CEO, @bitcoinhodlco (https://xitter.cf/t.co/nRDU4uVSfa) | Co-Founder, @bitcoinpolicyuk | #npub1wl39ydk5rpecvtrzhq67afl9ykn2ty2xdxdkfmyan0rss3f3ma5sndznlx
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Privacy, and our basic freedoms, are under attack from all sides.
Incredibly, the so-called 'liberal democracies' are now leading these attacks; arresting their own citizens for posting online, rolling out facial recognition cameras, and moving to ban VPNs.
"What can men do against such reckless hate?" And are we losing this battle?
Absolutely not. There's still time to fight back, and we have much in our arsenal. We at @bitcoinpolicyuk have put together a 'Privacy Toolkit', that should let anyone, whatever their skill level, take a few small steps towards improving their privacy and their freedom, and making themselves just a little bit harder for governments to track and to oppress.
This isn't comprehensive, and we'll continue to update it as time goes by. We hope it's useful to everyone and serves as a handy guide to help us all push back against government overreach, wherever we find it.
Link in the thread and comments welcome! 👇
🚨NEW: Britain has developed a reputation as perhaps the most censorious 'liberal' democracy.
How did we get here — and what can we do about it?
✍️: @charliecolecc investigates.
📖: pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/resto…
I suppose this is what it looks like when the Coldcard entropy issue breaks through into normie-land.
Yay, I guess?
The eMudhra compromise is an absolute joke. This isn't a standard data leak it's pure, unadulterated structural incompetence.
8 globally trusted intermediate CA keys were generated with basically zero cryptographic entropy. 😠 A standard NIST P-384 private key needs 384 bits of entropy so it's mathematically impossible to crack.
Yet, the blokes at @eMudhra generated production keys with 3 to 8 bits. The actual private key values were literal single digits like 4, 56, and 115. This is playground-level stuff. Infuriatingly amateur.
How does a private company with zero fundamental grasp of public key infrastructure even get global root trust? Indian regulatory and auditing bodies make us look like complete idiots. They treat cybersecurity like a casual compliance checkbox instead of critical national infrastructure.
This failure leaves the entire internet with a massive cleanup job. Browsers blocked these keys fast, but millions of unmaintained Linux distros, embedded IoT tech, Docker containers, and backend apps are completely exposed out there.
If you're an everyday user (not a developer), you still need to fix this on your personal devices right now:
Update everything: Force-update your web browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) and your operating systems across your laptop, Mac, and mobile phone. Don't wait for auto-updates manually trigger them in your settings.
Test your device: Go to emudhra.we-have-a-problem.co…
Verify the result: If your browser blocks the site and says "Did not connect" (or throws a certificate error), you are safe. If the website opens normally, you are still vulnerable.
If you're running Linux, Python, Go, or Node infrastructure:
Stop what you're doing. Manually update your ca-certificates bundles, pins, or drop a system-level blocklist immediately to prevent traffic interception.
The casual negligence of these agencies shouldn't be your vulnerability.
Might want to just stay offline for the next day or so. And enjoy that physical media you've been stockpiling instead.
This is the most serious 48 hours in cybersecurity history.
"Black October" they're calling it
It seems every *hour* there's a new incident, that in a typical year, would be one of the biggest incidents of the *entire year*
SUMMARY OF THE LAST 48 HOURS:
YEAR-LEVEL INCIDENTS (In a typical year, these would be among the biggest incidents of the year):
1. PHP2Shell: a hole in the software behind ~70% of websites. Governments took sites offline.
2. eMudhra: the master keys that prove websites are real were cracked. One was the number 4.
3. California: data on every public school student since 2023 stolen, including disability status
4. Railway: hackers stole customers' secret keys from a hosting platform used by millions of developers
5. Zeabur: 321,810 accounts breached. The company is shutting down.
6. LiteLLM: an AI tool downloaded 3.4 million times a day was poisoned with a password stealer
7. GitLab: a 10-out-of-10 severity hole in every version since 2014
8. Cairn: criminals used an AI hacking tool to break into 100+ companies
9. Ahold Delhaize: hackers knocked the owner of Food Lion and Stop & Shop offline
10. Onamae: malware planted on up to 26,739 customer servers in Japan
MONTH-LEVEL INCIDENTS (In a typical month, these would be among the biggest incidents):
11. Signal: a bug could leave your mic and camera on after you hang up
12. NGINX: 3 critical holes in software running ~1/3 of websites
13. HTTP/3: a single connection can crash 7 of the 10 web server types tested
14. Plex: hackers breaking into home media servers
15. SafePay ransomware: FBI warns it has hit 600+ critical infrastructure organizations
16. Palo Alto: ransomware gangs breaking in through company firewalls
17. Bullhorn: platform used by 10,000+ companies knocked offline
18. Medi-Cal: 970,000 patients' data stolen
19. WordPress: hackers stole a plugin maker's keys and used them to plant backdoors on websites
20. AOMEI: backup software's update server handed out a backdoor
21. Meta Muse: Meta's AI agent exposed users' personal and business secrets
22. Tor: 333 relays hijacked to steal logins
23. TiDB Cloud: database company's cloud breached
Also serious:
24. State Bank of India: India's biggest bank confirms a data breach
25. OVHcloud: hackers slipped a password stealer into a cloud company's official tool
26. Siemens: a software hole being used to spread malware
27. North Korea: state hackers launch a new attack campaign on South Korea
👇
So basically, today PHP got two critical bugs that let anyone run code on your server without even logging in, which is bad, and then the details leaked before the patch was even out, which is worse, and it works on WordPress and MediaWiki and Magento and Joomla and Laravel, and Censys says like 1.5 million servers are running a version with no fix, so the NSA was like "take your system offline," and the FBI was like "take your system offline," and CISA and the UK and CERT-EU were all like "take your system offline," and then the Prime Minister of Japan, the actual Prime Minister, posted at 5:55 in the morning telling 48.8 million people to take their system offline, so everyone took their system offline, like the Dutch cybersecurity agency took its own website offline, and the Dutch parliament went offline, and the Port of Rotterdam went offline, and Finland and France and Denmark started pulling government sites, and Wikipedia went down, and Archive.org went down, and Asana and GOG and Something Awful went down, and the University of Vienna's webmail went down for some reason, and that's just PHP. Because GitLab also dropped a CVSS 10.0, which is the highest score they give out, for a bug that's been there since 2014, so that's every self-hosted GitLab for twelve years, and then LiteLLM 1.107.0 got hijacked and shipped a credential stealer and a remote access trojan in every single wheel and the Docker images, including latest, and you didn't even have to import it, just installing it was enough, and it's the second time this year, and then Railway paused every deployment on the entire platform because someone got into the environment variables, so now everyone has to rotate every secret they've ever stored there, and TiDB Cloud said someone was walking around inside with stolen credentials for basically a month and an extortion group says they took 10.6 terabytes, and Zeabur got breached for the second time in two months and is just shutting down, like the whole company, and Node.js patched remote code execution and a TLS bypass, and CISA says Plex is being actively exploited, and someone took over 300 Tor exit relays to steal SSH passwords, and SafePay ransomware has hit over 600 critical infrastructure orgs, and India's biggest bank filed a data loss incident, and Japan has been in an official state of emergency in cyberspace since October 9, which honestly explains the 5:55 AM post. Oh, and eMudhra, a certificate authority that's issued over 60 million certificates, whose entire job is proving websites are who they say they are, was supposed to be using private keys that are random numbers over a hundred digits long, and one of them was 4. Just 4. And the others were like 66 and 237. Anyway, it's Wednesday.
👇👇
Effective Immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems are advised to be prepared for an update addressing two critical vulnerabilities. PHP is widely used for web applications. These vulnerabilities often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database. If an immediate update is not feasible, it is recommend that organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated. NSA will follow up shortly with more specific guidance.
Truth.
For any man who was bullied, belittled, abused or neglected as a child, there's only one question you need to ask yourself.
"Have I become the kind of man who would have protected me when I was a boy?"
If you can answer 'yes', then you really have no more to do.
Pushing back against misguided and unjust laws and proposals is NOT time wasted.
Well done to everyone who responded to this.
But remember, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
On to the next....
BREAKING | Treasury backs down on crypto rules after ‘thousands’ of comments techcentral.co.za/treasury-c…
Freddie New retweeted
This comes to show that even in South Africa, the man on the street still sometimes has influence.
Well done to everyone who made themselves heard about this insane and draconian proposal.
Hat tip to @PRDG_ZA for doing excellent work on this topic.
We live to fight them another day.
BREAKING | Treasury backs down on crypto rules after ‘thousands’ of comments techcentral.co.za/treasury-c…
Freddie New retweeted
Treasury backs down on ludicrous crypto rules after being inundated with 'thousands' of comments.
BREAKING | Treasury backs down on crypto rules after ‘thousands’ of comments techcentral.co.za/treasury-c…
Freddie New retweeted
Loving the Great Exhibition in Lincolnshire! Great to have you here with us @Jcastweet on the @RenewaBlox stand ... its been super busy so first chance we've had to post. @BitcoinColl @CL_Wheeler
Freddie New retweeted
Everyone talks about #AIagents paying for things.
@shoneanstey made a point I don't hear enough. A few sats can also prove who an agent is.
Send one sat, prove you own the wallet. Own the key, and you are who you say you are.
Picture a fleet of thousands of agents and robots. That's how they earn trust.
#Lightning #Bitcoin
From our live with @VIhnatiuk of @utexocom on @LQWDTech 👇
Freddie New retweeted
ABC2026 IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK!
Your countdown to Blantyre starts here.
From travel tips to accommodation and tickets, we’ve answered your key questions to help you prepare for Africa Bitcoin Conference 2026.
Swipe through, save this post, and start getting ready. We’ll see you in Malawi
Blantyre, Malawi | 2–4 December 2026
Secure your ticket: afrobitcoin.org/tickets/
#ABC2026 #Bitcoin #Africa #Malawi #Blantyre
Freddie New retweeted
It’ll all come crashing down sooner or later. May not even be the national debt that does it.
In truth, we spend a lot of time on here debating how to get out of this mess. But the reality is, there’s no fixing it. Maybe AI renders much of this meaningless as we surf our way into the singularity. That’s probably the best case… but I’m not convinced yet.
On our current trajectory, all we can really do is try to make the inevitable less painful and destructive. The trouble is, even that modest ambition would require us to behave in ways we’ve consistently failed to throughout history.
Things were much easier when we ruled an empire and controlled the game. Now Britain is just one of many participants, and we’ve made a pretty rough start to the 21st-century edition.
If we’re going to find a foothold, we need new players. Not the same tired old bullshit from a worn-out political establishment that’s out of ideas and running out of friends.
If we want a fighting chance, we need to start tearing shit up. Play to our strengths. And play our own game.
Freddie New retweeted
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England expects that inflation will go on rising at an unexpected rate
(unexpected that is by those whose job it is to predict it...)
Oh, and we borrowed more than expected as well. Debt finally over three trillion for the first time
reuters.com/world/uk/uk-borr…
Mr Unexpected quickly drew up a new three-point plan for power.
1. Pretend you didn't expect to be in power, so people don't think you're a typical politician.
2. Pretend you didn't know how bad things were, so you can't be blamed for not having a plan to fix them.
3. Make a very big fuss about something very small. That way, people will think you understand their concerns, and that you're one of them
Freddie New retweeted
On drink: following the two double bourbons already downed, Bond soon orders a third. That’s three double bourbons before Mr Du Pont offers to buy him a drink minutes later in Chapter 2. ‘What’ll you have?’
‘Thanks,’ says Bond. ‘Bourbon on the rocks.’
The man’s a *machine* 😂
Freddie New retweeted
The "KYC everyone for everything" situation has gotten totally ridiculous.
Even for non-financial products & use cases, I am having to scan my face and drivers license to get access to things like a Lime scooter, e.g. Before they could give me accounting advice, a Big 4 firm recently asked me to send a photo of my email *attached as a JPEG*.
This expectation creep around personal data sharing already has documented devastating consequences (e.g. financial ruin) at the individual level. It's only going to be a matter of time before personal identity compromise of enough individuals leads to a total collapse of online trust.