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For what looks at first glance to be a potentially impactful development, this post and the "encode.su" one linked from it are extremely sparse on details. Whe
by p-e-w 3y ago
For what looks at first glance to be a potentially impactful development, this post and the "encode.su" one linked from it are extremely sparse on details.
Where is the source code? A detailed description of what the codec actually does? References to relevant publications?
All I see are two mystery Windows binaries, hosted on a forum I've never heard about. The fact that "encode.su" uses the world's most notorious domain extension doesn't inspire confidence, to put it mildly.
- brnt 3y agoHydrogenaudio is well known in this area and many new prototype codecs are announced there first. Also, the lack of source control and Windows-only binaries are very much congruent to the style of development there. See it as your confrontation with a new world, because small it is not! And later, you will learn to understand the depth of the contribution that the ffmpeg project provides :)
- p-e-w 3y agoSo people just download .exe files that they see in those forum posts and run them on their machines? New world indeed...
- userbinator 3y ago[flagged]
- piecerough 3y agoTell us more about "I don't aee anything suspicious". How exactly do you know it's not a binary that hashes all your files using a key and asks for btc to revert?
- peddling-brink 3y agoThere are libraries that would be useful for cryptography that you wouldn’t likely need in an audio codec. If the binary imports those libraries, it may be visible with a bit of prodding.
- p-e-w 3y agoUnless they are statically linked. Or the binary uses executable compression. Or obfuscated dynamic loading. Or about a million other techniques that can thwart dependency analysis, and which have been well-known for decades.
- TylerE 3y agoAnd precense of those things is basically the first thing any malware heuristic looks at. Why are you so emphatically stating them as if they are news?
- 0xDEADFED5 3y agoi think they were just examples of how simply looking at imports isn't good enough, and it's true. on the plus side, by hitting HN there are more eyes on it and hopefully more consensus on how safe/interesting this is
- userbinator 3y agoOpen in hex/text editor, scroll through and look for anything suspicious like network, crypto, obfuscated sections (major red flag), strange strings, etc. The #1 most reliable sign of malware is if it's unusually large and packed/obfuscated, but this isn't. The guy even has his full name and contact info in there. This is harmless. If you don't trust me you could upload to an online malware multiscanner (which tends to invite false positives, but better than nothing).
- p-e-w 3y agoIt's not about whether this particular announcement, with these particular executables, is trustworthy or not. It's about the whole process of regularly downloading and running executables uploaded by individuals to a BBS-type forum being unimaginable in most other parts of the software world, and violating every security "best practice" written about in the past 30 years. I know that this is how things were once done everywhere. But that was a long time ago.
- Dalewyn 3y agoAre we even in the same universe? The vast majority of the world still downloads and runs executables uploaded by individuals, albeit perhaps not on a bulletin board or forum (most of those have been killed and replaced by social media).
- wokwokwok 3y agoThis argument comes up reasonably regularly. No, the majority of the world does not download and run binaries from non-reputable sources. The distinction between reputable and non-reputable varies, but broadly easily spoofable user uploaded content falls into the non-reputable. Most people download software from trust worthy websites like the official chrome website. Indeed, the fact that people are continually scammed by this sort of attack is why Apple now refuses to run unsigned binaries by default. To pretend nothing is wrong here is like pretending JavaScript supply chain attacks don’t exist because you don’t want them to exist. …and yet. They do exist; wanting it not to be true does not make it so. Likewise, downloading and running arbitrary binaries from a forum is naive. You simply want nothing bad to happen. That does not mean nothing bad will actually happen. Even if you trust the authors of the posts, how reputable is the forum itself? Are the binary hashes posted? (No, they aren’t). > I'm new in this forum ^ does not inspire confidence.
- p-e-w 3y agoYeah, I too was using the web in the late 90s. I remember countless programming and "hacking" forums where .exes were shared, and I downloaded and ran anything and everything that had a download link. It was a fun time, and I do harbor some nostalgia for it. But I can't imagine going back.
- 0xDEADFED5 3y agoit was okay back then though, because the cracked copy of NOD32 on your system would totally protect you =)
- mxmilkiib 3y agoCorporate? That's not a sound way to describe the totality of the world of programmers that lean towards free/open and beyond. Sure, closed-source communities exist and have for a long age, but many folk have grown beyond the ethos or tradition of closed releases for reasons like, IDK, competitive individualism for clout or potential code quality shame that AFAICT drive such corners of the software world, especially at the level of freeware, not just for business. It's certainly a new world for younger people who skipped the era when that was more prevalent. If people don't like corporate, there are newer source available licence options that folk to the left of free/open have been advocating more recently.
- dang 3y agoHey, could you please edit out swipes and/or name-calling from your HN posts? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your comment would be just fine without the (first clause of the) second sentence.
- lifthrasiir 3y agoYou can always use a sandbox if that's the most concern. A bigger issue is that, as like other established forums, enough many people don't know much about data compression and contribute to the noise.
- HakanAbbas 3y agoMy goal is to try to do something practical just on data compression. I have neither knowledge nor experience about malicious software mentioned. You may be comfortable about this. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hakan-abbas-178b5852/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/hakan-abbas-178b5852/
- p-e-w 3y agoI was referring to the practice of downloading executables from such forums in general, not to your post specifically. I have no reason to suspect that this particular post contains any malware. But in most parts of the software world, Open Source has been the standard for experimental publications for a long, long time, and seeing a forum depart so strongly from that standard is certainly surprising, and does of course have security implications when this practice is used at scale.
- npteljes 3y agoThat's an old world, for me. It's how the Windows software ecosystem worked and works to this day.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoThere are open source developers out there who literally write installation instructions like these in their READMEs: curl http://example.com/script.sh | bash
- p-e-w 3y agoAlso, what does the High Availability in the name of the codec refer to? I've searched the web and found not a single mention of "high availability" in the context of audio codecs. In fact, the top-ranked result was this very post, which doesn't explain what the term is intended to mean.
- HakanAbbas 3y agoI wasn't really careful when making this naming. I just tried to make it a little different. I can't say that I'm successful in nomenclature.
- lifthrasiir 3y agoIf you need some retronym, how about "highly astute ..." or "highly apt ..."?
- HakanAbbas 3y agoI will evaluate them.
- fmajid 3y agoSounds like a retronym for the author’s initials :-)
- HakanAbbas 3y agoGreat detection :)
- layer8 3y agoIt uses less resources, so the resource retains higher availability?
- HakanAbbas 3y agoHALAC and HALIC really consume very little memory. The process speed is high at the same rate. And they offer a reasonable compression rate. Therefore, they can be used at high level and different areas.
- userbinator 3y agoThe fact that "encode.su" uses the world's most notorious domain extension doesn't inspire confidence, to put it mildly. The leaders in data compression and information theory are all from the former Soviet Union, so that's no cause for concern. I think Andrey Markov started it all.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lifthrasiir 3y ago> The fact that "encode.su" uses the world's most notorious domain extension doesn't inspire confidence, to put it mildly. Encode.su (formerly encode.ru) is indeed the most known forum dedicated for data compression in general. So much that many if not most notable data compression projects posted to HN are often first advertised to that forum first (for example, Zstandard [1]). [1] https://encode.su/threads/2119-Zstandard https://encode.su/threads/2119-Zstandard
- RockRobotRock 3y agoReally? Tearing down the OP because of the TLD the forum uses? That's just lame.
- aingisni_del 3y ago>>>uses the world's most notorious domain extension doesn't inspire confidence, to put it mildly. What does this mean? Why or how is this TLD the world’s most notorious?
- throw0101d 3y ago> The .su TLD is known for usage by cybercriminals.[4][5][6] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su I would think that ICANN/whomever would have mandated its retirement / de-orbit, but a special exception was asked for: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Exceptional_reservations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Exceptional...
- lifthrasiir 3y agoAll three references are 10 years old (or only have a secondary reference that is 10 years old). More recent analyses give much more diverse set of TLDs---.ga, .tk, .us, .ru, .ml, .pw and so on [1]. In fact, at this point we should be much more concerned about .us than .su. [1] https://www.interisle.net/PhishingLandscape2023.pdf#page=18 https://www.interisle.net/PhishingLandscape2023.pdf#page=18
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]