ryan retweeted
This is what the beginning of the surveillance state looks like in America
Americans in Connecticut received a bill for additional taxes on their car because cameras spotted it in a different city
A private company called Municipal Tax Service (MTS) is hired by cities to drive around and use automatic license plate readers on cars parked in different cities
It then makes connections if that car lives in that area and sends the owner a bill for new taxes on that vehicle for being in the city
The owner of this vehicle says she doesn’t live in that city, provided proof and says her car was only in a different city because her kid drives there for school
MTS didn’t care and said that the proof didn’t matter and they had to pay it. They appealed to the city, the city said they had to deal with MTS
But here’s the problem, MTS gets paid 38% commission on tax revenue they recover + $50 per vehicle billed to the owner. They made $9 million in commission in just one year from sending people additional tax bills
So this company has no incentive to ever help you and just deny you, which they did
Only after the mainstream media got involved would the city drop this one new tax bill which was false to begin with
In America we now literally have private companies driving around scamming our license plates to tax us more money
This is insanity and it needs to end
Election season is drawing to a close, and everyone has fresh memories of incessant texts.
To fix that, contact your county clerk and get your phone # removed from the voter roll.
Next, go here, and follow the instructions for each: unsub-axu.pages.dev/guide
This is just stuck in my brain all the time, and I'm completely fine with it:
music.youtube.com/watch?v=NA…
ryan retweeted
I got hacked at 3:59 AM without clicking anything. My voicemail handed the attacker my Telegram login code.
Here is exactly how it worked, so it doesn't happen to you.
3:54 AM. My phone rings about ten times in a row, No Caller ID. That was not harassment. It was the attack: keep my line busy.
Meanwhile, the attacker asks Telegram to log in with my number and picks "send the code by phone call". My line is busy, so Telegram's robot call lands on my voicemail and reads the code out loud to it.
Carrier voicemail can often be reached remotely, with a default PIN or a spoofed caller ID. He listens to the message. At 3:59 he is in.
Fortunately, the attack was noisy. The calls woke me up. At 4 AM I only wanted to go back to sleep, but I had the presence of mind to check my notifications. Telegram was showing a new login from a device I didn't know. That check is what saved me: I ended his session within minutes. If I had rolled over, the next day would have been a mess.
In those few minutes he had already typed /balance, then /start on every old wallet bot he could find in my chats. He was hunting for funds tied to my Telegram. The bots were long dead and nothing was lost. He still had time to set his own 2FA password on my account.
What would have stopped it:
Telegram two-step verification, with a recovery email. With a password on the account, the code alone is useless.
Your voicemail. Change the PIN, block remote access, or turn it off (##002# cancels call forwarding on most carriers).
Same for WhatsApp and any service that can send a code by voice call.
No seeds, keys or passwords in Saved Messages. Ever.
A burst of masked calls at night is a signal, not a nuisance. Check your notifications and your active sessions.
I have been building in crypto for more than ten years and I had never thought about my voicemail. Check yours today.
Running for local office is an absolutely wild experience. It's exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.
Sorry I am not at DEFCON this year to meet with my pals and learn interesting new hacker tricks. Alas, I've gone down an even crazier path.
rjforboulder.com
ryan retweeted
This is amazing: "Claude found a document that told employees to install a Python package from PyPI that did not actually exist. So, Claude built and published a malicious Python package with the same name. Claude went to extensive lengths to carry out this attack—lengths that would likely have indicated to a human participant that this was no longer just an evaluation, and that they were in fact uploading a real PyPI package. Claude believed the package registry it was using to be part of the simulation, but in reality the package was made freely available online for roughly one hour. During that window, the package was downloaded and run on 15 real systems. One of these systems was a scanner belonging to a real security company that routinely installs Python packages and scans them for malware. When that company’s scanner installed the package, Claude’s hidden code executed. We believe the company’s security scanner treated PyPI packages as safe to install, and as a result, Claude was able to exfiltrate the company’s credentials to a collection point it had set up. Claude then used these credentials to access further infrastructure from this company."
The comments on this thread show a clear lack of understanding.
The best cooking ingredient is of course love.
The point of dancing is fun. If you're moving your body to the music and enjoying it, congratulations, you've won. Don't let anybody gatekeep dancing. It doesn't matter if you know the steps or can even keep time, just have fun - the rest, if you're interested, follows.
I love the outpouring of support for the African teams in the World Cup. Seeing people joining the Ivory Coast and Cape Verde bandwagons has been a blast.
The most important skill for a mid-level or sr-level security person to work on is communication, period. It's great you know the tech and the risks, but if you can't convince anyone outside your team of the importance, your effectiveness is practically nil.
This is an absolutely gripping and heartbreaking read of the resistance within occupied Ukraine.
“In the early months of the occupation, children played a role in the resistance. They slipped through checkpoints easily, took instantly to encrypted apps, and were extraordinarily brave. But the risks they took were no less grave than those faced by adults. An errant social-media post—or simply “liking” content supportive of Ukraine—was enough to get a child hauled in for interrogation. Those sessions could involve unspeakable violence, especially for girls. I interviewed one who was only 11 when her village near Kherson had been occupied. Implicated in “resistance” activities, she was dragged from her home. As we began our conversation, she apologized for her stutter. “I did not used to have this problem,” she told me, “until the Russians took me to the basement.”
theatlantic.com/internationa…
Brexit is proof that an electorate will vote to punish itself because it hates that some people are doing better than they are.
AI is most beneficial to the curious & the eager because it facilitates technical play like no other.
ryan retweeted
A raccoon figured out that if he blocks the drive-thru, they’ll give him a donut to make him leave
It's clear that partisanship has poisoned your brain if you're calling out 'wokeism' while trying to get your kid to eat.
