tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

New, from me: 'Popa' Botnet Linked to Publicly Traded Israeli Firm

"For the past four years, a sprawling Android-based botnet called Popa has forced millions of consumer TV boxes to relay Internet traffic linked to advertising fraud, account takeovers, and mass data-scraping efforts. This week, researchers from multiple security firms concluded that the Popa botnet is linked to NetNut, a “residential proxy” provider operated by the publicly-traded Israeli firm Alarum Technologies Ltd [NASDAQ: ALAR]."

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/06/popa-botnet-linked-to-publicly-traded-israeli-firm/

There is an incredible amount of interesting data and findings in the reports on Popa released this week. For example, the proxy detection service Spur told me they recently scraped the LG and Samsung app stores and found that each had approximately 3,000 apps available for download. Spur said it found that more than 42 percent of apps available for download via the webOS operating system on LG smart TVs include SDKs that turn one’s television into an always-on residential proxy node. More than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung’s Tizen operating system had similar residential proxy components, Spur found.

#proxy #popa #botnet #lg #samsung

Det finns en rutten kultur i svensk politik där folk bygger nätverk och håller varandra om ryggen för att gynna personliga intressen mot väljarnas vilja. Det finns också en bok som beskriver att och hur detta sker i den vinstdrivna skolsektorn. Läs den vettja.

This video appears to confirm it was a Russian air-defense missile — not a Ukrainian drone — that blew up that Moscow refinery’s storage tank today, creating the "flying saucer" footage. (This video was shared on Telegram by Russian military expert Yan Matveev.) https://t.me/arrowsmap/11995

Returned home to find police at my door, someone broke into the shop downstairs, when I identified myself they called off the search in the garden for my body, they said they looked upstairs where I lived and said there were "signs of a struggle." I thought it was reasonably tidy

After a deadly drone struck a bus carrying Belarusian youth soccer players in Russia's Bryansk region, Belarus's exiled opposition leader and President Lukashenko agree: don't send your kids to Russia. (Moscow blames Kyiv; Kyiv calls it staged.) https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/06/18/drone-strike-on-youth-soccer-bus-pushes-both-minsk-and-exiled-belarusian-opposition-to-issue-the-same-warning-don-t-go-to-russia

When the Republic Almost Fell

What we can learn from new reporting on how the Trumpists have been contemplating despotism, the fault lines within the regime, and the prospects for a post-Trump MAGA.

My new piece – free to read, no paywall:

https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/71475e17-b44e-43ec-83de-f17533e5bf92

Principiellt viktigt från lilla Bollnäs: kommunen har sagt nej till Dibbers ansökan att starta förskola med hänvisning till färre antal barn totalt i kommunen. Dibber överklagade till Kammarrätten men fick avslag. Nu ger de upp. Våga säga nej kommunpolitiker!
www.ljusnan.se/bollnas/dibb...

Att man kan vara muslim och svensk är inte en åsikt, det är fakta. Vi har religionsfrihet. Att säga tvärtom är rasism.

Important development in holding gun industry civilly accountable for their role in gun violence. The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from gun makers who sought to invalidate New York’s statute grounding lawsuits against firearms industry members who create a public nuisance. News report at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-turns-away-challenge-new-york-firearms-liability-law-rcna349068. Fuller analysis in this 🧵. 1/ #LawFedi

"Latin letters do not hold hands. Arabic letters do.

To understand why every machine since Gutenberg has wrestled this script and mostly lost, you need one structural fact: Arabic is cursive always."

This piece is an exhilarating, eye-opening, outrageous, and very funny tale of the difference between latin letters and Arabic letters, and why printing presses and screen renderers have such a hard time with it.

https://lr0.org/blog/p/arabic/

The Cambridge Whistleblowing Saga

This is an update concerning the Employment tribunal I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

The claimant in the case is Professor Wyn Evans of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. Now that he has finished given evidence, it is now possible to release some of the background publicly. You can read a summary here. If you follow that link you will see reference to this guest post, published on this blog in late 2022:

https://telescoper.blog/2022/11/02/guest-post-the-bullying-of-hannelore/

That old post was carefully anonymised for legal reasons, but it can now be revealed that the Department concerned is, nor surprisingly given the affiliation of the claimant, the Intitute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge.

I will refrain from commenting further as the case is ongoing, but you can follow updates here. There is also piece about the case in the Guardian here.

P.S. Yes, it has taken a very long time for the matter to reach a head.

#BullyingAndHarassment #InstituteOfAstronomy #NeilWynEvans #UniversityOfCambridge #Whistleblowing

The #curl project will not accept or otherwise handle any vulnerability reports during the month of July 2026. We call it the curl summer of bliss.

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/06/15/curl-summer-of-bliss/

Statsministerns eget friskoleentourage vässar tonen mot journalister (i vanliga fall nöjer han sig med att styra Näringslivets Medieinstitut som granskar journalister som granskat näringslivet). Det är samhällsfarliga personer vi har att göra med. www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/8p...

Thorstensons mejl om reportern...

On a first date, we scheduled going for a walk around the lake. I paid my 7-year old cousin £10 to fall in the pond and I would save him as a bystander. Six years later, we're getting married and the little twat is extorting me out of £10 a week to keep my cover and not come.

Det här är en ren lögn. Sverigedemokraterna är inte alls ”delvis emot” att ägare av friskolor ska tillåtas ta ut vinster, de är det parti som är mest för skolvinsterna. Fackförbundet Sveriges Lärare borde inte bidra till den här typen av lurendrejeri för att vinna röster.

Skollobbyisten Thorstenson sitter i styrelsen för bolaget som driver "Näringslivets Medieinstitut" vars affärsidé är att ta in pengar från näringslivet (bland annat Hans o Barbara Bergström) och granska journalister som granskar näringslivet (bland annat skolkoncerner). Lyssna på podden.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jpjmnu6x2h7gq7uvi4whpavk/post/3moaabcnxtc2u

KPMG issued a report citing all the transformational ways GenAI has transformed industry, it’s been widely cited.

One minor problem: it turns they used AI to write the report, and it made up all of the evidence.

KPMG have now withdrawn the report in full.

https://www.ft.com/content/b3828e92-4961-4b39-84f0-c42f33be3c3f