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Polygon Blockchain Fixes Double Spend Bug Reported From Bug Bounty

Andrew Orr ·

Security researcher Gerhard Wagner found a double-spend bug in Polygon’s Plasma bridge. The company awarded Mr. Wagner a record US$2 million for reporting this critical vulnerability.

In total, it is possible to create 14×16 = 224 different encodings for the same raw path. A malicious user can leverage the issue to create alternative exits for the same burn transaction and perform double spends on the Polygon network.

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Stargate SG-1 Cast to Read AI-Generated Script

Jeff Butts ·

More than a few of us have been wishing for a reunion of our favorite Stargate: SG-1 characters. It looks like it’s finally happening, but not the way we thought. Someone fed thousands of hours of Stargate SG-1 episodes into a Google AI bot, and then let it write the script. On November 6, 2021, some of our favorite Stargate stars will do a table reading of that script. Could be good, could be bad, but it’s bound to be fun.

The whole script — every single line, every stage direction — was, according to the teaser, produced by an AI from Google. Some of it is in clear homage to classic Stargate’s sense of humor. But there’s also some of the gravitas that Thor and the Asgard brought to their interactions with SG-C and allies. If what we know about Markov chains is any indication about what is to come, this reading may include word salad, but it’ll be light, and pretty meme-ready. It isn’t the reunion we deserve… it’s the reunion we need right now.

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Elcomsoft Can Now Download iCloud Data With Trusted Device Authentication

Andrew Orr ·

Elcomsoft has announced an update to its Phone Breaker, a forensic tool used to extract data from iPhones. A trusted iOS device can now be used to authenticate into iCloud. This will let the tool decrypt data protected by end-to-end encryption.

By using a trusted device, experts benefit from unrestricted access to all kinds of information stored in the user’s iCloud account including cloud backups produced by all Apple devices sharing the same Apple ID, photos, synchronized data, as well as end-to-end encrypted data such as the user’s passwords, browsing history, and health information.

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Adobe's Behance Platform Adds Support for NFT Art

Andrew Orr ·

Behance, a portfolio platform for graphic designers, will let creators connect their crypto wallet to showcase NFT art.

The company is working to include blockchains like Polygon, Solana, Flow and Tezos. It is also partnering with NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, SuperRare, KnownOrigin, and Rarible to display provenance data from the Content Authenticity Initiative — which is now built into a number of Creative Cloud tools — visible on their sites, in addition to Behance.

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Mastercard and Bakkt Partner to Offer Crypto Loyalty Programs

Andrew Orr ·

Mastercard and Bakkt announced a partnership to make it easier for merchants, banks and fintechs in the U.S. to offer cryptocurrency loyalty programs.

Mastercard will also integrate crypto into its loyalty solutions, enabling its partners to offer cryptocurrency as rewards and create fungibility between loyalty points and other digital assets. This means that consumers can earn and spend rewards in cryptocurrency instead of traditional loyalty points and seamlessly convert their crypto holdings to pay for purchases.

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New Wikimedia Enterprise API Enables Public Data Access

Andrew Orr ·

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, launched Wikimedia Enterprise on Monday. Its API was first announced in March.

Wikimedia Enterprise makes the process of leveraging, packaging, and sharing content from Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects more efficient for large scale content reusers. In most cases, commercial entities that reuse Wikimedia content at a high volume have product, service, and system requirements that go beyond what Wikimedia freely provides through publicly available APIs and data dumps. The information panels shown in search engine results and the information served by virtual home assistants are examples of how Wikimedia content is frequently used by other websites.