Jabber.ru, an XMPP messaging service, fell victim to a man-in-the-middle attack where the attacker intercepted encrypted traffic for up to 6 months on hosting providers Hetzner and Linode in Germany.
Despite the protracted nature of the attack, no evidence of server breaches or spoofing attacks was found. However, rogue TLS certificates were exploited using Let's Encrypt to hijack connections.
The attack primarily affected connections to the XMPP service's STARTTLS port 5222. The interception was suspected to have been either lawfully done or as a result of an intrusion into the hosting providers' networks.
The Hacker News thread discusses encrypted traffic interception on hosting services targeting the Jabber messaging service and touches upon various mitigation strategies like additional authentication, monitoring SSL/TLS certificates, RIPE Atlas measurements, and DLT-based systems.
The discussion explores the use of DANE for certificate authentication and the limitations of Certificate Authorities (CAs). Other topics include potential SSL infrastructure vulnerabilities, the possible compromise of SSL certificate issuance, and the importance of DNSSEC, CAA records, and encryption methods like PGP and OMEMO/OpenPGP.
The thread debates the need for multiple certificates for the same domain, the reliability of SSL certificates, potential lawful interception, and challenges of assuring security in hosting services.
A decade ago, an experienced team called "tech surge" led by Todd Park was formed to resolve the issues with the non-functioning HealthCare.gov website.
The team, comprised of individuals from within and outside the government, analyzed the challenges of the site, including, but not limited to code, testing, releases, and monitoring.
After intensive discussions and meetings, they successfully installed a monitoring system revealing critical performance issues, marking the beginning of their continuous efforts to improve the site and enable millions to enroll in healthcare coverage.
The discussions are centered around healthcare reform in the US, including the troubles that occurred during the development of Healthcare.gov, the political influences on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the competency of Medicaid.
Attention is drawn to issues such as corruption, cronyism, distribution of federal funds, the underpayment of federal employees, and the engagement of companies in IT projects related to healthcare.
Overall, the discourse underscores the intricate challenges of healthcare reform, emphasizing the need for enhanced systems and political intervention.
The text encompasses discussions on diverse law-related topics including police behavior, privacy, defamation, and legal procedures.
Key issues examined include the effectiveness of protective orders, the role of law enforcement, the influence of social media on accountability, behavior of police officers in smaller communities, defamation claims, and the authority of border agents.
This broad range of topics suggests an in-depth exploration of law enforcement and legal topics pertinent to contemporary society.
The blog post examines the search for the least viewed articles on Wikipedia, with many of these being about insects and obscure geographical locations.
It delves into community policies and practices regarding the concept of notability which has led to the absence of articles about businesses or bands in the bottom 500 most viewed pages.
These lesser-viewed articles are important as they offer a basis for future editors to enhance and build upon.
The discussion highlights challenges encountered by Wikipedia editors such as determining the notability of a subject, dealing with platform limitations, and managing deletions.
It brings to light the existence of gender bias and misogyny on the platform, the bias in notability criteria, and other challenges in contribution.
It raises concerns about Wikipedia's impact on search results, along with issues relating to the accuracy and reliability of information on the platform.
The article investigates the unique spatial methods employed by characters in Die Hard to navigate architecture, drawing parallels with the Israeli Defense Forces' strategies used during the Nablus invasion.
It introduces the concept of "Nakatomi space", a depiction of altered architectural navigation in films like Die Hard, and considers a broader urban implementation.
Furthermore, it explores various architectural concepts like moving through walls, fluidity of space, and infringement of private space, and contemplates the power dynamics and implications of these in film and literature.
The conversation on bldgblog.com covers a range of topics such as the impact of urban planning on crime rates and the perceived deficit in open-ended gameplay in modern video games.
The discussion also extends to the apparent decline of the James Bond franchise and analyzes the depiction of romance in films.
Participants in the discussion contribute varying viewpoints, recommending alternative games and movies, and delving into the multifaceted aspects of the topics discussed.
A recent investigation reveals that tech industry and security service-affiliated organizations fund a campaign supporting the EU's proposed "Chat Control" regulation which is aimed to combat child sexual abuse.
This regulation pushes for mandatory scanning and disclosure of suspicious private messages and photos by service providers. Patrick Breyer, an EU Parliament lawmaker, criticizes EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson's involvement.
Advocates regard the campaign as a push for indiscriminate screening of private messages and photos, which they view as a threat to digital privacy and encryption. At present, such a law does not exist in the US.
The passage highlights various EU-related topics, such as accusations of corruption and foreign intervention, sovereignty debates, and EU regulations critiques.
It underscores concerns regarding the EU's integrity and its capability to safeguard privacy rights, suggesting a level of skepticism towards its regulations and governance.
The text also mentions debates on the pros and cons of government intervention and regulations on the context of capitalism and communism.
The music site Bandcamp, renowned for its support to independent artists, has been acquired by content licensing and service company Songtradr.
This acquisition has triggered concerns among artists and fans, as there have already been layoffs announced affecting Bandcamp's editorial staff and vinyl team.
The sale has led to uncertainties about Bandcamp's future and its continuing commitment to support independent artists, igniting fears that the site's repute as an independent music platform could be compromised under the new ownership.
The discourse centers around Bandcamp's employees' job losses, Bandcamp's significance as a music platform, and concerns regarding its acquisition by Epic Games.
In-depth discussions take place about the drawbacks of profit-driven digital game stores, the need for non-profit entities to cultivate communities, and the employer-employee relationship.
Further topics include the balance between labor and capital value, sustainability issues for web properties, the preservation of cultural content by organizations such as the Internet Archive, personal privacy rights, and the decline of social media platforms like MySpace and Twitter.
Okta, a provider of business identity tools, has had a security breach in its customer support unit, granting hackers access for approximately two weeks until contained.
The breach allowed the attackers to view files uploaded by certain customers, potentially revealing sensitive data such as cookies and session tokens.
Despite the incident affecting a small number of customers, Okta advises all clients to cleanse credentials and tokens within files prior to sharing them and speculates that a familiar threat actor likely targeted them.
Okta, a centralized identity provider, had a security breach where hackers stole access tokens from its support unit, which ensued after an employee uploaded sensitive data to Okta's support tool.
This incident sparked discussions about the integrity and reliability of Okta in managing significant IT systems, the efficacy of their security protocols, and the continuous debate contrast between on-premises systems and cloud services for authentication.
There is a emphasized necessity for implementing robust security measures, maintaining proactive cybersecurity vigilance, and considering alternative authentication providers.
The Python steering council is considering making the global interpreter lock (GIL), a mechanism that prevents multiple native threads from executing Python bytecodes at once, optional in future releases of Python.
Discussions are ongoing regarding compatibility with extensions, proposing API changes, and potential names for the non-GIL version, with "free-threading" and "nogil" as suggestions. They are also considering introducing a new Application Binary Interface (ABI) termed as 'abi4.
Final approval of the Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) related to these changes is pending. The steering council is in the process of defining their acceptance criteria while discussing the potential impact on migration and perception.
The discussion is about various aspects of parallel programming in Python. This includes the need for more explicit parallelism in university curricula, and the potential removal of Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), a mechanism that prevents simultaneous execution of Python bytecodes by multiple threads.
Participants have different opinions, some promote functional code without side-effects, while others propose alternative approaches like sandboxed Virtual Machines (VMs) and offloading tasks to libraries.
There are concerns about Python's single-threaded performance and the transition from Python 2 to 3, but the potential repercussions and benefits of removing GIL and enhancing parallelism are also recognized.
The owner of jabber.ru and xmpp.ru reported a man-in-the-middle attack, likely originating from Germany, involving automatic interception of traffic and the issuance of an unauthorized certificate.
The report highlights flaws in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) infrastructure and proposes enhanced security measures such as using Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME)-Certificate Authority Authorization (CAA) and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC).
The article advises against relying on third-party solutions, champions end-to-end encryption, and questions the efficacy of "confidential computing" technologies in providing solid security.
A recent security breach was identified involving the interception of XMPP traffic on the Hetzner/Linode network, specifically targeting the XMPP STARTTLS port.
The attack was mitigated, but it exposed vulnerabilities and highlighted security risks associated with data centers and potential supply chain compromises.
Discussions featured users' concerns about using Cloudflare, with an exploration of its advantages and disadvantages. XMPP stands for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, a communication protocol, and STARTTLS is a way to take an unencrypted connection and upgrade it to an encrypted (TLS or SSL) connection.
The paper discusses vulnerabilities and potential exploit chains present in terminal emulators, with emphasis on escape sequences.
It identifies risks in popular terminal emulators and underlines the importance of implementing proper handling and mitigation measures against these vulnerabilities.
The study also points to the development of a testing tool for terminals and acknowledges contributions by previous researchers in this field.
The article highlights the significance of sanitizing control characters in text-based tools to mitigate security risks, emphasizing problems in some terminal systems.
It brings attention to the difficulties and challenges associated with terminal emulation, particularly due to a lack of standardization, proposing the need for a new text terminal protocol.
The content also covers issues related to terminal emulators and control sequences, touching upon the historical context of the escape key, PostScript usage in Lisp programs, and associated projects.
F-Droid is a repository of free and open-source software (FOSS) apps for Android, offering a client for easy browsing, installing, and updating on devices.
The most recent update introduced new applications and improved features, enhancing the usability and functionality of F-Droid.
F-Droid is a non-profit organization that depends on public donations to maintain its services and continue providing its offerings to the Android community.
The article explores F-Droid, a store for free and open-source Android apps. Alternate clients, including Aurora Droid and Neo Store, are recommended by users for enhanced functionality and app installation.
A lack of usage statistics on F-Droid, possible obstacles in implementation, and the slow addition of new software are discussed within the article. Users recommend adding extra repositories for improved access and mention F-Droid Basic, a version of F-Droid.
Both positives and negatives of F-Droid are highlighted by users, pointing out that while some love it, others criticize the platform for containing several apps that have not been updated for years.
The guide details how to create and work with hexagonal grids, covering varying coordinate systems, algorithms, and formulas with programming code samples.
It discusses calculating distances, drawing lines, and determining movement ranges for hexagonal grids, along with algorithms for obstacle handling, map storage, wraparound maps, and pathfinding.
The author recommends pertinent resources like the GameLogic Grids library in Unity, Hex-Grid Utilities library, sample code, a PDF article, and procedural generation code for website use.
US nonprofit hospitals are facing scrutiny for favoring executive compensation over providing charity care for low-income patients.
According to a report from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, many nonprofit hospitals spend less than 2% of their revenue on charity care, while hospital CEOs receive multi-million-dollar salaries.
The report accuses the hospitals of price gouging and violating their nonprofit mandates. The American Hospital Association, however, protests that the report overlooks the community benefits hospitals offer.
The report reveals that nonprofit hospitals are scrutinized for their relatively low charitable care despite the high CEO salaries, raising fairness questions over publicly funded organizations.
This debate touches on the hospital's challenges in serving Medicaid and Medicare patients, the impact of government payments on healthcare costs, and views on executive compensation, suggesting a need for addressing this issue.
The report also discusses transparency regarding the nature and financial operations of non-profit organizations, allegations of collusion, the need for alterations to campaign finance laws, and the significance of allocating hospital funds to charity care.
The author developed a 2D Flappy Bird game using solely TypeScript type annotations, demonstrating the potential to leverage these annotations outside the TypeScript compiler.
The game state gets updated based on the principles of functional programming and rendering through a command buffer filled with drawing commands, showcasing the project's technical proficiency.
The runtime, created in Rust and Zig, employs bytecode and the web canvas API for game execution with future plans of utilizing this type-level TypeScript runtime as a high-performance type-checker and to develop a competent Domain-Specific Language (DSL) for creating schemas.
The article explores the utility of TypeScript's type system through its application in implementing the game Flappy Bird, and refers to the use of Ocaml in sudoku solving for comparison.
It discusses the strength and complexity of TypeScript's type system, its capacity to generate complex interfaces, and the benefits of an advanced type system.
The piece points out the flexibility and restrictions of TypeScript's type system, and touches upon the implications of Turing completeness - a term describing a system capable of solving any computation problem given enough time and resources.