Daily Tech News 6 November 2026

• Well, that's dumb: A configuration flaw in certainly flavours of Linux - most of them uncommon but the list includes OpenWRT and Alpine - allows anyone to log in using SSH to account that explicitly forbid logins. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  You can disable logins in several ways, one of which is to replace the password hash on the account with * - an invalid hash that can never match any password.
  
  A patch to OpenSSH in 2016 made it always try to hash the password even though it knew there was no way it could match, to prevent sidechain attacks.
  
  And then it all went wrong:

  The problem is that the musl C library's crypt() function also returns * when password hashing fails, including when a submitted password exceeds its 256-byte limit.

  Because null is too hard.

  This means an attacker can submit an oversized password and cause OpenSSH to compare the returned * against the account's stored *, resulting in a successful login.

  Ouch.
  
  It isn't open season; the bug is more specific than that. But the default AWS template for Alpine Linux is affected.

• Well, that's dumb, and worthy of dismissal for cause: Several staffers at the White House are using personal electronic devices with VPN exit nodes running on them. (Krebs on Security)
  
  A lot of paid services block known VPNs, so VPNs pay users to host exit nodes on their residential devices that aren't blocked.
  
  Bringing such a device to work when you work at the White House is beyond retarded.
  
  
  
• Oops: Paraguay just went bankrupt. (AP)
  
  Or at least its largest bank did, holding accounts for 60% of the country's adult population. The crisis has the Paraguayan president's fingerprints all over it, and he's unlikely to survive. And I don't just mean politically.
  
  
  
• Well, that's dumb, but also expected: Congressthing Yassamin Ansari has called for a ban on artificial superintelligence, something that doesn't exist and isn't even defined. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, that was easy. Why don't you ban unicorns while you're at it?
  
  
  
• NASA has announced its X-70 experimental aircraft. (NASA)
  
  With a computer-generated image shrouded in computer-generated mist.

  The X-70 Fractal has a takeoff weight of 10,000 pounds and is designed to cruise at Mach .75.

  Smol.
  
  Also, slo.
  
  
  
• Claude has been tuned to be less obstreperous when tasked with helping to create a game that resembles another game in some respects. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Direct copying of copyrighted stuff is still out - Anthropic doesn't want to get sued... Again - but referencing an existing game in a spec no longer triggers the restriction.
  
  
  
• SpaceX plans to build more datacenter capacity over the next 18 months than Google. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  To be clear, more than Google has, ever.
  
  
  
• Relativity: My order from the local hardware store arrived. On a pallet. Half a ton of it. About (let's see) one and a half cubic yards of pine bark mulch, plus ten big bags of potting mix for Australian native plants which don't like the regular stuff, and various other gardeny items.
  
  My knees hurt already.
  
  Anyway, total cost was about the same as a 2TB SSD these days.
  
  Also the rest of the plants I ordered online showed up. Not as tall as the ones I got previously but intact and healthy. Pink and purple bottlebreesh included.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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