Daily Tech News 10 August 2024

• Users are fleeing X (formerly Twitter) in droves and signing up for Threads (Meta's, which is to say Facebook's, Twitter clone), except that not a single word of that is true. (Tech Crunch)
  
  In an article that looks suspiciously like legitimate reporting, Tech Crunch looks at claims circulating on Threads, finds them false, and spills the beans.
  
  In reality Twitter's user base is growing, and Threads is stagnant at best.

• A critical security vulnerability affects almost all AMD processors built since 2006. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It only affects systems that have already been hacked at the kernel level, so you don't need to worry. If you're using cloud servers, you don't need to worry, because they don't allow root-level access.
  
  But if you are using dedicated servers in a datacenter - which I am - this is potentially a nasty problem. To guarantee a previously used system is clean the datacenter would need to directly rewrite the BIOS using a debug cable.
  
  AMD has already issued updates for pretty much all their CPUs, so this reduces the scope of the problem signficantly.
  
  
  
• Tim Peters, a core member of the Python development team, has been suspended under the project's Code of Conduct for raising concerns about the Code of Conduct. (The Register)
  
  We did warn you.
  
  
  
• A 512-bit RSA key gave a user access to an entire network of home energy systems. (Ars Technica)
  
  512-bit RSA keys were first broken by researchers in 1999, and by 2015 could be broken by anyone for a few dollars in a few hours. I've been using 4096-bit RSA keys for years.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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