mafriese

I posted a comment on the announcement when it was posted here:

As someone who is working in incident response and malware analysis I have to say that is one of the worst ideas I have ever seen. A lot of companies have issues with ClickFix [1] and other social engineering campaigns and now Google wants to teach users that they should scan QR codes to proceed on a website.

How should we realistically teach Susan from HR the difference between a real Google Captcha QR code and a malicious phishing QR code - you (realistically) can't. I wish we could - but those people don't work in tech, they will never know and I can't really blame them because at the end of the day they are just happy that they don't have to deal with tech after work.

We have spent years of behavioural conditioning to prevent QR-code based phishing attacks (some people call it Quishing but I hate that term) and since the QR code is being scanned from a mobile device (99.99% of the time the private device), we have no EDR visibility on those devices and can't track what's happening if people scan it.

This is more of an invitation for threat actors than it is something that holds them back.

[1] https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/what-is-clickfix/53348/

As someone who is working in incident response and malware analysis I have to say that is one of the worst ideas I have ever seen.

A lot of companies have issues with ClickFix [1] and other social engineering campaigns and now Google wants to teach users that they should scan QR codes to proceed on a website.

How should we realistically teach Susan from HR the difference between a real Google Captcha QR code and a malicious phishing QR code - you (realistically) can't. I wish we could - but those people don't work in tech, they will never know and I can't really blame them because at the end of the day they are just happy that they don't have to deal with tech after work.

We have spent years of behavioural conditioning to prevent QR-code based phishing attacks (some people call it Quishing but I hate that term) and since the QR code is being scanned from a mobile device (99.99% of the time the private device), we have no EDR visibility on those devices and can't track what's happening if people scan it.

This is more of an invitation for threat actors than it is something that holds them back.

[1] https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/what-is-clickfix/53348/

From my experience OpenAI has become very sensitive when it comes to using their tools for security research. I am using MCP servers for tools like IDA Pro or Ghidra (for malware analysis) and recently received a warning:

OpenAI's terms and policies restrict the use of our services in a number of areas. We have identified activity in your OpenAI account that is not permitted under our policies for: - Cyber Abuse

I raised an appeal which got denied. To be fair I think it's close to impossible for someone that is looking at the chat history to differenciate between legitimate research and malicious intent. I have also applied for the security research program that OpenAI is offering but didn't get any reply on that.

I’m not saying that this is related to Wikipedia ditching archive.is but timing in combination with Russian messages is at least…weird.

From the conclusion

Importantly, this work also highlights the defensive implications of such techniques. While Secure Boot and firmware integrity mechanisms would prevent this attack chain when correctly enforced, the explicit requirement for users to disable Secure Boot demonstrates how social and usability tradeoffs continue to undermine otherwise effective platform defenses.

maybe it's a mix of both :)

You can define the tools that agents are allowed to use in the opencode.json (also works for MCP tools I think). Here’s my config: https://pastebin.com/PkaYAfsn

The models can call each other if you reference them using @username.

This is the .md file for the manager : https://pastebin.com/vcf5sVfz

I hope that helped!

Nope it isn’t. I did it as a joke initially (I also had a version where every 2 stories there was a meeting and if a someone underperformed it would get fired). I think there are multiple reasons why it actually works so well:

- I built a system where context (+ the current state + goal) is properly structured and coding agents only get the information they actually need and nothing more. You wouldn’t let your product manager develop your backend and I gave the backend dev only do the things it is supposed to and nothing more. If an agent crashes (or quota limits are reached), the agents can continue exactly where the other agents left off.

- Agents are ”fighting against” each other to some extend? The Architect tries to design while the CAB tries to reject.

- Granular control. I wouldn’t call “the manager” _a deterministic state machine that is calling probabilistic functions_ but that’s to some extent what it is? The manager has clearly defined tasks (like “if file is in 01_design —> Call Architect)

Here’s one example of an agent log after a feature has been implemented from one of the older codebases: https://pastebin.com/7ySJL5Rg

Ok it might sound crazy but I actually got the best quality of code (completely ignoring that the cost is likely 10x more) by having a full “project team” using opencode with multiple sub agents which are all managed by a single Opus instance. I gave them the task to port a legacy Java server to C# .NET 10. 9 agents, 7-stage Kanban with isolated Git Worktrees.

Manager (Claude Opus 4.5): Global event loop that wakes up specific agents based on folder (Kanban) state.

Product Owner (Claude Opus 4.5): Strategy. Cuts scope creep

Scrum Master (Opus 4.5): Prioritizes backlog and assigns tickets to technical agents.

Architect (Sonnet 4.5): Design only. Writes specs/interfaces, never implementation.

Archaeologist (Grok-Free): Lazy-loaded. Only reads legacy Java decompilation when Architect hits a doc gap.

CAB (Opus 4.5): The Bouncer. Rejects features at Design phase (Gate 1) and Code phase (Gate 2).

Dev Pair (Sonnet 4.5 + Haiku 4.5): AD-TDD loop. Junior (Haiku) writes failing NUnit tests; Senior (Sonnet) fixes them.

Librarian (Gemini 2.5): Maintains "As-Built" docs and triggers sprint retrospectives.

You might ask yourself the question “isn’t this extremely unnecessary?” and the answer is most likely _yes_. But I never had this much fun watching AI agents at work (especially when CAB rejects implementations). This was an early version of the process that the AI agents are following (I didn’t update it since it was only for me anyway): https://imgur.com/a/rdEBU5I

I am still torn on this issue. On the one hand, it feels like a copyright violation when other people's works are used to train an ML model. On the other hand, it is not a copyright infringement if I paint a picture in the Studio Ghibli style myself. The question is whether removing a ‘skill requirement’ for replication is sufficient grounds to determine a violation.

I never doubted that it's possible but it's way harder than identifying bank accounts. There is a massive business behind crypto tracking, that's why companies like MasterCard have acquired CipherTrace. Some years ago there was a really good article / case study from them. I think it was related to a ransomware gang and they were able to identify the threat actor's wallets through crypto tumblers and chain hopping. It's just a matter of how much money and time are you willing to invest into finding out and not a matter of possibility.

You can easily establish the connection from a bank account to a person. A connection from a crypto wallet to a person is extremely difficult. Money laundering with crypto is also much easier (and cheaper usually).

The threat actor appears to have obtained this information by paying multiple contractors or employees working in support roles outside the United States to collect information from internal Coinbase systems to which they had access in order to perform their job responsibilities

Based on the information present in the breach, I think it's likely that the source was their customer support in the Philippines. Monthly salary is usually < 1000$/month (entry-level probably even less than 500$) and a 5000$ bribe could be more than a year worth of money, tax-free. Considering the money you can make with that dataset now, this is just a small investment.

•Name, address, phone, and email; •Masked Social Security (last 4 digits only); •Masked bank-account numbers and some bank account identifiers; •Government‑ID images (e.g., driver’s license, passport); •Account data (balance snapshots and transaction history); and •Limited corporate data (including documents, training material, and communications available to support agents).

This is every threat actor's dream. Even if you only had email addresses and account balances, this is a nightmare. Instead of blackmailing the company, you can now blackmail each individual user. "Send me 50% of your BTC and I won't publish all of your information on the internet". My guess is that we will have a similar situation like we had with the Vastaamo data breach...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vastaamo_data_breach

This is perfect advertising for the Ladybird browser. I hope that some of the developers (if this really goes live on the release channel) will join other projects. I can understand that Mozilla needs money, but I don't think this feature fits with Firefox and what it stands for.

Is this in any way better than eza? https://github.com/eza-community/eza

The website uses "Enter your 6-digit authentication code" as an example and then shows a 4-digit auth code in the text field https://imgur.com/a/u4STHPe

https://github.com/mafriese/scarecrow Can upload any files you want there. Direct DL for one of the files: https://github.com/mafriese/scarecrow/raw/main/autoruns.exe

This "thing" is always spawning 3 processes at the time. The processes are always the ones from the virustotal link. I can upload the DLL to a file sharing service of your choice if you don't have a VT premium license. I can also provide an any.run link: https://app.any.run/tasks/bc557b04-5025-46a1-a683-aad3b29b9a... (installer) https://app.any.run/tasks/e257e7f2-7837-4ed1-93c8-5d617d75cc... (zip file containing the files). Let me know if you need further info :).

I don't understand why the software is built how it's built. Why would you want to implement licensing in the future for a software product that only creates fake processes and registry keys from a list: https://pastebin.com/JVZy4U5i . The limitation to 3 processes and license dialog make me feel uncomfortable using the software. All the processes are 14.1MB in size (and basically the scarecrow_process.dll - https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/83ea1c039f031aa2b05a082c...). I just don't understand why you create such a complex piece of software if you can just use a Powershell script that does exactly the same using less resources. The science behind it only kinda makes sense. There is some malware that is using techniques to check if there are those processes are running but by no means is this a good way to keep you protected. Most common malware like credential stealers (redline, vidar, blahblah) don't care about that and they are by far the most common type of malware deployed. Even ransomware like Lockbit doesn't care, even if it's attached to a debugger. I think this mostly creates a false sense of security and if you plan to grow a business out of this, it would probably only take hours until there would be an open source option available. Don't get me wrong - I like the idea of creating new ways of defending malware, what I don't like is the way you try to "sell" it.

You guys are getting paid?

Use Bitwarden instead. fixed.

https://bitwarden.com/

Because the 99$/year are for the dev platform and the 15%/30% cut are for using the infrastructure needed for in app purchases.

they do - the first 1m$ only cost 15% - It's btw the same with the Google Play Store

Well... That's the same amount of money you have to give to Google, Microsoft and Amazon if you want to use their services. Google and Apple both take 15% if you make less than 1.000.000$/year. Again - As a user I also don't have a problem with the AppStore monopoly because 1. When I bought the device I knew that I can only use the apps that are available on the AppStore 2. Every time I open the Microsoft Store I'm thankful that the guidelines on iOS are so strict 3. Freedom to install everything you ""want"" has at least the same amount of bad use cases than good ones (usually it's mostly used for modding or piracy).

Honestly as a user I will avoid any app that is trying to offer me a purchase outside the App Store. Users mostly don't care about the issues between the developers and Apple and at least I am willing to pay more for my IAPs and be able to use Apple as my payment processor (sure - I can pay with Apple Pay but switching to another app for paying is a step more than needed).

yep

I think the problem with emojis is that everyone has the same options to pick from - if you have stickers you can express yourself in a way that fits more your own style(?)

Your app feels really clean! I like the dropping buttons when you want to delete a sticker and the sticker effect when you view a sticker and you pull it up or down. iCloud Sync also works like a charm! Hope you manage to get Whatsapp support in the near future ;)

I notice that you have no one in your circle of acquaintances who has illegally downloaded movies about torrents and got caught. I don't know how it is in other countries, but here in Germany friendly people ring your doorbell and take everything that is connected to electricity :). And if there is any data in there that is very damaging to Intel, then I think they will take the trouble to look for these people (at least in certain countries)

That's exactly what I'm thinking! Further I can't find the EULA of the app on the internet - maybe I'll find it later. But I could bet that they sell the data for marketing purposes. And I could also bet that they removed Facebook not because they don't want to use it but because they had to implement Sign in with Apple which would result in the Data being not so valuable because the standard option is to obfuscate the mail address.