Daily Tech News 14 October 2021

• No, airdropped NFTs cannot empty your crypto wallet. (CoinDesk, September 22)
  
  OpenSea bug lets hackers empty crypto wallets with airdropped NFTs. (Bleeping Computer, October 13)
  
  I mean, sort of... I read through the article, and it looks like there's a long series of factors involved:
  
  
1. A hacker mints an NFT with a malicious SVG file attached as the ERC721 metadata image.
   
   
2. They then airdrop this NFT into the wallets of their victims.
   
   
3. OpenSea imports every single NFT across three different blockchains, so the new NFT shows up automatically.
   
   
4. User clicks on the new NFT.
   
   
5. This is surmise on my part, though I don't see how else the rest could happen: Metamask was using the SVG tag rather than the IMG tag when the detected image type was SVG.
   
   
6. The SVG file has embedded JavaScript, and the SVG tag permits the JavaScript to run. (The IMG tag would block it.)
   
   
7. A Metamask (or other wallet) prompt pops up to connect your wallet. User clicks on that was well.
   
   
8. Another Metamask prompt pops up to siphon your funds out of your account. User clicks on that one as well.
   
   
9. All your money is gone.
   
   
The moral of the story seems to be well, don't do that then. Don't allow SVG files, don't use the SVG tag, don't take any wooden airdrops, don't blindly click on Metamask popups, keep your funds separate from your NFTs, and just generally treat the blockchain with the same level of trust and respect as you'd grant a Chicago politician you just caught rifling through your cash register.

• AMD's Radeon RX 6600 is here. (PC Perspective)
  
  It looks like a reasonable card. It's a little slower but a lot cheaper than the Nvidia RTX 3060. In fact, it's by far the cheapest current generation card when looking at actual retail prices rather than suggested prices.
  
  It should fly through any game at 1080p - it's about 40% faster than the Xbox Series S - and it is small, quiet, and power-efficient. It's not really remarkable in terms of performance or value; it's a mid-range card in a market where 100% markups are the norm. But if you just want something to get by for a year or two, it at least won't break the bank.
  
  
  
• I previously mentioned a problem with Windows 11 that caused AMD CPUs to slow down by as much as 15%. Well, the first update has arrived for Microsoft's new operating system and it's made everything much worse. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If you're not being paid to use Windows 11, even if you are generally inclined to upgrade because, I don't know, you want to run Linux GUI apps under Windows, give it a couple of months.
  
  
  
• Nvidia may also be new releasing low-end cards soon. (WCCFTech)
  
  In fact, there's an entire new rumoured product lineup:
  
  
  • RTX 3050
  • RTX 3050 Ti
  • RTX 3060 Super
  • RTX 3070 Ti 16GB
  • RTX 3080 Super
  • RTX 3090 Ti
  
  
  The RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti already exist as laptop parts and have been expected to show up as desktop cards for a while. The 16GB 3070 Ti (or something like it) has been rumoured for quite a while; I mentioned that Nvidia's mid-range is short on memory compared to AMD; the current 3070 Ti has 8GB where the competing RX 6800 has 16GB.
  
  The 3060 Super is a little weird if it is real. The rumoured specs suggest a card with more compute power and RAM than the current 3060 Ti, but less bandwidth. Nvidia doesn't have the large on-chip caches that AMD has, so that will skew benchmark results significantly depending on the game.
  
  
  
• Is your Apple II or Commodore PET getting a bit slow and creaky? The 65F02 is a pin- and binary-compatible replacement CPU that runs at 100MHz. (e-basteln)
  
  It's an entire circuit board - it needs extra chips to convert the old 5V signals to modern logic levels that are closer to 1V - but it it's the same size as the original 40-pin DIP chip and drops straight into the socket.
  
  
  
• Southwest: It was lag! (The Points Guy)
  
  Totally not industrial action. It was the weather. Moonlight reflecting off a weather balloon. Look over there, a monkey!
  
  
  
• Apple: Forcing us to allow sideloading of apps would turn iPhones into pocket PCs. (ZDNet)
  
  "Customers would actually own the devices they pay for! Can you just imagine how terrible that would be? I mean, for us. Fuck the customers. Wait, this is off the record, right?"

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:10 AM

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