The Linkielist

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The Linkielist

Daily Archives: January 4, 2021

Scientists turn CO2 into jet fuel

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Researchers may have found a way to reduce the environmental impact of air travel in situations when electric aircraft and alternative fuels aren’t practical. Wired reports that Oxford University scientists have successfully turned CO2 into jet fuel, raising the possibility of conventionally-powered aircraft with net zero emissions.

The technique effectively reverses the process of burning fuel by relying on the organic combustion method. The team heated a mix of citric acid, hydrogen and an iron-manganese-potassium catalyst to turn CO2 into a liquid fuel capable of powering jet aircraft.

The approach is inexpensive, uncomplicated and uses commonplace materials. It’s cheaper than processes used to turn hydrogen and water into fuel.

There are numerous challenges to bringing this to aircraft. The lab method only produced a few grams of fuel — you’d clearly need much more to support even a single flight, let alone an entire fleet. You’d need much more widespread use of carbon capture. And if you want effectively zero emissions, the capture and conversion systems would have to run on clean energy.

The researches are talking with industrial partners, though, and don’t see any major scientific hurdles. It might also be one of the most viable options for fleets. Many of them would have to replace their aircraft to go electric or switch fuel types. This conversion process would let airlines keep their existing aircraft and go carbon neutral until they’re truly ready for eco-friendly propulsion.

Source: Scientists turn CO2 into jet fuel | Engadget

Zyxel products have a hardcoded root user you can access from internet

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TL;DR: If you have a Zyxel USG, ATP, VPN, ZyWALL or USG FLEX you should update to the latest firmware version today. You can find the full list of affected devices here and the Zyxel advisory here.

Zyxel is a popular brand for firewalls that are marketed towards small and medium businesses. Their Unified Security Gateway (USG) product line is often used as a firewall or VPN gateway. As a lot of us are working from home, VPN-capable devices have been quite selling well lately.

When doing some research (rooting) on my Zyxel USG40, I was surprised to find a user account ‘zyfwp’ with a password hash in the latest firmware version (4.60 patch 0). The plaintext password was visible in one of the binaries on the system. I was even more surprised that this account seemed to work on both the SSH and web interface.

$ ssh zyfwp@192.168.1.252
Password: Pr*******Xp
Router> show users current
No: 1
  Name: zyfwp
  Type: admin
(...)
Router>

The user is not visible in the interface and its password cannot be changed. I checked the previous firmware version (4.39) and although the user was present, it did not have a password. It seemed the vulnerability had been introduced in the latest firmware version. Even though older versions do not have this vulnerability, they do have others (such as this buffer overflow) so you should still update.

As SSL VPN on these devices operates on the same port as the web interface, a lot of users have exposed port 443 of these devices to the internet. Using publicly available data from Project Sonar, I was able to identify about 3.000 Zyxel USG/ATP/VPN devices in the Netherlands. Globally, more than 100.000 devices have exposed their web interface to the internet.

Source: Undocumented user account in Zyxel products (CVE-2020-29583) – EYE

Julian Assange will NOT be extradited to the US over WikiLeaks hacking and spy charges, rules British judge

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Accused hacker and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should not be extradited to the US to stand trial, Westminster Magistrates’ Court has ruled.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser told Assange this morning that there was no legal obstacle to his being sent to the US, where he faces multiple criminal charges under America’s Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act over his WikiLeaks website.

Assange is a suicide risk and the judge decided not to order his extradition to the US, despite giving a ruling in which she demolished all of his legal team’s other arguments against extradition.

“I am satisfied that the risk that Mr Assange will commit suicide is a substantial one,” said the judge, sitting at the Old Bailey, in this morning’s ruling. Adopting the conclusions of medical expert Professor Michael Kopelman, an emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at King’s College London, Judge Baraitser continued:

Taking account of all of the information available to him, he considered Mr Assange’s risk of suicide to be very high should extradition become imminent. This was a well-informed opinion carefully supported by evidence and explained over two detailed reports.

[…]

All other legal arguments against extradition rejected

Judge Baraitser heard from Assange’s lawyers during this case that he was set to be extradited because he had politically embarrassed the US, rather than committed any genuine criminal offence.

Nonetheless, US lawyers successfully argued that Assange’s actions were outside journalistic norms, with the judge approvingly quoting news articles from The Guardian and New York Times that condemned him for dumping about 250,000 stolen US diplomatic cables online in clear text.

“Free speech does not comprise a ‘trump card’ even where matters of serious public concern are disclosed,” said the judge in a passage that will be alien to American readers, whose country’s First Amendment reverses that position.

[…]

The judge also found that the one-time WikiLeaker-in-chief had directly commissioned a range of people to hack into various Western countries’ governments, banks and commercial businesses, including the Gnosis hacking crew that was active in the early 2010s.

Judge Baraitser also dismissed Assange’s legal arguments that publishing stolen US government documents on WikiLeaks was not a crime in the UK, ruling that had he been charged in the UK, he would have been guilty of offences under the Official Secrets Acts 1911-1989. Had his conduct not been a crime in the UK, that would have been a powerful blow against extradition.

[…]

Summing up the thoughts of most if not all people following Assange’s case when the verdict was given, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden took to Twitter:

Having had all of his substantive legal arguments dismissed, there isn’t much for Assange and his supporters to cheer about today. It is certain that the US will throw as much legal muscle at the appeal as it possibly can. With some British prisoners successfully avoiding extradition by expressing suicidal thoughts, it is likely American prosecutors will want to set a UK precedent that overturns the suicide barrier.

Source: Julian Assange will NOT be extradited to the US over WikiLeaks hacking and spy charges, rules British judge • The Register