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q3k

8,813 karma · joined February 5, 2013

email: q3k@q3k.org

matrix: @q3k:hackerspace.pl

irc: q3k on libera.chat

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q3k··on sshole
EDIT: works after downgrading OpenSSH, turns out even EOL Alpine version got updated packages!

Also didn't have much luck on Alpine 3.20.10 with OpenSSH_9.7p1 which I've freshly installed from an official ISO.

Last two entries in /etc/shadow:

    test:*:20762:0:99999:7:::
    q3k:$6$snip.GgDQNTrqqX.A0:20762:0:99999:7:::
SSHing into test@ with one 'wrong' password then one 'long' password doesn't work. I have UsePAM no and PasswordAuthentication yes in my sshd_config.
q3k··on BioWare Is Shutting Down
yeah but what does that have to do with bioware
q3k··on eMudhra intermediate CA compromise
Reading further, it seems like they say they first generated some keys on-HSM, but then used 'test keys' (that were used to test wrap/unwrap of key material) instead by accident. Fishy.
q3k··on eMudhra intermediate CA compromise
It's real.
q3k··on eMudhra intermediate CA compromise
https://chaos.social/@fluepke/117474156947559280

Private keys can be trivially recovered from the public keys because they're tiny. I found D=156, flüpke found D=4.

Yes, that's the entire private key.

q3k··on eMudhra intermediate CA compromise
https://chaos.social/@fluepke/117474156947559280

D=4. That's the entire private key for one of the certs.

q3k··on Go will reject certificate chains containing eight distrusted SPKIs
Cat's out of the bag: https://chaos.social/@fluepke/117474156947559280

D=156 in my case. Yeah, that's the entire private key.

q3k··on Go will reject certificate chains containing eight distrusted SPKIs
It doesn't. This is an additional, ad-hoc blocklist for compromised intermediaries, it's not even roots. The roots are just taken from your system.
q3k··on Go will reject certificate chains containing eight distrusted SPKIs
$ curl https://q3k.google.com --resolve 'q3k.google.com:443:135.181.235.221'

Yeah okay this is funny. Nice little CTF challenge :).

q3k··on How employment is changing at Anthropic
It's 2026 and people still believe in measuring productivity by lines of code^W^W^Wnumber of commits? Amazing.

Two vibecoders are walking down a forest path.

One of them spots a Zig codebase and challenges the other: “I'll give you $100 to convert this codebase to Rust!”. They accept and after spending $1000 worth of tokens on a thousand commits the codebase is now in Rust.

On the way back, the second vibecoder spots the same codebase again, and challenges back: “I'll give you $100 to convert this codebase to Zig!”. Another gajillion tokens later, the codebase is now in Zig.

Walking a little more, one vibecoder (in a moment of unusual clarity) asks the other: “It feels like we just did this for nothing”. “No”, the other responds, ”we just increased our company productivity by two thousand commits per day!”.

q3k··on RFC8950: Announce IPv4 with an IPv6 next-hop
Use a loopback address! Only one to configure per host, and useful to establish iBGP sessions on them afterwards.
q3k··on RFC8950: Announce IPv4 with an IPv6 next-hop
This isn't one of those. It's for ISPs who run a native IPv6 backbone and want to exchange and route IPv4 traffic without setting up IPv4 addressing.
q3k··on RFC8950: Announce IPv4 with an IPv6 next-hop
It's also just nice to not need numbered point-to-point links (ie. just use IPv6 LL).

(this is one of those things that's really magical with OSPv3 - it just runs on IPv6 LL addresses, no need to set anything up other than set the link to be within some area and it just works! well, as much as they do with OSPF anyway.)

q3k··on RFC8950: Announce IPv4 with an IPv6 next-hop
That's basically MP-BGP! Your dream is real.

(Keep in mind that the setup described here has work for years now.)

q3k··on Anthropic bans 'abusive or cruel behavior' towards Claude
Yeah but you see the slaves are actually happy to work here!
q3k··on Anthropic bans 'abusive or cruel behavior' towards Claude
Dungeons & Dragons DM bans 'abusive or cruel behaviour' towards their NPCs.
q3k··on How to keep enjoying programming in a world of LLMs
> But you can still do that, much easier, with plain human words.

Skill issue.

q3k··on How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance
> My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?

What? Absolutely not! At least not in the countries in which I went to school.

q3k··on Claude Code reads AGENTS.md only when telemetry is on [fixed]
> It seems to be exactly the opposite, a "fully human error"

"LLMize the succeses, humanize the failures." is the PR strategy at play here. Anything goes well it's because AI did it, anything goes bad it's because a human didn't catch it.

q3k··on iPod Classic 6G in QEMU
> FreeiPod and DevoS50/QEMU-iOS reply

It's free_my_ipod and devos50 is not capitalized like (it makes no sense if you knew that it's a derivative of a last name).

You might say all these things but I can't see anything but disrespect if you can't even be bothered to spell the name of the involved project/people correctly.

Your work wouldn't exist in this shape without those who came in before you, and all you're doing is discouraging them (at least me) from ever publishing any code or research again.

q3k··on iPod Classic 6G in QEMU
> One thing we already know is that the firmware is from Apple and is encrypted, so there's no legal download.

wInd3x can decrypt it.

> and the boot ROM cannot be read from the running device

Yes it can, you just need to turn on the right clock gate.

I'm so tired of AI slop. We've been reverse engineering these SoCs slowly and carefully for years, but this is what ends up getting published and shared.

q3k··on Colorlight 5A-75B: A dive into a popular low-cost ECP5 (FPGA) development board
This really doesn't sound right. I've ran these from hundreds-of-watts industrial PSUs without any voltage sag and they did great. I suspect the clanker is making some shit up here, as always.
q3k··on Colorlight 5A-75B: A dive into a popular low-cost ECP5 (FPGA) development board
More accurate credit for the RE effort would be 'q3k took scans done by someone else for the first board and turned them into a netlist, then other people did the rest'. It's really just hosted under my GH user at this point, nothing more.
q3k··on Tracking down the 16-year-old WAL-reset SQLite bug
Yeah, I also feel 'just use SQLite [no matter what]' is just the pendulum swinging hard after the 'just use mongodb [no matter what]' of yesteryear.

It's so sometimes just performative. I remember when Tailscale had a similar performative approach with 'just use a JSON file on disk'. Then etcd. Then SQLite. Like sure, you can keep picking the absolite mininum technology for your needs and then change it every couple of years... Or you could just immediately go with a solid Postgres (or Postgres-like setup, eg. yugabyte) and save yourself a bunch of faffing about with weird solutions and migrating between them. But I guess that doesn't drive engagement on your blog.

q3k··on Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation
I've refurbished multiple PVD systems, I'm setting up a DIY e-beam lithography rig for Cr-on-glass photomask making and I'm bringing up an 80's photolithography mask aligner / exposure system. I've even built some terrible Al/Si(P-type) Schottky junctions already. I'm not completely clueless.
q3k··on Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation
I told you - it's not the correct term. Finding the correct one should be something you can achieve in 5 minutes of research, and then you can confirm your understanding with a SME.

To be clear, I am also not an expert - I can pick out things that are wrong because I generally know a thing or two about semiconductor fabrication, but I'm not willing to sign-off on correctness of the whole thing, especially wrt. to modern processes. I personally wouldn't publish anything about this matter without getting it checked by someone else, because I know where the limits of my knowledge are.

The goal of my comment was to bring that to your attention - that you need someone to actually review your content before you continue teaching people the wrong thing. When you're educating people, you're in a position of power that comes with the responsibility of making sure what you write is as correct and clear as possible. You have a duty of care.

q3k··on Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation
Because it's not the correct term. And that's not the only thing that's wrong, see the parent comment.

With all due respect, I would recommend you run any educational resources and infographics you create past an actual subject matter expert (not an LLM!) before release. Otherwise you're just spreading shiny misinformation.

q3k··on Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation
Also "The pattern is photographed onto the wafer."... shudder.

All subtly wrong. And no, not in the 'simplified' sense.

q3k··on Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?
Maybe. :)
q3k··on Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?
In a simplified scenario (not too far from this)? Yeah, we've done that in CTFs almost a decade ago.

https://blog.dragonsector.pl/2017/10/?m=1

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