBreach, il protocollo di comunicazione Quick Share è “altamente generico, contiene classi astratte e di base, nonché una classe di gestione per ciascun tipo di pacchetto… Inoltre, abbiamo scoperto che funziona in qualsiasi modalità. Pertanto, anche se il dispositivo è configurato per accettare file solo dai contatti dell’utente, possiamo comunque inviargli un file che non richiede conferma”, affermano i ricercatori.

Pertanto, una volta installato, Quick Share crea un’attività pianificata che controlla ogni 15 minuti per vedere se l’applicazione è in esecuzione e la avvia se necessario. Gli esperti hanno utilizzato il CVE-2024-38271 per creare una catena RCE: l’attacco MiTM ha permesso loro di rilevare quando i file eseguibili venivano scaricati tramite il browser, quindi gli esperti hanno sfruttato il problema di path traversal per sovrascrivere il file eseguibile con il proprio file dannoso

Attualmente i ricercatori di SafeBreach hanno già pubblicato informazioni tecniche dettagliate sulle vulnerabilità scoperte e ne hanno anche presentato una presentazione alla recente conferenza DEF CON 32 .

L'articolo Attenzione a Google Quick Share! Delle Vulnerabilità Critiche Consentono RCE proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Thomas White, uno dei fondatori dell’organizzazione Distributed Denial of Secrets ( DDoSecrets ), ha recentemente rivelato informazioni sul suo passato criminale. Dopo aver scontato una pena detentiva di cinque anni, White ha condiviso i dettagli delle sue attività con 404 Media.

DDoSecrets, che White ha co-fondato con Emma Best nel 2018, è diventata una piattaforma chiave per la pubblicazione di fughe di dati su larga scala, riempiendo la nicchia precedentemente occupata da WikiLeaks. Tuttavia, è stato rivelato che prima di fondare DDoSecrets, White era profondamente coinvolto in attività criminali sul dark web.

Alla fine del 2013, dopo che l’FBI ha chiuso il famigerato mercato della droga Silk Road e arrestato il suo creatore Ross Ulbricht, White ha assunto il ruolo del suo successore. Sotto lo pseudonimo di Dread Pirate Roberts 2.0, lui, insieme all’utente Defcon (in seguito identificato come ex dipendente di SpaceX Blake Bentall), ha lanciatoSilk Road 2.0. L’investigatore della National Crime Agency Paul Choles ha detto che White “era il capo” dell’operazione.

Le attività criminali di White non si limitavano al traffico di droga. È stato arrestato nel novembre 2014 e, quando la polizia ha perquisito il suo appartamento di Liverpool, ha trovato un laptop contenente 464 immagini di categoria A di abusi sui minori, la classificazione più grave. Inoltre, si è scoperto che White aveva discusso con l’amministratore di Silk Road 2.0 l’idea di creare un sito web per pedofili, sostenendo che avrebbero potuto ricavarne dei soldi. Successivamente ha chiarito che le sue parole erano state dette più come un processo di pensiero provocatorio e non riflettevano le sue vere intenzioni.

Nonostante i suoi trascorsi criminali, White ha iniziato a collaborare con Emma Best nel 2015, utilizzando lo pseudonimo di The Cthulhu per vari progetti di archiviazione e fuga di dati. Questa collaborazione ha infine portato alla creazione di DDoSecrets nel 2018, con White che si è occupato degli aspetti tecnici, tra cui la registrazione del dominio e la configurazione del server. Ha detto che le forze dell’ordine e le agenzie di intelligence erano probabilmente a conoscenza del suo coinvolgimento perché il server era inizialmente registrato a suo nome.

Emma Best ha confermato che tutti i membri di DDoSecrets conoscevano il passato di Thomas White. Informazioni al riguardo non sono state rese pubbliche in precedenza per garantire la sicurezza del lavoro del team e per evitare possibili problemi legali per White legati alla sua partecipazione al progetto.

Il caso di White è rimasto soggetto a rigide restrizioni sulla copertura mediatica fino alla sua conclusione. Nel 2019 è stato condannato a cinque anni e quattro mesi di carcere dopo essersi dichiarato colpevole di traffico di droga, riciclaggio di denaro e creazione di immagini indecenti di bambini. Afferma di non aver avuto alcun coinvolgimento diretto nell’operazione DDoSecrets mentre scontava la pena.

L'articolo Il Passato Segreto di Thomas White: Da Criminale del Dark Web a Fondatore di DDoSecrets proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

While CDs were still fighting for market share against cassettes, and gaming consoles were just starting to switch over to CD from cartridge storage, optical media companies were already thinking ahead. Only two years after the introduction of the original PlayStation, the DVD Forum had introduced the DVD-RAM standard: 2.58 GB per side of a disc in a protective caddy. The killer feature? Essentially unlimited re-writeability. In a DVD drive that supports DVD-RAM, they act more like removable hard drive platters. You can even see hard sectors etched into the media at the time of manufacture, giving DVD-RAM its very recognizable pattern.

At the time, floppy drives were still popular, and CD-ROM drives were increasingly available pre-installed in new computers. Having what amounted to a hard drive platter with a total of 5 GB per disc should have been a killer feature for consumers. Magneto-optical drives were still very expensive, and by 1998 were only 1.3 GB in size. DVD-RAM had the same verify-after-write data integrity feature that magneto-optical drives were known for, but with larger capacity, and after the introduction of 4.7 GB size discs, no caddy was required.

So why didn’t DVD-RAM completely take over removable storage? The gigabyte-size MO drives in 2002 sold for about $400 in 2001 (roughly $721 today), whereas the first 4.7 GB DVD-RAM drives sold in 1998 for $500-$800, with blank discs costing $30 for single-sided and $45 for double-sided, which would have been 9.4 GB total per disc. Around the same time, MO discs with 1.3 GB capacity were often around $20-$25, though they varied widely. So we can see the up-front cost for a DVD-RAM drive was higher, with the media cost per megabyte lower.

Another benefit of DVD-RAM over MO drives was the ability to do hard-drive-like fast random seeks and support various filesystems, allowing non-contiguous data. MO drives were typically quite a bit slower, though they had a decent continuous write speed if writing large blocks of data contiguously. Around this same time, devices like the LS-120 and ZIP drive were trying to replace floppy drives, but their relatively small media sizes of 120 MB / 240 MB and 100 MB / 250 MB couldn’t do the same things DVD could do. Despite this, the Iomega ZIP in particular did have some breakthrough success. This was mostly because of the relatively low drive cost, and the price per 100 MB ZIP disk being $10-$15 on average. These were more expensive per MB than DVD-RAM or MO, but with lower overall consumer investment. So it really seems like the up-front drive costs for DVD-RAM kept them from becoming ubiquitous, though reviews at the time showed that those who bought and used the drives loved them and felt they were an economical way to store and transfer data.
A DVD-RAM disc, with its distinct hard sector pattern clearly visible

DVD-RAM, What’s It Good For?

One of the killer apps for DVD-RAM ended up being Personal Video Recorders, or PVRs. The TiVo introduced consumers to the idea of easy, high-quality timeshifting without having to faff about with the timer feature on their VCRs. A DVD-RAM-based PVR could easily record many shows in high quality, play them back instantly, and be used an essentially unlimited number of times. With the purchase of 3-4 DVD-RAM discs, you could easily record and store your favourite TV shows and later transfer them to another medium for long-term storage. Similarly, DVD-RAM drives in handheld camcorders made a lot of sense, but for various reasons, DVD-RW and some tape formats continued to dominate in that field.

For archival and backup purposes, CD-R, DVD-R and even LTO tape drives were still much more popular. Despite write-once optical media being single-use, the much lower media cost and the rapidly falling price of CD and then DVD burners meant they were much more popular. Many consumers didn’t even realize that their newly purchased DVD burner could almost certainly also support DVD-RAM discs. And for audio and video, write-once media made more sense for the vast majority of end users. Though CD-RW and DVD-RW weren’t quite as popular as the write-once media, they remained more popular than DVD-RAM despite lacking the extreme write endurance of DVD-RAM. It’s hard to say definitively why this is the case, though consumer confusion about all the different blank media formats likely played a part. People were already confused enough about the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R!

Of course, we can’t talk about DVD-RAM’s downfall without mentioning USB flash drives. First introduced commercially around 1999 in sizes of 8 MB, by 2002 drives in the 1 GB – 2 GB capacity were available. These were much smaller and lighter than optical media and had very fast read/write speeds (comparatively) — especially with USB 2.0 becoming popular. Their cost and ubiquity were the death knell not only for DVD-RAM as a portable storage format, but also floppies, magneto-optical, ZIP drives, and essentially everything except for CD-R and DVD-R for audio and movie burning, respectively. While USB drives didn’t have the write endurance of DVD-RAM drives, for most users this wasn’t a problem — they were just transferring office documents, pictures, and other files back and forth between computers. If one started to wear out, another could be cheaply purchased.

So in 2024, is there any use for DVD-RAM left? I recently purchased a pack of 6 brand-new, Japanese-made Panasonic DVD-RAM discs to test out with my USB DVD burner. Essentially all DVD drives still support DVD-RAM, though as Technology Connections discovered in his rundown on the format, the drive firmware support for DVD-RAM seems to be slapdash and lacking in many ways. Write speeds are nowhere near what they should be. On my Arch Linux laptop, I couldn’t believe how slow copy speeds were. iostat showed utilization of less than 1% of the available bandwidth, and with the disc constantly speeding up and spinning down, I was seeing speeds way under 50 kB/s most of the time. Considering DVD-RAM discs support up to 3x (4140 kB/s), something was clearly wrong.

I connected the drive to my Windows 10 virtual machine and saw mostly similar speeds, except when writing an ISO to the drive. Because this seems to be a firmware issue, the usefulness of DVD-RAM for doing backups of important files depends entirely on the drive you happen to own. My idea was to back up all my code, schematic, and PCB design files as they are the most valuable files on my laptop. If I can find a decent drive, I might still follow through — but with 128GB USB drives being less than the cost of the 6 DVD-RAM discs I bought, I can’t say it’s economical, more just for the nerd cred.

For over six years now, Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) has been sharing quarterly updates on advanced persistent threats (APTs). These summaries draw on our threat intelligence research, offering a representative overview of what we’ve published and discussed in more detail in our private APT reports. They’re designed to highlight the key events and findings that we think people should know about.

In this latest installment, we focus on activities that we observed during Q2 2024.

Readers who would like to learn more about our intelligence reports or request more information about a specific report, are encouraged to contact intelreports@kaspersky.com.

Most notable findings

In March, a backdoor was discovered in XZ, a compression utility integrated into many popular distributions of Linux. The backdoored library
liblzma is used by the OpenSSH server process sshd. OpenSSH is patched to use systemd features on a number of systemd-based distributions, including Ubuntu, Debian and RedHat/Fedora Linux, and therefore depends on this library (Arch Linux and Gentoo are not affected). The code was inserted in February and March 2024, mostly by Jia Cheong Tan – probably a fictitious identity. The likely goal of the attack was to introduce exclusive remote code execution capabilities into the sshd process by targeting the XZ build process, and then to push the backdoored code to major Linux distributions as a part of a large-scale supply-chain attack. The attackers used social engineering to gain prolonged access to the source/development environment, and extended that access by faking human interactions in plain sight to build credibility for introducing the malicious code.
There are two levels at which the backdoor in the
liblzma library was introduced. The source code of the build infrastructure that generated the final packages was tweaked slightly (by adding an extra file, build-to-host.m4) to extract the next stage script that was hidden in a test case file (bad-3-corrupt_lzma2.xz). The script then extracted a malicious binary component from another test case file (good-large_compressed.lzma) that was linked with the legitimate library during the compilation process to be shipped to Linux repositories. Some of the big vendors ended up shipping the malicious component in beta and experimental builds without realizing it. The compromise of XZ Utils was given the identifier CVE-2024-3094 and a maximum severity score of 10.
The attackers’ initial goal was to successfully hook one of the functions related to RSA key manipulation. In our analysis of the hook process, we focused on the backdoor’s behavior inside OpenSSH, specifically OpenSSH portable version 9.7p1 (the most recent version). Our analysis revealed a number of interesting details about the functionality of the backdoor.

• The attacker set an anti-replay feature to make sure the backdoor communication couldn’t be captured or hijacked.
• The author hid the public key for backdoor decryption in the x86 code using a custom steganography technique.
• The backdoor hooks the logging function to hide its logs of unauthorized connections to the SSH server.
• The backdoor hooks the password authentication function, which allows the attacker to use any username/password to log in to the infected server without any further checks. It also does the same for public key authentication.
• The backdoor has remote code execution capabilities, which means the attacker can run any system command on the infected server.

You can read our analysis here, here and here.

Chinese-speaking activity

In an earlier report on ToddyCat, we described various tools used to collect and exfiltrate files of interest to this APT threat actor. One of these tools was PcExter, which was initially only used to exfiltrate data previously collected with the help of other tools, such as FileScan. However, we recently found a new version, PcExter 2.0, which has been completely redesigned and rewritten in .NET to be able to collect the data itself, as well as use an improved file search mechanism. We found several versions of this tool, together with a set of special loaders.

In 2021, we published a private report describing the technical details of QSC, a framework that was discovered while investigating an attack on the telecoms industry in South Asia. While our research did not reveal how the framework was deployed, or the threat group behind it, we continued to monitor our telemetry for further detections of the QSC framework. In October 2023, we saw multiple detections of QSC framework files in the West Asia region targeting an ISP. Our investigation revealed that the target machines had already been infected with Quarian Backdoor version 3 (aka Turian) since 2022, and the same attackers used this access to deploy the QSC framework starting from October 10, 2023. In addition to the QSC framework, the attackers also deployed a new backdoor written in Golang, which we named “GoClient”: we saw the first deployment of this GoClient backdoor on October 17, 2023. After analyzing all the artifacts from this campaign, we assess with medium confidence that the CloudComputating threat actor is behind the deployment of the QSC framework and the GoClient backdoor.

Early in 2023, the activities of GOFFEE were discovered when this threat actor used a modified version of a monitored malicious IIS module called Owowa. Since then, GOFFEE has stopped using Owowa, as well as a PowerShell RCE implant VisualTaskel; however, it has continued to conduct intrusions leveraging PowerTaskel, the threat actor’s previous HTA-based infection chain, and has added a new loader, disguised as a legitimate document and distributed via email, to its arsenal.

We recently found a new remote access tool (RAT) with a low detection rate called SalmonQT that was uploaded from a computer in China to a public multi-scanner platform. What caught our attention was that the sample used GitHub’s REST API to accept instructions and upload data, thereby acting as a C2 (command and control) server. At first glance, it appeared that the path to the GitHub repository had been deleted, but on closer inspection, the repository was set to private and the REST API could only be accessed using the correct token. The C2 server was active from early January 2024 up to the completion of our report at the end of June this year. We attribute this newly discovered RAT with low confidence to the threat actor CNC. CNC (aka APT-C-48) is highly focused on Chinese entities.

Middle East

Gaza Cybergang has been active since at least 2012, targeting the Middle East and North Africa. When we first started tracking the group, its attacks were relatively basic in nature, often relying on publicly available malware families such as QuasarRAT. Nevertheless, the group exhibited a particular TTP that we can still see today – going after only a few targets per campaign. At the start of this year we detected several cases involving Gaza Cybergang in which the threat actor adjusted its TTPs slightly. Instead of using
tabcal.exe as a vehicle to sideload its initial access downloader IronWind, the group switched to setup_wm.exe, another legitimate Windows Media Utility file. The lures were also changed to a more generic theme, rather than focusing on a specific geopolitical situation.

Southeast Asia and Korean Peninsula

We discovered Mysterious Elephant in 2023 while investigating attacks using a set of malware families previously associated with other known threat actors, such as SideWinder and Confucius. As we analyzed the infrastructure, we realized that the attacks were not in fact delivered by any of the previously known actors, but by a new threat actor that we dubbed Mysterious Elephant. The threat actor has remained active since then and has launched several attacks since our initial report. We have discovered a wealth of new malware families developed and used by Mysterious Elephant in its recent attacks, as well as recently created infrastructure and updated tools – mostly backdoors and loaders to minimize detection in the early stages of attacks. In our report, we describe the latest attacks delivered by this threat actor and analyze the newly discovered malware samples and associated infrastructure.

Hacktivism

With the start of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, hundreds of different hacktivist groups have emerged on both sides. One such group is -=Twelve=-. This group announced itself in the information sphere by claiming to have hacked various government and industrial enterprises of the Russian Federation. Some of the targets were published on the group’s official channel on its own platform, while others remained in the shadows. While there are several reports on the internet about the Twelve group from various CTI (Cyber Threat Intelligence) vendors that attempt to describe the group’s activities, we have not seen any that detail the tools and techniques used in the attacks. Our report on Twelve provides a detailed overview of the TTPs used by the group, as well as the connections to its infrastructure.

In February, the Institute of Geography and Statistics of Albania (INSTAT) was attacked. The attack was the work of Homeland Justice – a self-described hacktivist group, but suspected of being a state sponsored group – that has been relentlessly attacking Albanian targets, particularly in the government sector, for over three years. The attackers were able to obtain more than 100TB of data, as well as disrupt the official websites and email services of organizations and wipe database servers and backups. One of the main reasons for the attacks is the presence of a Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) refugee camp on Albanian territory: Homeland Justice considers this group to be a terrorist organization and believes that specific sectors of the Albanian government and certain companies provide them with support and funding. The threat actor conducts ongoing cyber operations aimed at conveying its anti-MEK political message. They are attempting to garner support among the Albanian people for the government to abandon the MEK – their actions are framed within what are known as psychological operations (PsyOps) campaigns.

We have analyzed the group’s campaign history, which spans almost three years of cyberattacks aimed at exerting long-term pressure on the Albanian government and populace. In our report, we cover its main campaigns, ranging from sophisticated operations involving collaboration with allied groups with the same aims, to opportunistic attacks. We also describe the main techniques employed by the group, which range from exploiting internet-facing servers for initial access, lateral movement activities, expanding the attack surface, to using custom wiping malware and ransomware in the final disruptive phase of the cyber operations. Additionally, we examine the group’s persuasion mechanisms, such as amplifying messaging through social networks and news media, sharing stolen data to gain notoriety and advocate for change, and the continual threat of future attacks to induce a state of permanent vigilance among its targets.

Other interesting discoveries

We discovered a new modular malware framework, which we dubbed “Aniseed Vodka”, on a system in East Africa: the system was infected in 2018. The framework consists of a main module, a JSON-formatted configuration file, and a set of plug-ins. The framework is highly configurable, allowing its operator both to specify operating parameters for plug-ins and to schedule plug-in tasks (such as screen capture, webcam capture, and data exfiltration) at specific intervals. The framework employs anti-detection and anti-forensics techniques, enabling it to operate covertly. It uses non-traditional communication channels to evade network detection, using Google Chat as a C2 channel, Gmail to send alerts and Google Drive as an exfiltration channel. The framework we presented in our report is, as far as we know, not publicly known. We have not been able to tie this framework to an existing threat actor.

Our previous report on DinodasRAT showed a wealth of overlaps in features between the Linux backdoor version and its Windows counterpart, as well as additional Linux-specific functionalities such as persistence through systemd or SystemV. In recent months, we were able to collect more relevant samples, giving us a deeper insight into the Linux variant. There are indications that it has been used in campaigns dating back to 2021. Previously identified as XDealer, an ongoing APT campaign using the Windows version of this threat was disclosed by ESET and named “Operation Jacana”. DinodasRAT was also used in a recent APT campaign, which included both its Windows and Linux versions, as described by Trend Micro. In our latest report on the Linux variant of DinodasRAT, we focus on the network communication with the C2 and the operations performed by the malware on the infected machine, beyond establishing persistence and awaiting C2 commands.

In May 2024, we discovered a new APT targeting Russian government entities. The CloudSorcerer malware is a sophisticated cyber-espionage tool used for stealth monitoring, data collection and exfiltration via Microsoft, Yandex and Dropbox cloud infrastructures. The malware uses cloud resources for its C2 servers, accessing them through APIs using authentication tokens. Additionally, CloudSorcerer uses GitHub as its initial C2 server. CloudSorcerer’s modus operandi of is reminiscent of the CloudWizard APT, which we reported on in 2023. However, the malware code is completely different. We believe that CloudSorcerer is a new threat actor that has adopted a similar method of interacting with public cloud services.

In April, we discovered a previously unknown campaign targeting organizations in Russia, including the government sector, using the Telemos backdoor. The malware is delivered via spear-phishing emails as a ZIP file containing one of two types of dropper – a PE64 executable with an .SCR extension or a Windows Script File with a .WSF extension. These drop and execute a PowerShell-based script with backdoor functionality. We found several malicious samples associated with these attacks and were able to restore the original source code. The main purpose of this threat is espionage – collecting data from browsers such as login credentials, cookies and browsing history, as well as collecting files of interest from available drives on the affected system. The operation cannot be tied to a known threat actor at this point.

Final thoughts

While some threat actors’ TTPs remain the same, such as a heavy reliance on social engineering to gain entry to a target organization or compromising an individual’s device, others have updated their toolsets and broadened the scope of their activities. Our regular quarterly reports are designed to highlight the most significant developments related to APT groups.

Here are the key trends we saw in Q2 2024:

• The key highlight this quarter was the backdooring of the XZ compression utility integrated into many popular Linux distributions – in particular, the use of social engineering to gain persistent access to the development environment.
• This quarter we saw APT campaigns focused on Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa targeting a range of sectors including government, military, telecoms and judicial systems.
• The purpose of most APT activities is cyber-espionage, although some campaigns are driven by financial gain.
• Hacktivist attacks have also been a feature of the threat landscape this quarter. Not all of these attacks are focused on areas of open conflict, as illustrated by the attacks on entities in Albania by the Homeland Justice group.

As always, we would like to point out that our reports are the product of our insight into the threat landscape. However, it is important to remember that while we strive for continuous improvement, there is always the possibility that there are other sophisticated attacks that may go unnoticed.

Disclaimer: when referring to APT groups as Russian-speaking, Chinese-speaking or other-language-speaking, we refer to various artifacts used by the groups (such as malware debugging strings, comments found in scripts, etc.) containing words in these languages, based on the information that we obtained directly or that is otherwise publicly known and widely reported. The use of certain languages does not necessarily indicate a specific geographic relation, but rather points to the languages that the developers behind these APT artifacts use.

securelist.com/apt-trends-repo…

The Teenage Engineering badging usually appears on some cool gear that almost always costs a great deal of money. One such example is the Rabbit R1, an AI-powered personal assistant that retails for $199. It was also revealed that it’s basically a small device running a simple Android app. That raises the question — could build your own dupe for $20? That’s what [Thomas the Maker] did.

Meet Rappit. It’s basically [Thomas]’s take on an AI friend that doesn’t break the bank. It runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, which has the benefit of integrated wireless connectivity on board. It’s powered by rechargeable AA batteries or a USB power bank to keep things simple. [Thomas] then wrapped it all up in a cute 3D printed enclosure to give it some charm.

It’s software that makes the Rappit what it is. Rather than including a screen, microphone, or speakers on the device itself, [Thomas] interacts with the Pi-based device via smartphone. It makes it a less convincing dupe of the self-contained Rabbit R1, but the basic concept is the same. [Thomas] can make queries of the Rappit via a simple Android or iOS app he created called “Comfyspace,” and the Rappit responds with the aid of Google’s Gemini AI.

If you’re really trying to duplicate the trend of AI assistants, you really need standalone hardware. To that end, the Rappit design could really benefit from a screen, microphone, speaker, and speech synth. Honestly, though, that would only take you a few hours extra work compared to what [Thomas] has already done here. As it is, [Thomas] could simply throw away the Raspberry Pi and just use the smartphone with Gemini directly, right? But he chose this route of using the smartphone as an interface to keep costs down by minimizing hardware outlay.

If you want a real Rabbit R1, you can order one here. We’ve discussed controversy around the device before, too. Video after the break.

youtube.com/embed/QpYoH_iKno0?…

Alla conferenza DEF CON 2024 è stato lanciato un nuovo ambizioso progetto denominato “Franklin”, che mira ad attrarre specialisti della sicurezza informatica per creare politiche nel campo della protezione delle infrastrutture critiche.

Il progetto Franklin ha due obiettivi principali:

1. pubblicazione dell’annuale “Hacker’s Almanac”, che includerà le più importanti questioni di sicurezza delle infrastrutture critiche individuate durante la conferenza. Tale documento ha lo scopo di offrire agli hacker l’opportunità di influenzare le discussioni sulla sicurezza nazionale e sulla politica estera. I creatori del progetto stanno attivamente cercando e analizzando i dati ottenuti al DEF CON per includerli nel futuro “Almanacco”.

Tuttavia, qui sorgono alcune difficoltà. Gli hacker sono bravissimi a penetrare nei sistemi, ma creare documentazione è un compito molto più difficile. Resta ancora molto lavoro per tradurre i risultati tecnici in un linguaggio comprensibile a un vasto pubblico, nonché per raccogliere le opinioni dei ricercatori e verificare i risultati del lavoro.

2. Portare l’attenzione dei legislatori e degli esperti politici sulle questioni di sicurezza informatica al fine di creare una risorsa che servirà come base per lo sviluppo di nuove leggi per proteggere le infrastrutture critiche.

È interessante notare che il Progetto Franklin rende omaggio anche a Benjamin Franklin, che creò i primi vigili del fuoco volontari negli Stati Uniti. In questo contesto, l’iniziativa mira a mettere insieme un esercito di hacker volontari e specialisti di sicurezza informatica per aiutare a proteggere le infrastrutture critiche.

La registrazione dei volontari è ora iniziata e si è riscontrato un notevole interesse da parte della comunità per il progetto.

L'articolo Presentato il progetto Franklin al DEF CON. Una visione diversa della sicurezza nazionale proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

L’FBI ha bloccato server e siti Web associati al gruppo ransomware RADAR/DISPOSSESSOR. L’operazione è stata condotta congiuntamente con partner del Regno Unito e della Germania.

Red Hot Cyber ha intervistato RADAR/DISPOSSESSOR circa un mese fa dove il gruppo ha fornito una serie di informazioni sul suo funzionamento.

Di conseguenza, le forze dell’ordine hanno confiscato server e domini utilizzati dagli hacker per sferrare gli attacchi. In particolare sono stati sequestrati 3 server negli USA, 3 server nel Regno Unito, 18 server in Germania nonché diversi domini (radar[.]tld, dispossessor[.]com, cybernewsint[.]com e altri). I siti servivano sia a coordinare gli attacchi che a creare notizie false e piattaforme video.

Dall’agosto 2023, il gruppo DISPOSSESSOR, guidato da un criminale informatico di nome Brain, attacca le piccole e medie imprese in vari paesi, tra cui Stati Uniti, Argentina, Australia, Germania e altri. In totale sono state colpite 43 aziende. Gli hacker sono penetrati nelle reti attraverso vulnerabilità, password deboli e mancanza di autenticazione a più fattori, rubando dati e crittografando i dispositivi delle vittime, negando loro l’accesso alle informazioni.

Dopo l’attacco, se l’azienda non si metteva in contatto, i criminali stessi contattavano i dipendenti tramite e-mail o chiamate, minacciando di pubblicare i dati rubati. Gli aggressori hanno anche inviato collegamenti a piattaforme dove venivano pubblicati i file rubati, aumentando la pressione sulle vittime. Invece di screenshot con informazioni rubate, gli hacker hanno allegato alla pagina di fuga piccoli video che mostravano chiaramente cataloghi con dati rubati.

L’FBI ha esortato chiunque sia stato violato da DISPOSSESSOR a contattare l’Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) o la hotline 1-800-CALL dell’FBI.

In precedenza, il gruppo Dispossesor operava come gruppo ransomware, rilasciando dati rubati da altri attacchi ransomware come LockBit. Successivamente gli hacker hanno rivenduto i dati su vari forum clandestini. Nel giugno 2024, i criminali hanno iniziato a utilizzare il ransomware LockBit 3.0 trapelato, che ha aumentato notevolmente la portata dei loro attacchi.

Alcuni ricercatori ritengono che il gruppo sia stato creato da ex membri di LockBit, cosa confermata dagli stessi hacker, ma non è possibile verificare l’autenticità delle loro parole.

L'articolo LockBit e rebrand sotto assedio. L’FBI blocca i server di RADAR e DISPOSSESSOR proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

[Ben]’s a 15-year-old who loves engineering and loves taking on new challenges. He’s made some cool stuff over the years, but the high water mark (no pun intended) has to be this impressively documented remote controlled submarine.

His new build starts off with more research than the actual building. [Ben] spent a ton of time investigating the design of the submarine from its shape, to the propeller system, to the best way to waterproof everything, keeping his sub in tip-top shape. He decides to go with the Russian-style Akula submarine, which is probably the generic look that most of us would think of when we hear the word submarine. He had some interesting thoughts on the propeller system (like the syringe ballast we’ve seen before), and which type of motor to use. In the end, he decided with a pump that would fill a chamber with water, allowing the submarine to submerge, or fill with air, making the submarine buoyant, allowing it to resurface.

However, what we found most interesting about his build is how he explains the rationale for all his design decisions and clearly documents his thought process on his project page. We really can’t do [Ben]’s project justice in a short post, so head over to his project page to see it for yourself.

While you’re at it, check out some of these other cool submarine builds that we’ve featured here on Hackaday

Il Ministero della Pubblica Sicurezza e l’Amministrazione statale delle informazioni su Internet della Cina hanno sottoposto alla discussione una bozza del nuovo “Regolamento sulla rete nazionale di identificazione personale”. Questo passo mira a rafforzare la protezione delle informazioni personali dei cittadini e a creare un sistema affidabile per verificare l’identità su Internet.

La nuova legge si basa su leggi cinesi chiave come la legge sulla sicurezza informatica, la legge sulla protezione dei dati, la legge sulla protezione dei dati personali e la legge contro le telecomunicazioni e le frodi su Internet. Ciò fornisce una solida base giuridica per l’implementazione del nuovo sistema e garantisce che sia conforme alle normative esistenti sulla protezione dei dati e sulla sicurezza informatica.

Una caratteristica fondamentale del nuovo sistema sarà l’introduzione di un “numero di rete” (net ID) e di un “certificato di rete”. Questi strumenti consentiranno agli utenti di registrarsi e verificare in modo sicuro la propria identità online senza rivelare informazioni personali.

Il numero di rete è un identificatore univoco composto da lettere e numeri che corrisponderà alle informazioni personali del cittadino. Un certificato online è un ID digitale che contiene un numero online e informazioni personali crittografate. È importante notare che l’ottenimento di questi ID digitali sarà volontario per i cittadini di età superiore ai 14 anni.

Il nuovo sistema aiuterà a ridurre al minimo la raccolta e l’archiviazione dei dati personali, riducendo così i rischi di fuga di informazioni. La piattaforma fornirà solo i risultati della verifica dell’identità senza la necessità di archiviare dati completi. Nei casi in cui ciò sia necessario, i dati verranno archiviati solo con il consenso dell’utente e nella misura minima necessaria.

Il progetto di legge prevede inoltre requisiti rigorosi per il trattamento e la protezione dei dati personali. Gli utenti devono essere informati delle finalità e delle modalità del trattamento dei loro dati, nonché dei loro diritti e delle misure per proteggere le informazioni.

Il progetto presta particolare attenzione alla tutela dei diritti dei minori. Per i minori di 14 anni, l’ottenimento dell’ID digitale è possibile solo con il consenso dei genitori o dei tutori. Gli adolescenti dai 14 ai 18 anni potranno ottenere un numero di rete e un certificato sotto la supervisione di un adulto.

Le nuove regole incoraggiano le società di Internet ad implementare questo sistema. Qualora l’utente sia stato identificato attraverso la piattaforma nazionale, i servizi non potranno richiedere ulteriori dati personali. Ciò può ridurre significativamente i rischi di fuga di dati e uso improprio.

Il Ministero della Pubblica Sicurezza e l’Amministrazione statale delle informazioni su Internet monitoreranno il funzionamento di questo sistema e garantiranno il rispetto dei requisiti di sicurezza dei dati.

L'articolo Sicurezza Online in Cina: Introduzione del Numero di Rete Unico proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Polish billionaire Rafal Brzoska and his wife plan to sue Meta over fake advertisements on Facebook and Instagram that feature his face and false information regarding her circulating on the social media platforms.

euractiv.com/section/platforms…

Building a portable console is hard, right? You have to do lots of wiring, maybe trim a few PCBs, and learn all about the finer points of high-end motherboard design! Or, you could keep it simple. That’s just what [Francesco6n] did when he built this portable PS4.

The aim for this build wasn’t to build the smallest, sleekest, or prettiest portable PS4. It was just to build a functional one that worked. To that end, the guts of the PS4 was installed in a 3D-printed case decorated with the usual square-circle-cross-triangle motif. A 1024×600 Acer Aspire One laptop display was installed in a clamshell configuration to act as the screen for the build. Inside the case is a large GPU-style cooler which helps keep temperatures down. As for power, there’s no need to plug this thing in everywhere you go. Instead, it’s capable of running for up to 90 minutes continuously thanks to a battery pack consisting of eighteen 18650 cells. In a beautiful touch of cross-platform cooperation, an Xbox 360 supply is used to power the thing when mains power is available.

It’s a neat build, and one that doesn’t overcomplicate things. Projects like this are a great way to get your feet wet with portable console hacking, letting you learn the ropes without too much pressure. More pictures after the break.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Francesco Tempra (@francesco6n)

Il 19enne Bill Demirkapi ricercatore indipendente e hacker white hat, ha sviluppato un metodo per identificare le vulnerabilità su larga scala su Internet utilizzando fonti di dati non standard.

I risultati del lavoro sono stati presentati alla conferenza Def con di Las Vegas. Tra gli almeno 15.000 segreti rinvenuti (per “segreti” si intendono dati sensibili come password, chiavi API , token di autenticazione, ecc ..) c’erano centinaia di account associati alla Corte Suprema del Nebraska e ai suoi sistemi IT, nonché dati di accesso ai canali Slack dell’università di Stanford .

Di particolare interesse sono state le oltre mille chiavi API appartenenti ai clienti OpenAI. Tra le organizzazioni che hanno inavvertitamente esposto dati sensibili figurano un importante produttore di smartphone, clienti fintech e una società multimiliardaria di sicurezza informatica.

Demirkapi ha anche creato un sistema automatizzato che revoca i dati compromessi, rendendoli privi di valore per i potenziali aggressori.

La seconda area di ricerca riguardava le vulnerabilità dei siti web. L’hacker ha scoperto 66.000 siti con vulnerabilità in sottodomini non utilizzati (“dangling”). Tra le persone colpite figurano alcune delle proprietà web più grandi del mondo, compreso un dominio di prova di proprietà del New York Times.

Per dimostrare i pericoli dei sottodomini vulnerabili, Demirkapi ha condotto un esperimento. Ha pubblicato temporaneamente un articolo satirico sul dominio di prova del New York Times con il titolo provocatorio “Gli Stati Uniti dichiarano guerra alla Russia mentre le tensioni aumentano, inviando onde d’urto attraverso la comunità internazionale”. L’articolo è rimasto disponibile per circa una settimana. Questo esperimento ha mostrato chiaramente come le vulnerabilità possano essere sfruttate per diffondere disinformazione o effettuare attacchi di phishing.

Per trovare le chiavi segrete, il ricercatore si è rivolto a VirusTotal, un servizio di proprietà di Google che viene generalmente utilizzato per scansionare i file alla ricerca di malware. Utilizzando le regole Retrohunt e YARA, ha analizzato oltre 1,5 milioni di campioni alla ricerca di dati sensibili.

Per garantire che le chiavi e i segreti trovati fossero aggiornati, Demirkapi ha eseguito le richieste API. Ciò gli ha permesso di confermare che le informazioni scoperte erano ancora attive e potevano essere utilizzate dagli aggressori.

Per identificare i siti Web vulnerabili, l’esperto ha utilizzato i dati di replica DNS passiva. Di conseguenza, sono stati scoperti più di 78.000 servizi cloud non protetti associati a 66.000 domini di primo livello.

Alon Schindel, vicepresidente della ricerca sulle minacce informatiche presso Wiz, osserva che esiste un’enorme varietà di dati sensibili che gli sviluppatori possono inavvertitamente lasciare nel codice o rivelare durante il processo di creazione del software. Questi includono password, chiavi di crittografia, token di accesso API, segreti del provider cloud e certificati TLS. Schindel sottolinea che il pericolo principale è che la loro divulgazione possa fornire agli aggressori un accesso non autorizzato a basi di codice, database e altre infrastrutture digitali riservate.

Secondo Demirkapi, individuare i problemi è solo metà dell’opera. Ha anche adottato misure critiche per correggere i problemi riscontrati. Ad esempio, OpenAI ha segnalato più di 1.000 chiavi API esposte, dopodiché l’azienda ha fornito una chiave API pubblica per revocare automaticamente i dati compromessi.

Tuttavia, non tutte le aziende erano pronte a collaborare. GitHub e Amazon Web Services hanno negato l’accesso agli strumenti di reporting esistenti. Ciò ha costretto Demirkapi a trovare soluzioni alternative, incluso l’utilizzo di GitHub per caricare automaticamente i segreti per abilitare il sistema di scansione dei dati sensibili della piattaforma .

Daiping Liu, responsabile della ricerca senior presso Palo Alto Networks, afferma che il problema dei domini è diffuso. In ogni momento, decine di migliaia di documenti sono a rischio, ha affermato. Liu aggiunge che i domini più grandi potrebbero essere particolarmente vulnerabili a questo problema perché sono più difficili da gestire e sono più soggetti a errori umani. Questo spiega perché anche giganti come il New York Times potrebbero essere in pericolo.

L'articolo Un Hacker di 19 anni scopre le chiavi API di OpenAI oltre a 66.000 Vulnerabilità sul web proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

A team at MIT led by [Professor Douglas Hart] has discovered a new, potentially revelatory method for the generation of hydrogen. Using seawater, pure aluminum, and components from coffee grounds, the team was able to generate hydrogen at a not insignificant rate, getting the vast majority of the theoretical yield of hydrogen from the seawater/aluminum mixture. Though the process does use indium and gallium, rare and expensive materials, the process is so far able to recover 90% of the indium-gallium used which can then be recycled into the next batch. Aluminum holds twice as much energy as diesel, and 40x that of Li-Ion batteries. So finding a way to harness that energy could have a huge impact on the amount of fossil fuels burned by humans!

Pure, unoxidized aluminum reacts directly with water to create hydrogen, as well as aluminum oxyhydroxide and aluminum hydroxide. However, any aluminum that has had contact with atmospheric air immediately gets a coating of hard, unreactive aluminum oxide, which does not react in the same way. Another issue is that seawater significantly slows the reaction with pure aluminum. The researchers found that the indium-gallium mix was able to not only allow the reaction to proceed by creating an interface for the water and pure aluminum to react but also coating the aluminum pellets to prevent further oxidization. This worked well, but the resulting reaction was very slow.

Apparently “on a lark” they added coffee grounds. Caffeine had already been known to act as a chelating agent for both aluminum and gallium, and the addition of coffee grounds increased the reaction rate by a huge margin, to the point where it matched the reaction rate of pure aluminum in deionized, pure water. Even with wildly varying concentrations of caffeine, the reaction rate stayed high, and the researchers wanted to find out specifically which part of the caffeine molecule was responsible. It turned out to be imidazole, which is a readily available organic compound. The issue was balancing the amount of caffeine or imidazole added versus the gallium-indium recovery rate — too much caffeine or imidazole would drastically reduce the recoverable amount of gallium-indium.

This chart shows the incredible acceleration found by adding 0.01M caffeine – from well over 20h down to 5-10m
After some experimentation, they hit a magic number: a 0.02M concentration of imidazole resulted in consistent recovery rates of ~90% of the gallium-indium, which is comparable to the recovery rate in seawater with no catalysts of any kind! This method of hydrogen generation could make marine applications of hydrogen engines much more viable. By only needing to carry aluminum, imidazole and gallium-indium, the safety issues with liquid or compressed hydrogen disappear. This could make marine vehicles cleaner and more efficient while reducing the safety issues already present in carrying diesel or other marine fuels aboard.

The study goes into much, much more detail, so if you want to learn more, be sure to check it out! Thankfully, it’s hosted in an open-access journal so the knowledge is free for all to learn from.

[Thanks to zoobab for the tip, via ScienceDaily!]

Header image CC-BY-SA 4.0

Time zones are a complicated but necessary evil. Humans like the numbers on the clock to vaguely match up with what the sun is doing in the sky outside. To that end, different places in the world keep different time. If you want to keep track of them in a very pretty fashion, you might consider building a fancy and beautiful World Clock like [Karikuri] did.

The design is based around a globe motif, mimicking the world itself. Only, on the surface of the globe, there are clock faces instead of individual countries. Each clock runs to its own time, directed by a complicated assemblage of 3D-printed gears. Mechanical drive is sent to the globe from a power base, which itself carries a mechanical seven-segment display. This too can display the time for different regions by using the controls below. It’s also useful for setting the clock to the correct time.

It’s a little difficult to follow the build if you don’t speak Japanese. However, quality subtitles are available in English if you choose to enable them.

We’ve seen [Karikuri’s] work before. We’ve also featured a great many world clocks over the years, including this particularly beautiful example that tracks night and day. Just don’t expect it to keep track of moon time. Video after the break.

youtube.com/embed/Fq-mOtpW9TI?…

[Thanks to MrTrick for sending this in!]

The Raspberry Pi Foundation had their new RP2350 chip audited by Hextree.io, and now, both companies want to see if you can hack it. Just to prove that they’re serious, they’re putting out a $10,000 bounty. Can you get inside?

The challenge to hack the chip is simple enough. You need to dump a secret that is hidden at OTP ROW 0xc08. It’s 128 bits long, and it’s protected in two ways—by the RP2350’s secure boot and by OTP_DATA_PAGE48_LOCK1. Basically, the chip security features have been activated, and you need to get around them to score the prize.

The gauntlet was thrown down ahead of DEF CON, where the new chip was used in the event badges. Raspberry Pi and Hextree.io invited anyone finding a break to visit their booth in the Embedded Systems Village. It’s unclear at this stage if anyone claimed the bounty, so we can only assume the hunt remains open. It’s been stated that the challenge will run until 4 PM UK time on September 7th, 2024.

Hacking microcontrollers is a tough and exacting art. The GitHub repo provides full details on what you need to do, with the precise rules, terms, and conditions linked at the bottom. You can also watch the challenge video on Hextree.io.

One of the things you’re paying for when you buy a 3D printer from Prusa Research is, essentially, your next 3D printer. That’s because Prusa’s machines are designed to be upgraded and modified as time goes on. An upgrade kit is always released to allow each older printer to be converted into its successor, and while there’s occasionally been some debate about whether or not it’s the most cost-effective choice, at least it is a choice you have as an owner.

If you’ve got a Prusa MK4, you’ll soon get to make that decision for yourself. Announced earlier today, the new MK4S brings some notable changes to last year’s printer. The $99 upgrade is scheduled to be available by the end of the month for existing owners, but if you’ve been on the fence about joining Team Orange and Black, you can purchase the MK4S right now in both kit and assembled forms for the same price ($799 and $1,099 respectively) as the previous MK4.

The front panel of the MK4S is now injection molded.
So, what’s new with the MK4S? With speed an increasingly hot topic in the 3D printing community, it should come as little surprise to find this new machine is even faster than its predecessor. A reworked cooling system and new high-flow nozzle mean Prusa’s latest can spit out everyone’s favorite little boat in 14 minutes—or as little as 8 minutes if you don’t mind a slight drop in print quality.

The announcement post also cites improvements to the machine’s printed structural components. Parts that were previously made in PETG are now being printed in carbon fiber-infused polycarbonate. Some parts, such as the front panel, have even been switched over to injection molding.

While describing the changes made with the MK4s, the blog post also clarified Prusa’s position regarding open sourcing of their printers. There was considerable concern back in March of 2023 when the company announced it was reconsidering its traditional dedication to making its hardware and software as open — as much as possible — in light of increased commercial competition. But now the company has posted a chart on their site that explains not only what’s being shared for each of their printers, but a timeline as to when we can expect it.
The GPIO hackerboard
While it hasn’t been updated for the 4S yet, the overview shows that the company plans on holding onto the design files for the MK4 PCBs until the end of the product’s life. Otherwise, it seems their current flagship printer is equally as open as the MK3 that came before it. While a time-limited source release will likely rub some in the wrong way, the reality is that it’s more than you’d get with pretty much any other 3D printer manufacturer out there.

The announcement also talks briefly about the new GPIO “Hackerboard” that the company will start shipping in September. The $15 board plugs into an expansion connector on the PCB of the MK4 or MK4S, and provides eight pins that can be toggled via G-Code sent to the printer. These could be used for all sorts of automation tasks, such as turning on the lights and fans inside of an enclosure or triggering the shutter on a camera. There’s not much detail about this particular add-on yet, but it’s certainly something we’ll be keeping a close eye on.

youtube.com/embed/VO2MaQrUcqE?…

On Monday (12 August), European Commissioner Thierry Breton urged Elon Musk to ensure X adheres to EU regulations and effectively moderates content, ahead of Musk's planned live-streamed debate with US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

euractiv.com/section/platforms…