AI Camera Imagines A Photo Of What You Point It At

June 2, 2023 by Lewin Day 20 Comments

These days, every phone has a camera, and few of us are ever without one. [Bjørn Karmann] has built an altogether not-camera, though, in the form of the Paragraphica, powered by artificial intelligence.

The Paragraphica doesn’t actually take photographs at all. Instead, it uses GPS to determine the user’s current position. It then feeds the address, time of day, weather, and temperature into a paragraph which serves as a prompt for an AI image generator. It also uses data gathered from various APIs to determine points of interest in the immediate area, and feeds those into the prompt as well. It then generates an artificial image that is intended to bear some resemblance to the prompt, and ideally, the real-world scene. In place of a lens, it bears a 3D printed structure inspired by the star-nosed mole, which feels its way around in lieu of using its eyes.

Three dials on the Paragraphica control its action. The first dial controls the radius of the area which the prompt will gather data about; it’s akin to setting the focal length of the lens. The second dial provides a noise seed value for the AI image generator, and the third dial controls how closely the AI sticks to the generated textual prompt.

The results are impressive, if completely false and generated from scratch. The Paragraphica generates semi-believable photos of a crowded alley, a public park, and a laneway full of parked cars. It’s akin to telling a friend where you are and what you’re seeing over the phone, and having them paint a picture based on that description.

Through their unique abilities and stolen data sets, AI image generators are proving controversial to say the least. As all good art does, Paragraphica explores this and raises new questions of its own.

This Week In Security: Barracuda, Zyxel, And The Backdoor

June 2, 2023 by Jonathan Bennett 12 Comments

Barracuda’s Email Security Gateway (ESG) has had a vulnerability in it for years. Tracked as CVE-2023-2868, this one was introduced back in version 5.1.3.001, and only got patched during the 9.2 development cycle. Specific build information on patched firmware has not been made available, but a firmware build containing the patch was deployed on May 20.

The flaw was a command injection bug triggered by .tar files attached to incoming emails. The appliance scans attachments automatically, and the file names could trigger the qx operator in a Perl script. It’s a nasty one, ranking a 9.4 on the CVSS scale. But the really bad news is that Barracuda found the vulnerability in the wild, and they have found evidence of exploitation as far back as October 2022.

There have been three malware modules identified on the compromised appliances. SALTWATER is a backdoor trojan, with the ability to transfer files, execute commands, and host network tunnels. SEASPY is a stealthier module, that looks like a legitimate service, and uses PCAP to monitor traffic and receive commands. And SEASIDE is a Lua module for the Barracuda SMTP monitor, and it exists to host a reverse shell on command. Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) have been published, and Barracuda recommends the unplug-and-remove approach to cleaning up an infection. The saving grace is that this campaign seems to have been targeted, and wasn’t launched against every ESG on the Internet, so maybe you’re OK.

Moxa, Too

And speaking of security software that has problems, the Moxa MXsecurity appliance has a pair of problems that could be leveraged together to lead to a complete device takeover. The most serious problem is a hard coded credential, that allows authentication bypass for the web-API. Then the second issue is a command-line escape, where an attacker with access to the device’s Command Line Interface (CLI) can break out and run arbitrary commands. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Barracuda, Zyxel, And The Backdoor” →

Is MINIX Dead? And Does It Matter?

June 2, 2023 by Jenny List 51 Comments

Is MINIX dead? OSnews is sounding its death-knell, citing evidence from the operating system’s git log that its last updates happened as long ago as 2018. Given that the last news story on the MINIX website is from 2016 and the last release version, 3.3, came out in 2014, it appears they they may have a point. But perhaps it’s more appropriate to ask not whether or not MINIX is dead, but whether indeed it matters that the venerable OS appears no longer in development. It started as an example to teach OS theory before becoming popular in an era when there were no other inexpensive UNIX-like operating systems for 16-bit microcomputers, but given that its successors such as Linux-based operating systems have taken its torch and raced ahead, perhaps its day has passed.

No doubt many of you will now be about to point out that MINIX lives on unexpectedly baked into the management engine core on Intel microprocessors, and while there’s some debate as to whether that’s still the case, you may have a point. But the more important thing for us isn’t whether MINIX is still with us or even whether it’s a contender, but what it influenced and thus what it was responsible for. This is being written on a GNU/Linux operating system, which has its roots in [Linus Torvalds]’ desire to improve on… MINIX.

Read more about the tangled web of UNIX-like operating systems here.

A white Wii console sits on a grey table in the vertical orientation with its front facing the camera and its back away from the camera at a slight angle to the right. Next to it is a 2x sized replica which dwarfs the diminutive console. A purple light runs across the back edge of the table.

Wii XL Is Twice As Nice

June 2, 2023 by Navarre Bartz 17 Comments

The Wii was a relatively small console when it released, but it packed a big punch when it came to its game library and the impact it had on the industry. [Bringus Studios] wanted a Wii that physically matched the grandeur of one of Nintendo’s greatest successes, and built the Wii XL.

Basing the scale of this console around an 80 mm case fan, the final product has twelve times the volume of the original Wii. This leaves plenty of room for an unmodified original Wii, its power brick, and all the various cables and adapters necessary to bring the ports to the exterior of the case. To power the fan, [Bringus Studios] designed his first PCB to leach power off one of the USB connectors while still allowing data to pass through.

Given the size constraints of his 3D printers, he used melamine MDF for the sides and had to print the other panels in multiple pieces, resulting in some gapping in the front panel where the prints peeled off the print bed. We really love the use of a modular design that leaves room for future improvements, since no project is ever truly done.

Power is routed through a figure eight power connector on the outside to a female two prong plug on the inside while USB and HDMI are routed out the back via a combination panel connector intended for RV and boat use. If you don’t remember the Wii having HDMI out, that’s because it didn’t, but HDMI adapters are easy to come by for the machine.

In case you want to see more supersized projects checkout this giant XBox Series X or ponder if it would’ve been better with an enormous 555.

Continue reading “Wii XL Is Twice As Nice” →