Tootfinder

Metacurity is pleased to offer our free and premium subscribers a weekly digest of the best long-form (and longish) infosec-related pieces we couldn't properly fit into our daily news crush.
This week's selection covers
--How the SEC missed the likely culprits in its 2017 hack,
--How a quiet engineer controls Telegram,
--When a Canadian teen spied for Russia,
--Cybercrime group document shows that Russia doubts China,
--Modern militaries rely on li…

Best infosec-related long reads for the week of 6/7/25
How the SEC missed the likely culprits in its 2017 hack, How a quiet engineer controls Telegram, When a Canadian teen spied for Russia, Cybercrime group document shows that Russia doubts China, Modern militaries rely on lightweight tools and superior spycraft, AI's delusional rabbit holes

Generative Models of 21cm EoR Lightcones with 3D Scattering Transforms
Ian Hothi, Erwan Allys, Benoit Semelin, Romain Meriot
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10061

Generative Models of 21cm EoR Lightcones with 3D Scattering Transforms
The 21cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) is observed as a three-dimensional data set known as a lightcone, consisting of a redshift (frequency) axis and two spatial sky plane axes. When observed by radio interferometers, this EoR signal is strongly obscured by foregrounds that are several orders of magnitude stronger. Due to its inherently non-Gaussian nature, the EoR signal requires robust statistical tools to accurately separate it from these foreground contaminants, but current f…

Folks in NZ are starting to realise the implications of the impending EOL of Microsoft Windows 10 for our education system. In its finite wisdom, our MinOfEd has effectively locked all schools into either the use of MS Windows or Google ChromeOS. Both have fundamental issues like endless license hassles, EOLing OSs, ending support for Window or ChromeOS on specific computer models, etc. And that doesn't even start to talk about digital colonisation & sovereignty (see

Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the US disaster agency said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation.
The US hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast last week that this year’s season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.

LLMs often nail short-term tasks but AI agents can spiral into insane meltdowns over time. This AI-powered vending machine tried to email the FBI to say it was a victim of cyberfraud and then declared its quantum state "collapsed":
https://www.linked…

Multi-Tool Analysis of User Interface & Accessibility in Deployed Web-Based Chatbots
Mukesh Rajmohan, Smit Desai, Sanchari Das
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04659

Multi-Tool Analysis of User Interface & Accessibility in Deployed Web-Based Chatbots
In this work, we present a multi-tool evaluation of 106 deployed web-based chatbots, across domains like healthcare, education and customer service, comprising both standalone applications and embedded widgets using automated tools (Google Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, SiteImprove Accessibility Checker) and manual audits (Microsoft Accessibility Insights). Our analysis reveals that over 80% of chatbots exhibit at least one critical accessibility issue, and 45% suffer from missing semantic str…

Concentration profiles of OH and H$_2$O$_2$ in plasma-treated water: influence of power, gas mixture and treatment distance
Anna Lena Sch\"one, Steffen Sch\"uttler, Talisha Mro{\ss}, Niklas Eichstaedt, Judith Golda, Lars Sch\"ucke, Andrew R. Gibson
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03886

Concentration profiles of OH and H$_2$O$_2$ in plasma-treated water: influence of power, gas mixture and treatment distance
Plasma liquid interactions are important for a range of applications. For these, H$_2$O$_2$ and OH represent two key reactive species, whose concentrations in liquids need to be controlled for effective application outcomes. Here, a combination of gas and liquid simulations is used to study the concentration profiles of H$_2$O$_2$ and OH in water treated by a radio-frequency-driven plasma jet, with a glass capillary between the electrodes, operated in He with admixtures of water vapour. Simulat…

Phase-based analysis and control of low Reynolds number aeroelastic flows
Chathura R. Sumanasiri, Tulsi Ram Sahu, Aditya G. Nair
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00306

Phase-based analysis and control of low Reynolds number aeroelastic flows
Flutter in lightweight airfoils under unsteady flows presents a critical challenge in aeroelastic stability and control. This study uncovers phase-localized mechanisms that drive the onset and suppression of flutter in a freely pitching airfoil at low Reynolds number. By introducing targeted impulsive stiffness perturbations, we identify critical phases that trigger instability. Using phase-sensitivity functions, energy-transfer metrics, and dynamic mode decomposition, we show that flutter aris…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14667 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csAI_…

SAFEPATH: Preventing Harmful Reasoning in Chain-of-Thought via Early Alignment
Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have become powerful tools for complex problem solving, but their structured reasoning pathways can lead to unsafe outputs when exposed to harmful prompts. Existing safety alignment methods reduce harmful outputs but can degrade reasoning depth, leading to significant trade-offs in complex, multi-step tasks, and remain vulnerable to sophisticated jailbreak attacks. To address this, we introduce SAFEPATH, a lightweight alignment method that fine-tunes LRMs to emit a…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07271 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_…

Cautionary tales on heating-rate prescriptions in kilonovae
A major ingredient for kilonova lightcurves is the radioactive heating rate and its dependence on the electron fraction and velocity of the ejecta and, in principle, on the nuclear mass formula. Heating-rate formulae commonly used as the basis for kilonova models previously employed in the literature produce substantially different outputs for high electron fractions ($Y_{e} \gtrsim 0.3$) and at late times ($t \gtrsim 1$d) compared to newer prescriptions. Here, we employ standard semi-analytica…