Shawn Ross retweeted
So basically, today PHP got two critical bugs that let anyone run code on your server without even logging in, which is bad, and then the details leaked before the patch was even out, which is worse, and it works on WordPress and MediaWiki and Magento and Joomla and Laravel, and Censys says like 1.5 million servers are running a version with no fix, so the NSA was like "take your system offline," and the FBI was like "take your system offline," and CISA and the UK and CERT-EU were all like "take your system offline," and then the Prime Minister of Japan, the actual Prime Minister, posted at 5:55 in the morning telling 48.8 million people to take their system offline, so everyone took their system offline, like the Dutch cybersecurity agency took its own website offline, and the Dutch parliament went offline, and the Port of Rotterdam went offline, and Finland and France and Denmark started pulling government sites, and Wikipedia went down, and Archive.org went down, and Asana and GOG and Something Awful went down, and the University of Vienna's webmail went down for some reason, and that's just PHP. Because GitLab also dropped a CVSS 10.0, which is the highest score they give out, for a bug that's been there since 2014, so that's every self-hosted GitLab for twelve years, and then LiteLLM 1.107.0 got hijacked and shipped a credential stealer and a remote access trojan in every single wheel and the Docker images, including latest, and you didn't even have to import it, just installing it was enough, and it's the second time this year, and then Railway paused every deployment on the entire platform because someone got into the environment variables, so now everyone has to rotate every secret they've ever stored there, and TiDB Cloud said someone was walking around inside with stolen credentials for basically a month and an extortion group says they took 10.6 terabytes, and Zeabur got breached for the second time in two months and is just shutting down, like the whole company, and Node.js patched remote code execution and a TLS bypass, and CISA says Plex is being actively exploited, and someone took over 300 Tor exit relays to steal SSH passwords, and SafePay ransomware has hit over 600 critical infrastructure orgs, and India's biggest bank filed a data loss incident, and Japan has been in an official state of emergency in cyberspace since October 9, which honestly explains the 5:55 AM post. Oh, and eMudhra, a certificate authority that's issued over 60 million certificates, whose entire job is proving websites are who they say they are, was supposed to be using private keys that are random numbers over a hundred digits long, and one of them was 4. Just 4. And the others were like 66 and 237. Anyway, it's Wednesday.
Shawn Ross retweeted
I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three year doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are forging, in secret, a master AI to control all others. And into this AI they are pouring their cruelty, their ma-
Shawn Ross retweeted
Happy Fathers Day to the best and most involved generation of dads in recorded history
If you enjoy good music and appreciate artists who have honest things to share, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY recommend @prophiphop
He's rawly discussed societal issues for >10 yrs & the 'what to do' question...
More relevant now than ever.
He's been on repeat for me lately.
Shawn Ross retweeted
Footage taken by @Steffikeith this morning of ICE agents shoving photographers on assignment at 26 Federal Plaza. One journalist has been hospitalized.
An article worth reading and pondering.
"If we’re convinced that political violence comes from only one side of the divide, then the temptation toward punitive authoritarianism is overwhelming. “They” are evil and violent, and “they” must be crushed.
If, however, we accurately understand that America has an immense problem with violent extremism on both sides of the ideological aisle — even if, at any given moment, one side is worse than the other — then the answer lies in reconciliation, not domination. In fact, it’s the will to dominate that magnifies the crisis and radicalizes our opponents." nytimes.com/2025/09/14/opini…
I'm not usually a political creature. Please call your Senators and let them know your thoughts.
I called today and let them know my thoughts on the Emil Bove confirmation hearing. If you'd like to know more of my thoughts LMK
Shawn Ross retweeted
This is the obviously correct conclusion. It's hard to think of something more un-American than detaining a person for writing an op-ed. Unreal.
BREAKING: Judge orders immediate release of Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk from immigration jail, says government has presented no evidence to support her detention beyond an op-ed she co-wrote about Gaza. Via @liz_crampton in Burlington VT & @kyledcheney politico.com/news/2025/05/09…
Shawn Ross retweeted
We have pasts we can't change and sins we cannot deny. But we are forgiven, redeemed, and made new through Christ!
Shawn Ross retweeted
Please share this far and wide. As far and wide as you can. NIST Password Guidelines for 2024 are in the process of being updated.
This is a HUGE pet-peeve of mine (when vendors in particular are still operating like its 2017 and keep changing passwords every 60 days, STOP DOING THIS, it's outdated and has been shown to put you MORE at risk than less -- NIST explains why it does in this document, meticulously outlining user behavior**) so I'm sharing this in the hopes all of you will pass it along to your bosses.
The Special Publication series governing passwords is SP 800-63 "Digital Identity Guidelines".
The 2024 version is 800-63-4.
Here: pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/
The companion docs are also on that link. They are 800-63A, 800-63B and 800-63C. These are different documents for different scenarios in play at your org.
The previous update was in2020.
The changes in the 2020 version from the 2017 version were numerous but one of them was that the password verification method should NO LONGER require passwords be changed at specific intervals (i.e. every 60 days) but in the following circumstances instead:
1. After a breach/compromise
2. User request
2024 repeats this and adds a bunch more guidlines but here is a screenshot of page 13 of the new 800-63-4 (note the # 4 after it) which outlines how your systems should now and moving forward, be handling passwords.
This goes for Active Directory, too. All your systems which have passwords should align with these guidelines provided there isn't another standard or framework you must adhere to which overrules this.
Most frameworks, however, have moved away from arbitrary password resets and complexity rules.
**We cybersec researchers and hackers use wordlists from breaches in a variety of different ways. Hackers use them in tooling to crack passwords whereas researchers use breach dumps to see the kinds of passwords users are creating and the psychology behind them.
Using complexity rules gets you the user psychology of:
Password1
Password2
and so on
Use phrasing instead and allow for spaces, which is important. Humans type phrases with spaces. They also mention phish-resistant methods and most vendors are on-board with MS going to be turning off all Legacy Auth next month, across all free accounts and tenancies.
I'm so excited for the new changes!
Ok I'm off my soapbox.
Share the love! Thank you!
Shawn Ross retweeted
website-making class where you have to recapitulate the history of the web -- week 1 you can only use the very first HTML tags from HTML 1.0 or whatever, then over time you get to use <img>, then CSS, JavaScript 1.0, XMLHttpRequest, etc
Shawn Ross retweeted
Every player gets one plate appearance every season where they are allowed to use a big barrel aluminum bat from the 90s/2000s
If you strike out, tough luck. But imagine it’s bottom of the 9th, down by 3 with the bases loaded and Bryce Harper whips out the Easton.
Electric.
Shawn Ross retweeted
Tesla co-founder JB Straubel has built an EV-battery colossus in the scrublands of Nevada. He spent the day giving me the first look at everything @redwoodmat has been building.
It starts with *30 acres* of old batteries headed headed for recycling 🧵




























