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LockBit 5.0: segnali concreti di una possibile rinascita?


Il panorama del ransomware continua a essere caratterizzato da dinamiche di adattamento e resilienza. Anche quando un’operazione internazionale sembra decretare la fine di un gruppo criminale, l’esperienza ci mostra che la scomparsa è spesso solo temporanea.

È questo il caso di LockBit, una delle gang più prolifiche e strutturate dell’ultimo quinquennio, la cui parabola sembrava essersi chiusa con l’operazione Cronos del febbraio 2024. Oggi, tuttavia, nuove evidenze provenienti dal dark web stanno alimentando l’ipotesi di un ritorno sotto una nuova veste: LockBit 5.0.

LockBit: dal dominio incontrastato al declino apparente


LockBit ha rappresentato negli anni un modello di riferimento per l’ecosistema criminale, grazie al suo approccio Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), alla struttura capillare di affiliati e a una costante innovazione nelle tecniche di cifratura e propagazione. L’introduzione dei data leak site (DLS) come strumento di pressione ha reso LockBit una vera e propria icona del cybercrime.

Con l’operazione Cronos, culminata nel sequestro di numerose infrastrutture e nella compromissione dei pannelli affiliati, il gruppo sembrava destinato a un declino definitivo. Tuttavia, come già analizzato nel precedente articolo, tracce residue di attività e segnali sparsi sul dark web lasciavano presagire una possibile riorganizzazione.

L’emergere di LockBit 5.0


Nelle ultime ore è emersa un’immagine che sembra confermare questa ipotesi: una schermata di autenticazione relativa a un nuovo DLS legato al brand LockBit. A differenza dei portali tradizionali, liberamente consultabili per massimizzare l’effetto coercitivo sulle vittime, questa nuova infrastruttura richiede l’inserimento di una chiave privata per poter accedere ai contenuti.

Questa scelta introduce elementi di novità e apre a scenari interpretativi differenti:

  • un tentativo di aumentare la segretezza operativa, riducendo l’esposizione verso ricercatori e forze dell’ordine;
  • una logica di selezione degli interlocutori, limitando l’accesso a partner fidati o affiliati;
  • oppure un esperimento di rebranding, utile a testare nuove modalità di gestione dei dati esfiltrati.


Un ecosistema in evoluzione: AI e automazione


La ricomparsa di LockBit deve essere letta nel contesto di un’evoluzione più ampia. Diversi gruppi ransomware stanno infatti sperimentando nuove tecniche di attacco, integrando automazione, moduli di evasione avanzata e strategie di doppia estorsione più aggressive.

In questo quadro, il dibattito sull’impiego dell’intelligenza artificiale come fattore dirompente è sempre più centrale. Come sottolineato anche nel post di Anastasia Sentsova, la possibilità che in futuro si affermino campagne di AI-orchestrated ransomware apre a scenari in cui targeting, movimento laterale e negoziazione potrebbero essere ottimizzati in tempo reale. In questo senso, la potenziale rinascita di LockBit 5.0 potrebbe segnare l’inizio di una nuova fase sperimentale.

Conclusioni


La schermata di login trapelata dal nuovo DLS, con la richiesta di una chiave privata, non rappresenta soltanto un dettaglio tecnico, ma un indizio capace di alimentare una serie di domande aperte:

  • chi gestisce realmente questa infrastruttura?
  • è davvero LockBit a orchestrare la riapparizione, o un nuovo attore che sfrutta il brand?
  • quale sarà la prossima evoluzione nel modello di estorsione e pubblicazione dei dati?

Al momento, non vi sono risposte definitive. Tuttavia, un elemento è certo: il vuoto lasciato da LockBit nel panorama del ransomware è troppo grande perché rimanga tale a lungo. Se LockBit 5.0 dovesse confermarsi come realtà, il settore potrebbe trovarsi di fronte a un nuovo punto di svolta, con impatti significativi su tattiche, tecniche e procedure del cybercrime internazionale.

L'articolo LockBit 5.0: segnali concreti di una possibile rinascita? proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


ARTO: la piattaforma italiana che rivoluziona l’arte con la blockchain e NFT certificati


Nel 2024 avevamo raccontato ARTO come un’intuizione coraggiosa: un progetto che univa arte e blockchain con l’obiettivo di ridurre le frodi nel mercato artistico e di aprire a un nuovo modo di intendere la creatività.

Oggi, a distanza di mesi, quell’intuizione si è trasformata in una piattaforma concreta, già online pronta a raccogliere la sfida di rendere l’arte più sicura, trasparente e accessibile.

Una rete di innovazione e cultura


ARTO non è nato dal nulla: dietro questa visione ci sono tre realtà italiane che da anni lavorano su ricerca, innovazione e cultura.IAD S.r.l., capofila del progetto (cofinanziato dall’Unione Europea Programma PR FESR Regione Lazio 2021- 2027 Avviso pubblico Riposizionamento competitivo RSI Ambito 4 industrie creative e digitali e patrimonio culturale e tecnologie della cultura – Approv. dalla Regione Lazio con Det. n. G14831 del 09/11/2023 – CUP F89J23000910007 e con COR 16161824 – 1661828 – 16161827), ha guidato il percorso insieme a Ulteriora S.r.l. e Mirart Point S.r.l., con il sostegno della Regione Lazio.

(Scopri di più sul sito à artetoken.it/)

Un ecosistema per l’arte digitale


È grazie a questa alleanza che ARTO è diventato molto più di un’idea: oggi è una piattaforma attiva, online, capace di accogliere opere, trasformarle in NFT certificati e proporle in asta in un contesto sicuro, trasparente e scalabile.

Oltre il marketplace: una nuova esperienza culturale


ARTO non è solo un marketplace di NFT. È un ecosistema culturale e tecnologico che ha saputo intrecciare linguaggi diversi in un’unica architettura: l’espressione artistica, le aste digitali, la tracciabilità immutabile della blockchain.

Gli artisti possono caricare le proprie opere, digitalizzarle e trasformarle in certificati unici, mentre il pubblico e i collezionisti possono finalmente vivere un’esperienza libera da intermediazioni opache, basata sulla sicurezza e sulla trasparenza.

Le aste come motore del cambiamento


Il cuore pulsante della piattaforma sono le aste. Non parliamo di aste tradizionali, ma di eventi digitali costruiti su smart contract che garantiscono regole certe e risultati inviolabili. Ogni opera che entra in ARTO trova un palcoscenico dove il suo valore non è stabilito a tavolino, ma riconosciuto da chi partecipa, in un meccanismo che restituisce dignità e autenticità al processo creativo. In questo modo, il mercato dell’arte smette di essere un territorio riservato a pochi e si apre a una comunità più ampia, inclusiva e consapevole.

Una piattaforma aperta e partecipativa


La piattaforma è oggi viva e consultabile. Aspetta soltanto gli artisti pronti a mettersi in gioco, a caricare le loro opere, a dare al mondo nuovi sguardi e nuove possibilità. ARTO non nasce solo per creare opportunità economiche, ma per portare l’arte fuori dai recinti elitari e trasformarla in esperienza culturale diffusa, accessibile a tutti.

Emergenza Arte: creatività come cura


Dentro questo impianto trova spazio anche una delle sfide più ambiziose: il progetto “Emergenza Arte”. L’obiettivo è portare l’arte nei reparti pediatrici come strumento di cura, offrendo ai bambini un linguaggio con cui raccontare paure e desideri. Non è ancora una sperimentazione attiva, ma una direzione precisa e dichiarata: sono stati definiti protocolli e strumenti, e la volontà è quella di trasformare questa idea in realtà, convinti che potrà dare un contributo enorme ai piccoli pazienti e alle loro famiglie. ARTO ha già le basi tecnologiche e organizzative per custodire quelle esperienze e trasformarle in NFT unici, che diventerebbero memorie eterne di resilienza e creatività.

Tecnologia al servizio della fiducia


Il percorso compiuto fin qui è stato tutt’altro che semplice. Creare una piattaforma che unisse sicurezza, user experience e tracciabilità ha richiesto mesi di lavoro, test e validazioni. Le componenti tecnologiche più delicate, come gli smart contract per le aste, sono state sviluppate e messe alla prova con rigore. Il risultato è un’infrastruttura robusta, pronta a scalare, in grado di affrontare le sfide di un mercato che sempre più chiede trasparenza e affidabilità.

Le persone dietro il progetto


Questo lavoro è stato possibile grazie anche alle competenze delle persone coinvolte. Tra i protagonisti ci sono Daniele Fiungo, responsabile dell’area Ricerca e Sviluppo di IAD, e Flaviano Cardone, coordinatore tecnico-scientifico del progetto. Entrambi hanno guidato lo sviluppo e la definizione dei processi chiave di ARTO, unendo visione e pragmatismo. E a conferma del loro impegno verso la sicurezza e la qualità, hanno conseguito di recente la certificazione Cyber Threat Intelligence Professional (CTIP) rilasciata da Red Hot Cyber Academy. Un segno di come in ARTO la tecnologia non sia mai separata dal tema della sicurezza, ma al contrario ne rappresenti la spina dorsale.

Il debutto ufficiale: ottobre 2025, Arte Parma Fair


Il futuro è già scritto nel calendario: ottobre 2025, Arte Parma Fair. Qui ARTO avrà il suo debutto ufficiale davanti al grande pubblico, con uno stand pensato per stupire e coinvolgere. Ci saranno NFT visibili in realtà aumentata, aste live, installazioni multimediali e persino un omaggio speciale al maestro Arnaldo Pomodoro, reinterpretato con linguaggi digitali per intrecciare memoria e innovazione. Sarà il momento per mostrare che ARTO non è più un esperimento, ma un modello che può fare scuola, pronto a replicarsi e a crescere.

ARTO: un ponte tra tecnologia e umanità


Oggi ARTO rappresenta un punto di incontro tra digitale e cultura, tra tecnologia e umanità. È la prova che la blockchain non serve solo alla finanza, ma può generare valore reale per artisti, collezionisti e comunità. È un progetto che guarda avanti, con l’ambizione di connettere mondi che spesso restano separati: il mercato dell’arte, le pratiche terapeutiche, la dimensione sociale.

Perché l’arte, se accompagnata da strumenti giusti, può diventare molto più di un segno su una tela. Può trasformarsi in esperienza collettiva, in memoria condivisa, in valore che resta. ARTO è già questo: un modello concreto che nasce dall’innovazione e dalla ricerca, e che oggi è pronto a dare voce a chiunque voglia farsi ascoltare.

L'articolo ARTO: la piattaforma italiana che rivoluziona l’arte con la blockchain e NFT certificati proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


The 555 as You’ve Never Seen It: In Textile!


The weaving is on the left, a microphoto of the chip die is on the right.

The Diné (aka Navajo) people have been using their weaving as trade goods at least since European contact, and probably long before. They’ve never shied from adopting innovation: churro sheep from the Spanish in the 17th century, aniline dies in the 19th, and in the 20th and 21st… integrated circuits? At least one Navajo Weaver, [Marilou Schultz] thinks they’re a good match for the traditional geometric forms. Her latest creation is a woven depiction of the venerable 555 timer.
“Popular Chip” by Marilou Schultz. Photo courtesy of First American Art Magazine, via righto.com
This isn’t the first time [Marilou] has turned an IC into a Navajo rug; she’s been weaving chip rugs since 1994– including a Pentium rug commissioned by Intel that hangs in USA’s National Gallery of Art–but it’s somehow flown below the Hackaday radar until now. The closest thing we’ve seen on these pages was a beaded bracelet embedding a QR code, inspired by traditional Native American forms.

That’s why we’re so thankful to [VivCocoa] for the tip. It’s a wild and wonderful world out there, and we can’t cover all of it without you. Are there any other fusions of tradition and high-tech we’ve been missing out on? Send us a tip.


hackaday.com/2025/09/10/the-55…


FLOSS Weekly Episode 846: Mastering Embedded Linux Programming


This week Jonathan and Dan chat with Frank Vasquez and Chris Simmonds about Embedded Linux, and the 4th edition of the Mastering Embedded Linux Programming book. How has this space changed in the last 20 years, and what’s the latest in Embedded Linux?


youtube.com/embed/6JKmZAQMgh0?…

Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on our YouTube Channel? Have someone you’d like us to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us! Take a look at the schedule here.

play.libsyn.com/embed/episode/…

Direct Download in DRM-free MP3.

If you’d rather read along, here’s the transcript for this week’s episode.

Places to follow the FLOSS Weekly Podcast:


Theme music: “Newer Wave” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License


hackaday.com/2025/09/10/floss-…


Gli hacker criminali di The Gentlemen pubblicano la prima vittima italiana


Nella giornata di oggi, la nuova cyber-gang The Gentlemen” rivendica all’interno del proprio Data Leak Site (DLS) il primo attacco ad una azienda italiana.

Disclaimer: Questo rapporto include screenshot e/o testo tratti da fonti pubblicamente accessibili. Le informazioni fornite hanno esclusivamente finalità di intelligence sulle minacce e di sensibilizzazione sui rischi di cybersecurity. Red Hot Cyber condanna qualsiasi accesso non autorizzato, diffusione impropria o utilizzo illecito di tali dati. Al momento, non è possibile verificare in modo indipendente l’autenticità delle informazioni riportate, poiché l’organizzazione coinvolta non ha ancora rilasciato un comunicato ufficiale sul proprio sito web. Di conseguenza, questo articolo deve essere considerato esclusivamente a scopo informativo e di intelligence.

All’interno del post, la gang riporta quanto segue:

Laboratorio Clinico Santa Rita
Santa Rita Laboratorios offers a wide range of medical laboratory services, including hematology, immunology, microbiology, and molecular biology. The company is committed to preserving health through accurate diagnostics and operates with state-of-the-art technology and high-resolution equipment. They provide personalized medical assistance 24/7, as well as home sample collection services for client convenience. Intended clients include individuals seeking reliable laboratory tests and diagnostics.”

Chi sono i criminali informatici di The gentlemen


La cyber gang The Gentlemen è emersa di recente nello scenario del cybercrime distinguendosi per un approccio organizzato e un’infrastruttura ben strutturata. Il gruppo opera attraverso un proprio data leak site nel dark web, dove pubblica avvisi di compromissione e minacce di esposizione dei dati.

La loro comunicazione è caratterizzata da uno stile curato e studiato, con un’immagine pubblica che mira a costruire credibilità e timore nel settore della criminalità informatica, nonostante la relativa novità della loro presenza. Questo aspetto lascia intendere che dietro al progetto possano esserci attori già esperti di ransomware e data extortion.

Il modus operandi dei The Gentlemen ricalca i modelli tipici del ransomware moderno: compromissione iniziale delle infrastrutture, esfiltrazione dei dati sensibili e successiva estorsione basata sulla minaccia di pubblicazione. Le prime vittime individuate dal gruppo appartengono a settori sensibili come sanità, manifattura e servizi, aree particolarmente appetibili per la pressione che la perdita o la fuga di informazioni può generare. Il loro sito non si limita a elencare le vittime, ma fornisce anche dettagli sui dati sottratti, aumentando così la pressione psicologica sulle aziende colpite.

La rapidità con cui il gruppo si è imposto nell’ecosistema del cybercrime solleva interrogativi sulla sua reale origine e sulla possibilità che sia una riorganizzazione o una “costola” di operatori già noti. La capacità di attrarre l’attenzione della comunità di sicurezza informatica. In un panorama già saturo di gang ransomware, i The Gentlemen puntano a differenziarsi con uno stile comunicativo elegante ma allo stesso tempo aggressivo, posizionandosi rapidamente come una minaccia emergente di cui monitorare attentamente le mosse future.

Come nostra consuetudine, lasciamo sempre spazio ad una dichiarazione da parte dell’azienda qualora voglia darci degli aggiornamenti sulla vicenda. Saremo lieti di pubblicare tali informazioni con uno specifico articolo dando risalto alla questione.

RHC monitorerà l’evoluzione della vicenda in modo da pubblicare ulteriori news sul blog, qualora ci fossero novità sostanziali. Qualora ci siano persone informate sui fatti che volessero fornire informazioni in modo anonimo possono utilizzare la mail crittografata del whistleblower.

Cos’è il ransomware as a service (RaaS)


Il ransomware, è una tipologia di malware che viene inoculato all’interno di una organizzazione, per poter cifrare i dati e rendere indisponibili i sistemi. Una volta cifrati i dati, i criminali chiedono alla vittima il pagamento di un riscatto, da pagare in criptovalute, per poterli decifrare.

Qualora la vittima non voglia pagare il riscatto, i criminali procederanno con la doppia estorsione, ovvero la minaccia della pubblicazione di dati sensibili precedentemente esfiltrati dalle infrastrutture IT della vittima.

Per comprendere meglio il funzionamento delle organizzazioni criminali all’interno del business del ransomware as a service (RaaS), vi rimandiamo a questi articoli:


Come proteggersi dal ransomware


Le infezioni da ransomware possono essere devastanti per un’organizzazione e il ripristino dei dati può essere un processo difficile e laborioso che richiede operatori altamente specializzati per un recupero affidabile, e anche se in assenza di un backup dei dati, sono molte le volte che il ripristino non ha avuto successo.

Infatti, si consiglia agli utenti e agli amministratori di adottare delle misure di sicurezza preventive per proteggere le proprie reti dalle infezioni da ransomware e sono in ordine di complessità:

  • Formare il personale attraverso corsi di Awareness;
  • Utilizzare un piano di backup e ripristino dei dati per tutte le informazioni critiche. Eseguire e testare backup regolari per limitare l’impatto della perdita di dati o del sistema e per accelerare il processo di ripristino. Da tenere presente che anche i backup connessi alla rete possono essere influenzati dal ransomware. I backup critici devono essere isolati dalla rete per una protezione ottimale;
  • Mantenere il sistema operativo e tutto il software sempre aggiornato con le patch più recenti. Le applicazioni ei sistemi operativi vulnerabili sono l’obiettivo della maggior parte degli attacchi. Garantire che questi siano corretti con gli ultimi aggiornamenti riduce notevolmente il numero di punti di ingresso sfruttabili a disposizione di un utente malintenzionato;
  • Mantenere aggiornato il software antivirus ed eseguire la scansione di tutto il software scaricato da Internet prima dell’esecuzione;
  • Limitare la capacità degli utenti (autorizzazioni) di installare ed eseguire applicazioni software indesiderate e applicare il principio del “privilegio minimo” a tutti i sistemi e servizi. La limitazione di questi privilegi può impedire l’esecuzione del malware o limitarne la capacità di diffondersi attraverso la rete;
  • Evitare di abilitare le macro dagli allegati di posta elettronica. Se un utente apre l’allegato e abilita le macro, il codice incorporato eseguirà il malware sul computer;
  • Non seguire i collegamenti Web non richiesti nelle e-mail;
  • Esporre le connessione Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) mai direttamente su internet. Qualora si ha necessità di un accesso da internet, il tutto deve essere mediato da una VPN;
  • Implementare sistemi di Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) e Web Application Firewall (WAF) come protezione perimetrale a ridosso dei servizi esposti su internet.
  • Implementare una piattaforma di sicurezza XDR, nativamente automatizzata, possibilmente supportata da un servizio MDR 24 ore su 24, 7 giorni su 7, consentendo di raggiungere una protezione e una visibilità completa ed efficace su endpoint, utenti, reti e applicazioni, indipendentemente dalle risorse, dalle dimensioni del team o dalle competenze, fornendo altresì rilevamento, correlazione, analisi e risposta automatizzate.

Sia gli individui che le organizzazioni sono scoraggiati dal pagare il riscatto, in quanto anche dopo il pagamento le cyber gang possono non rilasciare la chiave di decrittazione oppure le operazioni di ripristino possono subire degli errori e delle inconsistenze.

La sicurezza informatica è una cosa seria e oggi può minare profondamente il business di una azienda.

Oggi occorre cambiare immediatamente mentalità e pensare alla cybersecurity come una parte integrante del business e non pensarci solo dopo che è avvenuto un incidente di sicurezza informatica.

L'articolo Gli hacker criminali di The Gentlemen pubblicano la prima vittima italiana proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


Everything in a Linux Terminal


Here at Hackaday Central, we fancy that we know a little something about Linux. But if you’d tasked us to run any GUI program inside a Linux terminal, we’d have said that wasn’t possible. But, it turns out, you should have asked [mmulet] who put together term.everything.

You might be thinking that of course, you can launch a GUI program from a terminal. Sure. That’s not what this is. Instead, it hijacks the Wayland protocol and renders the graphics as text. Or, if your terminal supports it, as an image. Performance is probably not your goal if you want to do this. As the old saying goes, “It’s not that the dog can sing well; it’s that the dog can sing at all.”

If, like us, you are more interested in how it works, there’s a write up explaining the nuances of the Wayland protocol. The article points out that Wayland doesn’t actually care what you do with the graphical output. In particular, “… you could print out the graphics and give them to a league of crochet grandmas to individually tie together every single pixel into the afghan of legend!” We expect to see this tested at an upcoming hacker conference. Maybe even Supercon.

We generally don’t like Wayland very much. We use a lot of hacks like xdotool and autokey that Wayland doesn’t like. We also think people didn’t understand X11’s network abilities until it was too late. If you think of it as only a video card driver, then you get what you deserve. But we have to admit, we are humbled by term.everything.


hackaday.com/2025/09/10/everyt…


Phishing in Classe! 115.000 email per 13.500 organizzazioni con Google Classroom


I ricercatori di Check Point hanno scoperto una campagna di phishing attiva su larga scala che sfrutta Google Classroom, una piattaforma a cui si affidano milioni di studenti ed educatori in tutto il mondo.

Nel corso di una sola settimana, gli aggressori hanno lanciato cinque ondate coordinate, distribuendo più di 115.000 e-mail di phishing rivolte a 13.500 organizzazioni di diversi settori. Sono state prese di mira organizzazioni in Europa, Nord America, Medio Oriente e Asia.

Uno strumento affidabile trasformato in un vettore di minacce


Google Classroom è progettato per mettere in contatto insegnanti e studenti attraverso inviti a partecipare a classi virtuali. Gli aggressori hanno sfruttato questa fiducia inviando inviti fasulli che contenevano offerte commerciali non correlate, che andavano dalla rivendita di prodotti ai servizi SEO.

Ogni e-mail indirizzava i destinatari a contattare i truffatori tramite un numero di telefono WhatsApp, una tattica spesso legata a schemi di frode.

L’inganno funziona perché i sistemi di sicurezza tendono a fidarsi dei messaggi provenienti da servizi Google legittimi. Sfruttando l’infrastruttura di Google Classroom, gli aggressori sono stati in grado di aggirare alcuni livelli di sicurezza tradizionali, tentando di raggiungere le caselle di posta elettronica di oltre 13.500 aziende prima che le difese venissero attivate.

Anatomia della campagna


  • Scala: 115.000 e-mail di phishing inviate tra il 6 e il 12 agosto 2025.
  • Obiettivi: 13.500 organizzazioni in tutto il mondo, in diversi settori.
  • Esca: Falsi inviti a Google Classroom contenenti offerte non correlate all’istruzione
  • Invito all’azione (call to action): Un numero di telefono WhatsApp, progettato per spostare la conversazione al di fuori della posta elettronica e del monitoraggio aziendale.
  • Metodo di consegna: Cinque ondate principali, ognuna delle quali ha sfruttato la legittimità di Google Classroom per eludere i filtri.


Come Check Point ha bloccato l’attacco


Nonostante l’uso sofisticato da parte degli aggressori della fidata infrastruttura, la tecnologia SmartPhish di Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration ha rilevato e bloccato automaticamente la maggior parte dei tentativi di phishing. Ulteriori livelli di sicurezza hanno impedito ai messaggi rimanenti di raggiungere gli utenti finali.

Questo incidente sottolinea l’importanza delle difese a più livelli. Gli aggressori utilizzano sempre più spesso servizi cloud legittimi, rendendo i gateway di posta elettronica tradizionali insufficienti a bloccare le tattiche di phishing in continua evoluzione.

Cosa devono fare le organizzazioni


  • Educare: Istruire utenti, studenti e dipendenti a trattare con cautela gli inviti inattesi (anche quelli provenienti da piattaforme familiari).
  • Prevenzione avanzata delle minacce: Utilizzate un rilevamento basato sull’intelligenza artificiale che analizza il contesto e l’intento, non solo la reputazione del mittente.
  • Monitorare le applicazioni cloud: Estendete la protezione dal phishing oltre le e-mail anche alle app di collaborazione, alle piattaforme di messaggistica e ai servizi SaaS.
  • Difendersi dall’ingegneria sociale: Essere consapevoli che gli aggressori spingono sempre più spesso le vittime verso comunicazioni al di fuori dei canali “ufficiali” (come WhatsApp) per eludere i controlli aziendali.

Gli aggressori continuano a trovare modi creativi per sfruttare servizi legittimi come Google Classroom per ottenere fiducia, aggirare le difese e raggiungere obiettivi su larga scala. Con oltre 115.000 e-mail in una sola settimana, questa campagna evidenzia la facilità con cui i criminali informatici possono armare le piattaforme digitali a scopo di frode.

Riconosciuto come Leader e Outperformer nel GigaOm Radar 2025 per l’Anti-Phishing, Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration fornisce la difesa avanzata e stratificata necessaria per proteggere le organizzazioni dagli attacchi di phishing, anche quando si nascondono in bella vista.

L'articolo Phishing in Classe! 115.000 email per 13.500 organizzazioni con Google Classroom proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


Notes of cyber inspector: three clusters of threat in cyberspace


Hacktivism and geopolitically motivated APT groups have become a significant threat to many regions of the world in recent years, damaging infrastructure and important functions of government, business, and society. In late 2022 we predicted that the involvement of hacktivist groups in all major geopolitical conflicts from now on will only increase and this is what we’ve been observing throughout the years. With regard to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, this has led to a sharp increase of activities carried out by groups that identify themselves as either pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian.

The rise in cybercrime amid geopolitical tensions is alarming. Our Kaspersky Cyber Threat Intelligence team has been observing several geopolitically motivated threat actors and hacktivist groups operating in various conflict zones. Through collecting and analyzing extensive data on these groups’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), we’ve discovered a concerning trend: hacktivists are increasingly interconnected with financially motivated groups. They share tools, infrastructure, and resources.

This collaboration has serious implications. Their campaigns may disrupt not only business operations but also ordinary citizens’ lives, affecting everything from banking services to personal data security or the functioning of the healthcare system. Moreover, monetized techniques can spread exponentially as profit-seeking actors worldwide replicate and refine them. We consider these technical findings a valuable resource for global cybersecurity efforts. In this report, we share observations on threat actors who identify themselves as pro-Ukrainian.

About this report


The main goal of this report is to provide technical evidence supporting the theory we’ve proposed based on our previous research: that most of the groups we describe here actively collaborate, effectively forming three major threat clusters.

This report includes:

  • A library of threat groups, current as of 2025, with details on their main TTPs and tools.
  • A technical description of signature tactics, techniques, procedures, and toolsets used by these groups. This information is intended for practical use by SOC, DFIR, CTI, and threat hunting professionals.


What this report covers


This report contains information on the current TTPs of hacktivists and APT groups targeting Russian organizations particularly in 2025, however they are not limited to Russia as a target. Further research showed that among some of the groups’ targets, such as CloudAtlas and XDSpy, were assets in European, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries. In particular, traces of infections were discovered in 2024 in Slovakia and Serbia. The report doesn’t include groups that emerged in 2025, as we didn’t have sufficient time to research their activity. We’ve divided all groups into three clusters based on their TTPs:

  • Cluster I combines hacktivist and dual-purpose groups that use similar tactics, techniques, and tools. This cluster is characterized by:
    • Shared infrastructure
    • A unique software suite
    • Identical processes, command lines, directories, and so on
    • Distinctive TTPs
Cluster II comprises APT groups that have different TTPs from the hacktivists. Among these, we can distinguish simple APTs (characterized by their use of third-party utilities, scripts that carry out all the malicious logic, shared domain registrars, and concealing their real infrastructure behind reverse proxy systems – for example, using Cloudflare services), and more sophisticated ones (distinguished by their unique TTPs).Cluster III includes hacktivist groups for which we’ve observed no signs of collaboration with other groups described here.


Example: Cyberthreat landscape in Russia in 2025


Hacktivism remains the key threat to Russian businesses and businesses in other conflict areas today, and the scale and complexity of these attacks keep growing. Traditionally, the term “hacktivism” refers to a blend of hacking and activism, where attackers use their skills to achieve social or political goals. Over the past few years, these threat actors have become more experienced and organized, collaborating with one another and sharing knowledge and tools to achieve common objectives.

Additionally, a new phenomenon known as “dual-purpose groups” has appeared in the Russian threat landscape in recent years. We’ve detected links between hacktivists and financially motivated groups. They use the same tools, techniques, and tactics, and even share common infrastructure and resources. Depending on the victim, they may pursue a variety of goals: demanding a ransom to decrypt data, causing irreparable damage, or leaking stolen data to the media. This suggests that these attackers belong to a single complex cluster.

Beyond this, “traditional” categories of attackers continue to operate in Russia and other regions: groups engaged in cyberespionage and purely financially motivated threat actors also remain a significant problem. Like other groups, geopolitically motivated groups are cybercriminals who undermine the secure and trustworthy use of digitalization opportunities and they can change and adapt their target regions depending on political developments.

That is why it is important to also be aware of the TTPs used by threat actors who appear to be attacking other targets. We will continue to monitor geopolitically motivated threat actors and publish technical reports about their TTPs.

Recommendations


To defend against the threats described in this report, Kaspersky experts recommend the following:

  • Provide your SOC teams with access to up-to-date information on the latest attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Threat intelligence feeds from reliable providers, like Kaspersky Threat Intelligence, can help with this.
  • Use a comprehensive security solution that combines centralized monitoring and analysis, advanced threat detection and response, and security incident investigation tools. The Kaspersky NEXT XDR platform provides this functionality and is suitable for medium and large businesses in any industry.
  • Protect every component of modern and legacy industrial automation systems with specialized OT security solutions. Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (KICS) — an XDR-class platform — ensures reliable protection for critical infrastructure in energy, manufacturing, mining, and transportation.
  • Conduct regular security awareness training for employees to reduce the likelihood of successful phishing and other social engineering attacks. Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness Platform is a good option for this.

The report is available for our partners and customers. If you are interested, please contact report@kaspersky.com


securelist.com/three-hacktivis…


Bare Metal STM32: the Various Real Time Clock Flavors


Keeping track of time is essential, even for microcontrollers, which is why a real-time clock (RTC) peripheral is a common feature in MCUs. In the case of the STM32 family there are three varieties of RTC peripherals, with the newest two creatively called ‘RTC2′ and RTC3’, to contrast them from the very basic and barebones RTC that debuted with the STM32F1 series.

Commonly experienced in the ubiquitous and often cloned STM32F103 MCU, this ‘RTC1’ features little more than a basic 32-bit counter alongside an alarm feature and a collection of battery-backed registers that requires you to do all of the heavy lifting of time and date keeping yourself. This is quite a contrast with the two rather similar successor RTC peripherals, which seem to insist on doing everything possible themselves – except offer you that basic counter – including giving you a full-blown calendar and today’s time with consideration for 12/24 hour format, DST and much more.

With such a wide gulf between RTC1 and its successors, this raises the question of how to best approach these from a low-level perspective.

You Can Count On Me


If it was just about counting seconds, then any of the timer peripherals in an MCU would be more than up to the task, limited only by the precision of the used system clock. The RTC requirements are a bit more extensive, however, as indicated by what is called the backup domain in F1 and the backup registers in the RTC2 and RTC3 peripherals. Powered by an external power source, this clock and register data are expected to survive any power event, the CPU being reset, halted or powered off, while happily continuing to count the progress of time until the rest of the MCU and its firmware returns to check up on its progress.

Naturally, this continuation requires two things: the first is a power source to the special power pin on the MCU (VBAT), often provided from a ubiquitous 3 V lithium cell, along with a clock source that remains powered when the rest of the MCU isn’t. This provides the first gotcha as the RTC clock can be configured to be one of these three:

  • Low Speed External (LSE): usually an external 32,768 Hz oscillator which is powered via VBAT.
  • Low Speed Internal (LSI): a simple internal ~40-ish kHz oscillator that is only powered by VDD.
  • High Speed External (HSE): the external clock signal that’s generally used to clock the MCU’s CPU and many of its peripherals. Also not available in all low-power modes.

Thus, the logical RTCCLK choice for an RTC that has to survive any and all adverse power events is the LSE as it feeds into the RTC. Take for example the STM32F103 RTC block diagram:
Simplified RTC diagram of the STM32F103. (Source: RM0008)Simplified RTC diagram of the STM32F103. (Source: RM0008)
Here we can see the elements of the very basic RTC1 peripheral, with the sections that are powered by VBAT marked in grey. The incoming RTCCLK is used to generate the RTC time base TR_CLK in the RTC prescaler, which increases the value in the RTC_CNT register. It being a 32-bit register and TR_CLK usually being 1 Hz means that this counter can be run for approximately 136 years if we ignore details like leap years, without overflowing.

For initializing and using the RTC1 peripheral, we can consult application note AN2821 alongside reference manual RM0008, which covers a clock and calendar implementation, specifically on the STM3210B-EVAL board, but applicable to all STM32F10x MCUs. If you want to keep a running calendar going, it’s possible to use the backup registers for this whenever the counter reaches a certain number of seconds.

That said, where having just this counter is rather pleasant is when using the C <time.h> functions with Newlib, such as time(). As Newlib on STM32 requires you to implement at least [url=https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/gettimeofday.2.html]_gettimeofday()[/url], this means that you can just let RTC_CNT do its thing and copy it into the seconds member of a timeval struct – after converting from BCD to binary – before returning it. This is significantly easier than with RTC2 and 3, with my own implementation in Nodate’s RTC code currently fudging things with mktime() to get a basic seconds counter again from the clock and calendar register values.

All The Bells And Whistles


If the RTC1 peripheral was rather basic with just a counter, an alarm and some backup registers, its successor and the rather similar RTC3 peripheral are basically the exact opposite. A good, quick comparison is provided here, with AN4759 providing a detailed overview, initialization and usage of these newest RTCs. One nice thing about RTC3 is that it adds back an optional counter much like the – BCD-based – RTC1 counter by extending the RTC_SSR register to 32-bit and using it as a binary counter. However as the summary by Efton notes, this counter and some other features are not present on every MCU, so beware.

Correspondingly, the block diagram for the RTC2 peripheral is rather more complicated:
Block diagram of the RTC 2 peripheral in the STM32F401 MCU. (Source: ST, RM0368)Block diagram of the RTC 2 peripheral in the STM32F401 MCU. (Source: ST, RM0368)
Although we can still see the prescaler and backup/tamper registers, the prescaler is significantly more complex with added calibration options, the alarms span more registers and there are now three shadow registers for the time, date and sub-seconds in RTC_TR, RTC_DR and RTC_SSR respectively. This is practically identical to the RTC3 block diagram.

These shadow registers lay out the individual values as for example in the RTC_TR register:
The RTC_TR register in the STM32F401. (Source: ST, RM0368)The RTC_TR register in the STM32F401. (Source: ST, RM0368)
Taking the seconds as an example, we got the tens (ST) and units (SU), both in BCD format which together form the current number of seconds. For the minutes and hours the same pattern is used, with PM keeping track of whether it’s AM or PM if 12 hour format is used. Effectively this makes these shadow registers a direct source of time and calendar information, albeit generally in BCD format and unlike with the basic RTC1 peripheral, using it as the source for C-style functions via Newlib has become rather tricky.

Unix Time Things


In the world of computing the ‘seconds since the Unix Epoch’ thing has become rather defining as the starting point for many timing-related functions. One consequence of this is that indicating a point in time often involves listing the number of seconds since said epoch on January 1st of 1970, at 00:00:00 UTC. This includes the time-related functions in the standard C libraries, such as Newlib, as discussed earlier.

This is perhaps the most frustrating point with these three-ish different STM32 RTC peripherals, as although the RTC1 is barebones, making it work with Newlib is a snap, while RTC2 and RTC3 are for the most part a nightmare, except for the RTC3 implementations that support the binary mode, although even that is a down-counter instead of an up-counter. This leaves one with the dreadful task of turning those shadow register values back into a Unix timestamp.

One way to do this is by using the mktime() function as mentioned earlier. This takes a tm struct whose fields define the elements of a date, e.g. for seconds:
tm tt;
tt.tm_sec = (uint8_t) bcd2dec32(RTC_TR & (RTC_TR_ST | RTC_TR_SU));
By repeating this for each part of RTC_TR and RTC_DR, we end up with a filled in struct that we can pass to mktime which will then spit out our coveted Unix timestamp in the form of a time_t integer. Of course, that would be far too easy, and thus we run head-first into the problem that mktime is incredibly picky about what it likes, and makes this implementation-dependent.

For example, despite the claims made about ranges for the tm struct, running a simple local test case in an MSYS2 environment indicated that negative years since 1970 wasn’t allowed, so that not having the RTC set to a current-ish date will always error out when the year is less than 71. It’s quite possible that a custom alternative to mktime will be less headache-inducing here.

Of course, ST could just have been nice and offered the basic counter of RTC1 along with all of the good stuff added with RTC2 and RTC3, but maybe for that we’ll have to count the seconds until the release of RTC4.


hackaday.com/2025/09/10/bare-m…


Rackintosh Plus Is the Form Factor Nobody Has Been Waiting For


For all its friendly countenance and award-winning industrial design, there’s one thing the venerable Macintosh Plus can’t do: fit into a 1U rack space. OK, if we’re being honest with ourselves, there are a lot of things a Mac from 1986 can’t do, but the rack space is what [identity4] was focused on when they built the 2025 Rackintosh Plus.
Some folks may have been fooled by this ad to think this was an actual product.
For those of you already sharpening your pitchforks, worry not: [identity4]’s beloved vintage Mac was not disassembled for this project. This rack mount has instead become the home for a spare logic board they had acquired Why? They wanted to use a classic Mac in their studio, and for any more equipment to fit the space, it needed to go into the existing racks. It’s more practical than the motivation we see for a lot of hacks; it’s almost surprising it hasn’t happened before. (We’ve seen Mac Minis in racks, but not the classic hardware.)

Aside from the genuine Apple logic board, the thin rack also contains a BlueSCSI hard drive emulator, a Floppy Emu for SD-card floppy emulator, an RGB-to-HDMI converter to allow System 7 to shine on modern monitors, and of course a Mean Well power supply to keep everything running.The Floppy Emu required a little light surgery to move the screen so it would fit inside the low-profile rack. [identity4] also broke out the keyboard and mouse connectors to the front of the rack, but all other connectors stayed on the logic board at the rear.

Sound is handled by a single 8-ohm speaker that lives inside the rack mount, because even if the Rackintosh can now fit into a 1U space, it still can’t do stereo sound…or anything else a Macintosh Plus with 4 MB of RAM couldn’t do. Still, it’s a lovely hack. and the vintage-style advertisement was an excellent touch.

Now they just need the right monochrome display.


hackaday.com/2025/09/10/rackin…


A Look at Not an Android Emulator


Recently, Linux has been rising in desktop popularity in no small part to the work on WINE and Proton. But for some, the year of the Linux desktop is not enough, and the goal is now for the year of the Linux phone. To that end, an Android Linux translation layer called Android Translation Layer (we never said developers were good at naming) has emerged for those running Linux on their phones.

Android Translation Layer (ATL) is still in very early days, and likely as not, remains unpackaged on your distro of choice. Fortunately, a workaround is running an Alpine Linux container with graphics pass through via a tool like Distrobox or Toolbox. Because of the Alpine derived mobile distribution postmarketOS, ATL is packaged in the Alpine repos.

In many ways, running Android apps on Linux is much easier then Windows apps. Because Android apps are architecture independent, hardware emulation is unnecessary. With such similar kernels, on paper at least, Android software should run with minimal effort on Linux. Most of what ATL provides is a Linux/Android hardware abstraction layer glue to ensure Android system calls make their way to the Linux kernel.

Of course, there is a lot more to running Android apps, and the team is working to implement the countless Android system APIs in ATL. For now, older Android apps such as Angry Birds have the best support. Much like WINE, ATL will likely devolve into a game of wack-a-mole where developers implement fresh translation code as new APIs emerge and app updates break. Still, WINE is a wildly successful project, and we hope to see ATL grow likewise!

If you want to get your Android phone to talk to Linux, make sure to check out this hack next!


hackaday.com/2025/09/10/a-look…


Preludio alla compromissione: è boom sulle scansioni mirate contro Cisco ASA


A fine agosto, GreyNoise ha registrato un forte aumento dell’attività di scansione mirata ai dispositivi Cisco ASA. Gli esperti avvertono che tali ondate spesso precedono la scoperta di nuove vulnerabilità nei prodotti. Questa volta, si tratta di due picchi: in entrambi i casi, gli aggressori hanno controllato massicciamente le pagine di autorizzazione ASA e l’accesso Telnet/SSH in Cisco IOS.

Il 26 agosto è stato osservato un attacco particolarmente esteso, avviato da una botnet brasiliana, che ha utilizzato circa 17.000 indirizzi univoci e ha gestito fino all’80% del traffico. In totale, sono state osservate fino a 25.000 sorgenti IP. È interessante notare che entrambe le ondate hanno utilizzato intestazioni di browser simili, mascherate da Chrome, a indicare un’infrastruttura comune.

Gli Stati Uniti erano l’obiettivo principale, ma anche Regno Unito e Germania sono stati monitorati.

Secondo GreyNoise, circa l’80% di tali ricognizioni si traduce nella successiva scoperta di nuove problematiche di sicurezza, sebbene la correlazione statistica sia notevolmente più debole per Cisco rispetto ad altri produttori. Ciononostante, tali indicatori consentono agli amministratori di rafforzare in anticipo le proprie difese.

In alcuni casi, questi potrebbero essere tentativi falliti di sfruttare bug già chiusi, ma una campagna su larga scala potrebbe anche essere mirata a mappare i servizi disponibili per un ulteriore sfruttamento di vulnerabilità non ancora divulgate.

Un amministratore di sistema indipendente con il nickname NadSec – Rat5ak, ha segnalato un’attività simile iniziata a fine luglio e che ha preso slancio fino al 28 agosto. Ha registrato oltre 200.000 richieste ad ASA in 20 ore con un carico uniforme di 10.000 richieste da ciascun indirizzo, il che indica una profonda automazione. Le fonti erano tre sistemi autonomi: Nybula, Cheapy-Host e Global Connectivity Solutions LLP.

Si consiglia agli amministratori di installare gli ultimi aggiornamenti di Cisco ASA il prima possibile per chiudere le falle note, abilitare l’autenticazione a più fattori per tutti gli accessi remoti e non pubblicare direttamente pagine /+CSCOE+/logon.html, Web VPN , Telnet o SSH.

In casi estremi, si consiglia di esternalizzare l’accesso tramite un concentratore VPN, un reverse proxy o un gateway con verifica aggiuntiva.

È inoltre possibile utilizzare gli indicatori di attacco pubblicati da GreyNoise e Rat5ak per bloccare le richieste sospette sul perimetro e, se necessario, abilitare il geo-blocking e la limitazione della velocità. Cisco non ha ancora rilasciato dichiarazioni in merito.

L'articolo Preludio alla compromissione: è boom sulle scansioni mirate contro Cisco ASA proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


The Gentlemen ransomware: analisi di una minaccia emergente nel dark web


Nel Q3 2025 è stato osservato un nuovo gruppo ransomware, identificato come The Gentlemen, che ha lanciato un proprio Data Leak Site (DLS) nella rete Tor.

L’infrastruttura e le modalità operative del gruppo indicano un livello di organizzazione medio-alto, con particolare attenzione alla gestione dell’immagine e alla sicurezza operativa. Il DLS di The Gentlemen è accessibile tramite un indirizzo .onion e si presenta come segue:

  • Homepage minimalista con logo, motto e branding coerente.
  • TOX ID pubblico per comunicazioni cifrate P2P, probabilmente utilizzato per le negoziazioni.
  • QR code ridondante per facilitare l’accesso ai contatti.
  • Sezione dedicata alle vittime, organizzata in schede con descrizioni e riferimenti a dati esfiltrati.

L’assenza di funzionalità superflue e la scelta di protocolli decentralizzati riducono la superficie d’attacco contro la loro infrastruttura.

Victimology


Le vittime osservate appartengono a settori ad alto valore strategico:

  • Manifatturiero/Automotive (EU)
  • Servizi tecnologici/IT consulting (Asia)
  • Energia e Telecomunicazioni (global)

L’approccio suggerisce una strategia mirata verso entità con bassa tolleranza alla disruption e forte esposizione reputazionale.

Distinguishing Factors


  • Branding marcato: stile grafico coerente e naming che punta a differenziarsi da gruppi caotici.
  • OpSec rafforzata: uso di TOX invece di portali centralizzati.
  • DLS modulare: struttura scalabile, pronta a ospitare un numero crescente di vittime.


Considerazioni finali


Il debutto di The Gentlemen conferma che il panorama ransomware è in continua evoluzione. L’attenzione ai dettagli, la costruzione di un DLS pulito e funzionale, e la scelta di obiettivi nei settori industriali più redditizi lasciano intuire che questo gruppo non sia un’iniziativa improvvisata, ma il risultato di un’organizzazione con risorse e competenze consolidate.

Per le aziende, la lezione è chiara: rafforzare le difese di rete e i processi di incident response è ormai imprescindibile, soprattutto in quei comparti che rappresentano un target primario per attori malevoli di nuova generazione.

L'articolo The Gentlemen ransomware: analisi di una minaccia emergente nel dark web proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


The Magic of the Hall Effect Sensor


A photo of the air-wired circuit, with one LED on and the other off.

Recently, [Solder Hub] put together a brief video that demonstrates the basics of a Hall Effect sensor — in this case, one salvaged from an old CPU fan. Two LEDs, a 100 ohm resistor, and a 3.7 volt battery are soldered onto a four pin Hall effect sensor which can toggle one of two lights in response to the polarity of a nearby magnet.

If you’re interested in the physics, the once sentence version goes something like this: the Hall Effect is the production of a potential difference, across an electrical conductor, that is transverse to an electric current in the conductor and to an applied magnetic field perpendicular to the current. Get your head around that!

Of course we’ve covered the Hall effect here on Hackaday before, indeed, our search returned more than 1,000 results! You can stick your toe in with posts such as A Simple 6DOF Hall Effect ‘Space’ Mouse and Tracing In 2D And 3D With Hall Effect Sensors.

youtube.com/embed/YTwcnHwplQw?…


hackaday.com/2025/09/09/the-ma…


Was Action! The Best 8-Bit Language?


Most people’s memories of programming in the 8-bit era revolve around BASIC, and not without reason. Most of the time, it was all we had. On the other hand, there were other options if you sought them out, and [Paul Lefebvre] makes the case that Goto10Retro that Action! was the best of them.

The limits of BASIC as an interpreted language are well-enough known that we needn’t go over them here. C and Pascal were available for some home computers in the 1980s, and programs written in those languages ran well, but compiling them? That was by no means guaranteed.
The text editor. Unusual for Atari at the time, it allowed scrolling along a line of greater than 40 char.
For those who lived on the Atari side of the fence, the Action! language provided a powerful alternative. Released by Optimized Systems Software in 1983, Action! was heavily optimized for the 6502, to the point that compiling and running simple programs with “C” and “R” felt “hardly slower” than typing RUN in BASIC. That’s what [Paul] writes, anyway, but it’s a claim that almost has to be seen to be believed.

You didn’t just get a compiler for your money when you bought Action!, though. The cartridge came with a capable text editor, simple shell, and even a primitive debugger. (Plus, of course, a hefty manual.) It’s the closest thing you’d find to an IDE on a computer of that class in that era, and it all fit on a 16 kB cartridge. There was apparently also a disk release, since the disk image is available online.

Unfortunately for those of us in Camp Commodore, the planned C-64 port never materialized, so we missed out on this language. Luckily our 64-bit supercomputers can easily emulate Atari 8-bit hardware and we can see what all the fuss was about. Heck, even our microcontrollers can do it.


hackaday.com/2025/09/09/was-ac…


Bambu Lab’s PLA Tough+ Filament: Mostly a Tough Sell


Beyond the simple world of basic PLA filaments there is a whole wild world of additives that can change this humble material for better or worse. The most common additives here are primarily to add color, but other additives seek to specifically improve certain properties of PLA. For example Bambu Lab’s new PLA Tough+ filament series that [Dr. Igor Gaspar] over at the My Tech Fun YouTube channel had over for reviewing purposes.

According to Bambu Lab’s claims for the filament, it’s supposed to have ‘up to’ double the layer adhesion strength as their basic PLA, while being much more robust when it comes to flexing and ‘taking a beating’. Yet as [Igor] goes through his battery of tests – comparing PLA Tough+ against the basic PLA – the supposedly tough filament is significantly worse in every count. That sad streak lasts until the impact tests, which is where we see a curious set of results – as shown above – as well as [Igor]’s new set of impact testing toys being put through their paces.

Of note is that although the Tough+ variants tested are consistently less brittle than their basic PLA counterparts, the Silver basic PLA variant makes an unexpectedly impressive showing. This is a good example of how color additives can have very positive impacts on a basic polymer like PLA, as well as a good indication that at least Bambu Lab’s Basic PLA in its Silver variant is basically better than Tough+ filaments. Not only does it not require higher printing temperatures, it also doesn’t produce more smelly VOCs, while being overall more robust.

youtube.com/embed/U-aTEslkqco?…


hackaday.com/2025/09/09/bambu-…


O Brother, What Art Thou?


Dedicated word processors are not something we see much of anymore. They were in a weird space: computerized, but not really what you could call a computer, even in those days. More like a fancy typewriter, with a screen and floppy disks. Brother made some very nice ones, and [Chad Boughton] got his hands on one for a modernization project.

The word processor in question, a Brother WP-2200, was chosen primarily because of its beautiful widescreen, yellow-phosphor CRT display. Yes, you read that correctly — yellow phosphor, not amber. Widescreen CRTs are rare enough, but that’s just different. As built, the WP-2200 had a luggable form-factor, with a floppy drive, mechanical keyboard, and dot-matrix printer in the back.

Thanks to [Chad]’s upgrade, most of that doesn’t work anymore. Not yet, anyway. The original logic controller of this word processor was… rather limited. As generations have hackers have discovered, you just can’t do very much with these. [Chad] thus decided to tear it all out, and replace it with an ESP-32, since the ESP32-VGA library is a thing. Of course this CRT is not a VGA display, but it was just a matter of tracing the pinout and guesstimating sane values for h-sync, v-sync and the like. (Details are not given in the video.)

Right now, the excellent mechanical keyboard (mostly) works, thanks to a Teensy reading the keyboard matrix off the original cable. The teensy sends characters via UART to the ESP32 and it can indeed display them upon the screen. That’s half of what this thing could do, back in the 1980s, and a very good start. Considering [Chad] now has magnitudes more compute power available than the engineers at Brother ever did (probably more compute power than the workstation used to program the WP2200, now that we think of it) we’re excited to see where this goes. By the spitballing at the end of the video, this device will end its life as much more than a word processor.To see what he’s got working so far, jump to 5:30 in the video. Once the project is a bit more mature, [Chad] assures us he’ll be releasing both code and documentation in written form.

We’ve seen [Chad]’s work before, most recently his slim-fit CD player, but he has been hacking for a long time.We covered his Super Mario PLC hack back in 2014.

youtube.com/embed/mr3uRO7FDz8?…


hackaday.com/2025/09/09/o-brot…


This Ouija Business Card Helps You Speak to Tiny Llamas


Business Card Ouija board

Business cards, on the whole, haven’t changed significantly over the past 600-ish years, and arguably are not as important as they used to be, but they are still worth considering as a reminder for someone to contact you. If the format of that card and method of contact stand out as unique and related to your personal or professional interests, you have a winning combination that will cement yourself in the recipient’s memory.

In a case study of “show, don’t tell”, [Binh]’s business card draws on technological and paranormal curiosity, blending affordable, short-run PCB manufacturing and an, LLM or, in this case, a Small Language Model, with a tiny Ouija board. While [Binh] is very much with us in the here and now, and a séance isn’t really an effective way to get a hold of him, the interactive Ouija card gives recipient’s a playful demonstration of his skills.

Business Card Ouija Board PCB Design

The interface is an array of LEDs in the classical Ouija layout, which slowly spell out the message your supernatural contact wants to communicate. The messages are triggered by the user through touch pads. Messages are generated locally by an ESP32-S3 based on Dave Bennett’s TinyLlama LLM implementation.

For a bit of a role reversal in Ouija communication, check out this Ouija robot. For more PCB business card inspiration, have a look at this pong-playing card and this Arduboy-inspired game console card.

youtube.com/embed/WC3O2cKT8Eo?…

Thanks to [Binh] for sharing this project with us.


hackaday.com/2025/09/09/this-o…


In Nepal si muore per i Social Network! In 19 hanno perso la vita per riavere Facebook


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.


The Android Linux Commander


Last time, I described how to write a simple Android app and get it talking to your code on Linux. So, of course, we need an example. Since I’ve been on something of a macropad kick lately, I decided to write a toolkit for building your own macropad using App Inventor and any sort of Linux tools you like.

I mentioned there is a server. I wrote some very basic code to exchange data with the Android device on the Linux side. The protocol is simple:

  • All messages to the ordinary Linux start with >
  • All messages to the Android device start with <
  • All messages end with a carriage return


Security


You can build the server so that it can execute arbitrary commands. Since some people will doubtlessly be upset about that, the server can also have a restrictive set of numbered commands. You can also allow those commands to take arguments or disallow them, but you have to rebuild the server with your options set.

There is a handshake at the start of communications where Android sends “>.” and the server responds “<.” to allow synchronization and any resetting to occur. Sending “>#x” runs a numbered command (where x is an integer) which could have arguments like “>#20~/todo.txt” for example, or, with no arguments, “>#20” if you just want to run the command.

If the server allows it, you can also just send an entire command line using “>>” as in: “>>vi ~/todo.txt” to start a vi session.

Backtalk


There are times when you want the server to send you some data, like audio mute status or the current CPU temperature. You can do that using only numbered commands, but you use “>?” instead of “># to send the data. The server will reply with “<!” followed by the first line of text that the command outputs.

To define the numbered commands, you create a commands.txt file that has a simple format. You can also set a maximum number, and anything over that just makes a call to the server that you can intercept and handle with your own custom C code. So, using the lower-numbered commands, you can do everything you want with bash, Python, or a separate C program, even. Using the higher numbers, you can add more efficient commands directly into the server, which, if you don’t mind writing in C, is more efficient than calling external programs.

If you don’t want to write programs, things like xdotool, wmctrl, and dbus-send (or qdbus) can do much of what you want a macropad to do. You can either plug them into the commands file or launch shell scripts. You’ll see more about that in the example code.

Now all that’s left is to create the App Inventor interface.

A Not So Simple Sample

One of the pages in the designer
App Inventor is made to create simple apps. This one turned out not to be so simple for a few reasons. The idea was that the macro pad should have a configuration dialog and any number of screens where you could put buttons, sliders, or anything else to interact with the server.

The first issue was definitely a quirk of using App Inventor. It allows you to have multiple screens, and your program can move from screen to screen. The problem is, when you change screens, everything changes. So if we used multiple screens, you’d have to have copies of the Bluetooth client, timers, and anything else that was “global,” like toolbar buttons and their code.

That didn’t seem like a good idea. Instead, I built a simple system with a single screen featuring a toolbar and an area for table layouts. Initially, all but one of the layouts are hidden. As you navigate through the screens, the layout that is active hides, and the new one appears.

Sounds good, but in practice there is a horrible problem. When the layouts become visible, they don’t always recalculate their sizes properly, and there’s no clean way to force a repeat of the layout. This led to quirks when moving between pages. For example, some buttons would have text that is off-center even though it looked fine in the editor.

Another problem is editing a specific page. There is a button in the designer to show hidden things. But when you have lots of hidden things, that’s not very useful. In practice, I just hide the default layout, unhide the one I want to work on, and then try to remember to put things back before I finish. If you forget, the code defensively hides everything but the active page on startup.

Just Browsing


I also included some web browser pages (so you can check Hackaday or listen to Soma FM while you work). When the browser became visible, it would decide to be 1 pixel wide and 1 pixel high, which was not very useful. It took a lot of playing with making things visible and invisible and then visible again to get that working. In some cases, a timer will change something like the font size just barely, then change it back to trigger a recalculation after everything is visible.

Speaking of the browser, I didn’t want to have to use multiple pages with web browser components on it, so the system allows you to specify the same “page” more than once in the list. The page can have more than one title, based on its position, and you can initialize it differently, also based on its position. That was fairly easy, compared to getting them to draw correctly.

Other Gotchas

You’d think 500 blocks was the biggest App Inventor program anyone would be dumb enough to write…
A few other problems cropped up, some of which aren’t the Inventor’s fault. For example, all phones are different, so your program gets resized differently, which makes it hard to work. I just told the interface I was building for a monitor and let the phone resize it. There’s no way to set a custom screen size that I could find.

The layout control is pretty crude, which makes sense. This is supposed to be a simple tool. There are no spacers or padding, for example, but small, fixed-size labels will do the job. There’s also no sane way to make an element span multiple cells in a layout, which leads to lots of deeply nested layouts.

The Bluetooth timeout in App Inventor seemed to act strangely, too. Sometimes it would time out even with ridiculously long timeout periods. I left it variable in the code, but if you change it to anything other than zero, good luck.

How’d It Work?

Over 900 blocks is really dumb!
This is probably the most complex thing you’d want to do with App Inventor. The block structure is huge, although, to be fair, a lot of it is just sending a command off when you press a button. The example pad has nearly 500 blocks. The personalized version I use on my own phone (see the video below) has just over 900 blocks!

Of course, the tool isn’t made for such a scale, so be prepared for some development hiccups. The debugging won’t work after a certain point. You just have to build an APK, load it, and hope for luck.

You can find the demo on GitHub. My version is customized to link to my computer, on my exact screen size, and uses lots of local scripts, so I didn’t include it, but you can see it working in the video below.

If you want to go back and look more at the server mechanics, that was in the last post. Of, if you’d rather repurpose an old phone for a server, we’ve seen that done, too.

youtube.com/embed/15znMKz42yM?…


hackaday.com/2025/09/09/the-an…


Give Your Twist Connections Some Strength


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…


FreeCAD Foray: From Brick To Shell


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…


Race condition letale per Linux: il trucco che trasforma un segnale POSIX in un’arma


Un ricercatore indipendente di nome Alexander Popov ha presentato una nuova tecnica per sfruttare una vulnerabilità critica nel kernel Linux, a cui è stato assegnato l’identificatore CVE-2024-50264. Questo errore di tipo “use-after-free” nel sottosistema AF_VSOCK è presente dalla versione 4.8 del kernel e consente a un utente locale senza privilegi di avviare uno errore quando si lavora con un oggetto virtio_vsock_sock durante la creazione della connessione.

La complessità e l’entità delle conseguenze hanno fatto sì che il bug si aggiudicasse i Pwnie Awards 2025 nella categoria “Best Privilege Escalation”.

In precedenza, si riteneva che lo sfruttamento del problema fosse estremamente difficile a causa dei meccanismi di difesa del kernel, come la distribuzione casuale delle cache e le peculiarità dei bucket SLAB, che interferiscono con metodi semplici come l’heap spraying.

Tuttavia, Popov è riuscito a sviluppare una serie di tecniche che eliminano queste restrizioni. Il lavoro è stato svolto nell’ambito della piattaforma aperta kernel-hack-drill, progettata per testare gli exploit del kernel.

Il passaggio chiave è stato l’utilizzo di un tipo speciale di segnale POSIX che non termina il processo. Interrompe la chiamata di sistema connect(), consentendo una riproduzione affidabile delle race condition e di non perdere il controllo sull’attacco.

Successivamente, il ricercatore ha imparato a controllare il comportamento delle cache di memoria sostituendo le proprie strutture al posto degli oggetti rilasciati. La messa a punto delle temporizzazioni consente di far scivolare i dati preparati in precedenza esattamente dove si trovava in precedenza l’elemento vulnerabile.

youtube.com/embed/qC95zkYnwb0?…

L'articolo Race condition letale per Linux: il trucco che trasforma un segnale POSIX in un’arma proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


Further Adventures in Colorimeter Hacking


A thick, rectangular device with rounded corners is shown, with a small screen in the upper half, above a set of selection buttons.

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…


Google spinge l’AI come ricerca predefinita: rischio blackout per editori e blog indipendenti


Google intende semplificare l’accesso degli utenti alla modalità AI consentendo loro di impostarla come ricerca predefinita (al posto dei link tradizionali). La modalità AI è una versione della ricerca Google che utilizza modelli linguistici di grandi dimensioni per riassumere le informazioni dal web, in modo che gli utenti possano trascorrere più tempo su Google, anziché cliccare sui link dei siti web.

La nuova modalità AI nella ricerca di Google


La modalità AI può rispondere a domande complesse, elaborare immagini, riassumere informazioni, creare tabelle, grafici e persino fornire supporto con il codice. Come sottolinea Bleeping Computer , la modalità AI è attualmente facoltativa e si trova a sinistra della scheda “Tutti”. È disponibile in inglese in 180 paesi e territori in tutto il mondo.

Tuttavia, verso la fine della scorsa settimana, Logan Kilpatrick, responsabile del prodotto Google AI Studio, ha annunciato sul social media X che la modalità AI sarebbe presto diventata la modalità predefinita in Google. Successivamente, Robby Stein, vicepresidente del prodotto per la Ricerca Google, ha chiarito che l’azienda intende solo rendere la modalità AI più facilmente accessibile per le persone che desiderano utilizzarla.

L’azienda afferma che al momento non ci sono piani per rendere la modalità AI predefinita per tutti, ma se un utente preferisce utilizzarla sempre, presto sarà disponibile un interruttore o un pulsante a tale scopo.

In questo caso, i link tradizionali non verranno visualizzati per impostazione predefinita, ma è possibile passare alla vecchia visualizzazione dei risultati di ricerca trovando la scheda “Web”, che si trova proprio alla fine del pannello. La pubblicazione sottolinea che nel prossimo futuro la modalità AI potrebbe diventare la pagina di ricerca predefinita per tutti. Tuttavia, gli ingegneri di Google stanno attualmente cercando di determinare come questo passaggio influenzerà il settore pubblicitario.

Se l’AI fa il sunto, gli editori che fine fanno?


Google sta già testando annunci e recensioni basati sull’intelligenza artificiale e sta offrendo tali annunci ai partner. Tuttavia, il settore del marketing digitale non ha ancora capito come funzionerà il tutto se i link classici saranno completamente sostituiti dalla modalità AI.

I piani di Google per monetizzare la ricerca basata sull’intelligenza artificiale

Google detiene ancora circa il 90% del mercato della ricerca e continua a generare miliardi di clic per gli editori di tutto il mondo. Tuttavia, Google non paga editori e blog indipendenti per utilizzare l’intelligenza artificiale per riassumere i contenuti. Al contrario , l’azienda sostiene che i riepiloghi basati sull’intelligenza artificiale inviino più clic “di qualità” agli editori, sebbene non vi siano dati ufficiali a supporto di questa affermazione.

Una alleanza contro Google


Allo stesso tempo, ricerche indipendenti dimostrano che le persone sono meno propense a cliccare sui risultati di ricerca se il motore di ricerca fornisce loro un riepilogo basato sull’intelligenza artificiale.

Secondo quanto riportato dai media, alcuni editori indipendenti stanno già discutendo la creazione di un’alleanza tra media e notizie per combattere la crisi esistenziale che l’introduzione dell’intelligenza artificiale nei motori di ricerca comporta.

L'articolo Google spinge l’AI come ricerca predefinita: rischio blackout per editori e blog indipendenti proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


Turning a $2 IKEA Lantern into a Stylish Enclosure


It’s fair to say that the average Hackaday reader enjoys putting together custom electronics. Some of those builds will be spaghetti on a breadboard, but at some point you’ll probably have a project that needs a permanent case. If you’re looking for a small case for your latest creation, check out [Julius Curt’s] modification of an IKEA Vårsyren lantern into a customizable enclosure!

Like most things IKEA, the Vårsyren lantern is flat pack — but rather than coming as a collection of wooden components, the lantern is made of sheet metal. It’s hexagonal in shape with a pair of three sided panels, so [Curt] simply snaps one of them off to make three sides of the final case. The other three sides are 3D printed with the STEP files provided so the case can be made to fit anything around 60x60x114 mm in size.

If flat pack hacking is up your alley, make sure to check out this IKEA 3D printer enclosure next!

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Thanks [Clint] for the tip!


hackaday.com/2025/09/09/turnin…


Le Aziende italiane dei call center lasciano online tutte le registrazioni audio


Le aziende italiane che utilizzano piattaforme di telefonia online (VoIP) basate su software open-source come Asterisk e Vicidial, si affidano a questi sistemi per contattare quotidianamente i cittadini italiani, proponendo la vendita di prodotti e servizi di varia natura.

Paragon Sec, durante una ricerca nelle underground, ha individuato numerosi call center di aziende italiane attivi in diversi settori dalla promozione di pannelli fotovoltaici alla fornitura di acqua, luce e gas, fino a prodotti di benessere.

Quello che abbiamo scoperto, però, è allarmante: una fuga di registrazioni audio private tra operatori e clienti, rese pubblicamente accessibili sul web senza alcuna protezione.

Perché è un problema di sicurezza e privacy


Le registrazioni audio dei call center non sono semplici file tecnici dentro ci sono voci, dettagli personali e informazioni quotidiane dei cittadini italiani. Se questi contenuti finiscono online senza protezione, i rischi diventano reali e immediati.

  • Frodi e truffe telefoniche: chiunque ascolti questi audio può usare numeri di telefono e dettagli personali per fingere di essere un operatore, ingannare le persone e ottenere ulteriori informazioni sensibili.
  • Furto di identità: i dati anagrafici, se combinati con altre informazioni pubbliche, possono essere sfruttati per aprire contratti, richiedere finanziamenti o fare acquisti a nome delle vittime.
  • Phishing e social engineering: dalle registrazioni emergono abitudini, preferenze e necessità dei clienti, informazioni preziose per costruire attacchi mirati, difficili da riconoscere come falsi.
  • Violazione della dignità e della fiducia: ascoltare conversazioni che avrebbero dovuto restare private mina il rapporto tra cittadini e aziende, generando un clima di sfiducia generalizzata.

Inoltre, la voce è un dato biometrico. Questo apre scenari inquietanti: truffe bancarie via telefono, ordini falsi impartiti ad assistenti virtuali, e persino manipolazioni nei contesti lavorativi o familiari.

Violazione della normativa privacy


Il GDPR (Reg. UE 2016/679) e il Codice Privacy italiano (D.lgs. 196/2003) impongono obblighi precisi:

  • Consenso esplicito e informato prima di registrare le conversazioni.
  • Diritto di accesso, correzione o cancellazione dei dati personali.
  • Conservazione dei dati solo per il tempo strettamente necessario.

L’esposizione di questi file online, senza autenticazione, cifratura o controlli di accesso, rappresenta una violazione diretta della legge e può comportare sanzioni rilevanti.

Se non protette, queste registrazioni possono essere sfruttate per frodi, phishing e social engineering, con rischi immediati per clienti e operatori.

Come sono state trovate le registrazioni


Le registrazioni non erano custodite in archivi riservati né nel dark web: erano semplicemente disponibili online, accessibili a chiunque sapesse dove cercare.

Il nostro team di analisti ha utilizzato la piattaforma di terze parti, che hanno un motore di ricerca che indicizza dispositivi e server esposti su Internet. Attraverso query mirate è stato possibile individuare server di call center italiani che utilizzavano piattaforme come Asterisk o Vicidial.

Questi sistemi, se configurati male, espongono cartelle contenenti file .wav o .mp3 delle conversazioni tra operatori e clienti. Alcuni server mostravano anche directory web navigabili senza autenticazione, un errore di sicurezza basilare che ha reso le registrazioni accessibili a chiunque.

Molti di questi sistemi, basati su Asterisk e Vicidial, erano configurati senza autenticazione o cifratura, rendendo pubblicamente accessibili registrazioni riservate.

Impatti per le aziende italiane


Le aziende coinvolte rischiano:

  • Multe salate da parte del Garante Privacy.
  • Perdita di fiducia da parte dei clienti.
  • Danni reputazionali difficili da recuperare.

Le registrazioni audio non espongono solo le aziende, ma soprattutto i cittadini italiani che ogni giorno ricevono telefonate dai call center. Le conversazioni trapelate contengono informazioni che possono avere conseguenze dirette e concrete.

In un contesto in cui la protezione dei dati è cruciale per la protezioni dei dati personali.

Conclusioni


Il caso delle registrazioni audio dei call center italiani trovate online non è un semplice incidente tecnico è la prova di come configurazioni errate e mancanza di controlli di base possano trasformarsi in una minaccia concreta per aziende e cittadini.

Per le aziende, significa esporsi a multe, perdita di fiducia e danni reputazionali difficili da recuperare. Per i cittadini, invece, il rischio è diretto: frodi telefoniche, furto di identità, phishing mirato e persino l’uso della propria voce come dato biometrico per creare falsi digitali.

Paragon Security, qualora contattata, mette a disposizione le informazioni acquisite alle aziende dei call center interessate.

L'articolo Le Aziende italiane dei call center lasciano online tutte le registrazioni audio proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


Tasting the Exploit: HackerHood testa l’exploit di WINRAR CVE-2025-8088


Manuel Roccon, leader del team etico HackerHood di Red Hot Cyber, ha realizzato una dettagliata dimostrazione video su YouTube che espone in modo pratico come funziona CVE-2025-8088 di WinRAR.

Il video mostra passo dopo passo le tecniche utilizzate dagli aggressori per compromettere i sistemi delle vittime attraverso un semplice doppio click su un archivio RAR malevolo.

Il bug CVE-2025-8088 di WinRAR


Il bug in questione è di tipo directory traversal ed è stato sfruttato attivamente in campagne di phishing mirate.

Come spiegato nell’articolo Hai fatto doppio click su WinRAR? Congratulazioni! Sei stato compromesso”, un archivio manipolato può estrarre file in directory critiche, come le cartelle di avvio automatico di Windows, bypassando la normale destinazione di estrazione selezionata dall’utente.

I Rischi concreti: phishing ed esecuzione di malware


Quando gli attaccanti posizionano il malware nelle cartelle %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup o %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp, il sistema operativo lo esegue automaticamente al successivo avvio, consentendo loro di avviare codice dannoso, backdoor o altri payload malevoli.

I ricercatori hanno attribuito questi exploit al gruppo RomCom (noto anche come Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, Void Rabisu o UNC2596), un collettivo cyber-criminale legato alle operazioni di spionaggio russo.

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Originariamente focalizzato sull’Ucraina, il gruppo ha ampliato i propri obiettivi, attaccando entità legate a progetti umanitari e altre organizzazioni europee. Le loro campagne si avvalgono di malware proprietario e tecniche sofisticate di persistenza e furto dati.

Patch disponibile, ma aggiornamenti manuali necessari


Fortunatamente, gli sviluppatori hanno risolto la vulnerabilità rilasciando WinRAR versione 7.13. Tuttavia, a causa dell’assenza di aggiornamenti automatici in WinRAR, molti utenti potrebbero rimanere esposti se non eseguono manualmente l’update scaricandolo dal sito ufficiale. Questo ritardo nell’adozione della patch ha permesso al bug di essere sfruttato a lungo prima della sua correzione.

Il video realizzato da Manuel Roccon mette in evidenza il valore formativo delle dimostrazioni “hands-on”.

Guardare concretamente come gli attaccanti nascondono i file malevoli in percorsi di sistema critici e li attivano senza alcuna interazione dell’utente aiuta ad aumentare la consapevolezza sul reale impatto della vulnerabilità. Questi contenuti divulgativi sono fondamentali per stimolare un’adozione più rapida delle buone pratiche di sicurezza e la tempestiva installazione degli aggiornamenti.

L'articolo Tasting the Exploit: HackerHood testa l’exploit di WINRAR CVE-2025-8088 proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


Modos is Open Hardware, Easy on the Eyes


Front and back view of the 13.7" monitor kit

Since e-ink first hit the market a couple decades back, there’s always murmurs of “that’d be great as a second monitor”— but very, very few monitors have ever been made. When the commecial world is delivering very few options, it leaves room for open source hardware projects, like the Modos Glider and Paper Monitor, projects now seeking funding on Crowd Supply.

As far as PC monitors go, the Modos isn’t going to win many awards on specs alone. The screen is only 13.3″ across, and its resolution maxes out at 1600 x 1200. The refresh rate would be totally unremarkable for a budget LCD, at 75 Hz. This Paper Monitor isn’t an LCD, budget or otherwise, and for e-ink, 75 Hz is a blazing fast refresh rate.

Before you declare noone could get productive work done on such a tiny screen, stop and think that that screen is larger, and refreshing faster, than everyone’s favourite Macintosh. It can even run up to 8x the colour depth, and people got plenty done back in the day with just black-and-white. Some people still do.

Now that we’ve defended the idea, let’s get to the good part: it’s not just a monitor being crowdsourced. The driver board, called Glider, is fully open with code and design files on the Modos Labs GitHub repository. We sometimes complain about what counts as open hardware, but these guys are the true quill. Glider is using an FPGA with a custom clever configuration to get screens refreshing at that impressive 75 Hz. With the appropriate panel (there’s a list on Git– you’ll need an E Ink branded display, but you aren’t limited to the 13.3″ panel) the board can drive every pixel independently, forcing updates only on those pixels that need them. That’s an impressive trick and we’re not surprised it needed an FPGA to pull off. (It uses a Xilinx Spartan 6, for the record, running a config called Casper)

Because everything is open source, you can do things like you see in the API demo video (embedded below), where every panel in what looks like a tiled display manager is running a different picture mode. (There are more demo videos at the CrowdSupply page). We’re not sure how often that would come up in actual use– that functionality is not yet exposed to a window manager, for example, though it may yet be. Perhaps more interesting is the ability to customize specific refresh modes oneself, rather than relying on someone else’s idea of what a “browsing” or “gaming” mode should be.

For anyone interested, there’s still time to get in on the ground floor: the campaign on CrowdSupply ends September 18, 2025 at 04:59 PM PDT, and has levels to nab yourself a dev kit. It’s 599 USD for the 13″ and 199 USD for a 6″ version. (It’s the same board, just different displays.) For anyone not interested, there is no deadline for not buying things, and it usually costs nothing.

Thanks to [moneppo] for the tip!

youtube.com/embed/AoDYEZE7gDA?…


hackaday.com/2025/09/08/modos-…


Retrotechtacular: The Noisy Home Computer from 1967


[Rex Malik] didn’t need an alarm clock. That’s because he had one of two “home computer terminals” next to his bed and, as you can see in the video below, it made quite a racket. The terminal looks like an ASR33 with some modifications. In 1967, it was quite a novelty and, of course, it didn’t have any real processing power. It connected to an “invisible brain” ten miles away.

What do you do with a computer in 1967? Well, it looks like you could trade stocks. It also apparently managed his shopping list and calendar. His young son also learned some letters and numbers. We’d love to hear from the young [Mr. Malik] today to find out what kind of computer he’s using now.

The BBC announcer made some fair predictions. One day, they supposed, every home would have a computer “point” to plug in a rented terminal. They were saying the rent was, at that time, £30 a week. That was relatively steep in those days. Especially considering it couldn’t play Doom or download cat memes.

We couldn’t help but notice that [Malik’s] bedroom had a single bed. With the TeleType going off at all hours, we aren’t really surprised. While it might not be able to download cat memes, the old TeleTypes could download a text-based web page. Well, once there was a web, anyway. This beats the kitchen computer, although we have to admit that at least the kitchen device was really a computer in your home.

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hackaday.com/2025/09/08/retrot…


How to Use the AT24C32 EEPROM for 4KB External Memory for Microcontrollers


Electronic Wizard in his lab wearing his wizards hat

Over on YouTube [Electronic Wizard] explains how to use the AT24C32 EEPROM for external memory for microcontrollers.

He begins by explaining that you don’t want to try modifying your microcontroller flash memory for storing settings, you want to use a separate EEPROM for that. Sometimes your microcontroller will have EEPROM memory attached, but you might still find yourself needing to attach more. The AT24C32 EEPROM is a 4KB non-volatile memory chip. It’s available in various 8-pin packages and two voltage levels, either 2.7 to 5.5 volts or 1.8 to 5.5 volts, and it’s programmed using the I2C protocol.

The AT24C32 has three address pins, A{0,1,2}, a Serial Data pin (SDA), a Serial Clock Input (SCL), and a Write Protect pin. He explains how to use the address pins to set the device I2C address and goes into some detail about how the I2C protocol works. Microcontrollers usually have an API for talking to I2C devices, for STM32 controllers that is functions such as HAL_I2C_Master_Transmit(). He refers the viewer to the datasheet for how to accomplish various write and read operations over I2C. The AT24C32 uses 16 bits for addresses of which only 12 are relevant (13 bits are relevant for the 8KB version of the EEPROM the AT24C64).

If you’re interested in EEPROMs you might also like to read Erasing EEPROMs Isn’t Always As Easy As It Seems and How Do You Test If An EEPROM Can Hold Data For 100 Years?

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hackaday.com/2025/09/08/how-to…


The Incrediplotter: Voice Controlled Plotter from Repurposed Printer


There’s something uniquely satisfying about a pen plotter. Though less speedy or precise than a modern printer, watching a pen glide across the page, mimicking human drawing, is mesmerizing. This project, submitted by [Jacob C], showcases the Incrediplotter, a brilliant repurposing of a 3D printer built by him and his brother.

Starting with a broken 3D printer, [Jacob C] and his brother repurposed its parts to create a voice-controlled pen plotter. They 3D-printed custom components to adapt the printer’s framework for plotting. An STM32 Blue Pill running Klipper controls two TMC2208 motor drivers for the x- and y-axes, while a small standalone servo manages the pen’s height.

The unique twist lies in the software: you can speak to the plotter, and it generates a drawing based on your prompt without needing to select an image. The process involves sending the user’s voice prompt to Google Gemini, which generates an image. The software then converts this image into an SVG compatible with the plotter. Finally, the SVG is translated into G-Code and sent to the plotter to start drawing.

Thanks to [Jacob C] for sharing this impressive project. It’s a fantastic example of repurposing a broken machine, and the voice-to-image feature adds a creative twist, enabling anyone to create unique artwork. Be sure to check out our other featured plotter hacks for more inspiration.

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hackaday.com/2025/09/08/the-in…


A Love Letter to Internet Relay Chat


Although kids these days tend to hang out on so-called “Social Media”, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first, by decades. IRC is a real-time communication technology that allows people to socialize online in both chat rooms and private chat sessions. As a decentralized communication protocol, anyone can set up an IRC server and connect multiple servers into networks, with the source code for these servers readily available ever since its inception by a student, and IRC clients are correspondingly very easy to write. In a recent video [The Serial Port] channel dedicates a video to IRC and why all of this makes it into such a great piece of technology, not to mention a great part of recent history.

Because of the straightforward protocol, IRC will happily work on even a Commodore 64, while also enabling all kinds of special services (‘bots’) to be implemented. Even better, the very personal nature of individual IRC networks and channels on them provides an environment where people can be anonymous and yet know each other, somewhat like hanging out at a local hackerspace or pub, depending on the channel. In these channels, people can share information, help each other with technical questions, or just goof off.

In this time of Discord, WhatsApp, and other Big Corp-regulated proprietary real-time communication services, it’s nice to pop back on IRC and to be reminded, as it’s put in the video, of a time when the Internet was a place to escape to, not escape from. Although IRC isn’t as popular as it was around 2000, it’s still alive and kicking. We think it will be around until the end days.

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hackaday.com/2025/09/08/a-love…


Arriva Cephalus! Il gruppo ransomware che attacca tramite la sostituzione DLL


A metà agosto, i ricercatori hanno incontrato il ransomware Cephalus in due incidenti separati. Tra le recenti emergenze di famiglie come Crux e KawaLocker, una richiesta di riscatto che iniziava con le parole “Siamo Cephalus” ha attirato l’attenzione. In entrambi i casi, gli aggressori hanno ottenuto l’accesso iniziale tramite RDP utilizzando credenziali compromesse senza autenticazione a più fattori e hanno utilizzato il servizio cloud MEGA per potenzialmente far trapelare i dati.

L’aspetto più rilevante della catena di attacco è stato il metodo di lancio del ransomware. I criminali hanno fatto ricorso alla sostituzione delle DLL utilizzando il componente legittimo SentinelOne: il file SentinelBrowserNativeHost.exe è stato avviato dalla directory Download, prelevando la libreria SentinelAgentCore.dll, che a sua volta ha caricato il file data.bin con il codice ransomware.

Su uno degli host, il tentativo è stato bloccato da Microsoft Defender, mentre sull’altro è stata avviata la crittografia. Non sono stati rilevati parametri della riga di comando durante l’avvio, il che indica indirettamente l’assenza di una distribuzione “di rete” tra le condivisioni disponibili.

È importante sottolineare che entrambe le organizzazioni interessate utilizzavano effettivamente i prodotti SentinelOne. Allo stesso tempo, il fatto che SentinelBrowserNativeHost.exe sia finito nella cartella Download appare insolito: la telemetria ha mostrato milioni di avvii legittimi di questo file eseguibile nelle infrastrutture dei clienti al giorno, ma non dalla cartella Download degli utenti, il che rende tale posizione un buon indicatore di attività sospetta. I moderni sistemi SIEM sono in grado di rilevare tali anomalie: ad esempio, la regola DLL_Side_Loading in MaxPatrol SIEM rileva la sostituzione della creazione della libreria nella cartella con il file binario e il suo successivo caricamento nel processo.

Prima della crittografia, Cephalus cerca di privare il sistema di qualsiasi possibilità di ripristino e di accecare le difese. E’ stato osservato l’eliminazione delle copie shadow del volume e una sequenza di comandi PowerShell e modifiche al registro volte a disabilitare i componenti di Windows Defender , aggiungere esclusioni e interrompere i servizi correlati. Queste azioni hanno preceduto la creazione della nota e il processo di crittografia stesso, il che corrisponde alle tattiche tipiche dei gruppi moderni.

Un altro dettaglio sono le note con le richieste. Nei casi rilevati, il testo iniziava con una presentazione diretta (“Siamo Cephalus”), conteneva affermazioni sul furto di “dati riservati” e istruzioni per contattarli. A differenza delle varianti precedentemente pubblicate sui social network, la nota era indirizzata al dominio dell’organizzazione vittima e includeva link a due “articoli di giornale” su precedenti attacchi Cephalus, presumibilmente per aumentare la pressione e dare un’apparenza di “notorietà“. In alcuni casi, alla vittima veniva chiesto di seguire il link GoFile e, con una password, di controllare un campione dei file presumibilmente rubati.

In entrambi gli incidenti, MEGAsync non era solo un endpoint per lo scambio, ma anche nella linea di processo sull’host: MEGAcmdUpdater.exe veniva avviato e, in uno degli incidenti, persino tramite Task Scheduler. Questo rientra nel modello della doppia estorsione, in cui la crittografia è integrata da un’esfiltrazione preliminare.

L’insieme delle caratteristiche tecniche forma già un profilo riconoscibile. Le osservazioni includevano l’estensione “.sss” per i file crittografati e il file di note “recover.txt”. Gli artefatti includono il percorso C:Users[user]Downloads come directory di lavoro dell’operatore, il nome della workstation Desktop-uabs01 e i checksum dei componenti della catena: SHA-256 per SentinelBrowserNativeHost.exe – 0d9dfc113712054d8595b50975efd9c68f4cb8960eca010076b46d2fba3d2754 e per SentinelAgentCore.dll – 82f5fb086d15a8079c79275c2d4a6152934e2dd61cc6a4976b492f74062773a7.

Cephalus si inserisce nel familiare panorama dei ransomware, ma combina vecchi punti di ingresso con una tecnica di avvio non banale tramite un eseguibile legittimo. Le implicazioni pratiche per i difensori rimangono rilevanti: chiudere RDP senza MFA, monitorare lanci anomali di SentinelBrowserNativeHost.exe, soprattutto dalle directory utente, limitare o controllare l’uso di MEGA e strumenti simili e monitorare qualsiasi tentativo di interferire con le impostazioni e i servizi di Windows Defender. Maggiore è la visibilità delle azioni prima della crittografia, maggiore è la possibilità di fermare l’attacco prima che compaiano “note” e tempi di inattività.

L'articolo Arriva Cephalus! Il gruppo ransomware che attacca tramite la sostituzione DLL proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


Ore Formation Processes, Part Two: Hydrothermal Boogaloo


There’s a saying in mine country, the kind that sometimes shows up on bumper stickers: “If it can’t be grown, it has to be mined.” Before mining can ever start, though, there has to be ore in the ground. In the last edition of this series, we learned what counts as ore (anything that can be economically mined) and talked about the ways magma can form ore bodies. The so-called magmatic processes are responsible for only a minority of the mines working today. Much more important, from an economic point of view, are the so-called “hydrothermal” processes.
Come back in a few million years, and Yellowstone will be a great mining province.
Image: “Gyser Yellowstone” by amanderson2, CC BY 2.0
When you hear the word “hydrothermal” you probably think of hot water; in the context of geology, that might conjure images of Yellowstone and regions like it : Old Faithful geysers and steaming hot springs. Those hot springs might have a role to play in certain processes, but most of the time when a geologist talks about a “hydrothermal fluid” it’s a lot hotter than that.

Is there a point on the phase diagram that we stop calling it water? We’re edging into supercritical fluid territory, here. The fluids in question can be hundreds of degrees centigrade, and can carry things like silica (SiO2) and a metal more famous for not dissolving: gold. Perhaps that’s why we prefer to talk about a “fluid” instead of “water”. It certainly would not behave like water on surface; on the surface it would be superheated steam. Pressure is a wonderful thing.

Let’s return to where we left off last time, into a magma chamber deep underground. Magma isn’t just molten rock– it also contains small amounts of dissolved gasses, like CO2 and H2O. If magma cools quickly, the water gets trapped inside the matrix of the new rock, or even inside the crystal structure of certain minerals. If it cools slowly, however? You can get a hydrothermal fluid within the magma chamber.

Peg It as a Pegmatite


This can create what’s called a pegmatite deposit. Strictly speaking, “pegmatite” refers to rock with a specific texture; when we’re talking about ore, we’re almost always referring to granitic pegmatites: that is, granite rocks with this texture. That texture is big crystals: centimeter size or bigger. Crystals grow large in a pegmatite deposits in part because of the slow cooling, but in part because of the action of the hydrothermal fluid that is squeezed out of the slowly-cooling rock.
When you’re using your hammer for scale next to the crystals, you know it’s a pegmatite. This example is from Radium Creek, Arkaroola, South Australia. Image: Geomartin, CC-BY-SA 4.0
Again, we’re talking about a fluid that’s hundreds of degrees Celsius: seriously supercritical stuff. It can carry a lot of ions. Circulating through the magma chamber, this ion-rich fluid brings each crystal all the metal ions it needs to grow to its full potential. Maybe that’s a garnet the size of your fist, or feldspar crystals like pink playing cards. The ions in the fluid can be leftovers from the earlier melt, but may also include material scoured from surrounding rocks.

Aside from the spectacular granite counter tops and semiprecious gems that sometimes come out of these deposits, granitic pegmatites come in two types: lithium-rich and rare-earth element rich. The lithium rich pegmatites are often called LCT deposits, the letters standing for Lithium, Cesium and Tantalum, the metals of interest. Those–especially the first and last–are not exactly metals of low consequence in this electronic era. That goes double for the rare-earth elements. Especially in North America, there’s a great deal of active prospecting searching for these increasingly valuable deposits.
Mica capacitors. You can’t make these guys without mica, and granitic pegmatites are a good source.
Image: Mataresephotos, CC-BY-3.0
Mines have been sunk to extract boron, fluorine, tin, and uranium from pegmatite deposits as well. Of particular note to Hackaday readers would be the mineral Muscovite, a course-grained mica often found in pegmatites, among other locales. Muscovite mica has excellent dielectric properties and fractures easily into thin sheets, making it very useful in capacitors and high voltage applications. The high thermal stability and voltage tolerance of mica capacitors makes them invaluable even today in niche applications, even though ceramics have taken over most of their original uses.

One thing to note about these deposits is that they are not necessarily going to be restricted to Earth. Don’t let the “hydro” in “hydrothermal” fool you– this process is occurring deep underground, in a magma chamber with no access to any surface water. The H2O involved is coming up from the mantle, and the mantle of every rocky body does contain trace water. That even holds true for the Earth’s moon; while older sources will declare that no hydrothermal processes are possible there, newer work has led to a reevaluation of how “wet” lunar rock really is, and re-opened the possibility of lunar pegmatites. Given that, there’s no reason not to expect the process to be at work on every rocky body in the solar system. Look for granitic rock, and you might find an interesting pegmatite.

Orogenic Ores


If the hydrothermal fluid stays put in a magma chamber, it can create pegmatite deposits, but if it breaks free, you’ll find something completely different. Running through faults, fissures, and cracks in the surrounding rock, the somewhat-lower-temperature fluid will have a different mineral content depending both on the melt and the host rock. These hydrothermal vein deposits are sometimes called orogenic ore deposits, because they are often associated with mountain building, which geologists call orogeny.
The white quartz vein follows the fissures in the rock hydrothermal fluid once flowed through. “Main Vein (hydrothermal quartz-gold vein), subsurface exposure in Nalunaq Gold Mine, southern Greenland” by James St. John, CC BY 2.0
That doesn’t mean you need to look near mountains: the gold fields of Kirkland Lake, mentioned last time, are actually an orogenic deposit, and Kirkland Lake sits near the middle of the Canadian Shield, as far from any (modern) mountains as you are likely to find. There may have been mountains there, once, but they were eroded away by the time the Dinosaurs walked the Earth. What you will find there are shocking white veins of quartz shooting through the granite of the Canadian Shield– evidence of the hydrothermal fluid’s ability to carry dissolved silica through fissures of the rock– interspersed with flecks and pebbles of gold. Most gold started in hydrothermal deposits like this one, but in an ironic twist, most of the gold humans have mined is actually from a different type of deposit we’ll get to later. For now we’ll say there are secondary processes at work on this planet and leave it at that.
Native Silver, from a mine that closed in 1887. Image: “Native silver in hydrothermal vein rock (Proterozoic; Silver Islet Mine, Lake Superior, Ontario, Canada) 1” by James St. John, CC BY 2.0
Gold isn’t the only thing to be found in these hydrothermal veins: native silver and copper mines have also been found chasing quartz veins. Cobalt, Molybdenum, even Tin and Tungsten may be found, though not necessarily in native form. To a geologist, note that the word “native” has nothing to do with tribal affiliation, and everything to do with elemental composition. “Native” metals are just that: metals. Native copper is a lump of Cu, not chemically bound into any mineral.

As you might imagine, native metals are among the most desirable of ores, as they often require very little by way of refining. For that reason, until perhaps Greenland or Antarctica’s melting glaciers expose new lands to prospecting, you’re not likely to ever see a new mine producing native copper.

The redox conditions of the fluid are hugely important here: as you might imagine, native metals aren’t going to precipitate from an oxidizing fluid. Redox reactions are hard enough in chemistry class, though; bring them into the world of geochemistry and it gets hugely complicated. Nature is a messy system with too many variables to easily predict.

That’s something many a prospector has found out to his chagrin, for not every vein of quartz will bear metals. On the other hand, enough quartz veins do that “look for veins of quartz” was common advice for prospectors once upon a time. Not all metal-bearing veins may not be entirely quartz, either; many contain quite a lot of carbonate minerals like calcite. The hydrothermal fluid may start out with different amounts of metals dissolved within it, depending on the source magma; it may also scour more or different minerals from the host rocks it flows through. Veins may go on for miles of nothing but quartz before something in composition of the rock, or its temperature, or the pH causes the fluid to start depositing valuable minerals. Geology can be a crapshoot like that.

Of Course It’s More Complex


The above description is somewhat misleading as it makes it sound like vein deposits can only be produced from hydrothermal fluid coming from magma, but that is untrue. It is also possible that surface water (called “meteoric” water by geologists who want to confuse you into thinking about space rocks) can trickle down through fractured rocks until it
Meteoric water has nothing to do with this.
Image: Navicore, CC-BY-3.0
reaches a hot-zone and picks up elements by dissolving minerals. A mix of meteoric and “crustal” water (that is, water from magma) may be present in a balance that changes over time. It should also be noted that this water can form a convective circuit, down to the hot zone (or melt) to pick up new minerals, then circulate upwards to deposit them in colder rock. Because this circulating fluid is cooler than in the case of fluids coming directly from a melt (“only” three or four hundred degrees Celsius) , they are sometimes called “epithermal” fluids, and the resulting veiny deposits can be called “epithermal” deposits. Those temperatures are not too far off from what you might find in geyser country. While I’m not suggesting anyone go digging under Old Faithful right now, it might be an interesting locality in a few million years or so.

Epithermal/orogenic/quartz vein deposits don’t need meteoric water– crustal water can be enough–but I have seen no references suggesting they might be found on the Moon. Mars, on the other hand, seems to have every condition required, so there may well be gold in them thar’ Arean hills. Meteorites believed to have come from Vesta show evidence of quartz veinlets as well, so don’t count out larger planetoids when talking about hydrothermal processes either.

There are other high-temperature hydrothermal deposits other than granitic pegmatites we haven’t yet gotten into; there are also several lower-temperature types that are likely to be exclusive to Earth. This entry in our series is getting long enough, however, so we will return to the theme of hydrothermal ore deposits another day.


hackaday.com/2025/09/08/ore-fo…


Making an Ultralight Helicopter


Ultralight aviation provides an excellent pathway for those who want to fly, but don’t want to get licensed. These quite often cheap and cheerful DIY aircraft often hide some excellent engineering underneath. This is no more true than in [ultralight helicopter’s] four-year-long helicopter build saga!

While most ultralight builds are fixed-wing, a rotocraft can meet all the legal definitions of ultralight aviation. This helicopter is an excellent example of what’s possible with a lot of time and patience. The construction is largely aluminium with some stainless steel on the skids. A 64-horsepower Rotax 582UL engine powers the two-bladed main rotor and tail rotor. The drivetrain features a multi-belt engine coupler and three gearboxes to ensure correct power output to the two rotors.

It features a control layout familiar to any helicopter pilot with foot pedals that control the rotor pitch for anti-torque control. A cyclic in front of the pilot controls the rotor’s cyclical movements, resulting in forward and sideways flight control. A collective with integrated throttle controls the overall main rotor pitch for altitude and climb control. Finally, a simple clutch sits next to the collective for engine start and idles.

The build was meticulous, with nearly everything from the swashplate to the gearboxes custom-machined. The balance and alignment of everything, from the rotor blades to the input trim, had to be checked. The build is a masterpiece of home workshop engineering.

We’ve seen ultralights before, so make sure to check out this electric fixed-wing ultralight next! Or, if you want really light, try foam.

youtube.com/embed/gbVudZv2ugg?…


hackaday.com/2025/09/08/making…


GPS And Its Little Modules


Ever want to find your device on the map? Think we all do sometimes. The technology you’ll generally use for that is called Global Positioning System (GPS) – listening to a flock of satellites flying in the orbit, and comparing their chirps to triangulate your position.

The GPS system, built by the United States, was the first to achieve this kind of feat. Since then, new flocks have appeared in the orbit, like the Galileo system from the European Union, GLONASS from Russia, and BeiDou from China. People refer to the concept of global positioning systems and any generic implementation as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), but I’ll call it GPS for the purposes of this article, and most if not all advice here will apply no matter which one you end up relying on. After all, modern GPS modules overwhelmingly support most if not all of these systems!

We’ve had our writers like [Lewin Day] talk in-depth about GPS on our pages before, and we’ve featured a fair few projects showing and shining light on the technology. I’d like to put my own spin on it, and give you a very hands-on introduction to the main way your projects interface with GPS.

Little Metal Box Of Marvels


Most of the time when you want to add GPS into your project, you’ll be working with a GPS module. Frankly, they’re little boxes of well-shielded magic and wonder, and we’re lucky to have them work for us as well as they do. They’re not perfect, but all things considered, they’re generally pretty easy to work with.

GPS modules overwhelmingly use UART connections, with very few exceptions. There have been alternatives – for instance, you’ll find a good few modern GPS modules claim I2C support. In my experience, support for those is inferior, but Adafruit among others has sure made strides in making I2C GPS modules work, in case your only available interface is an I2C bus. The UART modus operandi is simple – the module continuously sends you strings of data, you receive these strings, parse them. In some cases, you might have to send configuration commands to your GPS module, but it’s generally not required.

Getting coordinates out of a GPS module is pretty simple in theory – listen for messages, parse them, and you will start getting your coordinates as soon as the module collects enough data to determine them. The GPS message format is colloquially known as NMEA, and it’s human readable enough that problems tend to be easy to debug. Here’s a few example NMEA messages from Wikipedia, exactly as you’d get them from UART:
$GPGGA,092750.000,5321.6802,N,00630.3372,W,1,8,1.03,61.7,M,55.2,M,,*76
$GPGSA,A,3,10,07,05,02,29,04,08,13,,,,,1.72,1.03,1.38*0A
$GPGSV,3,1,11,10,63,137,17,07,61,098,15,05,59,290,20,08,54,157,30*70
$GPGSV,3,2,11,02,39,223,19,13,28,070,17,26,23,252,,04,14,186,14*79
$GPGSV,3,3,11,29,09,301,24,16,09,020,,36,,,*76
And the great part is, you don’t even need to write comma-separated message parsers, of course, there are plenty of libraries to parse GPS messages for you, and a healthy amount of general software support on platforms from Linux to microcontroller SDKs. GPS modules are blindingly simple as far as interfacing goes, really. Feed your module 3.3 V or whatever else it wants, and it’ll start giving you location data, at least, eventually. And, a GPS module’s usefulness doesn’t even end here!

Bring Your Own Battery

Even if your GPS board is super small, including a battery is always worthwhile. Picture from Adafruit
Have you ever seen a battery input pin on the module you’re using, or maybe even a battery socket? That’s for preserving the GPS satellite data and clock state while the module is not powered – making it that much faster to get your position after device bootup. This is known as “hot fix”, as opposed to a “cold fix”, when the module wakes up without any awareness which satellites it should be looking out for. Essentially, a backup battery cuts initial position lock time from minutes down to seconds, and it’s a must have for a battery-powered project.

Apart from getting the location fix way faster, a backup battery helps in more than one way. Because a GPS module’s inner workings depend so much on having a precise time source, you also get a rudimentary battery-backed RTC module, and with automatic time-setting directly from satellites, too! All in all, I do heavily recommend you make sure you wire up a backup battery to your GPS. Another nice thing GPS modules can provide you with is PPS – Pulse Per Second, an extremely precise 1Hz signal. There’s a number of specific things you can do with that, for instance, a pretty precise clock, but if you want more inspiration, our recent One Hertz Challenge has a large number of novel ideas that might just be a good fit for the PPS signal.

Let’s look at the “cold fix” scenario. No battery, or perhaps, powering up your module for the first time? GPS satellite signals have to be distinguished from deep down below the noise floor, which is no small feat on its own, and finding the satellites takes time in even favorable circumstances. If you can’t quite get your module to locate itself, leaving your house might just do the trick – or, at least, putting your board onto the windowsill. After you’ve done that, however, as long as you’ve got a backup battery going on, acquiring a fix will get faster. While the battery is present, your module will know and keep track of the time, and, importantly, which satellites to try and latch onto first.

The Bare Necessities


If you want to be able to wire up a GPS modem into your board anytime, you only really need to provide 4 pins on a pin header: 3.3 V, GND, and two UART pins. Frankly, most of the time, you’ll only need RX for receiving the GPS data, no configuration commands required, which means most of the time you can skimp on the TX pin. This is thanks to the fact that GPS as a technology is receive-only, no matter what your grandmother’s news sources might suggest. Apart from that, you might have to provide an antenna – most modems come with one integrated, but sometimes you’ll need to fetch one.
If the onboard passive antenna doesn’t help, the uFL is right there, waiting for your active antenna. Picture from Adafruit
GPS antennas are split into passive and active antennas – if you’ve seen a GPS module, you’ve likely seen active antennas, and they’re generally considered to be superiour. An active antenna is an antenna that includes an on-antenna amplifier chip, which helps filter out induced noise. In an average hacker project, an active antenna tends to be more workable, unless you’re making something that is meant to be in view of the sky at all times, for instance, a weather balloon. For such purposes, a passive antenna will work pretty well, and it will consume less power, too. Want to learn more? I’ve previously covered a blog post about modifying the internals of an active antenna, and it’s a decent case study.

If you’re putting a GPS module instead of using a standalone module, you won’t need to bring a power cable to the antenna, as power is injected into the same coaxial cable. However, you might need to add an extra inductor and a cap-two to support powering the antenna – watch out for that in the datasheet. Plus, treat antenna tracks with respect, and make sure to draw the antenna track with proper impedance. Also, remember to provide decoupling, and if you’re able at all, an RTC battery socket too – a CR1220 socket will work wonders, and the cells are cheap!

Increasingly Interconnected World


Recently, you’ll be getting more and more tech that comes with GPS included by default – it’s cheap, reasonably easy to add, very nice to have, and did I mention cheap? There’s also been a trend for embedding modules into 3G/4G/5G modem modules – most of them support things like active antennas, so, just wire up an antenna and you’ll know your coordinates in no time, perfect for building a tiny GSM-connected tracker for your valuables.

Want to learn more about GPS? It’s a marvellous kind of tech, and recently, we’ve been covering a fair few wonderful explainers and deep-dives, so check them out if you want to learn more about what makes GPS tick. Until then, you have everything you could want to slap GPS onto your board.


hackaday.com/2025/09/08/gps-an…


AUKUS Pillar 2 e il caso Palantir: la sfida tecnologica dell’Occidente


aukus

Dal nucleare al digitale, AUKUS si espande. Quando nel 2021 venne annunciata l’alleanza AUKUS, l’attenzione era tutta sul Pillar 1: la costruzione di sottomarini a propulsione nucleare per l’Australia, una scelta strategica destinata a spostare equilibri nel Pacifico. Ma col tempo, il vero terreno di gioco si è rivelato il Pillar 2: intelligenza artificiale, quantum computing, ipersonica, cyber, sistemi autonomi marittimi, guerra elettronica. In sostanza, le tecnologie che determineranno la superiorità militare di domani.

Pillar 2: promesse e rischi


Il secondo pilastro promette risultati rapidi, come gli algoritmi di AI già condivisi per la caccia ai sottomarini. Un segnale che l’alleanza non vuole solo difendere, ma innovare. Tuttavia, la strada è irta di ostacoli: riforme normative come quelle dell’ITAR americano, lacune nei finanziamenti pubblici per la ricerca precoce, difficoltà a trasformare prototipi in capacità operative. Non mancano critiche: l’ASPI australiano ha avvertito che senza un focus chiaro, il Pillar 2 rischia di restare una “pila di buone intenzioni” priva di impatti militari concreti.

L’offensiva di Palantir a Londra


In questo quadro si inserisce Palantir, la società americana di big data e intelligenza artificiale, legata fin dalla nascita nel 2003 agli apparati di intelligence. Dopo aver consolidato la sua presenza negli Stati Uniti e vinto un contratto miliardario con il NHS britannico, Palantir punta a diventare il motore tecnologico del Pillar 2. A Londra, la società ha organizzato eventi mirati a sedurre i decisori AUKUS, con dimostrazioni di AI per la difesa irregolare e l’intelligence, e con ex alti funzionari britannici nel ruolo di ambasciatori presso stakeholder politici e industriali.

Il ruolo chiave di Damian Parmenter


Emblematica è la parabola di Damian Parmenter, ex direttore generale AUKUS al Ministero della Difesa britannico, passato nel luglio 2025 a Palantir come Senior Counsellor. Un insider prezioso per comprendere dinamiche e priorità del progetto, ma anche fonte di sospetti di conflitti d’interesse. L’ACOBA, l’ente britannico che regola i rapporti post-governativi, ha imposto vincoli stringenti: no lobbying verso il governo UK, no uso di informazioni privilegiate, no attività sui contratti britannici per due anni. Palantir ha assicurato la compliance con programmi di formazione interna. Ma la mossa resta significativa: avere un ex coordinatore AUKUS a bordo significa rafforzare la propria credibilità nel cuore dell’alleanza.

Le dinamiche geoeconomiche


Il Pillar 2 non è solo difesa, ma anche industria. Gli Stati Uniti spingono perché partner come Australia e Regno Unito riducano i tempi di adozione e accettino regole comuni per la condivisione dei dati e degli algoritmi. In gioco non c’è solo la sicurezza, ma anche l’accesso a mercati miliardari per le società di AI, di software e di sensoristica. Palantir, con piattaforme come Gotham e Foundry, cerca di posizionarsi come attore irrinunciabile, pronto a tradurre gli obiettivi politici di AUKUS in soluzioni pratiche.

Verso una nuova corsa tecnologica


Nel 2025, test congiunti USA, UK e Australia hanno già mostrato algoritmi capaci di elaborare in tempo reale i dati provenienti da sonoboe per la lotta antisommergibile. È un assaggio della trasformazione in corso: la guerra sottomarina, per decenni dominio della potenza di fuoco e della silenziosità degli scafi, si gioca ora sulla velocità di calcolo e sulla qualità dei dati. Ma la sfida è duplice: da un lato accelerare l’innovazione, dall’altro evitare che il progetto si frammenti sotto il peso di interessi nazionali e rivalità industriali.

Conclusione: AUKUS come stress test dell’Occidente


Il Pillar 2 dell’AUKUS rappresenta un banco di prova per la capacità delle democrazie occidentali di tradurre la cooperazione politica in innovazione tecnologica condivisa. Palantir è l’esempio di come attori privati possano inserirsi in questa partita, colmando gap e dettando tempi. Ma resta aperta la questione fondamentale: l’alleanza saprà trasformare algoritmi e prototipi in deterrenza reale contro la Cina, o resterà intrappolata tra vincoli burocratici e burocrazie nazionali? La risposta deciderà non solo il futuro dell’AUKUS, ma la tenuta stessa della supremazia tecnologica occidentale nell’Indo-Pacifico.

L'articolo AUKUS Pillar 2 e il caso Palantir: la sfida tecnologica dell’Occidente proviene da InsideOver.


La più grande rete pirata di streaming sportivo è stata chiusa


Le autorità egiziane e l’Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) affermano di aver chiuso Streameast, la più grande rete illegale di streaming sportivo al mondo, e di aver arrestato due dei presunti operatori della piattaforma.

Streameast, attivo dal 2018, è un servizio di streaming gratuito, supportato da pubblicità, che offre accesso a contenuti HD da emittenti autorizzate.

Secondo ACE, Streameast gestisce 80 domini che complessivamente generano 136 milioni di visite mensili. La piattaforma ha attirato 1,6 miliardi di visite lo scorso anno, principalmente da Stati Uniti, Canada, Regno Unito, Filippine e Germania.

La piattaforma pirata offre streaming illegali di campionati di calcio tra cui la Premier League inglese, la Liga spagnola, la Serie A italiana, la Bundesliga tedesca, la Ligue 1 francese, la Primeira Liga portoghese e la MLS americana.

Streameast trasmetteva anche partite delle nazionali di calcio della Coppa del Mondo FIFA, degli Europei UEFA e della UEFA Nations League, oltre alla Copa America, e tornei internazionali per club come la Champions League e l’Europa League.

Streameast offriva inoltre agli spettatori i principali sport americani, tra cui NFL (football americano), NBA (basket), NHL (hockey), MLB (baseball), nonché trasmissioni PPV di boxe, MMA e vari eventi di sport motoristici da tutto il mondo (come Formula 1 e MotoGP).

I primi segnali di problemi con il sito di streaming pirata sono comparsi la scorsa settimana, quando gli utenti di Reddit hanno iniziato a segnalare problemi di accesso al sito e il mancato caricamento di streaming e chat. Poco dopo, i funzionari dell’ACE hanno dichiarato che le operazioni della piattaforma erano state interrotte dalle forze dell’ordine egiziane.

“La chiusura di Streameast è una grande vittoria per tutti coloro che investono e fanno affidamento sull’ecosistema dello sport in diretta”, ha affermato ACE. “Questa operazione criminale ha prosciugato i ricavi dello sport a ogni livello e ha messo a rischio i tifosi di tutto il mondo”.

Secondo il New York Times, due persone sono state arrestate nel governatorato di Giza, in Egitto. La polizia ha confiscato i loro computer portatili, smartphone, contanti e diverse carte di credito.

Secondo quanto riferito, gli investigatori hanno collegato il servizio di streaming a una società fittizia degli Emirati Arabi Uniti, che sarebbe stata utilizzata dal 2010 per riciclare 6,2 milioni di dollari di entrate pubblicitarie e 200.000 dollari in criptovalute.

Ottanta domini precedentemente di proprietà di Streameast ora reindirizzano i visitatori al sito “Watch Legally” di ACE , che contiene link a piattaforme legali.

Tuttavia, secondo Torrent Freak, l’operazione delle forze dell’ordine e di ACE non ha avuto ripercussioni sullo Streameast originale, ma ha eliminato una rete di 80 domini clone che copiavano solo il “marchio” Streameast. Allo stesso tempo, i cloni hanno generato ancora più traffico pirata rispetto all’originale.

I rappresentanti del servizio pirata hanno dichiarato di non avere alcun legame con questi siti falsi e hanno anche osservato: “Non siamo nemmeno egiziani”.

L'articolo La più grande rete pirata di streaming sportivo è stata chiusa proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.


What most don't understand about Brussels' take on tech


What most don't understand about Brussels' take on tech
IT'S MONDAY, AND THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and you find me in Brussels amid a flurry of transatlantic squabbles over trade, tech and, well, almost everything else. If you see me in the EU Quarter this week, say hello!

— The European Union can appear to blow hot and cold on digital policymaking. That's almost 100 percent down to the bloc's internal dynamics, and not its international alliances.

— Washington and Brussels just handed down dual antitrust decisions against Google. Both tell us a lot about the diverging approach to digital competition.

— The top AI chatbots still return a lot of false information when queried about world events.

Let's get started:



digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…