Remember, you are not alone

We've received so many excellent workshop CFP responses for DEATHCon 2025, and we'll be sending acceptance messages by tomorrow, June 1st! After workshop leaders confirm acceptance, we'll be listing the workshops on https://deathcon.io/workshops.html over the next few weeks. Thanks all!

The DEATHCon 2025 Call for Workshops is now open!
If you have a great idea for teaching people how to do #detectionengineering or #threathunting or an adjacent skill through hands-on experience in our lab, we'd love to hear it! https://deathcon.io/cfp.html Submit before June 1

We got another "critical vulnerability" on #curl reported. I figured you might enjoy it.

"The authentication mechanism in cURL does not properly restrict the number of failed authentication attempts, allowing an attacker to brute-force credentials"

Yawn. Away, away you go.

https://DEATHCon.io is updated with the 11 confirmed locations for in-person events, our dedication to making it affordable with pay-what-you-can pricing, why and how we're valuing diversity and representation, and more! Check it out!

@hacks4pancakes Ghosts is great too! My whole family enjoyed watching that together. TBH I didn't think I was going to enjoy it from the premise, but the characters are so quirky and fun, I couldn't help but get interested in their weird stories

Anybody out there looking for entry-level hires in infosec or IT in general? I regularly get people who are just starting out asking me for help connecting them with job opportunities.

@hacks4pancakes Skeleton Crew has been so much fun! It's giving me vibes of Goonies in space :) I can't wait for the next episode!

Best show seasons new to streaming right now in my very humble opinion right now are Ghosts, Reginald the Vampire, and Skeleton Crew. Just phenomenal and meeting me where I am.

@HankB @malanalysis that is so frustrating. I tried to help out a financial advisor firm that I was formerly a customer of and got a phone meeting with their head of customer security. I shared some simple yet compelling arguments why strong MFA was necessary. They replied that studies showed that many of their customers would be frustrated and annoyed by MFA. I recommended that they at least give customers options so people had the chance to protect their money to the extent they were willing to deal with it, and they tried to argue that the "security questions" they had actually counted as a second factor. I couldn't believe it, but patiently talked about "Something you know, something you have, and something you are" as the valid types of factors. When they tried to convince me that a password was something you know and a security question was something you are, I couldn't take it any more.

@malanalysis
The largest bank in the US requires and only supports a phone # for 2FA. No authenticator app. No Yubikey. SMS or voice to my phone. Period.

I called their customer service and reminded them that the FBI recommends not using SMS and that it is nearly 2025, not the 20th century. 😡

Today the Parker Solar Probe will get 7 times closer to the Sun than any spacecraft ever has, going faster than any spacecraft ever has - 690,000 kilometers per hour. WHEEEEEE!!!!!!!

But the really cool part is what the newspapers are barely talking about: what it's like down there. The Sun doesn't have a surface like the Earth does, since it's all just hot gas. But it has an "Alfvén surface" - and the probe has penetrated that.

What's the Alfvén surface? In simple terms, it's where the solar wind - the hot gas emitted by the Sun - breaks free of the Sun and shoots out into space. But to understand how cool it is, we need to dig a bit deeper.

After all, how can we say where the solar wind "breaks free of the Sun"?

Hot gas shoots up from the Sun, faster and faster due to its pressure, even though it's pulled down by gravity. At some point it goes faster than the speed of sound! This is the Alfvén surface. Above this surface, the solar wind becomes supersonic, so no disturbances in its flow can affect the Sun below.

But it's even cooler than that, because "sound" in the solar wind is very different from sound on Earth. Here we have air. The Sun has ions - atoms of gas so hot that electrons have been ripped off - interacting with powerful magnetic fields. You can visualize these fields as tight rubber bands, with the ions stuck to them. They vibrate back and forth together!

You could call these vibrations "sound", but the technical term is "Alfvén waves". Alfvén was the one who figured out how fast these waves move. Parker studied the surface where the solar wind's speed exceeds the speed of the Alfvén waves.

And now we've gone deep below that surface!

(1/n)

nice one, asus

https://www.windowslatest.com/2024/12/22/asus-bombards-windows-11-with-christmas-exe-malware-like-christmas-wreath-banner/

News you wouldn't expect to break on Xmas Eve: UN Adopted the Convention Against "Cybercrime" (proposed by Russia): https://unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2024/uniscp1184.html
Here's why you should be concerned if you are a fan of privacy and freedom of expression:

1. Russia's agenda was clear from the moment they proposed the language of this convention, when they broadly defined "cyber crime" as including publication of information deemed to be dangerous to governments , and provides for countries to cooperate on digital surveillance of any suspects

2. The language of the convention does not make any differentiation between people who gain access to a computer for security research purposes and those who break in to steal or destroy information. That puts legitimate security researchers at greater risk of surveillance, international prosecution

For one example that should cause you concern, check out Article 22 on jurisdiction:

The tradition is only known as "the holidays" to most, but it's important to remember what we are celebrating this time of year: the Herculean effort to fix the log4j vulnerability caused by needless use of JNDI.

Chilling out at #hushcon2024 meeting new friends, enjoying tasty beverages, hearing about the struggles of hardware hacking (respect!), trading stickers, and crocheting a hat to keep my hands busy. This con always feels like home and I love it!

The winner of the People's Choice Award for Best Workshop is... Practical Adversary Emulation, by Greg Ake (https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-ake) Principal Detection Engineer at @huntresslabs
Congratulations Greg!

One of the fun experimental activities we tried for DEATHCon this year was creating an original game ROM for the Game Boy, playable on the web in a JS emulator: https://deathcon.io/anubis-game

This was of course inspired by the really cool @defcon electronic badge, and the rom is playable on that hardware if you have it!

I'm curious to know if anyone else has built a GB game for a conference or is considering doing so?

Check out! New sharing community for Threat Hunters, from some amazing people I greatly respect @letswastetime and @Jotunvillur

HEARTH (Hunting Exchange And Research Threat Hub)!

Hey thrunters! A new open-source home to:
- Share hunt ideas
- Learn from others
- Level up together

Built by hunters, for hunters 🎯
https://threathuntingcommunity.com

#threathunting #thrunting #infosec #HEARTH

@fraying I've switched to Sticky Brand. Good so far!