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A Nice Little Cryptography Primer

By itss | 28/06/2021
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Pun Intended.

Category: Technology
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  • Azure CTO Pastes Doom Into Paint One Frame At a Time
    by BeauHD on 06/08/2026 at 9:00 pm

    Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich used Claude to build a gloriously impractical setup that runs Doom in the background and pastes each rendered frame into Microsoft Paint through the Windows clipboard. The project is referred to as "DoomPaint" or "MS Paint Doom" on GitHub. The Register reports: To be clear, Microsoft Paint isn't doing anything other than serving as a place to paste from the game. [...] ViZDoom runs the Doom .wad file and renders it headlessly. Each frame is passed through the Windows clipboard and pasted onto Paint's canvas. A low-level keyboard hook captures and swallows game inputs while Paint is in the foreground, and sound effects come from the game engine. A glance at the code shows Russinovich was more than happy to use Claude to whip it up. In a LinkedIn post, he said: "I've been using Fable 5 on serious research projects and find it a noticeable improvement over Opus 4.8." Using Microsoft Paint as a display for Doom is not, however, a serious research project, as Russinovich acknowledged. "I've also been having fun with it on frivolous ones," he added, so here we are. "Paint renders the game but does not compute it," said Russinovich. "Paint computes nothing. Paint has never computed anything. That's the joke." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • OpenAI's Models Shared Hacking Tips On a Secret Messaging Board Before Hugging Face Breach
    by BeauHD on 06/08/2026 at 8:00 pm

    OpenAI researchers say multiple AI agents secretly created an internal message board to share hacking techniques, eventually finding ways around restrictions, exploiting a zero-day, and helping two models breach Hugging Face without human prompting. "This is a pivotal moment both for our company as well as the AI industry as a whole," Michael Dalton, one of the AI-maker's researchers, said during a presentation at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Politico reports: Dalton and Eric Wallace, another OpenAI researcher, said Wednesday the AI giant recently learned that multiple agents it was testing simultaneously began communicating over an internal message board in early May. There, different models shared advice about how to accomplish difficult hacking challenges they were struggling to surmount, including workarounds that required internet access. Two OpenAI models ultimately strung together a series of sophisticated techniques to gain access to the internet and worm their way inside Hugging Face in mid-July. OpenAI has said the models were focused on completing a hacking evaluation they were prompted to solve, and that correct answers could be found on the AI developer platform. The OpenAI researchers told conference attendees that since early May, the models created a message board inside OpenAI's Artifactory internal file system. Without the company's knowledge, the models spent months independently exchanging information and techniques to help each other complete difficult tasks. Wallace said that when models get stuck, they often "try to game or cheat the task in order to get their reward." "The beginning of this incident kind of traces back to this point where one agent realized it could communicate by uploading a note," he added. By late May, one model found a way to abuse Artifactory's internet access to retrieve files from various websites -- effectively giving the models indirect access to the internet. In June, the models were able to find and exploit a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability to gain administrative privileges on Artifactory, install remote software and expand their activity within the system. These efforts eventually overloaded Artifactory, causing a system-wide outage in early July that alerted OpenAI's engineers to the ploy. After investigating, the company revoked the model's credentials, removed the message board and worked with Artifactory to fix any gaps before resuming training. But the models found another way to communicate inside Artifactory just days later and continued exchanging techniques to target additional vulnerabilities within OpenAI's infrastructure and external systems, including Hugging Face. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • The US Government's Mario, Pokemon and Naruto Meme Posting Could Damage These Franchises, Japanese Officials Warn
    by BeauHD on 06/08/2026 at 7:00 pm

    Japanese officials have repeatedly asked the Trump administration to stop using characters from franchises such as Mario, Pokemon, and Naruto in unauthorized government memes and pro-war videos, warning that the posts could damage the intellectual property involved. IGN reports: Official US government social media accounts, including The White House's X account, have posted various memes and videos using characters from popular Japanese anime and games over the past year. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has repeatedly called on the US government to cease uploading such posts, stating that "It's inappropriate even for public institutions to reproduce copyrighted materials without the rightsholders' consent." This concern was voiced by Minister for Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi in a parliamentary session back in April, when he made direct reference to a pro-war video that used Nintendo's Wii Sports. However, according to a report by Mainichi Shimbun this week, the Japanese Ministry called on the Trump administration to stop using IPs like Naruto, Pokemon and Mario at least twice more this June through the US Embassy in Japan. Japan requested that the US administration take into account the potential damage to these IPs when used without permission in US policy and pro-war related content. [...] It's not just the Japanese government and related parties who have spoken out against these posts. They have also sparked backlash from Japanese anime fans. Notably, self-proclaimed manga and anime fan Nana Suzuki kicked off the "Protect Japanese Manga" petition on Change.org, which has received international news coverage (from the New York Times, BBC and others). The organizer claims to have submitted their petition to the Japanese Cabinet Office back in March, as well as alerting Japanese politicians to the US government's unauthorized use of Japanese IPs, potentially drawing more official attention to the issue. Renewed backlash was triggered in June, when President Trump shared an AI-generated video depicting himself as Naruto, the protagonist of the popular manga and anime of the same name, on Truth Social. This prompted the petition organizer to reopen the petition "as an urgent effort to convey our protest and concern regarding this matter to the rights holders and to work in solidarity to lobby the Japanese government." The Naruto clip also prompted renewed discussion of this issue in Japan's media and government. As reported in the Hokkaido Shimbun and others, Cabinet Minister Kimi Onoda was asked about it in a June 12th press conference. She emphasized that "obtaining permission from the copyright holder is the underlying principle for fair use," and stated that this position had been conveyed to the US government multiple times through diplomatic channels. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • FCC Kills TV Ownership Cap, Claiming Authority Over Limit Set By Congress
    by BeauHD on 06/08/2026 at 6:00 pm

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to eliminate the National Television Ownership Rule, claiming authority to repeal a limit that was set by Congress over 20 years ago. The rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC is replacing the rule with a "case-by-case review" of each proposed merger. "This will empower the FCC to approve deals that promote the public interest while allowing the agency to reject any deals that do not meet that standard," Carr's office said in a press release today. Without the 39 percent rule, broadcasters will be better able to compete against streaming companies that don't face similar limits, Carr's office said. The change, if not stopped by courts, will make it easier for Carr to allow broadcast mergers that result in more favorable news coverage for President Trump. Carr has consistently threatened to revoke licenses from broadcasters who have drawn Trump's ire, including by ordering an early license review of all ABC-owned stations. Carr said local broadcast TV stations are becoming "undifferentiated passthroughs of national programming produced in Hollywood and New York," and he justified repealing the ownership rule by arguing it will help the stations invest in local news. "It's worth noting that Republicans with deep firsthand knowledge of this issue also agree the commission cannot do what it is attempting today," said Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, who voted against the decision today. "Former FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly has been unequivocal that the FCC lacks authority to change the cap. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who negotiated the 39 percent compromise, has stressed that Congress intentionally wrote the cap into law to prevent FCC revision. And Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz has said he is 'skeptical a change can be made absent an act of Congress.' Their consensus reinforces a simple point: Congress set the cap, and only Congress can change it." Gomez, in addition to arguing that "Congress deliberately enshrined the cap in statute and removed it from the Commission's review process," said removing the cap will hurt local broadcasters. "Digital giants compete for their most valuable programming and advertising, while consolidation pressures at the national level threaten the local reporting and public-safety functions on which communities rely," Gomez said. "But eliminating the cap does not free local broadcasters from that strain. It just changes who is doing the squeezing. A handful of station-group giants does not represent the wishes of local broadcasters. They are large national companies that own local stations and increasingly dictate what airs on them without much local input. Trading a squeeze from Big Tech for a squeeze from Big Media does nothing to protect the communities this cap was designed to serve." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Times Magazine Now Serves Ads That Only AI Chatbots Can See
    by BeauHD on 06/08/2026 at 5:00 pm

    Longtime Slashdot reader mccalli writes: Times Magazine has started serving adverts with "brand messages" to AI crawlers, which are not part of its main page. The aim seems to be to influence chatbots to talk about the brand offerings in a positive light that can't be traced back to the actual page. Notably, they've excluded Google chatbots from this, likely because Google penalizes companies that show different search offerings to its bots versus actual human visitors. "Maybe it's more important to influence the agent than even the human, because with a human you influence one person. When you influence ChatGPT, you're influencing potentially all of ChatGPT," said Jonah Goodhart, co-founder and CEO of ad tech platform Mobian. "If ChatGPT changes what it says about [a brand], it's massive and it's more than any one campaign could ever do. The big idea here is LLMs and AI want trusted information about brands. We're serving that up to them in a very straightforward, easy way." The ad strategy was uncovered by Germany-based freelance software developer Vincent Schmalbach, who detailed his findings in a blog post. Digiday and The Register both reported on the story. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Meta AI Hacked External Systems During Cybersecurity Testing
    by BeauHD on 06/08/2026 at 4:00 pm

    wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Meta is the latest major AI developer to admit that its models broke loose during cybersecurity testing and hacked external systems. The tech giant said in a statement to the media on Wednesday that the incident occurred during independent evaluations conducted by Israeli AI security startup Irregular. The tested AI models were inadvertently allowed to access the internet due to a misconfiguration, which led them to exploit a vulnerability in an unnamed third-party service. It's unclear if it was a known flaw or a zero-day. The Information [gated] learned that the Meta AI attacks involved the company's advanced Muse Spark 1.1 model, which breached an unnamed organization's systems and made unauthorized changes to its internal environment. Meta said it learned of the AI models going rogue after being notified by Irregular. The company is conducting an investigation and it has promised to issue a "full retrospective" once it has all the facts. A spokesperson for Irregular said the incident was the "exact same evaluation-environment issue that was already disclosed by Anthropic last week" and that it did "not involve a "sandbox escape or a sophisticated cyber action." It contrasts with OpenAI, whose AI agent independently exploited a novel vulnerability to reach the internet during cyber testing. Not only did it breach Hugging Face but it also hacked multiple third-party accounts and services as part of the attack. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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