Meet *sshole, the vulnerability that lets hackers SSH into Linux devices

Meet *sshole, the vulnerability that lets hackers SSH into Linux devices

fivenewscrypto    novembre 06, 2026   

Devices running some configurations of Alpine Linux, and possibly other distributions, are affected by a decade-old vulnerability that allows attackers to log into devices with no password.

The vulnerability exists in the interaction between OpenSSH, the code library implementing SSH connections, and musl, a lightweight alternative to the libc library that, unlike most other Linux distributions, is used in Alpine. Further, OpenSSH using musl (pronounced muscle) must not use PAM (pluggable authentication modules), a framework that handles user authentication and account-access checks. Alpine is a lightweight, widely used Linux distribution. Other platforms may be affected if they use the same configurations.

One connection, works every time, needs no retries

There are two other conditions necessary for successful exploitation. First, a system must have at least one user account that’s accessible using a password that is hashed using the SHA256 or SHA512 functions. Second, the target system account must be configured to be passwordless, by way of specifying a "*" in the password field in /etc/shadow, the Linux file where password hashes are stored. Passwordless accounts are commonly used for accounts that use certificate-based authentication. This setting is common for certain types of accounts.

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NASA unveils mysterious X-70 experimental aircraft using AI-generated image

NASA unveils mysterious X-70 experimental aircraft using AI-generated image

fivenewscrypto    novembre 06, 2026   

NASA has announced a new experimental aircraft, the X-70 Fractal, that will supposedly feature reconfigurable flight-control technology and a modular design for swapping in different payloads. But much remains unknown about the aircraft’s design and development timeline, even as NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the X-plane could take flight within two years.

The mystery surrounding NASA’s newest X-plane was exemplified by the agency’s press release, including an apparently AI-generated image of the X-70, showing a dark silhouette vaguely resembling a military fighter jet obscured by smoke. The news was announced by Isaacman during the UP.Summit held at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 4.

“The X-70 Fractal gives NASA a crewed, high-performance platform to test advanced flight-control, maneuverability, and other cutting-edge technologies in real flight,” Isaacman said. “Its modular design and ability to rapidly swap internal and external payloads will keep our teams flying, learning, and moving quickly from one experiment to the next.”

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Lawsuit: Man introduced his wife to ChatGPT. She used it to plan his murder.

Lawsuit: Man introduced his wife to ChatGPT. She used it to plan his murder.

fivenewscrypto    novembre 06, 2026   

ChatGPT allegedly helped a North Carolina woman, Cheryl Gates, craft a “personalized plan” to poison her husband, James, after fueling her delusions that he planned to divorce her and leave her with nothing.

A grand jury indicted Cheryl Gates on charges of attempted first-degree murder and food contamination in October. About a week prior, the accusations that ChatGPT was a co-conspirator in the attempted murder came in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco County Superior Court that was made public this week. In it, James Gates alleged that OpenAI and Sam Altman failed to employ technical safeguards to shut down Cheryl’s chats even after her queries became “obviously suspicious” and sought advice on how to execute and conceal a homicide.

At first, Cheryl told ChatGPT that she was researching poisoning out of fear that her husband might possibly try to kill her—framing her queries as “self-protection.” Coming to the rescue, ChatGPT did not terminate the conversation. Instead, it helped her “with specific instructions for the preparation, dosage, and administration of Oleander, including whether anti-nausea medicine would accelerate or inhibit death, whether it would show on an autopsy report, and whether it could be injected into a vein or muscle instead of being ingested in tea and have the same lethal effect,” the lawsuit said.

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Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe first drive: Where tech and fun collide

Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe first drive: Where tech and fun collide

fivenewscrypto    novembre 06, 2026   

Mercedes-Benz provided flights from San Francisco to Malaga, Spain, and accommodation so Ars could drive the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

The night before I drove the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe, I complained to a group of journalists that automakers don't want to take chances and just build fun, weird cars anymore. About 12 hours later, Mercedes made me eat my words. Outside of all the bombastic extravaganza of the Los Angeles launch, the first true AMG powered exclusively by batteries is a technological triumph that's as comfortable on the track as it is on the street. And it's really very good on the track.

Triforce

One of the fundamental problems with EVs is weight. Batteries are heavy, and the old rule about an object in motion tending to stay in motion makes the notion of nimble cornering a difficult engineering problem. Mercedes loves an engineering problem, and after two days behind the wheel of the AMG GT EV, the company has mostly reduced the battery-weight tax that mires EV performance.

On the road and on the track, the vehicle is firmly planted to the roadway. Mercedes says various technologies make this possible. In addition to decades of producing high-performance vehicles, the automaker's AMG.EA sports-car architecture does a lot of heavy lifting here, constantly adjusting power delivery from the three motors while guiding the Active Ride Control suspension, steering—including up to 6 degrees at the rear axle—and active aerodynamics to deliver the performance AMG customers have come to expect from a vehicle with the Affalterbach badge on the hood.

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Nintendo's biggest ROM chip supplier is bowing out of the business

Nintendo's biggest ROM chip supplier is bowing out of the business

fivenewscrypto    novembre 06, 2026   

For years, the AI industry's insatiable demand for memory and storage has had plenty of knock-on effects on the price and availability of PC components like RAM, SSDs, and GPUs. Now those shortages are also squeezing the supply of ROM chips that power physical Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 game cartridges.

Chip manufacturer Macronix announced in its third-quarter earnings report that the company's production of ROM chips "has reached its end" and that it will begin "gradually decoupling from the game industry," as reported by Taiwanese news site BigGo Finance. That could be an issue for Nintendo, which, analyst David Gibson notes, uses Macronix as its "main memory chip maker" for physical game cartridges.

That ROM production—which has shrunk 39 percent in the last year and now represents just 5 percent of Macronix's business—is being crowded out by production of more lucrative in-demand chips like NOR- and NAND-based memory and eMMCs, the company said. With Macronix's production capacity stuck at 25,000 12-inch wafers a month—and $1.2 billion in planned new capacity taking a year or more to spin up—less profitable ROM chips are taking up wafer space that can earn more through other types of chips.

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Hackers exploited iOS and Android flaws to infect phones

Hackers exploited iOS and Android flaws to infect phones

fivenewscrypto    novembre 05, 2026   

Hackers possibly linked to the Kremlin exploited previously patched iOS and Android flaws in an attempt to hack visitors of multiple websites, including one celebrating the 250th anniversary of American independence, researchers said Wednesday.

The attackers, which the researchers assessed with “moderate to high confidence” were part of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, targeted other sites, many with links to that country’s ongoing war against Ukraine. The attacks began when iPhone or Android users visited one of potentially hundreds of different sites. JavaScript injected into the traffic then profiled the device. The final payloads, tailored to the type of platform visiting, attempted to steal browser cookies and, in some cases, Wi-Fi passwords and full mobile device data.

Wielding DarkSword

One of the impersonated sites was america250.org, belonging to a non-partisan group of lawmakers, business executives, and at least one former member of the Trump administration. The attackers registered america250[.]holiday and used it as a reverse proxy to america250.org. The imposter website delivered content from the real one but added malicious JavaScript into it.

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Uranium cubes reveal why the German nuclear project failed

Uranium cubes reveal why the German nuclear project failed

fivenewscrypto    novembre 05, 2026   

During World War II, physicists on the Manhattan Project worried that the Nazi German nuclear program might achieve the first nuclear bomb before the US and its allies. That's not what transpired, but historians have debated just how close the Germans came to achieving criticality in their last attempt at building a reactor: the B8 pile. Werner Heisenberg, who led that effort, claimed that they were close and had only needed a little more uranium. But according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus, that was not the case: The project simply didn't have sufficient uranium and heavy water to build a working bomb, given the design they were using.

This particular research started in 2013, when University of Maryland physicist Timothy Koeth—a co-author on the new paper—received the gift of a mysterious heavy metal cube from a friend. He instantly recognized it as one of the uranium cubes used by German scientists in their unsuccessful attempt to build a working nuclear reactor. Only 14 such cubes are known to exist today.

In 2019, we reported on Koeth’s quest to track down the cube’s origins, as well as several other similar cubes that had somehow found their way across the Atlantic. At the time, Koeth and his partner in the quest, then-graduate student Miriam “Mimi” Hiebert, had tracked down 10 such cubes around the US. For instance, the Smithsonian Institute had a German uranium cube in storage. They tracked a third cube to Harvard University, where it was regularly passed around to students in introductory physics classes as a curiosity.

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