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... what a world.


Please don't rely on my judgement for this being safe for production, but after blacklisting the modules, the provided python exploit failed.

Check if the following are modules

  grep CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API /boot/config-$(uname -r)
If they are, you can try blacklisting them

  /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-crypto-user-api.conf
  
  """
  blacklist af_alg
  blacklist algif_hash
  blacklist algif_skcipher
  blacklist algif_rng
  blacklist algif_aead

  install af_alg /bin/false
  install algif_hash /bin/false
  install algif_skcipher /bin/false
  install algif_rng /bin/false
  install algif_aead /bin/false
  """

  update-initramfs -u
Can anyone comment on the ramifications this?


If iwd, or cryptsetup with certain non-default algorithms, isn't being used on the system, you should be fine. Not many programs use AF_ALG. It's possible there are others I'm not aware of, but it's quite rare.

To be clear, general-purpose Linux distros generally can't disable these kconfig options yet, due to these cases. But there are many Linux systems that simply don't need this functionality.

A good project for someone to work on would be to fix iwd and cryptsetup to always use userspace crypto, as they should.


is CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API needed for hw acceleration for cryptsetup (dm-crypt) disk encryption ?


No, dm-crypt just calls the kernel's crypto code directly.


I can’t comment on the ramifications, except to note that elsewhere in the thread this appears to not break anything (whether it makes userspace crypto a little less safe is academic, but that doesn’t matter if we have an easy local root shell), but I can verify the above fix does protect Ubuntu 24.04 from the exploit.

Just reboot after applying this change.


Or

  zgrep CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API /proc/config.gz


Is it built as a module in most distros?


It is built as a module in Debian.

lsmod shows it is not loaded on any of the Trixie or Bookworm machines I have checked, Intel or AMD.


FYI it's dynamically loaded on demand, so lsmod will show it after you try run the exploit, or you can explicitly load it with:

  modprobe algif_aead
The following mitigation (from the article) does work for Debian 12 and 13, I've tested this:

  echo "install algif_aead /bin/false" > /etc/modprobe.d/disable-algif.conf
  rmmod algif_aead 2>/dev/null || true
First line blocks it from loading, second line is unloading it if it's already been loaded. You can test with the same "modprobe algif_aead".


The point of noting whether it is loaded on their machine or not, is presumably to indicate that it is not normally loaded (for them), so disabling it to block the exploit should have no impact (for them).


It was loaded on my Ubuntu system so I wonder what used it.


As I understands any program code can use that socket to write to page cache memory and modify any main program. Even php code can be written for that. So it is serious problem if there is other security hole on web server.


over 500 servers with very varied workload i manage didn't had this module loaded so my guess is "near zero"

also only algif_aead is vulnerable


> the whole thing being built on copyright infringement

I am not a lawyer, but am generally familiar with two "is it fair use" tests.

1. Is it transformative?

I take a picture, I own the copyright. You can't sell it. But if you take a copy, and literally chop it to pieces, reforming it into a collage, you can sell that.

2. Does the alleged infringing work devalue the original?

If I have a conversation with ai about "The Lord of the Rings". Even if it reproduces good chunks of the original, it does not devalue the original... in fact, I would argue, it enhances it.

Have I failed to take into account additional arguments and/or scenarios? Probably.

But, in my opinion, AI passes these tests. AI output is transformative, and in general, does not devalue the original.


In order for LLM to be useful, you need to copy and steal all of the work. Yes, you can argue you don't need the whole work, but that's what they took and feed it in.

And they are making money off of other people's work. Sure, you can use mental jiujutsu to make it fair use. But fair use for LLMs means you basically copy the whole thing. All of it. It sounds more like a total use to me.

I hope the free market and technology catches up and destroys the VC backed machinery. But only time will tell.


I always wonder if anyone out there thinks they're not making money off of other people's work. If you're coding, writing a fantasy novel, taking a photograph or drawing a picture from first principals you came up with yourself I applaud you though.


You are absolutely right.

Seriously though, I do think that is the case. It would be self-righteous to argue otherwise. It's just the scale and the nature of this, that makes it so repulsive. For my taste, copying something without permission, is stealing. I don't care what a judge somewhere thinks of it. Using someone's good will for profit is disgusting. And I hope we all get to profit from it someday, not just a select few. But that is just my opinion.


This kind of thinking seems like a road for people to have to pay a license for the rest of their life after going to school for the knowledge they "stole" from their textbooks.


Except the school paid royalties for that specific book. Every book. The money was distributed. Writers, publishers and so on. The normal stuff.

Or if you had to buy the book yourself, same thing, distributed, royalties paid.


So your complaint is that they didn't pay for training data by buying every book found online?

That does seem more reasonable, but makes public libraries also evil.


Except the libraries pay the fees of the books, they only serve a dedicated local region of people and by loaning a book, you will know the author of the book.

For LLMs the transformative part is then removing the copyright info and serving it to you as OpenAI whatever.

Sure, you can query multiple books at the same time and the technology is godlike. But the underlying issue remains. Without the original content, the LLM is useless. Someone took all the books, feed them in and didn't pay anything back to the authors.

I'm not sure whether arguing in good faith here. This information you could easily check for yourself too. The problem is not the information itself. It's the massive machinery that steals all the works and one day we are staring at the paywall. And the artists are still not funded. I'd rather just do something nice offline in the future.


I'm talking about the knowledge people "steal" by reading. LLMs and humans both absorb knowledge by reading. You want to tax using that knowledge that was absorbed.

It will be applied to people soon after.


This reminds me of what happened around the time I hit year 3 in school. You could no longer buy used textbooks like everyone did from time immemorial because there was online drm making sure you had the latest textbook to take the latest quiz. I'm sure it's got even worse in the 20 years since.


I understand but I think this will be quite a quaint idea soon in all honesty. Imagine these things are able to progress the world of science, math, physics, and whatever else (they already are) and we stopped them because someone didn't make enough royalties first. That to me would be more repulsive. We stop/slow the progress of all humanity because there wasn't enough temporary gain for x individual who wrote y book. And if it all turns out to be bogus nonsense then I doubt x individual who wrote y book loses much in the process anyway.


Yeah, it's not an easy puzzle piece. How far are we going to go in the name of science and progress again? Are you buying it, that it's all for the greater good? Quite a lot of money involved here. Everyone wants a piece of it. But I digress. Dropping the big bomb, stealing the lands and riches of the natives, using slaves and colonies to power the whole civilization into a new era might be powerful and efficient. But it doesn't make it right. I don't buy the narrative. Do no evil until you can no longer say no?


I think comparing intellectual property theft to slavery and stealing land is where I start leaning towards the argument being absurd. The stolen books are still on store shelves. People are likely still buying them at about the same rate as before.

And as far as it being for the greater good that seems to be the promise of many of these companies. What will inevitably get in the way is greed and money, the very same reasons we're arguing about IP theft. Good or bad I see no way out of this but through at this point.


And in Bartz v. Anthropic, the court found that Anthropic training their LLMs on books was "highly transformative."


The US is not the only legal jurisdiction these services are being sold in.


This is a tiresome and well trod road.

The fact of the matter is that for profit corporations consumed the sum knowledge of mankind with the intent to make money on it by encoding it into a larger and better organized corpus of knowledge. They cited no sources and paid no fees (to any regular humans, at least).

They are making enormous sums of money (and burning even more, ironically) doing this.

If that doesn't violate copyright, it violates some basic principle of decency.


You are assuming intellectual property has intrinsic basis when it's at best functional not foundational. It's only useful if the net value to society is positive which is extremely dubious.


I'm assuming human creativity has intrinsic value, or what's the point of being human?


You are assuming that somehow human creativity was born with intellectual property and will somehow die with it. It's just not so.


Ok captain pedant, instead of making vague handwavey negations exclusively how about you say something.


Intellectual property is supposed to feed creativity by securing for creators exclusive rights to benefit from their creation. It mostly feeds uncreative leaches whose business it is to own things in exchange for crumbs for the creativity and drags down both the inherent enjoyment of the fruits of creativity and even its creation. It belonged in the bin back when we first thought of it as is only going to be more unfit for purpose as time goes on.


What in the mental gymnastics?

They just stole everyone's hard work over decades to make this or it wouldn't have been useful at all.


That's a statement. The comment you are replying to had actual reasoning behind his claim. Do you have any actual reasoning behind yours?


Let's not ignore the entirety of reality and what has been going on for the last few years to defend a pestilence on mankind you probably have stock invested in. I'm not going to acknowledge how insane of an argument that is you're making. It's like you heard of zero leaks, zero law suits, zero open source complaints. Zero anything. Just either intentionally or unintentionally astroturfing.

Thanks.


Still my all time favorite snippet of code.

    TC    BANKCALL    # TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE
    CADR  STOPRATE    # TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE
    TC    DOWNFLAG    # PERMIT X-AXIS OVERRIDE
https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/blob/master/Luminar...


It's reference in The Codeless Code - https://thecodelesscode.com/case/234


Cadr here has no relation with lisp cadr, right?


Correct.

CADR is an AGC assembly directive defining a "complete address" including a memory bank, in this case a subroutine to be called by the preceding BANKCALL (TC = transfer control, i.e., store return address and jump to subroutine), which switches to the memory bank specified in the CADR before jumping to the address specified in the CADR.

For a brief explanation of AGC subroutine calls, see [1].

CAR and CDR in Lisp come from the original implementation on the IBM 704, where pointers to the two components of a cons cell were stored as the (C)ontents of the (A)ddress and (D)ecrement fields of a (R)egister (memory word).

(CADR x) is just shorthand for (CAR (CDR x)), i.e., a function that returns the second element of a list (assuming x is a well-formed list).

[1] https://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/inostr-yazyki/American_...



Can you explain this to me?


I think the point was the comments more than any of the code requiring explanation. There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution


Wish I could... but I know of it from a previous HN post, where there is some discussion on its purpose.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367416


I'm having a really bad Mandala effect right now where I remember some XKCD that wrote a poem about this. Maybe I'm thinking of another comic.


Oh, it's Mandala effect now? I could swear it was Mandela before.


I think it was Madnela?


It was definitely Madalaine.


Are you thinking of "The Codeless Code" poem about this?

https://www.thecodelesscode.com/case/234


From the Editor’s note:

“I tried to keep to Shelley’s unusual (and non-standard) rhyme scheme for the sonnet, but I departed from it in the second-to-last line for poetic reasons. For a language which excels in stealing words from other cultures, English has an appalling lack of rhymes.”

Perhaps with deeper analysis, and a few choice new words this issue could be remedied.

Although that’s a paradoxically tedious engineering solution to improve a languages beauty.

From another angle how comes other languages are more poetic, are they older and have had more time to evolve to be more poetic? Or were the speakers who wrought the language just more poetic.


Yes! Thank you!


People who dedicate their lives to studying an industry, can get very good at being able to predict the probability of events in their domain.

These same people are commonly off by orders of magnitude when predicting the magnitude of these same events.

The author of this article won the "Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting". I'm going to infer from this, that he's better at political reporting, than he is at predicting the future of an entire industry.

And if he is truly convinced of this outcome, he should be shorting the airlines. (I'm gonna guess he hasn't done that).

(edit: syntax)


I grew up with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, by far, in my opinion, the most accurate representation of the stories.

Only in my adult life did I read the stories, finding large chunks of the dialog in the TV show being word for word taken from the stories. And when not word for word, the tone and feel of the scenes so well portrayed on screen.


It was incredibly well-done TV (my fave) and we have Brett's dedication to the character and ITV's Granada (not BBC) (and PBS here in the US) to thank for it.

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


> I grew up with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, by far, in my opinion, the most accurate representation of the stories.

Yeah, I grew up watching that on PBS Mystery! and love it. I rewatched some of it as an adult and it holds up very well.

I also really liked David Suchet's Poirot. I still have yet to watch the last few seasons though.


Suchet's Poirot is definitely good, but I should point out that it is produced by ITV not BBC (their long term rival). My mother used to watch it, so I'm very familiar with it thanks to her.

However, I've never been much enamoured with the Miss Marple adaptations. Joan Hickson's is maybe the best (even though I prefer Geraldine McEwan as an actress) but I never took to it like Poirot.

You might like the nineties Jeeves and Wooster which stars Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie (of House fame) as Bertie Wooster. It is formulaic but fun. I think it's the best thing Stephen Fry ever did.


Oh my family watched Jeeves and Wooster up until my dad learned of Stephen Fry's legal issues and it became banned in the house lol (evangelical extremist family).


Brett's Sherlock Holmes is definitely the definitive one in my book.

There is a Soviet version of Sherlock Holmes which is surprisingly good starring Vasily Livanov. The locations sometimes don't quite look like England etc, but I really enjoyed it.


Wow, a Soviet Sherlock Holmes. That's endearingly bizarre.


I have put up a thread about Soviet Sherlock Holmes with a link to the subtitles episodes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377242


Not completely. The Soviet Union did adapt a lot of classic literature alongside the more obvious Communist propaganda you'd expect. I think they used the old town of Riga in Latvia to film the London scenes. I have heard that the Russians still show these films every Christmas.

There are subtitled versions available online. Here is a short clip (with Sarabande over it)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Flnlb5ITNQ

I am a great fan of Brett's version, which I think is the best ever made. But I think the Soviet version is fantastic, considering it was made behind the Iron Curtain. There have, of course, been some awful Sherlock Holmes films but that's another matter.


I was researching some Doctor Who stuff recently and it seems to be very popular on vk. I didn't not expect the time lord to have a Russian following.


If you can track it down, Hendrix's home recordings are a gem.

https://jimihendrixrecordguide.com/home-recordings/

(edit: syntax)


I like how the phone rings in the background on Gypsy Eyes. Wonder who called?

Voodoo Chile lyrics: "on the night I was born the moon turned fire red".

Poetic license? Stellarium reveals on the early evening of November 27, 1942 in Seattle, the moon was low on the horizon - just 25 degrees altitude at 5:30pm, directly East. The sun set at 5pm. While not a full moon it was 85%, so I'm calling it! The moon may have glowed a warm orange-red on the night (of the day) Hendrix was born.



Thank you for this. I lost that CD years ago.


one of my favorites

https://xkcd.com/221/


Around 2001 I was working at Broadcom's networking division in San Jose. The switch chip we were working on (10Gbps x 8 ports) was understaffed and we hired a contractor at $120/hr to do verification of the design. He was pretty young, but he came across as confident and capable, and every weekly meeting he was reporting good progress.

Unfortunately we weren't reviewing his work, just trusting his reports, as we were overworked getting our own parts done. After a three months of this I said to the project lead: something smells wrong, because he hasn't filed a single bug against my design yet.

So we looked at his code, lots of files and lots of code written, all of it plumbing and test case generation, but he hadn't built the model of the chip's behavior. At the heart of it was a function which was something like:

    bool verify_pins(...) {
       return true;
    }
We asked him what was going on, and he said he was in over his head and had been putting off the hard part. Every morning was lying to himself that that was the day we was going to finally start tackling building the model for the DUT. His shame seemed genuine. My boss said: we aren't paying you for the last pay period, just go away and we won't sue you.

My boss and I literally slept at work for a month, with my boss building the model and fixing other TB bugs, and I addressed the RTL bugs in the DUT as he found them.


Revealing AI is a tool, and like any other tool, its how you use it.

If you use it with the express intent to learn, it is an amazing tool.

If you use it as a crutch, it results in "learning avoidance".


I wish I could remember where I picked up this quote

> No project manager ever got promoted for saying "let's keep things the same".


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