Intel's "Direct Data I/O" feature introduced in 2011 has been shown to allow for capturing keystrokes in "keyboard interactive" SSH sessions (archived). Keyboard interactive logins have been a feature of SSH best disabled for some time, but Intel's DDIO backdoor is architected in a way that allows still further shennanigans. The DDIO "optimization" allows peripherals to go further than direct memory address and skip to directly interacting with the CPU's on die cache. Expect the continued documentation of Intel backdoors marketed as optimizations to continue.
Monthly Archives: September 2019
John Bolton Out As US National Security Advisor
John Bolton is out as US National Security Advisor after using the position to systematically reduce US national security as so many of his predecessors have done before him (archived). Different parties are claiming a firing or resignation effected the departure. Bolton's legacy over his tenures in the Trump and Bush II administrations is a reduction of USG ability to effect its policy abroad to levels not seen in a century.
Massachusetts Mayor Busted For Extorting Bud Dealers Seeking Legality
Twenty-seven year old Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia is accused of extorting bribes out of cannabis businesses seeking to do enter the incredibly restrictive legal retail regime implemented in Correia's turf (archived). Among the various demands issued by Correia was a bribe of half of his own chief of staff's salary in exchange for their retention of that job. Correia is one of three Democratic Party candidates facing off in a primary election September 17th while his case isn't set for trial until late February 2020.
The combination of the ease with which massive amounts of potent cannabis buds can be grown along with the restictive regulatory regimes imagined by various fiat sovereigns makes this a particularly fruitful avenue for sovereigns in their own heads to milk suckers looking to enter the regulated market.
MIT Media Lab Haunted By Epstein
MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito is out after revelations that the late Pantsuitist Jeffery Epstein was intimately involved with the lab and the extent of the relationship has been actively concealed (archived). Shortly before Epstein's death the late Marvin Minsky of MIT was one of the names loudly declared in the press as a beneficiary of Epstein's networking.
All SEAL Team 7 Leaders Purged By US Navy Brass
The US Navy has purged "elite" SEAL Team 7 of its leaders citing a "breakdown of good order and discipline" (archived). Rear Admirald Colin Green is being publicly credited for execution of the purge, and he has further hinted that the culture of SEAL units is "being questioned" suggesting further purges may be on the way. The US Navy SEAL teams are one of several high training investment, high deployment tempo "special warfare" unit types which have taken over the bulk of the US military's combat operations in situations where the combatants are actually inside the same combat space.
Microsoft Invites Stallman
Microsoft invited their longtime antagonist Richard Stallman to address the USG agency after decades of ratcheting have finally aligned their interests (archived). Back in 2012, Stallman lost his Gnu to GLBSE.
Black South Africans Turn Violently Against Other Black Africans As Migration Raises Tensions
Attacks on economic migrants to South Africa have lead the Nigerian government to threaten "definitive" action to protect Nigerian citizens that have migrated to South Africa (archived). South African Foreign Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor cited the existence of Afrophobia as a problem which ought to be addressed as South Africa closed their embassy in Nigeria due to retaliatory violence (archived). South African has a population of 55 million with an official near 29 percent unemployment rate. Nigeria has a population of nearly 190 million and reported an official unemployment rate of 23.1 for 2018.
Illinois: Police Department Child Groomer Arrested For Child Porn
Mitchell Rowan of the Gurnee, Illinois Police Department was arrested earlier this week on a felony warrant for possession of child pornography (archived). Rowan had been employed by the Gurnee Police department to advise their "Police Explorers' Youth Program" where he groomed children for future careers in "law enforcement" while having achieved all of 23 years of age himself.
Another Open BMC Bung: Virtual USB Open To Anywhere
Yet another set of "Baseband Management Controllers" has been documented to compromise the systems in which they are implanted (archived). This latest batch of openings allows access from the network to a "virtual USB hub", and that vitual USB hub allows all of the mischief possible with a physical USB port. Or, almost all of it. The virtual USB port can't be meaningfully plugged with virtual epoxy to the same effect a real port can be plugged with real epoxy.
Macri Begins Implementing Capital Controls As Foreign Currency Reserves Exhaust
Three weeks after the prospect of a Kirchner-Fernandez government gutted the value of the Argentine peso, current Argentine president Macri's increasingly Kirchner-esque response to the crisis has hit a new milestone (archived). The current regime has declared Argentinos may buy no more than 10,000 USD in a month and that businesses in Argentina submit their USD purchase plans to the government lest they are determined to be "hoarding" USD.
This comes after Argentina has spent 21 days actively fighting the market and exhausting its foreign currency reserves by trying to prop up the Peso Argentina's value near 60 to the USD when the market clearly understands that the Peso Argentino's value should be far lower. The remaining reserves nominally belonging to the Argentine Central Bank are encumbered as collateral for loans and almost certain to be forfeited in the coming default.
Meanwhile, publications in the Northern Argentina calling itself the US lead by Forbes had been running pieces written by Peronists explaining why Argentina can't be in as bad of a position as its behavior is forcing it into (archived). At last they had been until today when they had to admit currency controls are back.