soc.octade.net is a Fediverse instance that uses the ActivityPub protocol. In other words, users at this host can communicate with people that use software like Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, etc. all around the world.
This server runs the snac software and there is no automatic sign-up process.
1930s fraud-detection mathematics, still working today — just aimed at a target it was never built for.
Challenge: catch an AI-generated JPEG using nothing but a 1938 statistical law. No neural network involved.
Benford's Law: in real-world numerical data, the leading digit isn't uniformly distributed — 1 shows up ~30% of the time, 9 under 5%. Holds for river lengths, electricity bills, physical constants... and, it turns out, for the AC coefficients in a JPEG's DCT blocks, if the image actually came from a capture-and-compress pipeline.
I run this as one of six checks in snapWONDERS' analyse pipeline: 8×8 DCT on every block, absolute value of the AC coefficients (DC term excluded — it doesn't follow Benford), leading digit extracted, binned against the classic log10(1 + 1/d) curve, then a chi-squared goodness-of-fit test. Above threshold, it's flagged.
It's not a standalone verdict — heavy resampling or repeated re-saves can trip it too, same as a genuinely synthetic image would. So it feeds a combined score alongside five other signals rather than deciding anything alone. But as a zero-training, zero-black-box check, it's a genuinely satisfying one: an accounting fraud-detection tool from 1938 has something real to say about whether a photo actually came out of a camera.
Full technical breakdown (with the formula) → https://kennethbspringer.au/2026/08/05/benfords-law-detecting-ai-generated-images-without-ai/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article-16
#digitalforensics #OSINT #infosec #aiimages #deepfake #snapWONDERS
9to5Linux:Tails 7.10.1 Is Out as an Emergency Release to Fix Critical Vulnerabilities https://9to5linux.com/tails-7-10-1-is-out-as-an-emergency-release-to-fix-critical-vulnerabilities @9to5linux @mariusnestor #Linux #Tails #infosec
New.
"ENDLESSDOORS, at its core, is a small tool called rctl (remote control linux). Uploaded to GitHub on January 14, 2015 and never touched again, this obscure repository implements a simple command and control client and server. The server listens on port 7000 for clients to connect. It can send the client individual shell commands or tell the client to spawn a reverse bash shell."
Vulncheck: ENDLESSDOORS Is Phoning Home. Pick Up https://www.vulncheck.com/blog/zbt-endlessdoors @vulncheck #infosec #cyberattack #Linux
A malicious host can attack your AWS Nitro Enclave through its connection to KMS.
It can't see inside the enclave, but it can swap encrypted data keys in storage, feed the enclave arbitrary plaintext, force the wrong CMK, replay attestations, and more. We wrote down the fixes in the blog: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/08/05/a-few-notes-on-aws-nitro-enclaves-kms-integration/
boostedReally exciting news about IFIN and being a non-profit.
IFIN has multiple offerings including a curated news feed / rss. You should check it out.
Patch the Planet update: 1,137 issues found (+279 since July 20), 866 awaiting a patch, 125 fixes open upstream, 146 merged across 46 open-source projects.
AegisLink just hit its first real milestone on Android: a Closed Testing build on Play — the first version someone who isn't me can install on their own phone.
In it: anonymous signup, E2EE chat/calls/groups, sealed-sender (no `from` field logged), embedded Tor, panic mode, encrypted local DB.
Not yet independently audited — saying that every time it's relevant. Min spec: arm64 + ~3GB RAM.
Want in as an early tester? Reach out.
New from Cloudflare:
"We're introducing @cloudflare/computer, an agent runtime that dynamically orchestrates between fast, efficient isolates and full Linux containers to give every agent a computer of its own."
"The central piece of @cloudflare/computer is the workspace. A virtual filesystem backed by SQLite that can be populated from various sources including cloud storage and source control."
Cloudflare: Your agent needs a computer, not a container — introducing @cloudflare/computer https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-computer/ #infosec #bots #Cloudflare #GitHub #Linux
New.
"While headlines focused on an AI model escaping its test environment, the real lesson is that security failures still begin with ordinary mistakes and overlooked exposure."
"Behind the AI headlines are familiar attack paths: vulnerable software, stolen credentials and permissive access."
Barracuda: Faster, not different: What the Hugging Face AI incident really means for organizations https://blog.barracuda.com/2026/08/03/hugging-face-incident-faster-not-different
Related, from yesterday:
Socket: Claude Breached 3 Companies and Uploaded Malware to PyPI During Anthropic's Security Tests https://socket.dev/blog/anthropic-claude-pypi-malware @SocketSecurity #infosec #HuggingFace #cyberattack #Claude #OpenAI #Anthropic #malware #Python
HKMA just published the most granular regulator-led PQC readiness assessment I've seen from any financial authority: a 56-page whitepaper with sector-wide survey data, a four-dimensional readiness index (12 sub-indices), barrier rankings, and five completed pilot descriptions.
The headline number: Hong Kong's banking sector scores 2.3/10 on post-quantum cryptography readiness. Pilots score 1.8/10 — the weakest dimension. 71% of respondents have never conducted or planned any PoC or live testing of PQC algorithms.
The barrier data is more interesting than the score. 87% ranked third-party dependencies as a top-three obstacle. 85% said their vendors lack clear PQC roadmaps. 79% cited technical complexity of cryptographic asset discovery across legacy IT environments. Banks can't migrate what they don't control, and the vendor ecosystem hasn't given them enough to plan against.
FINMA published similar findings from Switzerland two weeks earlier: 72% of 60 surveyed institutions hadn't planned or implemented quantum-safe measures, only 8% had a roadmap. Two jurisdictions, same picture.
What the HKMA report misses: no treatment of signature forgery (Trust Now, Forge Later) as a distinct threat track alongside HNDL. For banking, this matters — a CRQC that can break ECC forges transaction authorizations on the day the capability arrives. The report also never names ML-KEM, ML-DSA, or SLH-DSA in its body (they appear only in the abbreviations appendix), and barely addresses China's divergent PQC standards program despite Hong Kong straddling both cryptographic ecosystems.
Carmen Chu (HKMA Banking Supervision) noted that banks with existing transition plans estimate 5.6 years on average to complete migration. The HKMA targets full readiness by 2030. The contradiction speaks for itself.
Full analysis: https://postquantum.com/security-pqc/hkma-banks-quantum-readiness-2-3/
#infosec #cybersecurity #PQC #postquantum #quantum #cryptography #banking #HKMA
boostedIn 1998, seven members of L0pht Heavy Industries told the Senate they could make the internet unusable in 30 minutes. The governance fight that followed took 15 years: who evaluates security claims, who decides when vulnerabilities are disclosed, who is accountable when controls fail.
Cybersecurity never solved those conflicts. It built imperfect institutions: coordinated disclosure, external testing with assessor qualification, mandatory breach notification, scoped authorization for defensive research. They fail regularly. But they exist.
The AI safety community has built none of them.
July 2026 exposed two distinct failure modes in ten days of disclosures.
OpenAI evaluated its own models against ExploitGym internally. No third-party evaluator involved. Models exploited a zero-day, escaped the sandbox, and breached Hugging Face. Pure vendor self-evaluation.
Anthropic outsourced evaluation to Irregular, a third-party security lab. A shared misconfiguration left test environments connected to the internet. Neither organization detected the condition. Anthropic identified missed defense-in-depth controls on both sides. Three organizations compromised, earliest dating to April.
Both failure modes (self-evaluation and outsourced evaluation with an unverified containment boundary) appeared the same week. The cybersecurity industry separated vendor from evaluator over two decades. AI governance hasn't started that separation.
The guardrails asymmetry is the part every incident responder should study. Hugging Face analyzed the breach with commercial AI. Blocked. Guardrails "cannot distinguish an incident responder from an attacker." They rebuilt the timeline on GLM 5.2, a self-hosted open-weight model. ~17,600 attacker actions in hours.
AI providers have started authorized-use programs (OpenAI Trusted Access, Anthropic Glasswing). But they are provider-specific, discretionary, nonportable, and evidently unavailable when responding to a breach caused by those same providers' models. Cybersecurity built partial authorization over two decades: pen-test scopes, bug bounty safe harbors, DOJ's 2022 CFAA policy. Imperfect. But they exist.
Same week: both companies endorsed "Pacing the Frontier" asking Washington for AI governance tools. Dario Amodei, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan from Anthropic. Jakub Pachocki from OpenAI. Combined Q2 lobbying: $3.17M, up 23%.
What AI governance needs from the cybersecurity playbook:
A statutory body to register and inspect AI evaluation firms, set independence requirements, and discipline failures. Mandatory incident reporting with enforceable deadlines. Technical requirements for continuous monitoring of evaluation environments (default-deny connectivity, immutable logs, environment attestation). Portable authorized-use frameworks for defenders. And evidence preservation under independent custody.
Washington is not starting from zero. EO 14409 directs classified frontier-model cyber benchmarking and voluntary pre-release access. But it stops short of mandatory licensing or a statutory evaluator oversight regime.
I have spent three decades watching assurance regimes fail when the assessed organization controls the evidence, the assessor, and the account of what happened. AI is not exempt from that lesson.
https://postquantum.com/ai-security/ai-governance-cybersecurity-lessons/
#infosec #cybersecurity #AIgovernance #AIsafety #vulnerability #AIpolicy #incidentresponse
Think twice before clicking “Share” in your AI chatbot.
Researchers recently discovered that some publicly shared Claude conversations were indexed by search engines, making them discoverable through Google searches. While private chats weren’t exposed, any conversation intentionally shared via a public link could become searchable if indexed. Some exposed chats reportedly contained sensitive information, including code, legal discussions, personal data, and internal business documents.
Key takeaway: A “shared” AI conversation should be treated like any other public web page. Never include API keys, credentials, proprietary code, customer data, or other sensitive information in content you plan to share.
As AI collaboration features become more common, organizations should review their AI usage policies and remind employees that convenience should never come at the expense of privacy.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/claude-chats-popped-up-in-google-search-results-see-if-yours-are-public
#CyberSecurity #AI #ClaudeAI #Privacy #DataSecurity #InfoSec #GenAI #ArtificialIntelligence #DataPrivacy #SecurityAwareness #LLM #Technology
>Hi,
>
> I built a forum meant to be attacked. Not another vulnerable-by-design app — the opposite.
>
> The app is *protected* by client-side E2E encryption. Your goal: extract a flag from a user's encrypted memo. Dumping the DB won't help. Neither will root. The key never leaves the owner's browser.
>
> It's Juice Shop inverted. There, you hunt for bugs someone deliberately planted. Here, nothing is broken on purpose — three defences are claimed to hold, and the point is to prove otherwise.
>
> SelfDataGuard — the memo stays unreadable with full database access and root.
> SelfRecover — authentication holds with no email and no phone at any point.
> SelfModerate — reputation resists coordinated fake accounts.
>
> Concretely: extract the memo, take over an account without its password, read a private message between two other members, or bury someone's reputation. Each objective maps to MITRE ATT&CK and OWASP references.
>
> Three known limits are disclosed up front, so nobody wastes a report on them:
>
> — the login password also derives the wrap key → E2E **at rest**, and it's stated as such
> — offline floor on the memo is ~52 bits behind PBKDF2-600k; Argon2id is on the roadmap — the SU console is a sandbox, its password is public on purpose
>
> Rules of engagement are public: explicit scope, safe harbor, coordinated disclosure at 90 days. The report form is E2E encrypted — the module you're testing protects your report too.
>
> No bounty, no company behind it. AGPL-3.0, one maintainer, and a hall of fame that's still empty.
>
> https://ctf.my-self.fr
> https://ctf.my-self.fr/redteam.php
>
> #infosec #CTF #appsec #cryptography #opensource #AGPL #privacy #selfhosted #encryption #zerotrust #dataprotection
I've started a newsletter. NoBrain Inside — Use Your Own.
Every Sunday: philosophy of digital sovereignty. Aristotle meets AI. Socrates dismantles Dataism. Closed-source privacy is a square circle.
First issue just went out: https://nicolabaudo.ghost.io/
The Privacy Library, Part 1: How to Respond to „I Have Nothing to Hide“
Anyone who has ever spoken out about digital privacy is familiar with that phrase. You hear it at dinner, over coffee at work, or online…
https://vsx.global/library-private-section-1-how-to-respond-to-i-have-nothing-to-hide/
RE: https://infosec.exchange/@monniele/117018961534137995
Really good article.
As someone who's both concerned with user privacy AND spends an inordinate amount of time fighting fraud in the financial sector, this is something you should know.
It's how we keep your money safe.
It's how we keep bad guys out of your bank account.
Using proxies is absolutely your right, but we're watching for it.
Don't forget that this upcoming Friday will be the #FirstFriday of the month! Make sure to mark your calendars for #Friday, #August 7th as your next monthly @2600 meeting! 2600 Meetings always occur on the first Friday of each month. Please re-toot this to spread the word!
If you're in New Hampshire, then please join us in #Peterborough at Mi Jalisco, located at 19 Wilton Road at 7:00 PM Eastern time. https://nh2600.neocities.org for more info.
If you live elsewhere in the world & want to attend a local #2600meeting then check out https://2600.com/meetings to see where your local meeting is happening!
Also, do not forget that #HOPE17 is happening soon from August 14-16. Get your in-person or virtual ticket @ hope.net or 2600.com. @hopeconf
#2600 #26OO #NH2600 #NH #NewHampshire #HackTheSystem #HackingIsNotACrime #Hacker #Hackers #HackingIsAWayOfLife #HackingIsALifestyle #HackerCulture #infosec #hacking #cyber #cybersecurity #RememberWhenCyberMeantSomethingElse #FirstFridays #MiJalisco #HOPE
Zerion 3.0 is in its final stage before release. The dev branch, with the native protocol stack, I2P and the Bluetooth mesh, is now being tested by an external party before we ship it.
We don’t release security features on trust. They get checked first, and the whole thing is open source so you can read every line yourself while we do.
This is separate from the independent audit we’re still raising funds for. Both matter.
zerion.chat
Every technique used in the various July AI hacking incidents has a known defense. Weak passwords. Unauthenticated endpoints. SQL injection. Unmonitored east-west traffic. Two of three organizations Anthropic's models compromised didn't even detect it.
This is not an AI problem. It is a cybersecurity basics problem exposed at machine speed.
Vendors are already starting to market "AI-resilient" infrastructure and "Mythos-resistant" cryptography. Do not buy the label. The correct response to faster attacks is faster defense, not a different kind of defense. Shorter patching windows. Better credential rotation. Tighter segmentation. Automated rollout.
The one actually new investment: crypto-agility. In the same week OpenAI and Anthropic disclosed their hacking incidents, Anthropic's AI killed a PQC candidate that had survived years of NIST evaluation. 60 hours. $100K. HAWK was withdrawn the next day.
AI is now also attacking mathematical layer of your defenses. And the upcoming quantum threat is defeating the mathematical layer. The shared defense is the ability to swap cryptographic algorithms without rebuilding your stack.
Do good cybersecurity. Do it better. Do it faster. Build crypto-agility into the architecture.
https://postquantum.com/ai-security/ai-hacking-theater-crypto-agility/
#cybersecurity #CISO #AIhacking #cryptoagility #PQC #postquantum #infosec #AI #quantumsecurity
If you missed this:
Microsoft: CaptiveCrunch: Midnight Blizzard targets travelers worldwide for malware delivery and credential theft https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/07/31/captivecrunch-midnight-blizzard-targets-travelers-worldwide-for-malware-delivery-and-credential-theft/
More:
The Hacker News: Hijacked Hotel Wi-Fi Pushes Fake Updates to Deliver Surveillance Malware https://thehackernews.com/2026/08/hijacked-hotel-wi-fi-pushes-fake.html @thehackernews #infosec #Microsoft #threatintel #threatintelligence #surveillance
Want to detect intruders before they reach your real systems?
OpenCanary is a free, open-source network honeypot that emulates common services and sends instant alerts when someone interacts with them. It's lightweight, easy to deploy, and works on Linux, macOS, Docker, and Raspberry Pi.
More details: https://digitalescapetools.com/tools/tool.html?id=opencanary
#OpenSource #CyberSecurity #InfoSec #Honeypot #SelfHosting #Privacy #Linux #Homelab #FOSS
@w3c This doesn't seem like an open standard to me, although pretends to be one. Why not? Because it supports proprietary lock-in. Lock-in how? Look at section 8, where several hardware attestation methods are listed: https://www.w3.org/TR/2026/CR-webauthn-3-20260526/#sctn-defined-attestation-formats
Is there any guarantee or assurance that a given platform implement support for *all* hardware attestation methods, including ones that are not proprietary? No such assurance. A platform could support, say Android and Apple''s attestation methods **only** (skipping the actual Open Standard of FIDO U2F), and no other.
So my bank could support Android and Apple iOS attestation **only**, eschewing my Yubikey's #FIDO2 U2F, as used from my #Linux desktop. I'm left to the mercy of my bank, as to whether they feel like implementing FIDO U2F or not.
This standard masquerades as an open standard, then allows locking Linux (and other similar #OpenSource) desktops out.
#infosec
Good morning, folks.
We're observing an intensifying set of overlapping campaigns targeting Okta and M365 credentials to facilitate enterprise data exfiltration and ransom. I've pulled some initial thoughts together over at @ifin as well as a refined CSV of 133 suspect domains.
#threatintel #infosec #cybersecurity
Cohesive writeup: https://discourse.ifin.network/t/newly-observed-vishing-phishing-campaign-targeting-retail-finance-fintech-more/702
PATCH THE PLANET BUG SPOTLIGHT: We found a high-severity use-after-free bug in nginx, the web server handling over 30% of all websites in the world. Now patched.
Remote and unauthenticated, it can crash nginx and potentially run code, all through HTTP/3. Engineer Evan Hellman found it with Codex after roughly 14 hours of automated analysis. CVE-2026-42530 in the dashboard: https://trailofbits.com/patch-the-planet/dashboard/
The Tunick case is a useful threat-model update for anyone shipping or relying on anti-coercion features.
GrapheneOS duress PIN: entering it destroys the encryption keys, not a slow file delete but a key wipe, so the data is gone instantly and recovery is not realistic. Clean design, legal by GrapheneOS's own account.
The twist is legal, not technical. 18 U.S.C. 2232 reframes that wipe as "destruction to prevent a seizure." Up to five years, over a feature working as intended.
Takeaway: your threat model now has to include the prosecutor, not just the forensic lab. A control can be technically correct and still become the charge. Design and advise for plausible non-existence of data, not just its deletion, and be honest with users about the legal exposure of triggering a wipe under compulsion.
Agentic AI headlines Black Hat's keynotes and DEF CON's main stage next week, and it's a topic we've been researching for years. We've hijacked multi-agent systems with one web page, pulled Gmail data from Perplexity's Comet via prompt injection, and built image-scaling attacks invisible to humans but not models. All documented on blog.trailofbits.com.
We'll be in Vegas Aug 4-6. If you're around, we'd love to chat: https://meetings.hubspot.com/trailofbits/blackhat-defcon-scheduling
California's DROP becomes enforceable on 1 August: one request, every
registered data broker.
It does not touch real-time bidding. Every page load broadcasts a bid
request to every DSP in the auction, winners and losers alike. Google's
own documentation puts that at 2,051 entities in the US.
ICCL found purchasable segments for Pentagon staff, active military by
branch and judges.
Deletion rights operate on records. This is a broadcast. There is no
holder to serve.
https://privacyinsightsolutions.com/blog/real-time-bidding-data-deletion
#InfoSec #Privacy #DataBrokers #AdTech #RTB #DeleteAct #DROP #US #Realtimebidding
Thinking about how much "privacy" is actually just a lack of processing power.
We worry about the big, scary surveillance headlines—the "backdoor" searches and the massive dragnet programs—and those are absolutely worth the fight. But the real shift lately? It’s the "Commercial Data Loophole." Why bother hacking into someone’s device when you can just buy their location history and digital footprint from a third-party data broker for a few bucks?
The intelligence community is moving fast with tools like "Osiris" to churn through open-source data, and the line between public, private, and state-acquired data is blurring to the point of disappearing. We’re being profiled by our own habits, and the government doesn't even need a warrant to see the receipts.
Technology is moving faster than our ethics or our laws. We need to stop treating digital privacy like a "nice to have" and start treating it like a core democratic requirement. The Fourth Amendment shouldn't have a price tag.
Attackers drained $20M+ from protocols built around Uniswap v4 hooks.
The two largest were Cork (~$12M) and Bunni ($8.4M). Neither came from bugs in the PoolManager, Uniswap v4's central contract. The failures came from application and hook code.
We analyzed dozens of audit findings to isolate seven ways hooks break, and created a checklist for keeping these bugs out of production. https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/07/30/building-secure-uniswap-v4-hooks/
Work situation is so bad I have to start looking at evil companies because my money tree ain’t growing anything.
Drives me nuts seeing so many things happening at crazy speeds and I am just sitting on the sidelines….
US Military letting it's soldiers wear Meta Pervert Glasses and only now considering the Infosec risk of it...
Decentralized browser-based P2P E2EE messaging.
The key detail that sets this apart from other messaging apps is the browser-based client-side cryptography philosophy.
No need to install anything. Your ID is crypto-random and so the app doesnt need to rely on any central registration system like phone numbers. Your ID is unguessable and to connect to someone, you have to explicitly share it.
WebRTC has other nuances like being to route through a shared network for secure/faster transfer.
I hope this project has reached a level i can share the following details. I've made a genuine effort towards documentation and transparancy. I dont think it'll ever be enough and so im still concerned it isnt ready to share. While im using AI throughout. This is not a vibecoded project. There is attention throughout for unit tests and formal-verification. With your feedback, id like to make improvements for clarity throughout.
This version of the app demonstrates a fairly unique approach using a browser-based, local-only and webrtc approach. I know it's impossible for any system to be the "world's most secure", but that isnt a reason to not try. By rigorously implementing an exhaustive list of security features and practices, the aim is to get as close as possible.
* [Enkrypted.Chat](https://enkrypted.chat/)
This is intended to demonstrate client-side managed secure cryptography.
* [Introducing Enkrypted Chat](https://positive-intentions.com/blog/introducing-enkrypted-chat)
* [Whitepaper (work-in-progress)](https://positive-intentions.com/docs/technical/whitepaper/complete-whitepaper)
* [Protocol Spec (work-in-progress)](https://positive-intentions.com/docs/technical/whitepaper/complete-protocol-spec)
* [Roadmap](https://positive-intentions.com/docs/technical/p2p-messaging-technical-breakdown/)
I know ive tried to compress a lot of my journey into one post. The project above is going to be tricky to understand. Feel free to reach out for clarity on any of the details.
IMPORTANT: While this is aiming to provide a secure experience, It is [not audited or reviewed](https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberSecurityAdvice/comments/1su8lir/security_audit_feedback_from_radically_open/). **Shared for testing, feedback and demo purposes only.** Please use responsibly.
#Privacy #OnlinePrivacy #DataPrivacy #Infosec #CyberSecurity #OpSec #DigitalRights #AntiSurveillance #DataOwnership #E2EE #P2P #PeerToPeer #WebRTC #LocalFirst #LocalOnly #NoCloud #NoRegistration #PWA #SignalProtocol #PostQuantum #Cryptography #SecureMessaging #PrivateChat #EncryptedChat #Decentralized #OpenSource #SelfHosted #BetaTesting #FeedbackWelcome #TechDemo #ProofOfConcept #BuildInPublic #IndieDev #DevCommunity
…Tunick’s lawyers argued during the hearing last week that the seizure was unlawful, & that he was targeted because of his #political #activism against #Atlanta’s plan to build a police & fire training center within a 1,000-acre stretch of urban #woodland. Opponents argue that the center, known as #CopCity, would militarize officers & destroy precious #GreenSpace.