Issue 2314 - Wednesday 16 April 2025

Hello! Sorry for the late edition, I was reporting on a legally sensitive story (Crikey, $) and things dragged on longer than expected ᵃˢ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵍˢ ᶦⁿᵛᵒˡᵛᶦⁿᵍ ˡᵃʷʸᵉʳˢ ᵒᶠᵗᵉⁿ ᵈᵒ.

The News

It is about to get a lot harder to identify and track bugs and exploits without CVE

The world’s way of tracking software exploits may go dark as early as tomorrow after the Trump administration pulled funding (CyberDaily). Just yesterday, the board of CVE program — ‘common vulnerabilities and exposures’ — was told that the Department of Homeland Security would not extend a grant set to expire imminently (Mastodon). This program is responsible for registering and tracking software exploits, assigning those CVE-2025-6969 numbers that are both crucial to communicating about problems but are literally also hardwired into many of the cybersecurity systems. To put it bluntly, this will mean chaos, according to the industry (Forbes). Meanwhile, US’s Defense Digital Service has resigned en masse because of DOGE meddling (Politico) and a whistleblower claims DOGE has already caused a significant cyber breach (Reuters)…. I mean… what more is there to say?

4chan has been hacked and maybe we’re about to solve a lot of mysteries

The urinal of the internet, 4chan, has been down since Monday (Engadget). Screenshots purportedly of the admin phpMyAdmin page have been posted online (Imgur) but no idea how legit they are. A group, Soyjak.party, has claimed responsibility and reckons they’ve got info on admins and anonymous users (WIRED, $). If it’s true, there will be a lot of interest in this data. While not quite the centre of everything bad on the internet like it used to be, 4chan’s logs would be extremely useful for tracking down who was responsible for a lot of horrific stuff.

Two interesting stories about NSW Police using technology

NSW Police have switched off their facial recognition software but won’t say why 🤨 (InnovationAus, $). Police minister Yasmin Catley announced that the force had chosen to deactivate PhotoTrac, a tool it had used for more than a decade. PhotoTrac has never been tested for racial bias, but it apparently based on an algorithm that has previously been found to be less accurate for women and people of colour (WIRED, $). Elsewhere in NSW police tech news, a “firewall security” staff member was fired for installed WeChat on work computers, which was unapproved, and being “dishonest” about it (ITNews).

Leftovers

Oh, Also

Calm your farm by watching moose migrate

There’s a lot of hectic things going on in the world. You know what’s not hectic? This Swedish TV station’s annual livestream of its Great Moose Migration (Svtplay.se)

No sightings for me so far, but I’m told that you’ll just see a flock of moose stroll through fairly regularly (TechCrunch). Let me know if you see any!

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.