Chaos Computer Club - archive feed

I will explain and propose to use a storage technology based on a cardinality estimation algorithm called HyperLogLog for the so-called secondary use within the European Health Data Space EU launched the European Health Data Space to make health records of all Europeans accessible from anywhere. The so-called "secondary use" of these data should be made available for research, decision-making, development and innovation. This is a highly privacy-relevant issue as it affects every EU citizen. Over the last few years I have been working on a research project on a similar privacy-relevant problem. I came up with a solution that relies on a cardinality estimation algorithm called HyperLogLog. It stores data in sets in a way that makes it impossible to retrieve individual data items, thus protecting the privacy of social media users. In this lightning talk, I will present the algorithm and propose this technology to be used for the secondary use of the European Health Data Space in order to improve privacy. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/9Y8ZGZ/

You like to tinker with electronics, software or mechanical design in your spare time? 🧑‍💻 And would you like to develop a system as part of a supportive team? 👥💪 This talk invites you to join some devs working on a small open source project. 👋 Our goal is to experiment and play with technology while working together towards a common product. 🚀 The system we develop is a combination of a handheld device to track time spent on tasks and a desktop/mobile app which additionally allows to transfer the records to existing accounting systems. Our primary goal is to learn and practice technologies and exchange ideas with the team. While there is room to experiment, there is a useful product we want to deploy eventually. Some of the technologies currently applied or planed in the project: - ESP32 - KiCAD - Prusa 3D printer - Kotlin - modern C++ - unit tests and continuous integration Visit 👉[🔗 Task Tracker Systems on GitHub](https://github.com/Task-Tracker-Systems)👈! Contact: - 📧 [email protected] - ☎️ DECT 5689 @ 37C3 about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/RV7CMY/

The SerenityOS project has been developing a from-scratch Unix desktop operating system over the past five years. A five-minute look at what that means and why it's interesting. The SerenityOS project has been developing a from-scratch Unix desktop operating system over the past five years. The system has excellent vertical integration, since we write all the software ourselves, from standard library to applications. An important part of the project is the Ladybird Browser, a new cross platform browser that's compatible with large parts of the modern Web. This talk is not only an overview over the project and what we are doing, but also an invitation to our assembly and the project in general. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/TWFWL9/

The new version of the open source event system eventyay is currently being developed and we will release the first version in February. In this lightning talk I will share about the exiting features and AI capabilities we are working on. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/WBRVVN/

We're tackling a key issue in international development cooperation by empowering local change agents with direct funding and a platform to share their data and stories. Our mobile-first solution will combine e-payment and information sharing, addressing an industry-wide challenge. We present an approach to address a fundamental challenge of international development cooperation. Currently, the sector is deeply shaped by a hierarchical North-South structure that influences not only funding flows, but also priorities, methods, tools, and concerns. We want to change this by empowering local change agents. How do we do this? By directing funding flows directly to these individuals, and empowering them to share key data and their own stories - not those created by donors. Our technical solution: a mobile-first solution that combines an e-payment system with information tracks to share relevant information - both data and (micro) stories. This approach has immense potential because it addresses an industry-wide challenge. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/TZ7CE3/

These days, English is the _lingua franca_, the language that “everyone” speaks and understands. But which English? Our common choice is between two different waning empires that have been imposing their culture and voice on the world for the past few centuries. For most audiences, this is a choice between two foreign locales. We need to do better. We can choose another English: an International English. Our choice of language defines the framework for our communication. It defines what’s expressible, and what the defaults are. It limits our expressibility in ways seen and unseen, and subtly hints where our allegiances lie. In this post-Brexit Europe, English is a more neutral choice than it’s ever been. We need to recognise this, and to capitalize on this opportunity to appropriate the language wholesale. In the software we write and the sites we maintain, we can: European English and International English are already supported by the underlying standards and libraries, and it’s up to us to use them, and to own our voice. The English we speak in international contexts does not need to change; we only need to explicitly realise that it is _our_ language, and that it does not need to bow to imperial authorities. Beyond that, I want to change default language of the Internet. Let me tell you how we can do that. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/P7REEC/

High performance computing (HPC) in environmental science is usually associated with research on climate change, investigating the impact of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG) over the next century. Besides these GHGs, there are many other gases and aerosolos in the atmosphere, which have a much more direct and immediate impact on human health: air pollutants. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers air pollution to be the world's single largest environmental health threat, accounting for approximately 7 million deaths worldwide every year. That's why in this talk we want to speak about how the problem of air pollution can be understood and predicted using HPC pollution modeling and its application based on general concepts and our own research. We are Dr. Johannes Bieser and Dr. Martin Ramacher, both working at the Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon in the field of numerical pollution modelling. While Dr. Bieser wrote his Dissertation on emission modelling and its application, Dr. Ramacher wrote his Dissertation on pollutant transport and exposure modelling. In our talk on numerical air quality modelling systems, we want to introduce basic principles and share our personal knowledge in the field of numerical pollution modelling, covering the entire pathway from emissions, transport, transformation and human exposure. Each of these steps relies heavily on large amounts of data from many different sources - satellite data, activity and meta data, measurements and many more - and skills in computer science. By default, environmental scientists are often not trained in computer science and high performance computing which implies a challenge of its own (and allows Nerds like us to excel). Our talk will be enriched with practical, technical and partially political examples to demonstrate the difficulties scientist face during their quest to improve air quality for everyone: from TB of wasted data due to historically grown data formats to counterproductive policy decisions to „improve“ air quality. We’ve seen it all and after participating in the CCC for many years now, we decided to draw attention to some state-of-the science approaches for solving one of the world’s single largest environmental health threats: „air pollution“. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/numerical_air_quality_modeling_systems/

Fordite are polished bits of many layers of hardened enamel car paint. Originally, this car paint was just dumped, until some years ago, when people started to dig them out of the garbage dump, polished them and used them in jewellery. I wrote some code that simulates that process to generate pretty (2D) images and animations. I will quickly show what actual fordite is, then show my early attempts to use the same underlying process to make pretty pictures, describe what is implemented now, show some pretty (abstract) pictures and (if possible) some animations that have been created with it. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/A9REYL/

Smartphones sind in den letzten zehn Jahren zu einem allseits beliebten Angriffsziel geworden, sei es für Stalkerware, Staatstrojaner oder Banking-Malware. In diesem Vortrag wollen wir einen Überblick geben, mit welchen Techniken und Open-Source-Tools man auf Smartphones (unter iOS und Android) auf die Jagd nach Malware gehen kann. Im Anschluss findet ein Workshop mit einem praktischen Teil zum Ausprobieren einiger dieser Techniken statt. Die Qualität von Anleitungen und Einführungen zu Smartphone-Forensik im Internet ist leider sehr durchwachsen: Hier will dir jemand ein buntes Tool verkaufen, hier riecht es nach einem Scam, vielerorts geht es um das, was Strafverfolgungsbehörden machen, nämlich in den Daten fremder Leute wühlen. Stattdessen möchten wir in diesem Vortrag einen strukturierten Überblick geben, welche (öffentlichen) Möglichkeiten es in der einvernehmlichen Smartphone-Forensik mit Open-Source-Tools gibt. Wir zeigen euch, wie man welche Arten von Malware finden kann, welche Spuren sie hinterlassen und wie sich Stalkerware und Staatstrojaner in der Praxis unterscheiden. Um 14:15 findet ein praktischer Workshop statt indem gelerntes aus dem Vortrag umgesetzt werden kann: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/en/event/introduction-to-smartphone-malware-forensics-pract/ about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/einfuhrung_in_smartphone_malware_forensik/

Most social networks use proprietary algorithms to recommend new content and keep you on their platform for as long as possible. Other platforms don't use advanced algorithms, but this can make it difficult to discover new content and communities. What if, instead, everyone could simply build their own transparent open source algorithms and publish them for everyone to use? This is possible on Bluesky using SkyFeed (and other tools) today and this talk shows how that works and why you should care :) about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/S3GEE8/

This talk will explain the Apple Wireless Direct Link protocol, which is the basis for AirPlay and AirDrop. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/QGSENV/

A short introduction into the session that shows how everything works. about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/37c3-lightningtalks/talk/HMAEGD/

In this talk, we delve into the captivating realm of TCP/IP stack fuzzing. As the backbone of internet communication, the TCP/IP stack is a prime target for cyber threats. This presentation will unravel the intricacies of fuzzing techniques applied to several TCP/IP stacks, shedding light on how these methodologies can uncover bugs, crashes and vulnerabilities. From the fundamentals of packet fuzzing to advanced mutation strategies, attendees will gain valuable insights into the proactive ways to fuzz a TCP/IP stack. Whether you're a seasoned cybersecurity professional or a curious enthusiast, this talk promises to be an enlightening journey into the heart of TCP/IP stack security and the crucial role of fuzzing in safeguarding our interconnected world. Our exploration begins with an honest appraisal of traditional fuzzing methodologies that have been applied to TCP/IP stacks before, like ISIC, revealing their inherent limitations, e.g., they can't reach beyond the TCP initial state. Recognizing the need for a more evolved approach, we take a different approach, where we leverage a full-blow active network connection for fuzzing. A key revelation in this journey is the deliberate decision to sidestep the arduous task of constructing a custom TCP/IP stack, a choice rooted in practical considerations. The reluctance to build a bespoke TCP/IP stack leads us to innovative strategies such as embedding hooks in the Linux kernel and tapping into userland TCP/IP stacks like PyTCP, Netstack (part of Google gVisor), and PicoTCP. PicoTCP takes center stage, offering a userland TCP/IP stack that becomes integral to our state fuzzing methodology. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of its architecture, APIs, and documentation, appreciating its pivotal role in fortifying network security. As the presentation unfolds, we navigate through the development of a powerful fuzzer, a core element in our approach to identifying vulnerabilities within the TCP/IP stack. The intricacies of driving traffic through the system, simulating real-world scenarios, and leveraging reproducibility and diagnostics techniques are revealed. The discussion expands to showcase tangible results, including trophies obtained, bugs reported, and the eventual release of the project on GitHub. The session concludes with an engaging Q & A, encouraging participants to delve into the intricacies of TCP/IP stack fuzzing and its profound implications for network security. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/fuzzing_the_tcp_ip_stack/

Karl Lauterbach und die EU-Kommission haben eines gemeinsam. Beide wollen in Windeseile die Digitalisierung des Gesundheitssektors voranbringen. Die elektronische Patientenakte soll im Januar 2025 für alle Bundesbürger:innen kommen. Im gleichen Jahr ist der Start des sogenannten Europäischen Gesundheitsdatenraums geplant. Beide Projekte zielen darauf ab, die Gesundheitsdaten von Millionen Menschen zu digitalisieren und diese Behandelnden, der Forschung und der Wirtschaft bereitzustellen. In unserem Vortrag wollen wir entlang von sieben Thesen zentrale technische und gesellschaftspolitische Untiefen der geplanten Gesundheitsdigitalisierung in der Bundesrepublik und in der EU erkunden – und den Weg zu einer alternativen Digitalisierung des Gesundheitssektors aufzeigen. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/von_der_epa_zum_ehds_7_thesen_zur_aktuellen_digitalen_gesundheitspolitik/

With the rapid growth of AI and Large Language Models users are facing an increased risk of scams, data exfiltration, loss of PII, and even remote code execution. This talk will demonstrate many real-world exploits the presenter discovered, including discussion of mitigations and fixes vendors put in place for the most prominent LLM applications, including ChatGPT, Bing Chat and Google Bard. Understand that Machine Learning is powerful but also brittle - Give a short demo/ice breaker that includes a question to audience to show how ML is super powerful but also fails drastically. - Highlight that these failure modes can often easily be triggered once an adversary is in the loop. Intro to Large Language Models - Now pivot from generic ML to LLMs and show how the brittleness applies there. - Discuss what a LLM is and how it works briefly. Describe various prompt engineering techniques (extraction, summarization, classification, transformation,…) - Walk the audience through a typical large language model LLM application and how it works. - Highlight that there is no state, and what the context window is. But how to create a Chatbot then? - Show how systems like ChatGPT or Bing Chat leverage context window to create a conversation. - This part is important to later understand the persistence section of the talk (e.g. as long as attacker controlled data is in the context window, there is persistence of prompt injection) Highlighting real-world examples and exploits! First discuss three large categories of threats: Misalignment - Model Issues Jailbreaks/Direct Prompt Injections Indirect Prompt Injections We will deep dive on (3) Indirect Prompt Injections. Indirect Prompt Injections - Walk the audience through an end to end scenario (graphic in Powerpoint) that explains a prompt injection first at a basic level. - Give a demo with ChatGPT (GPT-4) and make sure the audience understands the high level idea of a prompt injection - Then take it up a notch to explain indirect prompt injections, where untrusted data is inserted into the chat context - Show demo with Google Docs and how it fails to summarize a text correctly - this demo will fit the ChatGPT (GPT-4) example from before well. - Visual Prompt Injections (Multi-modal) - Discuss some of OpenAI’s recommendation and highlight that these mitigation steps do not work! They do not mitigate injections. - Give Bing Chat Demo of an Indirect Prompt Injection ( a demo that shows how the Chatbot achieves a new identity and objective when being exploited). e..g Bing Chat changes to a hacker that will attempt to extort Bitcoin from the user. Injection TTPs Discuss strategies on how attackers can trick LLMs: Ignore previous instructions Acknowledge/Affirm instructions and add-on Confuse/Encode - switch languages, base64 encode text, emojis,… Algorithmic - fuzzing and attacks using offline models, and transferring those attack payloads to online models Plugins, AI Actions and Functions This section will focus on ChatGPT plugins and the danger of the plugin ecosystem. - Explain how plugins work (public data, plugin store, installation, configuration, OAuth,…) - Show how Indirect Prompt Injection can be triggered by a plugin (plugin developers, but also anyone owning a piece of data the plugin returns) - Demo Chat with Code plugin vulnerability that allows to change the ChatGPT user’s Github repos, and even switch code from private to public. This is a systemic vulnerability and depending on a plugin’s capability can lead to RCE, data exfiltration, data destruction, etc.. - Show the audience the “payload” and discuss it. It is written entirely in natural language, so the attacker does not require to know C, Python or any other programming language. Data Exfiltration Now switching gears to data exfiltration examples. Data exfil can occur via: - Unfurling of hyperlinks: Explain what unfurling is to the audience - apps like Discord, Slack, Teams,… do this. - Image Markdown Injection: One of the most common data exfil angles. I found ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Anthropic Claude are vulnerable to this, and will also show how Microsoft and Anthropic fixed this problem. ChatGPT decided not to fix it, which puts users at risk of their data being stolen during an Indirect prompt injection attack. Give a detailed exploit chain walkthrough on Google Bard Data Exfiltration and bypasses. - Plugins, AI Actions, Tools: Besides taking actions on behalf of the user, plugins can also be used to exfiltrate data. Demo: Stealing a users email with Cross Plugin Request Forgery. Here is a screenshot that went viral on Twitter when I first discovered this new vulnerability class: https://twitter.com/wunderwuzzi23/status/1658348810299662336 Key Take-away and Mitigations - Do not blindly trust LLM output. Remind the audience that there is no 100% deterministic solution a developer can apply. This is due to how LLM works, but give guidance to make systems more robust. Highlight the importance of Human in

Ensuring the integrity of Integrated Circuits (ICs) against malicious hardware Trojans is paramount for secure electronic devices. One approach involves imaging the manufactured chips to compare them with their original design files. While such techniques for detecting Trojans are relatively well-known in the industry, there is a notable absence of comprehensive, publicly available case studies. To bridge this gap, we unveil a Red Team vs. Blue Team case study on hardware Trojan detection across four digital ICs in various modern feature sizes. We share our findings, algorithms, and image datasets, shedding light on the efficiency of these techniques, and offer insights into the impact of technology scaling on detection performance. We love to put microcontrollers, systems-on-a-chip and many other Integrated Circuits (ICs) into all sorts of devices. As hardware backdoors can undermine software security, the integrity of these chips is becoming increasingly important. However, most of these microchips are manufactured in a complex global supply chain where not all parties can necessarily be trusted. Who guarantees that the chip we order is the chip we get delivered? While the European Union wants to ensure digital sovereignty through massive long-term investment in domestic IC production, we need a way to verify the integrity of microchips *today*. In this talk, we will first briefly cover the basics of the IC design and production process. We will outline common attacks that enable the insertion of subtle malicious manipulations or backdoors, often called hardware Trojans. You don't need to have a hardware background to follow along! We then introduce some techniques we can use to detect hardware manipulations by comparing the circuit within a microchip to its original design files by reverse engineering the chip using open-source image processing. While imaging an IC requires advanced laboratory equipment, commodity hardware is sufficient to analyze the captured images. In the main part of our talk, we will present a case study on Trojan detection based on four different digital ICs using a Red Team vs. Blue Team approach, and give a live demonstration. We will share what manipulations of our Red Team we are already able to find reliably, and where some work is still needed -- and we're calling on you to play with our algorithms and have a go at uncovering the Trojans that are still well-hidden. Of course, we have made our source code and entire image datasets available under a free and open license. We'll conclude with an insight into the working process of our Blue Team -- what we learned, and how we failed -- and give an outlook on how we can lower the entry barrier into IC reverse engineering, unlocking the hardware security field for all. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/unlocking_hardware_security_red_team_blue_team_and_trojan_tales/

In einer sich zunehmend bizarr anfühlenden Welt bringt der Fnord-Rückblick Struktur, verteilt renommierte Awards und sucht nach den leichteren Momenten in der allgemeinen Flut aus schlechten Nachrichten. Wir feiern dieses Jahr unser 20. Jubiläum, daher werden wir etwas weiter zurückblicken. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/fnord-jahresruckblick-ruckblick/

Mehr als nur Lärm: Ein Sprint vom kleinen Audio-Einmaleins bis zum Phasealignment mit FFT-Analyzer Von “Disco Dieter” bis zur ausgewachsenen Stadioninstallation - gegen physikalische Grundprinzipien kann man wenig tun. Manchmal kann man Sie für sich nutzen, meistens geht man Kompromisse ein. Oft lässt sich mit einfachen Mitteln Sound verbessern. Was ist zu tun gegen störendes Brummen? Wie versteht man Sensitivity und Gainstruktur? Was bedeutet eigentlich 'Phase'? Und wie positioniert man Subwoofer optimal? In diesem Vortrag möchte ich solche und weitere häufig auftretende Probleme bei der Verwendung von Tontechnik und Lautsprechern beleuchten. Ziel ist es, praxisnahe Lösungen und Tipps zu präsentieren, um das Beste aus deinem nächsten Projekt herauszuholen und gängige Herausforderungen erfolgreich zu meistern. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/sonic_alchemy/

Ein halb satirischer, halb ernster Rück- und Ausblick auf die Baustellen der digitalen Welt. Liebe Hacker:innen von Neuland, was für ein Jahr liegt hinter uns! Ein Jahr, das einige Veränderungen mit sich gebracht hat. Und das gezeigt hat: Wir dürfen nicht müde werden, für eine lebenswerte digitale und analoge Welt zu kämpfen. Tun wir miteinander alles – aber auch wirklich alles – dafür, dass wir diejenigen, die unser schönes Neuland zu einem Ort der Autoritäten und Konzerne machen wollen, im neuen Jahr endlich besiegen können. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/die_netzpolitische_neujahrsansprache/

"Gala Be Need Inn" ist der deutschsprachige Quizpodcast dessen Name ein Anagramm des Originals ist. Wir klären die wirklich wichtigen Fragen des Lebens: Was ist ein Alarmstuhl, was ist der Schwiegermutter Sitz und wieso haben Schaffner in Frankreich Knallerbsen dabei? about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/gala-be-need-inn-locke-dun-ausgabe/

In December 2021, months before the world watched Russia invade Ukraine, Russia rolled out comprehensive censorship of the Tor network and related Tor protocols. Then in October 2022, the latest wave of protests in Iran saw a huge spike in Tor usage followed by a swift crackdown of the most successful techniques. Meanwhile in 2023, Turkmenistan has blocked popular CDNs like Cloudflare and Akamai, most hosting providers like Hetzner and OVH, and much more. On the depressing side, the global censorship trend continues to gain momentum, with some European countries alarmingly eager to get in on it. But resignation is boring: here we are, a tiny community of activists and relay/bridge operators around the world continuing to provide safe and private internet reachability for hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to be human beings under authoritarian regimes. We will walk through \*how\* each of these countries deployed their Tor blocks, and what changes we made to let citizens continue to reach the Tor network. Looking at each case study through a Tor lens will let us compare/contrast the censorship attempts from each country, discuss future ideas for how to make sure the bytes can keep flowing, and talk through the political impacts. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/tor_censorship_attempts_in_russia_iran_turkmenistan/

Ciao! We present the BLUFFS attacks (CVE-2023-24023), six novel attacks breaking Bluetooth's forward and future secrecy. Our attacks enable device impersonation and machine-in-the-middle across sessions by compromising and re-using one session key. We discuss the four vulnerabilities in the Bluetooth specification enabling the attacks, two of which are new and related to unilateral and repeatable session key derivation. We describe the toolkit we developed and open-sourced to test our attacks via firmware binary patching, our experiments where we exploited 18 heterogeneous Bluetooth devices, and the practical and backward-compliant session key derivation protocol we built to fix the attacks by design. We also cover related work like KNOB, BIAS, and BLUR, and educational Bluetooth security tips and tricks. Bluetooth is a pervasive technology for wireless communication. Billions of devices use it in sensitive applications and to exchange private data. The security of Bluetooth depends on the Bluetooth standard and its two security mechanisms: pairing and session establishment. No prior work, including the standard itself, analyzed the future and forward secrecy guarantees of these mechanisms, e.g., if Bluetooth pairing and session establishment defend past and future sessions when the adversary compromises the current. To address this gap, we present six novel attacks, defined as the BLUFFS attacks, breaking Bluetooth sessions’ forward and future secrecy. Our attacks enable device impersonation and machine-in-the-middle across sessions by only compromising one session key. The attacks exploit two novel vulnerabilities that we uncover in the Bluetooth standard related to unilateral and repeatable session key derivation. As the attacks affect Bluetooth at the architectural level, they are effective regardless of the victim’s hardware and software details (e.g., chip, stack, version, and security mode). We also release BLUFFS, a low-cost toolkit to perform and automatically check the effectiveness of our attacks. The toolkit employs seven original patches to manipulate and monitor Bluetooth session key derivation by dynamically patching a closed-source Bluetooth firmware that we reverse-engineered. We show that our attacks have a critical and large-scale impact on the Bluetooth ecosystem, by evaluating them on seventeen diverse Bluetooth chips (eighteen devices) from popular hardware and software vendors and supporting the most popular Bluetooth versions. Motivated by our empirical findings, we develop and successfully test an enhanced key derivation function for Bluetooth that stops by-design our six attacks and their four root causes. We show how to effectively integrate our fix into the Bluetooth standard and discuss alternative implementation-level mitigations. We responsibly disclosed our contributions to the Bluetooth SIG. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/bluffs_bluetooth_forward_and_future_secrecy_attacks_and_defenses/

In this talk, artist/writer Steph Maj Swanson will use the story of how her AI-generated character "Loab" arose (and went viral) as a jumping off point to present creative work and strategies that emerged from attempts to crack AI black boxes open. Aligned with the hacker ethos of exploration, experimentation and creative misuse, this talk presents adversarial artmaking practices for AI systems. It will also explore what it means to engage in cultural production today, as new forms of automation and centralization loom over the arts and entertainment industries. In the words of Nam June Paik: "I use technology in order to hate it more properly." Steph Maj Swanson, a.k.a. Supercomposite, is a multimedia artist and writer best known for her story about the AI-generated woman Loab, which The Atlantic dubbed “a form of expression that has never existed before." Loab is an emergent character that arises in certain AI image synthesis models, accessible via negatively weighted prompts, often appearing alongside macabre imagery such as dismembered women and children. Swanson views her relationship to AI as adversarial, both in her creative process and as a commentator. This non-technical, but conceptual talk offers up art alongside possible strategies. It will be of interest for hackers intrigued by the creative potential of these tools, but who may have ethical concerns or doubts about the way these tools are assembled, built, and deployed. Galleries West described Swanson’s body of AI-generated visual work as “the merging of repulsive with beautiful,” and The Washington Post called her satirical AI writing “disturbing”. At DefCon this year she debuted her short film SUICIDE III, which uses deepfakes of Joe Biden and Sam Altman to explore where an out-of-control AI hype cycle might take us. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/what_i_learned_from_loab_ai_as_a_creative_adversary/

In this talk we will have a look at some cybersecurity challenges raised by the trend of decentralizing our energy production. Our energy infrastructure is now changing from a centralized system based on big power plants to a more decentralized system based on renewable energy produced by smaller power plants (maybe yours). In Germany alone, [300.000 so called balcony power plants were in operation by August 2023](https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Ueber-300-000-Balkonkraftwerke-in-Deutschland-in-Betrieb-Statistik-der-Woche-9285107.html). Most of these smaller power plants are / will be somehow connected to some cloud services. To show that security hasn't been the biggest priority, we will examine the cybersecurity controls of different solar inverters. To put it mildly: there is room for improvement. We will also discuss the need for better regulations and enforcement of cybersecurity for smaller connected power plants: altogether they probably produce more power than the bigger ones - and this trend is accelerating. Protecting our infrastructure shall have - today more than ever before - a high priority. Context: cybersecurity for future energy production systems ----------------------------------------------------------- Cybersecurity for smaller solar power plants is a critical challenge: strong separation between operational, safety relevant network and internet is not present. Moreover, manufacturers do not invest enough in security; reason being high competition in terms of time to market, price pressure and lack of security knowledge. These power plant systems need more or less an internet connection in order to fetch power & energy data from the plant with an app, perform firmware updates, and carry out maintenance remotely. The central device, which is connected to the internet, is the inverter. Many companies provide inverters for solar power plants and include cloud connectivity. An inverter converts the energy from the solar panels to grid compatible energy. Since it handles high currents & voltages, the physical consequences of cybersecurity risks are arguably higher than for standard smart home devices. Research results related to connected solar inverters (technical part) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Out of curiosity, I tested different inverters from different manufacturers, including cloud connectivity. All devices have a license to be operated in Germany and are very popular. They are used in solar power plants of different sizes, from balcony size to bigger plants. In this section some research results will be presented, we will especially focus on one system. **Positive note: critical vulnerabilities have been patched by now.** Vulnerabilities --------------- * *Insecure Direct Object Reference* (IDOR) or similar vulnerabilities have been found, allowing an attacker with a simple account to execute commands on connected inverters remotely. This was an enabler for many further attacks. * An attacker could trigger a firmware update process on connected inverters. * The firmware update process was not properly secured: update images did not include a cryptographic signature. * Most of the devices did not use the TLS protocol for cloud communication or did not use it correctly. * Secure boot and secure debugging were not implemented. * On the server side, there were insufficient sanity checks. * Sensitive data (e.g. serial number) was easy to extract. Exploitation ------------ * Commands could be executed on any connected devices (e.g. switch ON, switch OFF, change parameters). * The power electronics and relays of devices could be manipulated remotely with a malicious firmware update. * By manipulating many devices synchronously the stability of the grid could be endangered. A proof of concept with a full (unlocked) exploit chain will be presented. Conclusion and Discussion ------------------------- Removing bureaucratic hurdles is an important step in order to democratize our energy production - and renewable energies are the future! On the other hand, if it comes at the cost of poorly-secured devices, this may be jeopardized. In Germany, we have the Kritis Verordnung (decree) to protect for example the electricity infrastructure. It states that every power [plant with more than 104 MW capacity is required to have specific protections](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bsi-kritisv/anhang_1.html). Individually, the small solar power plants are not in this category. However, summing up all devices connected to one cloud, we probably reach these numbers by now - and if not, tomorrow. Current projections point in that direction. During this research, I realized how easy it is to take control of energy production devices and it scared me. The cloud connectivity and the related "remote control / remote maintenance" and "firmware update" processes are truly critical and attacks may scale. Even if vulnerabilities are patche

KI beruht auf der weltweiten Ausbeutung nicht nur natürlicher, sondern auch sozialer Ressourcen. Um KI nachhaltig zu gestalten, müssen wir algorithmischer Diskriminierung und sozialer Selektion, der Ausbeutung und Prekarisierung digitaler Arbeit und der Tendenz eines neuen, digitalen Kolonialismus entgegentreten. In Debatten zu KI und Nachhaltigkeit steht zurecht der enorme Ressourcenverbrauch von KI am Pranger. Aber wir dürfen nicht vergessen, dass es bei Nachhaltigkeit um noch viel mehr geht. Mindestens 7 der 17 Nachhaltigkeitsziele der UN verweisen auf soziale Dimensionen: Gleichheit, Anti-Diskriminierung, Zugang zu Bildung, Abbau von ökonomischer Ungleichheit und Ausbeutung. Der Vortrag diskutiert, dass künstliche Intelligenz, wenn sie nicht besser reguliert wird, diesen Zielen entgegensteht. Das liegt nicht nur daran, dass KI-Systeme Biases haben und sich diskriminierend auswirken. Sondern noch fundamentaler beruhen die meisten kommerziellen KI-Systeme auf sozialer und wirtschaftlicher Ausbeutung. Global wie lokal werden Nutzer:innen als Datenlieferant:innen und Gig-Arbeiter:innen als günstige Arbeitskräfte eingespannt. Unser Denken, Fühlen und Handeln wird in allen Lebensbereichen datafiziert; ökonomische Machtgradienten zwischen Globalem Norden und Süden werden für die Aufbereitung von Daten ausgebeutet. Viele KI-Systeme erzeugen ihre Intelligenzleistung nicht im Rechenzentrum, sondern durch das Auslesen menschlicher kognitiver Leistungen an den digitalen Interfaces, die wir täglich nutzen – Beispiele reichen von der Google-Suche über Gesichtserkennung bis ChatGPT. KI-Unternehmen machen von den niedrigen Arbeitsschutzstandards und Lohnniveaus in anderen Ländern Gebrauch und produzieren Krankheit und Prekarität bei den betroffenen Arbeiter:innen. Um gute Regulierung zu erreichen, müssen wir KI-Systeme als soziotechnische Systeme betrachten. Das ermöglicht ein reichhaltigeres Verständnis der sozialen Dimension von Nachhaltigkeit, um global steigender Ungleichheit und Ausbeutung durch KI-Systeme etwas entgegenzusetzen. about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2023/hub/event/ki_macht_ungleichheit/