Xeno Danger Evil @XenoDangerEvil@dpw.social

Have you ever thought about the privacy and security implications of Starlink satellites and cell phones? You're in luck, I've written a new blog post:

"Threat modeling Starlink satellite cellular risks"

https://yawnbox.is/blog/threat-modeling-starlink-satellite-cellular-risks/

"The Satanic Temple will be offering its Hellion Academy of Independent Learning (HAIL) program to elementary school students in Marysville, Ohio as an alternative to the LifeWise Christian one that takes students out of school for 55 minutes a week for religious instruction."

https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5033111-satanic-temple-education-programs-ohio-texas-louisiana-oklahoma/

It costs around $50 million every year to ensure Signal is robust and available all over the world for anyone whenever they need it.

And as a nonprofit, that money comes from all of you; the people who believe that we all deserve a place to speak freely.

https://signal.org/donate/

Threads, Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp all went down today, because they are centralised services owned and run by Meta. When Meta breaks, Meta's services break too.

This doesn't happen on the Fediverse because it is thousands of totally independent servers owned and run by thousands of different people. If one server goes down, the other servers keep running.

This is one of the reasons why decentralisation is so important: it makes networks more resilient through diverse ownership.

@jlepawsky @pluralistic

This reminds me of a story about the French Resistance in WW2. When workers were forced to manufacture parts for tanks, they purposely made the lines on dip sticks too low -- leading to too little oil in the engines of tanks.

The tanks worked fine after being manufactured, but died prematurely on the battlefield as engines seized from a lack of proper lubrication.

Be a "bad dipstick". :)

If you don't already know, now you do (via @pluralistic ): Simple Sabotage for the 21st Century.” https://specificsuggestions.com

A running update to the OG by United States Central Intelligence Agency. 1944. “Simple Sabotage Field Manual.” United States Central Intelligence Agency. Available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

Today's story involved a stupid amount of research. I'm so glad I can share it now.

How Cryptocurrency Turns to Cash in Russian Banks

A financial firm registered in Canada has emerged as the payment processor for dozens of Russian cryptocurrency exchanges and websites hawking cybercrime services aimed at Russian-speaking customers, new research finds. Meanwhile, an investigation into the Vancouver street address used by this company shows it is home to dozens of foreign currency dealers, money transfer businesses, and cryptocurrency exchanges — none of which are physically located there.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/12/how-cryptocurrency-turns-to-cash-in-russian-banks/

teasers:

The 122 services targeted in Sanders’ research include some of the more prominent businesses advertising on the cybercrime forums today, such as:

-abuse-friendly or “bulletproof” hosting providers like anonvm[.]wtf, and PQHosting;
-sites selling aged email, financial, or social media accounts, such as verif[.]work and kopeechka[.]store;
-anonymity or “proxy” providers like crazyrdp[.]com and rdp[.]monster;
-anonymous SMS services, including anonsim[.]net and smsboss[.]pro.

According to Sanders, all 122 of the services he tested are processing transactions through a company called Cryptomus, which says it is a cryptocurrency payments platform based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Cryptomus’ website says its parent firm — Xeltox Enterprises Ltd. (formerly certa-pay[.]com) — is registered as a money service business (MSB) with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC).

Sanders said the payment data he gathered also shows that at least 56 cryptocurrency exchanges are currently using Cryptomus to process transactions, including financial entities with names like casher[.]su, grumbot[.]com, flymoney[.]biz, obama[.]ru and swop[.]is.

These platforms are built for Russian speakers, and they each advertise the ability to anonymously swap one form of cryptocurrency for another. They also allow the exchange of cryptocurrency for cash in accounts at some of Russia’s largest banks — nearly all of which are currently sanctioned by the United States and other western nations.

Number of people who go bankrupt every year because of medical bills or illness-related work loss:

Australia 0
Canada 0
Denmark 0
Finland 0
France 0
Germany 0
Iceland 0
Ireland 0
Italy 0
Japan 0
Netherlands 0
Norway 0
Portugal 0
Spain 0
Sweden 0
UK 0
United States 530,000

There’s a lesson there.

Hey, friends. We’re hiring a software developer.

BookNook is a really awesome place to work. And we do good in the world by helping kids learn how to read and improve their math skills.

If you want to work on the Product team with me and some other really cool folks, check out the post for more info.

https://workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/default/mdf/recruitment/recruitment.html?cid=07e88bb8-0bdb-4356-9bf7-2339d6ea8fe6&ccId=19000101_000001&lang=en_US&jobId=510579&trk=public_post_comment-text

#Job #FediJobs #Dev #Coding #Development #Software #Career

@molly0xfff suspect used multiple programs linked to the anarchist Free Software movement. Suspect also spent inordinate amounts of time configuring his text editor. In hindsight this was a red flag.

if you got arrested after a nationwide manhunt, what would the media pull from your internet activity to make into ominous headlines?

Luigi’s so-called “Manifesto” is more like one paragraph. I dunno why the media is holding back on publishing it, it’s pretty tame and well written.

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

I just watched a program on the successful worldwide effort to defeat smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases in human history.
The last naturally occurring case was reported in 1977.

It should terrify you that anti-science/anti-vaccination halfwits like Robert Kennedy, Jr. will now be influencing American health policy.

https://www.who.int/health-topics/smallpox#tab=tab_1

This is your regular reminder that data brokers, especially Fog Data Sciences, which sells location data from cell phones to cops, must be destroyed: https://www.404media.co/location-data-firm-offers-to-help-cops-track-targets-via-doctor-visits/

Major media outlets have alluded to Luigi Mangione’s manifesto, have it in their possession, and have selectively quoted from it, but refuse to publish it in full. No surprises there.

Well, here it is, courtesy of Ken Klippenstein.

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

The League of Women Voters has a tool for writing Biden and Harris to tell them to direct the U.S. archivist to publish the ERA. Make your voice heard! https://www.lwv.org/take-action/president-must-immediately-publish-equal-rights-amendment

If you’re at that part of your web developer journey where you know enough HTML to be dangerous but haven’t really learned CSS because you tried once and it made you nauseous, then I’ve got a treat for you. This Friday, December 13 at 1 PM PST / 4 PM EDT / 9 PM UTC, I’m going to teach a live, hour-long class that will cover the basics of CSS.

More info here: https://neatnik.net/css-for-beginners/

It should be pretty chill, and hopefully fun, too. The entire internet is invited. Pass it on!

There is another batch of bad abortion-related opsec advice going around, so I'm just going to link to Digital Defense Fund's guide to abortion privacy, which is realistic, practical, and explicit in its threat models: https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy