_kbh_

> "Now is not the right time for elections" - Zelenskyy the stalwart defender of Democracy™

Its literally part of there constitution that they don't have elections whilst they are at war, and from a practical standpoint how would it even work for territories on the front line or under occupation?.

You have to resign the binary when you modify anyway which achieves the same thing.

On non-jailbroken platforms you generally do this with a developer certificate.

At least some of exploits that were used to install Pegasus have been patched.

You can find details here

>https://citizenlab.ca/2023/09/blastpass-nso-group-iphone-zer...

Vulnerabilities in third party apps that are used to install Pegasus Apple has less control over.

No one is burning a baseband 0day to write "we are in control" on a screen.

Ghidra uses Jython not sure if that counts as serious.

> I wrote blog entry on this subject with a very similar name [0] which covers the CryptoAG story in more detail. It doesn't have the 2020 news. [0]: A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013), https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html

Wow this is super interesting I noticed this paragraph in the text.

> 2013, Enabling for Encryption Chips: In the NSA's budget request documents released by Edward Snowden, one of the goals of the NSA's SIGINT project is to fully backdoor or "enable" certain encryption chips by the end of 201311. It is not publicly known to which encryption chips they are referring.

From what I know Cavium is one of these "SIGINT enabled" chip manufactures.

> https://www.electrospaces.net/2023/09/some-new-snippets-from...

>> "While working on documents in the Snowden archive the thesis author learned that an American fabless semiconductor CPU vendor named Cavium is listed as a successful SIGINT "enabled" CPU vendor. By chance this was the same CPU present in the thesis author's Internet router (UniFi USG3). The entire Snowden archive should be open for academic researchers to better understand more of the history of such behavior." (page 71, note 21)

> https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366552520/New-revelation...

Unfortunately the relevant text for the second is pretty long so I dont wanna quote it.

> It is likely that the backdoor consisted in some cache memory test registers used during production, but it is absolutely incomprehensible how it has been possible for many years that those test registers were not disabled at the end of the manufacturing process but they remained accessible for the attackers who knew Apple's secrets.

I think we are nearly certain that the bug is because of a MMIO accessible register that allows you to write into the CPU's cache (its nearly certain this is related to the GPU's coherent L2 cache).

But I don't think it's 'incomprehensible' that such a bug could exist unintentionally. Modern computers and even more so high end mobile devices are a huge basket of complexity that has so many interactions and coprocessors all over the place I think it's very likely that a similar bug exists undiscovered unmitigated.

> For instance any iPhone could be completely controlled remotely after sending to it an invisible iMessage message.

I don't think the iMessage was invisible I think it deleted itself once the exploit had run, its also worth noting just how complicated the attack chain was and that the attacker _needed_ a hardware bug just to patch the kernel whilst having kernel code execution.

To add another dimension to this, personally i think that the Crypto AG relationship is what is referred to as "HISTORY" in this leaked NSA ECI codenames list.

https://robert.sesek.com/2014/10/nsa_s_eci_compartments.html

> HISTORY HST NCSC (TS//SI//NF) Protects NSA and certain commercial cryptologic equipment manufacturer relationships.

> Indeed, especially when Googling "Mercedes report security issue" the page litterally populates the results with the address to email so it wasn't like it's hard to find.

Reporting via a third party isn't super unusual if you think that a organisation may be a bit legal threat happy from your report.

You could always do it with instructions itd just be slow no?.

> AMD holds an arm license and uses them as part of the software tpu in the pro series processors as I understand.

AMD uses ARM for its PSP as well which is more than just a TPM.

But afaik it also matters what type of license AMD has.

AMD would be need an ARM architecture license (like Apple has). This license allows you to do whatever you want with the chip (such as adding a x86 style memory model).

The downside to the architecture license is you have clean room design the chip entirely.

> Why? Apple isnt exactly a small family business and this is quite the drastic "feature" to be left enabled by accident.

Mistakes happen, maybe it's used in the manufacturing or fab phase to test something. Maybe it's used by the GPU firmware itself to perform some operations.

Maybe it was used by some older SoCs to do something and was just never removed.

Apple may not be a small family business but silly mistakes still happen all over the place in nearly every large system.

To quote another post by macran cause I feel like it's super relevant when trying to analyse how this kind of stuff comes about.

@nicolas17 @nil Correct. The question is, how many more of these fun bypasses are left undiscovered? The GPU is a huge amount of hardware and firmware.

Computers are so incredibly complicated now days that these kinds of hardware bugs are likely sitting around elsewhere as well, they don't come around that often because the amount of effort required to find them is likely a lot, which is likely only viable for a nation state actor.

> Decade old Backdoors no

I really doubt it's a backdoor after reading the blog post and this thread chain from a prolific M1 MacBook hacker (macran) I think it was just an unused or very rarely used feature that was left enabled by accident.

https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111655847458820583

Some choice quotes.

First, yeah, the dbgwrap stuff makes perfect sense. I knew about it for the main CPUs, makes perfect sense it'd exist for the ASCs too. Someone had a lightbulb moment. We might even be able to use some of those tricks for debugging stuff ourselves :)

Second, that "hash" is almost certainly not a hash. It's an ECC code*. I bet this is a cache RAM debug register, and it's writing directly to the raw cache memory array, including the ECC bits, so it has to manually calculate them (yes, caches in Apple SoCs have ECC, I know at least AMCC does and there's no reason to think GPU/ASC caches wouldn't too). The "sbox" is just the order of the input bits to the ECC generator, and the algorithm is a textbook ECC code. I don't know why it's somewhat interestingly shuffled like that, but I bet there's a hardware reason (I think for some of these things they'll even let the hardware synthesis shuffle the bits to whatever happens to be physically optimal, and that's why you won't find the same table anywhere else).

> Especially since NATO tries to expand to Ukraine despite saying it would not for decades.

The irony here being that no one promised anything to Russia regarding in any actionable way.

But Russia has multiple treaties where they say they will respect the borders and sovereignty of Ukraine.

If those treaties don’t matter to Russia why should any made up promises regarding NATO matter to anyone else.

> Read this

>https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hos...

I did and this doesn’t sound very “conclusive” at all

>> The Times’s finding does not answer what actually did cause the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital blast, or who is responsible.

>https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1718547315764441095

This tweets main source appears to the GreyZone which is a pro Russian propaganda rag that mostly peddles in misinformation I wouldn’t find it credible.

The German Spy Museum in Berlin has a very cool modified Trabant door in their collection that has an embedded IR camera used by the Stasi in East Germany.

https://www.berlin.de/en/museums/3977291-3104050-spy-museum-...

> [1] several sources, and most recently the NYT have shown that the rocket that the zinoist media said it caused the blast in the hospital actually came from israel.

I haven't seen anything that showed any conclusive proof that the rocket came from Israel, the blast pattern doesn't match any armaments that Israel has airburst or not.

I'm happy to change my mind with a link that provides concrete evidence though, can you provide one.

> Ukraine was just foolish enough to sign up for the role of “US’s cannon fodder” in the never ending US-Russia war.

I think you will find its Russia who invaded, and Russia alone is the one who decided this.

No one else did, everyone else wanted peace, Russia alone wants war.

> This is a completely made up fake story that's oft repeated by the Netanyahu administration. No basis in reality

We have pictures of dead babies from the October raid by Hamas, this is based in reality and is not made up.

> to me it's clear, if a private business sells a technology service that is being used in a war, the adversary is going to see that action as hostile and use powers within their means to neutralize the threat. I'm not sure you're using the word "conspiracy theory" correctly.

But Ukraine is literally using services from a SAR satellite right now, which is run by a private business.

https://www.universetoday.com/157208/ukraine-crowdfunded-a-1...

And yet theres 0 noise or even evidence anyones even thinking of blowing it out of the sky.

> I reject the concept of “just war” in general in all instances and think all war is mass murder, definitionally.

Then you must be for a swift Ukrainian victory right?, cause anything else just raises tensions in the region and increases the chance of another war in the near future.

> Furthermore, even in your worldview, an American citizen using nominally American-jurisdiction hardware to enable airstrikes in a war zone that has nothing directly to do with America is an unforced escalation in the proxy war unrelated to “illegal invasion” that invites retaliation against Americans and American space-based assets.

The war in Ukraine isn’t a proxy war it’s just a plain old war between Russia and Ukraine with both sides having allies that help supply them, and I’m not sure why “illegal invasion” is in quotation marks that’s exactly what it is.

> One may simply be against violence in all forms, which seems much more plausible, given what we know about humans on Earth, especially skeptics like Musk who tend to resist pro-just-war state messaging.

This is an easy view to have when you live the luxury of being able to choice whether or not to be involved in a war.

Ukrainians had no such choice war was forced upon them by the Russians.

> Just for the record, there are also claims supported by evidence, that Israel did it.

I've seen no convincing evidence that shows that Israel did it, the creator and damage size is way too small for any Israeli bomb or missile even airburst does not match the features found at the explosion.

> I think the USSR restoration empire building narrative is overblown.

You should tell that to Russian media who posted this very long very USSR restoration empire building victory article a handful of days into the war.

>>https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...

> Also, if what you say about red lines were true, the US would not be so hesitant to provide lots of advanced aircraft to Ukraine, which they have not done as yet despite this clearly being a full enemy-of-my-enemy proxy war.

They are literally starting training on the aircraft next month iirc, and will receive them in 4-6 months after that.

Nothing happened when all of Russias red lines were crossed, the Americans are merely boiling the frog to avoid escalation.

I think Russias red lines are akin to chinas final warning now days, a joke.

I think the invasion is less about Russia seeing Ukraine as an existential threat and more about Russia seeing Ukraine as rightfully there’s to take.

That’s why I don’t think Russia would actually retaliate in any significant way to the use of starlink.

They know it’s not an existential threat and that’s why they continue to draw red lines and when they get crossed literally nothing happens.

Except no one is going retaliate against starlink as it would stop _everyone_ from launching satellites.

> They (the Ukrainians) requested that he re-enable it in that area specifically so that mass murder could be conducted with it, and he declined. (This is an example of the geopolitical power he wields, and it will only increase after Starship.) Couching it in “strategic policy decisions” euphemism doesn’t change the fact that they tried to draft him into a conspiracy to slaughter hundreds of teenage Russian conscripts.

A lot of this paragraph is objectively false I don’t think conscripts are the ones that man boats and submarines.

Destroying those Russian missile boats and submarines would have taken out a large amount of the ships that where intentionally targeting Ukrainian civilians with cruise missiles.

That kind of attitude and appeasement is exactly what lead us to WW2.

> There's absolutely no evidence this happened.

There's evidence that Hamas beheaded children I haven't seen any evidence they tortured them infant of their parents.

> Russia has the economy the size of Italy. Three American states have bigger economies than Russia. Were more advanced than them on every level technologically economically militarily. The only thing they have is nukes which they'll still have no matter how Ukraine turns out.

That doesn't mean they aren't a military rival, Russias been building up there military stocks for decades, and inherited huge stockpiles as the successor state to the USSR.

That stockpile pile is being so quickly decimated that Russia is starting to dig into there stockpiles of tanks that are 60+ years old.

> That's been the propaganda reason for previous wars...

In what way is helping a country defend itself from a brutal imperialistic invasion not helping defend democracy?.

> So I dont understand the strategic interest of Ukraine.

How is it not in Americas strategic interest to decimate its biggest military rival, whilst committing a small fraction of its yearly military budget?.

At the same time it reduces Russian military exports and makes them look incredibly weak.

It also helps defend democracy in Eastern Europe.