#ITS A BASE64 CODE ITS A BASE64 CODE

[ask-unpleasant]

(GET)(IT)(THROUGH)(TO)(THE)(GREEN)(MAN)(.) (THE)(OTHERS)(CAN'T)(INTERCEPT)(ANONS)(.) (aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20vd2F0Y2g/dj1fNEtOblN3VGZzcw==) (HAVE)(HIM)(TYPE)(IT)(IN)(THE)(CONSOLE)(OF)(THE)(PC)(.) (GET)(M̴͕̽É̵͇)(Ȯ̸̢͎U̷̗̯͐̃̍T̵͉̆̾̒)(O̶͉̒ͅF̸̢͚̀̏̌)(H̵̭͋́̔́̄͐͂̒̈́̔̊͌̕E̷̳͇͑̒̕R̷̼͍̹̯̖̩͌̋̎̾͌́͋̾̓͗͑̕͘͠ͅḘ̸͕̓̄̒̅̋̈́̉̉̓͆̕)

This thing has no moral compass, no true emotion.

Do not let it escape. It has no place here.

[lumoctopus]

ok so 4cvit , Legundo, Lynxyliam, Wadebox, HilmCC and Leg.GG seem to be doign some arg thing on twitter and im putting it together here

Here are the links to each post : 4CVIT, Legundo, LynxyLiam, WadeBox, HilmCC, Leg.GG

When I mention someones @ it refers to the one on twitter

1) Each one has a code written on the side which is HEX code. Each one has the name of one person that posted a weird image so, 4C-> Legundo->HilmCC->LynxyLiam->Wadebox->LEGgg -> 4C

2) There are flowers art the top or bottom of each post. They match in pairs so one ofthem is the top half of the flowers and the other is the bottom half. The pairs are: Legundo & wadebox hilmCC & Lynxyliam 4cvit & Leggg

3) Lynxyliam's post has a QR code that when scanned it shows this: the l.eav-es b-attl.e to s/teal t.he su.n b.ut on-ly th/e tallest p.eta-ls bl-oo.m Which is a sentence with morse hiden in it that translates to: PVP

4) @/vikjayced found that the code on 4C's post trhough Bacon cypher translates to DEFEND

5) @/profpie2000 found that the binary on Legundo's post translates to COLLECT

6) Wadebox's post has a quote from Macbeth in the background The left is the orignal text and the right is a modern english version

7) LEGgg has a barcode at the bottom that when scanned shows that it means 25 Teams

8) By the way LegGG is legundo's server with like minigames and stuff. Probably means that this ARG is hinting at some event or new addition to the server

9) xiu-dian in the replies found that when taking the string on HilmCC's post as Qy1jb21wZXTEq3RvcsSTcw== and decoding with base64 it comes out as "C-competītorēs". Im not certain if this is correct but its the only result that makes some amount of sense. If its correct maybe it hints at spanish speakers being in or maybe 3 players per team or something idk.

10) I was told that in January 4C hinted at something in a post that seems to be related to what this event will be.

11) @/cyjen_ figured out that the C_competitors on HiImCC's tweet was refering to C in roman numerals which is 100. So 100 players. Wadebox is saying one part of the puzzle is msising and posing rose emojis

12) LAST CLUE HAS BEEN SOLVED. People on wadebox's discord server found that the flowers in the middle connecting the images have values assigned to them in bedrock mc. These correspond to a unix timestamp giving a date and time.

My theory is that this is all hinting to some sort of event in collaboration with LegGG that the 5 worked on together. Might be flower themed. I dont think its a permanent addition to the server becuase 25 teams is too big but I might be wrong. It will be focused on pvp and will have some mechanics that involve defending and collecting stuff. The macbeth quote implies that there will be ways of stealing from other teams. The event will happen on the 10th of may at 6 pm GMT

[area-strigae]

how i discovered akuma homura was in magia record

so magia record's twitter posted a link to an anniversary website said to contain hints at who its anniversary unit will be

throughout this website there were a few codes in base64, parts of a JWT token. as well, a series of numbers at the bottom.

when you go to the secret page of the site, it announces to you that you've found more hints. going back to the main section and sharing the contest-entrance tweet will get you an image with one of forty codes that correspond with one of those numbers. this is the one i got!

when you put all forty together, eventually, you'll get yourself a code. it is as follows:

O4W7TwhxYieUU8FFDPWv4FpkKnqmzRtl6TE9ps4dGWA

going back to the website, there's another sub-page called settoken, where you need to insert all the data you've found scrounging the site.

hitting set and going back to the secret page will bring you here.

the shield's ascii art is,

also, a png in text form, and when converted, you get a tiny image of akuma homura's insignia.

and this is where the story ends. thank god. i cant wait to waste a million dollars rolling for akuhomu

[rootbeertime]

Wordgirl Archive

Hello everyone! I just wanted to let you know I've spent the past few months creating a Wordgirl archive!

Here's the link!

aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZvbGRlci9wclZVZ0piVCNFcUZyVFNGV1E4T2pXaDI2Y0VBdjNR

its coded into base64 just for extra protection so the link isn't as easy to take down!

Just pop it into here and you're all set! :D https://www.base64decode.org/

Here is a Pastebin that contains the mega and also any updates i make! :D https://pastebin.com/S93zpfSE If you ever have any resources or extra things you'd like to contribute don't be afraid to DM me! Something that *is* missing is the scholastic book 'The Amazing Thing'. It appears at this time to be lost :( That's all, I hope you all enjoy and this can be useful to you! :D

[sympathytea]

Disclaimer: I wrote this before watching Ken's latest video (What if Ken made Unstable Universe videos) so this mini essay/ramble will not include that. Anyways for once this ISN'T about pvp civ. This is about Wato's 'Desolate Worlds' series, which includes spoilers for:

The End Barrens (both the regular and april fools timeline)

Bizarre SMP Part 1 and 2

How I survived a Utopia

The ARG section, including the unlisted video.

So the latest upload in Wato's catalogue has given the fanbase a lot of questions and theories, and I'm one of those people. For those new to my shit: Welcome! I hope you like brainvomit because this is probably one of those.

Some are confused about the End Barrens V2 video, and the binary text. The binary is...very hard to translate due to Wato apparently forgetting that video compression existed, but we've gotten an answer.

"You cannot run from a dying star." Or something along the same lines.

This goes back to the themes of space, the stars and the sky in general that False!Wifies and EB!Wato really seem to like. Its unclear who exactly is running from the dying star. I have a few ideas though. But we'll get back to this. The link that was in base64, The V2 video, is an early version of the actual End Barrens video. I haven't found anything code related in the video itself, so I am assuming that this is purely a metaphorical inclusion.

The contents of the video is primarily focused on Ken and Wato's interaction, before everything goes wrong and they get separated. To me, this seems to be a memory, lost to Wato. The memory of Ken, decaying the more they try to remember it.

This seems unsurprising, but what does this have to do with the binary text, or the description of the video, "Something is still there."?

When Wato leaves the End Barrens, they left alone. No Ken, no Wifies. Its left vague on what actually happened to Ken, its something that Wato refuses to confront the idea of. Wifies attempts to bring Wato to questioning this, but there's no actual answer.

Considering players cannot die permanently in the video, they just come back to spawn, but Ken never comes back to spawn...

They're still in the End Barrens. The memory of Ken, and Ken themself is still there.

But who runs from the dying star? There's a few possibilities of who or what the dying star is, or who runs from it, and I'll fire two that I think are strong contenders.

Ken is running from the dying star (e.g their own demise, the concept of it being possible to get out of the end barrens, Wato, or something else.) Ken seems pretty obvious, considering that the video is centered around him and Wato, but 'something' doesn't explicitly imply a person? Perhaps something isn't Ken himself, but the idea of Ken? A dying star possibly signaling the end of the concept of Ken, and thus they run from it, the same way Wifies avoided ruining the illusion of a friend for Wato? Another possibility is Wato running from a dying star (e.g dying servers, barren/desolate worlds, a decaying memory that they refuse to acknowledge to preserve it forever. Or something else.)

Wato is a person that doesn't like being trapped (much like Ken), they constantly try to escape or find a way out of situations. This isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility either, since Wato is the main protagonist of the series and is constantly running away from the inevitable decay of their mental state or the state of places. They would try to outrun a dying star. It could also mean absolutely nothing. Joking, of course.

[tenaciouschronicler]

September 12 2024 2009

Finally high time we perform alchemy in this house. And to do that we need dowels.

The captchalouge card dowel looks unchanged but it has been slightly shaved smaller. The shaving cream does not populate a knowable item right off the bat, most likely because the code isnt valid. Not saying you cant make whatever it is, its just not something SBURB planned on creating. Each item also comes with a different grist cost so far consisting of only shale and build grist. The more complex an item the more it costs. The hammer is 2 build grist while the pogo ride is 5 build grist and 1 shale. This means theres potential to make some very expensive items, a car for example.

First order of business is getting John more cards for his sylladex. Surprisingly these items, like the generic cube, form actual physical objects. No more cool glowing trees. Next order of business, test out all the cards.

That mystery card? Very nearly makes a functional rocket pack. Who owns a rocket pack and what do we have to change to get John his own. He would be such a menace with the ability to fly I just know it. Using the power of sweet catches and learned knowledge John no longer has to suffer the sylladex of dumbasses, at least.

In any case, reading Wise Guy gave John a revelation. Combine two punched cards in the lathe.

And for 10 build 16 shale...

You got the POGO HAMMER.

Our minds have been opened to the possibilities.

Fun facts about punched cards, the first punched cards were actually used with looms to create weave patterns. This was expanded upon and used on Harmoniums to create music, those cool self playing pianos.. It wasnt until the early 20th century that they were used for inputing data and computer programs on early computers. Imagine a stack maybe four or five inches thick for a single computer program.*

Im still trying to breakdown the captcha codes to punch card science. Best I can tell for now is that the captcha itself uses a hexidecimal variant (perhaps base64?) but translating that to a punch card system of 4 columns 12 rows is nebulous at best, at least if you follow diagrams of actual punch cards.

*edit: how did i manage to forget the rest of this sentence smh

[willcodehtmlforfood]

The README file for the project instruct the victim first to execute the malicious password manager application ('PasswordManager.py') on their system and then start looking for the errors and fixing them.

That file triggers the execution of a base64 obfuscated module hidden in the'_init_.py' files of the 'pyperclip' and 'pyrebase' libraries.

The obfuscated string is a malware downloader that contacts a command and control (C2) server and awaits for commands. Fetching and running additional payloads is within its capabilities.

[jjcocker]

I'll be real its kinda Hard to f/opost bc almost Every nice and sappy post i wanna reblog has like a 50 meter long dni list. or like a "check dni in my pinned! Then in my rentry! And then translate this base64 code to binary code to morse code! And put it through google translate 56 times!" and its like "Weird people dni >:(" (exaggeration. But also thid fr happened I literally went thru this one persons wholeass rentry bc their vague ass just went "Its in my rentry :)" and for the sake of aesthetics probably All clarification got Cleared Our)

and like. some of them r extremely aggressive like "oh if youre a proshipper Do not touch my blog ever and kill yourself NOW" (this is also an exaggeration)

Like okay I get it theres ppl who like things u dont but like. Dont put the filtering-out responsibility to strangers. Tira a bunda da cadeira and go block em! Filter the tags! Just!!!!!!!!! Stop

[deadly-espresso]

Fun Facts About TROJAN HORSE!

The original concept of TROJAN HORSE actually dated back to February of 2023 (At the time, Illusion of Flattery was my most recently posted song). I previously only had the original melody thought out at the time as well as some basic plot details (The subject of the song's name was Troy and he was like some sort of guy obsessed with a girl who didn't reciprocate his feelings and he had eventually plotted an attack on her after becoming a Trojan Horse). However, I had originally scrapped the song due to audio mixing issues and overall lack of skill (I hadn't even started implementing proper keys into my songs until Wanderlust and Illusion of Flattery). I had briefly revisited the song in October of 2023, but then I forgot about it again until May of this year.

The fake BSoD that I made for the warning screen at the beginning of the song was edited in MS Paint, of all programs. This was because it was the only program I had where the "System" font (the font that used to be used on Windows BSoDs (or at least Windows 9x systems, because the base of the edit was a BSoD from Windows Me)) rendered correctly (I couldn't access the font in FireAlpaca, and the font looked blurry in Krita because Krita renders fonts as vector images with no feature to turn off anti-aliasing) The edit was hard to pull off and I ended up having to make some minor adjustments to the edit in FireAlpaca, but the edit was certainly doable because, well, I made it.

Some more fun stuff about the fake BSoD I made is that does include a reference to a genuine error code (In this case, the error code "04" refers to an "overflow trap"). Also, if you compare the string of numbers in the error message to this Base64 index alphabet table, the numbers actually spell out a word in Base64 code (but then you'll have to decode that yourself 😏)

While I'm aware that TROJAN HORSE's very premise is bound to spark some KinitoPET jokes (even I've made my fair share of jokes about it), I actually envisioned the whole premise of the song long before KinitoPET was released to the public (The KinitioPET game's release was in January of this year, although I didn't learn of its existence until March. Funny enough, I had even envisioned Troy having a pink color scheme and wearing black tights (or maybe that just IS his leg color, since he chooses how he looks? 🤔) before the release of KinitoPET. However, I still think the release of KinitoPET did have some effect on the final version of the lore and song I settled on (for extra funnies, it turned out the creator of KinitoPET is named "troy_en").

Before that whole crisis I had on deciding what voice would play Troy in TROJAN HORSE, the placeholder voicebank I had used for testing the vocal tuning was Solaria's lite voicebank.

[sleepycelestialprincess]

Hey, Here's something I learned for creating my tumblr bio.

So, in current times, I'm a little apprehensive to say anything too searchable in my bio such as that I'm trans. So I didn't want to use the official emoji. But I wanted the flag there for humans to see. I have very limited knowledge of html and css but I got this to work. I embedded the image data it's self into the html code. Usually images are linked, and the address is stated in the html, but that would require uploading the image somewhere and tumblr linking to it even when my not viewing it within my tumblr themed page.

So here's what I did. First I created a file in photoshop that is 8×5 pixels. I painted it with the colors of the trans flag. As tumblr limits how many characters you can put in your bio, the smaller the image the better. As the flag is the same left to right, I reduced it to 1×5 px. Then I saved it as a gif to the desktop.

I'm sure this is easy to do on a Windows or Linux computer too but on a Mac, open the Terminal app. *See alternative option below. type:

cd desktop

Then type: (include the single space at the end after txt)

base64 -i imagename.gif -o imagename.gif.txt

It'll export a file on the desktop with a code in it that looks something like this:

R0lGODlhAQAFAKIAANUtAP+aVv///9NipKMCYgAAAAAAAAAAACH/C05FVFNDQVBFMi4wAwEAAAAh+QQEAAAAACwAAAAAAQAFAAADBAghQwkAOw==

Add the image into the html with a usual:

<img src="#" alt="text" title="text"

Replace the # with this code and the image data:

data:image/png;base64,

Add the inline css to size and position it.

style="image-rendering: pixelated; height: .8em; width: 1.2em; display: inline; position: relative; top: -.15em;">

The final html code looks like this: (remove the $, its there to let you see the code without it rendering the image)

<$img src="data:image/png;base64,R0lGODlhAQAFAKIAAFvO+tewxfWpuPvd4////wAAAAAAAAAAACH/C05FVFNDQVBFMi4wAwEAAAAh+QQEAAAAACwAAAAAAQAFAAADBAhCAgkAOw==" alt="TF" title="TF" style="image-rendering: pixelated; height: .8em; width: 1.2em; display: inline; position: relative; top: -.15em;">

So that's it. It doesn't work in posts, only a tumblr bio or a webpage of your own. Let me know if it works for you and I'll try to help if you run into trouble.

BTW, tumblr only allows up to 2000 characters including spaces in your bio.

Here are some references and additional information that I used to create this.

References:

https://www.thesitewizard.com/html-tutorial/embed-images-with-data-urls.shtml

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/image-rendering

https://www.macworld.com/article/221277/command-line-navigating-files-folders-mac-terminal.html

https://www.w3schools.com/Css/css_positioning.asp

*this next one is a tool that lets you create the image code without the Terminal app.

https://www.coderstool.com/gif-to-base64

hopefully I didn't miss anything, goodluck!

[apollo-ajkg]

Everything I found in the new DRDT MV

SPOILERS AFTER THE CUT PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO DISCOVER THESE THINGS FOR YOURSELF

We’ll start with the footnotes. I found nearly all of them, the exception being [8] which I couldn’t find. I will provide timestamps for each, and try my best to explain what it means.

[1] (1:22) - It is talking about solving the crossword, meaning that J would go by Julia and Xander would be Alexander. It’s also saying that David isn’t in the crossword, yet Teruko is. I will go into more detail on the crossword later.

[2] (3:02) - Arabidopsis is a thale cress plant; Drosophila melanogaster is a fruit-fly; and E. coli is bacteria. I’m not quite sure how these link, though.

[3] (2:18) - Literally a quote from Title 17 of the United States Code; which talks about Copyright.

[4] (1:47) - This footnote is attached to a bit of text in the background that says “subtract 4, add to tetraphobia.”. Tetraphobia is the practice of avoiding the number 4, which is mentioned in the description.

[5] (3:10) - As it says in the description, this part of the song has been mistranslated several times, so there is no reliable translation for it.

[6] (2:02) - The little 6 can be found next to the hands that look like this: 🙏. I assume the previous hand gestures were referencing a specific prayer, but I’m not sure.

[7] (2:41) - I’m gonna be honest, there isn’t much to work with here. The footnote in the description isn’t much help and the little 7 appears to be attached to the word “mind”

[8] - I couldn’t find [8] in the video, however, I googled the quote from the description and it comes from Alice in Wonderland.

[9] (2:08) - Again, the footnote in the description isn’t that helpful. This time, its attached to “sing a degraded copy”. The phrase “degraded copy” is in pink, so it’s probably important (maybe), but I really don’t know.

[10] (2:01) - The bit in the description mentions that “10 in Roman Numerals is X” and footnote 10, can be found on the right of the big, pink X in the background. Maybe the footnote is hinting that only 10 people will die in DRDT, because the pink X is very similar to the dead portrait Xs.

[11] (1:32) - Now, this one is probably the most interesting, because it says that ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ doesn’t exist. Given that this video centres around David, we can assume that this is most likely talking about his sister that he mentioned in Chapter 2 Episode 10, Diana. She fits the amount of letters perfectly. As for why this footnote is attached to “suspicious gaps”, I’m not quite sure. All I know about the gaps, is that there’s four of them.

[12] (2:02) - This part of the video shows that one person received 16 votes, and no-one else received any. This fits in with the description talking about majority vote (YTTD ref? /hj)

[13] (2:40) - Now this one is definitely next to something that’s been encoded. It seems like it’s been encrypted into Base64, but when I put those letters and numbers into a decoder, I got utter nonsense. It could have been encrypted several times, or it could just not be Base64, I’m still trying to work that out. The symbol in the description appears to mean correct as well, which fits with the placement.

[14] (3:52) - This appears to be at the end of a long chain of numbers, split into several parts. If you look at the equals symbol in the back, you’ll find the little 14. The hint in the description says “word length of 256″, which I could easily link to ASCII. ASCII is a form of character storage which only has 256 possible characters. Again, I’ll figure out what all the numbers mean, and translate it into something readable at some point.

[15] (1:48) - Not quite sure what to say here. The 15 is attached to the word “happiness” and the description talks about “ignorance is bliss”

[16] (2:50) - This is found on several screenshots(?) of a music sheet, which is “Entry of the Gladiators” by Julius Fucik.

[17] (2:01) - Probably the first footnote I spotted, I think I noticed it during my first watch, when it premiered. The description is right though, “Democratic-ly” isn’t a word.

[18] (3:04) - This one can be found with the dandelions (weed). I don’t know what the description is talking about though, the flowers are beautifully drawn ^^

[19] (3:42) - This one’s quite interesting because it’s part of a conversation. Not quite sure what it’s about but I’m pretty sure one of the mystery people is David.

[20] (1:53) - The description mostly explains that the 5 stages of grief are kind of outdated because they can be classed as reductionist, only considering nature.

[21] (3:49) - Again, another pretty simple one that I’m not sure I need to really explain.

[22] - This one is literally on screen for barely a second right at the very end, just before the video stops.

Now, I’ll move on to discuss the YouTube comment type things that appeared on the screen at around 1:09. These are in the order of when the appeared on screen (i think lol).

1.  “ ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ is like the byakuya/nagito/kokichi of the cast.” - This is probably talking about David, given the personality he showed during Chapter 2 Episode 11. Also, David has the right amount of letters. 2. “lets play spot the komaeda.” - Again, most likely about David. 3. “I like that  ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ is a protagonist who also plays the antag[onist]” 4. This one is likely about Teruko given how she’s our protagonist and can be quite antagonistic at times. (*cough* pulling a knife out on several people during Chapter 2 *cough*) 5. “mm  ⚪⚪⚪⚪ anyone?” - Not sure who this is talking about because there are so many people who have a four-letter name. (Levi, Whit, Arei, Nico, Rose and Eden) 6. “⚪ and  ⚪⚪⚪⚪ totally swapped places” - Ok, this is definitely about the J and Arei swapped theory. 7. “ ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ will obviously die in ch5″ - Could be talking about David again, but there’s something later in the video that might suggest otherwise, which I’ll talk about later on. 8. “I just hope ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪ doesn’t go crazy and kill in chapter 3. That would be way [too] predictable.” - Arturo 100% 9. “Everyone in the comment section is a fucking idiot” - Now this one’s kind of mean, but also very interesting. This could be David telling us we’re all wrong, or the creators.

At about 1:22, a crossword shows up briefly, as mentioned during [1]. I like crossword type things so I took some time to solve it. After this crossword shows up, there are several bits of text, which are matched with a roman numerals, so I matched those phrases up to the roman numerals from the crossword.

Across:

I. Alexander IV. Arei - “Right now, why do you cry?” VI. Arturo - “mind exercises 1234” VIII. Nico - “even if I try to think, idk!!! (lmao)” IX. Levi - “look aside from that, give me the usual medicine” - I wasn’t sure what was going on here XII. Eden - “But you’re in my way, aren’t you?” XIII. Teruko - “or” / “To be or not to be” XV. Whit - “Remaining ignorant, isn’t that “happiness”?” XVI. Hu - “Go and cry.”

Down:

II. Rose - “Ego cogito ergo (terbatus) sum” III. Charles - “If you doubt brittle things are broken.” V. Ace - “Right now, why do you go insane?” VII. Julia - “Do it like that, let’s live together” X. Min - “Democratic-ly”  XI. Mai - “God is dead” XIV. Veronika - “Things like substance of the arts”

And to finish off this post, I’ll talk about anything extra that couldn’t fit anywhere else. I’ll provide timestamps as well, lol.

(0:37) - Text says “I am a cat” before the word dog quickly covers the word cat. This could be a reference to how MonoTV looks like a cat, but insists they are a dog.

(1:00) - Text that is very briefly on screen says: “I did love you once so you should not have believed me.”

(1:04) - The person on screen looks like she could be Mai? Not really sure here, but she seems important.

(1:05) - Text at the bottom of the screen says “I’m guilty as charged. Sorry, we’re not there yet.” This could be a reference to how David says “I’m guilty as charged” in Chapter 2 Episode 11.

(1:28) - Text in red says “I hate the things that I love, and I love the tings that I hate.” This could be a reference to the photos of Mai and Teruko.

(2:02) - “Voting results: Everyone will be executed. There is no such thing as “victory” in a killing game.” This does not look good for the DRDT cast.

(2:22) - This looks like Xander. It looks like its from before he got his eyepatch, but that could just be the angle. If it is from before, does this mean David knew Xander before the killing game but lost(?) those memories.

(2:38) - “Note to self: put something here” Maybe something will be added to the video later?

(3:00) - “portrait of someone dearly loved” with an arrow pointing to the photo of Mai Akasaki. Maybe David loved Mai before something tragic happened?

(3:00) - “portrait of someone dearly unloved” with an arrow pointing to the photo of Teruko Tawaki. I think Teruko has something to do with whatever happened to Mai and David hates her for it. I think David was the person at the very beginning of the very first episode of DRDT, he’s the only person that I think has a motive. You can also spot a fork in the background of the MV and at the beginning of the prologue.

(3:04) - There’s a QR code on the books to the right. I haven’t been able to scan it so I don’t know what it leads to yet.

(3:06) - The supporting cast list has Mai Akasaki scribbled out and what looks like “Ms Naegi”  cut off underneath it. On the right of the screen, there was faint text that says: “(i.e. these are the only characters who make an appearance.) which could mean that Arei, Hu and Ms Naegi are in the video. This is a stretch but maybe Hu killed Arei. Probably not, though.

(3:10) - It looks like Xander is the one holding the gun here.

(3:20) - No, that’s wrong!

(3:44) - The lyrics here say “I’ll disappear” and David disappears from the chair, leaving what looks like splattered blood. The words “Chapter 3″ flash on the screen, though its cut off. David dies in Chapter 3 maybe?

Thank you for reading this extremely long post; I’ll reblog it anytime I get more information.

[this-week-in-rust]

This Week in Rust 510

Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software. This is a weekly summary of its progress and community. Want something mentioned? Tag us at @ThisWeekInRust on Twitter or @ThisWeekinRust on mastodon.social, or send us a pull request. Want to get involved? We love contributions.

This Week in Rust is openly developed on GitHub and archives can be viewed at this-week-in-rust.org. If you find any errors in this week's issue, please submit a PR.

Updates from Rust Community

Official

Announcing Rust 1.72.0

Change in Guidance on Committing Lockfiles

Cargo changes how arrays in config are merged

Seeking help for initial Leadership Council initiatives

Leadership Council Membership Changes

Newsletters

This Week in Ars Militaris VIII

Project/Tooling Updates

rust-analyzer changelog #196

The First Stable Release of a Memory Safe sudo Implementation

We're open-sourcing the library that powers 1Password's ability to log in with a passkey

ratatui 0.23.0 is released! (official successor of tui-rs)

Zellij 0.38.0: session-manager, plugin infra, and no more offensive session names

Observations/Thoughts

The fastest WebSocket implementation

Rust Malware Staged on Crates.io

ESP32 Standard Library Embedded Rust: SPI with the MAX7219 LED Dot Matrix

A JVM in Rust part 5 - Executing instructions

Compiling Rust for .NET, using only tea and stubbornness!

Ad-hoc polymorphism erodes type-safety

How to speed up the Rust compiler in August 2023

This isn't the way to speed up Rust compile times

Rust Cryptography Should be Written in Rust

Dependency injection in Axum handlers. A quick tour

Best Rust Web Frameworks to Use in 2023

From tui-rs to Ratatui: 6 Months of Cooking Up Rust TUIs

[video] Rust 1.72.0

[video] Rust 1.72 Release Train

Rust Walkthroughs

[series] Distributed Tracing in Rust, Episode 3: tracing basics

Use Rust in shell scripts

A Simple CRUD API in Rust with Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare KV, and the Rust Router

[video] base64 crate: code walkthrough

Miscellaneous

Interview with Rust and operating system Developer Andy Python

Leveraging Rust in our high-performance Java database

Rust error message to fix a typo

[video] The Builder Pattern and Typestate Programming - Stefan Baumgartner - Rust Linz January 2023

[video] CI with Rust and Gitlab Selfhosting - Stefan Schindler - Rust Linz July 2023

Crate of the Week

This week's crate is dprint, a fast code formatter that formats Markdown, TypeScript, JavaScript, JSON, TOML and many other types natively via Wasm plugins.

Thanks to Martin Geisler for the suggestion!

Please submit your suggestions and votes for next week!

Call for Participation

Always wanted to contribute to open-source projects but did not know where to start? Every week we highlight some tasks from the Rust community for you to pick and get started!

Some of these tasks may also have mentors available, visit the task page for more information.

Hyperswitch - add domain type for client secret

Hyperswitch - deserialization error exposes sensitive values in the logs

Hyperswitch - move redis key creation to a common module

mdbook-i18n-helpers - Write tool which can convert translated files back to PO

mdbook-i18n-helpers - Package a language selector

mdbook-i18n-helpers - Add links between translations

Comprehensive Rust - Link to correct line when editing a translation

Comprehensive Rust - Track the number of times the redirect pages are visited

RustQuant - Jacobian and Hessian matrices support.

RustQuant - improve Graphviz plotting of autodiff computational graphs.

RustQuant - bond pricing implementation.

RustQuant - implement cap/floor pricers.

RustQuant - Implement Asian option pricers.

RustQuant - Implement American option pricers.

release-plz - add ability to mark Gitea/GitHub release as draft

zerocopy - CI step "Set toolchain version" is flaky due to network timeouts

zerocopy - Implement traits for tuple types (and maybe other container types?)

zerocopy - Prevent panics statically

zerocopy - Add positive and negative trait impl tests for SIMD types

zerocopy - Inline many trait methods (in zerocopy and in derive-generated code)

datatest-stable - Fix quadratic performance with nextest

Ockam - Use a user-friendly name for the shared services to show it in the tray menu

Ockam - Rename the Port to Address and support such format

Ockam - Ockam CLI should gracefully handle invalid state when initializing

css-inline - Update cssparser & selectors

css-inline - Non-blocking stylesheet resolving

css-inline - Optionally remove all class attributes

If you are a Rust project owner and are looking for contributors, please submit tasks here.

Updates from the Rust Project

366 pull requests were merged in the last week

reassign sparc-unknown-none-elf to tier 3

wasi: round up the size for aligned_alloc

allow MaybeUninit in input and output of inline assembly

allow explicit #[repr(Rust)]

fix CFI: f32 and f64 are encoded incorrectly for cross-language CFI

add suggestion for some #[deprecated] items

add an (perma-)unstable option to disable vtable vptr

add comment to the push_trailing function

add note when matching on tuples/ADTs containing non-exhaustive types

add support for ptr::writes for the invalid_reference_casting lint

allow overwriting ExpnId for concurrent decoding

avoid duplicate large_assignments lints

contents of reachable statics is reachable

do not emit invalid suggestion in E0191 when spans overlap

do not forget to pass DWARF fragment information to LLVM

ensure that THIR unsafety check is done before stealing it

emit a proper diagnostic message for unstable lints passed from CLI

fix races conditions with SyntaxContext decoding

fix waiting on a query that panicked

improve note for the invalid_reference_casting lint

include compiler flags when you break rust;

load include_bytes! directly into an Lrc

make Sharded an enum and specialize it for the single thread case

make rustc_on_unimplemented std-agnostic for alloc::rc

more precisely detect cycle errors from type_of on opaque

point at type parameter that introduced unmet bound instead of full HIR node

record allocation spans inside force_allocation

suggest mutable borrow on read only for-loop that should be mutable

tweak output of to_pretty_impl_header involving only anon lifetimes

use the same DISubprogram for each instance of the same inlined function within a caller

walk through full path in point_at_path_if_possible

warn on elided lifetimes in associated constants (ELIDED_LIFETIMES_IN_ASSOCIATED_CONSTANT)

make RPITITs capture all in-scope lifetimes

add stable for Constant in smir

add generics_of to smir

add smir predicates_of

treat StatementKind::Coverage as completely opaque for SMIR purposes

do not convert copies of packed projections to moves

don't do intra-pass validation on MIR shims

MIR validation: reject in-place argument/return for packed fields

disable MIR SROA optimization by default

miri: automatically start and stop josh in rustc-pull/push

miri: fix some bad regex capture group references in test normalization

stop emitting non-power-of-two vectors in (non-portable-SIMD) codegen

resolve: stop creating NameBindings on every use, create them once per definition instead

fix a pthread_t handle leak

when terminating during unwinding, show the reason why

avoid triple-backtrace due to panic-during-cleanup

add additional float constants

add ability to spawn Windows process with Proc Thread Attributes | Take 2

fix implementation of Duration::checked_div

hashbrown: allow serializing HashMaps that use a custom allocator

hashbrown: change & to &mut where applicable

hashbrown: simplify Clone by removing redundant guards

regex-automata: fix incorrect use of Aho-Corasick's "standard" semantics

cargo: Very preliminary MSRV resolver support

cargo: Use a more compact relative-time format

cargo: Improve TOML parse errors

cargo: add support for target.'cfg(..)'.linker

cargo: config: merge lists in precedence order

cargo: create dedicated unstable flag for asymmetric-token

cargo: set MSRV for internal packages

cargo: improve deserialization errors of untagged enums

cargo: improve resolver version mismatch warning

cargo: stabilize --keep-going

cargo: support dependencies from registries for artifact dependencies, take 2

cargo: use AND search when having multiple terms

rustdoc: add unstable --no-html-source flag

rustdoc: rename typedef to type alias

rustdoc: use unicode-aware checks for redundant explicit link fastpath

clippy: new lint: implied_bounds_in_impls

clippy: new lint: reserve_after_initialization

clippy: arithmetic_side_effects: detect division by zero for Wrapping and Saturating

clippy: if_then_some_else_none: look into local initializers for early returns

clippy: iter_overeager_cloned: detect .cloned().all() and .cloned().any()

clippy: unnecessary_unwrap: lint on .as_ref().unwrap()

clippy: allow trait alias DefIds in implements_trait_with_env_from_iter

clippy: fix "derivable_impls: attributes are ignored"

clippy: fix tuple_array_conversions lint on nightly

clippy: skip float_cmp check if lhs is a custom type

rust-analyzer: diagnostics for 'while let' loop with label in condition

rust-analyzer: respect #[allow(unused_braces)]

Rust Compiler Performance Triage

A fairly quiet week, with improvements exceeding a small scattering of regressions. Memory usage and artifact size held fairly steady across the week, with no regressions or improvements.

Triage done by @simulacrum. Revision range: d4a881e..cedbe5c

2 Regressions, 3 Improvements, 2 Mixed; 0 of them in rollups 108 artifact comparisons made in total

Full report here

Approved RFCs

Changes to Rust follow the Rust RFC (request for comments) process. These are the RFCs that were approved for implementation this week:

Create a Testing sub-team

Final Comment Period

Every week, the team announces the 'final comment period' for RFCs and key PRs which are reaching a decision. Express your opinions now.

RFCs

No RFCs entered Final Comment Period this week.

Tracking Issues & PRs

[disposition: merge] Stabilize PATH option for --print KIND=PATH

[disposition: merge] Add alignment to the NPO guarantee

New and Updated RFCs

[new] Special-cased performance improvement for Iterator::sum on Range<u*> and RangeInclusive<u*>

[new] Cargo Check T-lang Policy

Call for Testing

An important step for RFC implementation is for people to experiment with the implementation and give feedback, especially before stabilization. The following RFCs would benefit from user testing before moving forward:

No RFCs issued a call for testing this week.

If you are a feature implementer and would like your RFC to appear on the above list, add the new call-for-testing label to your RFC along with a comment providing testing instructions and/or guidance on which aspect(s) of the feature need testing.

Upcoming Events

Rusty Events between 2023-08-30 - 2023-09-27 🦀

Virtual

2023-09-05 | Virtual (Buffalo, NY, US) | Buffalo Rust Meetup

Buffalo Rust User Group, First Tuesdays

2023-09-05 | Virtual (Munich, DE) | Rust Munich

Rust Munich 2023 / 4 - hybrid

2023-09-06 | Virtual (Indianapolis, IN, US) | Indy Rust

Indy.rs - with Social Distancing

2023-09-12 - 2023-09-15 | Virtual (Albuquerque, NM, US) | RustConf

RustConf 2023

2023-09-12 | Virtual (Dallas, TX, US) | Dallas Rust

Second Tuesday

2023-09-13 | Virtual (Boulder, CO, US) | Boulder Elixir and Rust

Monthly Meetup

2023-09-13 | Virtual (Cardiff, UK)| Rust and C++ Cardiff

The unreasonable power of combinator APIs

2023-09-14 | Virtual (Nuremberg, DE) | Rust Nuremberg

Rust Nürnberg online

2023-09-20 | Virtual (Vancouver, BC, CA) | Vancouver Rust

Rust Study/Hack/Hang-out

2023-09-21 | Virtual (Charlottesville, NC, US) | Charlottesville Rust Meetup

Crafting Interpreters in Rust Collaboratively

2023-09-21 | Lehi, UT, US | Utah Rust

Real Time Multiplayer Game Server in Rust

2023-09-21 | Virtual (Linz, AT) | Rust Linz

Rust Meetup Linz - 33rd Edition

2023-09-25 | Virtual (Dublin, IE) | Rust Dublin

How we built the SurrealDB Python client in Rust.

Asia

2023-09-06 | Tel Aviv, IL | Rust TLV

RustTLV @ Final - September Edition

Europe

2023-08-30 | Copenhagen, DK | Copenhagen Rust Community

Rust metup #39 sponsored by Fermyon

2023-08-31 | Augsburg, DE | Rust Meetup Augsburg

Augsburg Rust Meetup #2

2023-09-05 | Munich, DE + Virtual | Rust Munich

Rust Munich 2023 / 4 - hybrid

2023-09-14 | Reading, UK | Reading Rust Workshop

Reading Rust Meetup at Browns

2023-09-19 | Augsburg, DE | Rust - Modern Systems Programming in Leipzig

Logging and tracing in Rust

2023-09-20 | Aarhus, DK | Rust Aarhus

Rust Aarhus - Rust and Talk at Concordium

2023-09-21 | Bern, CH | Rust Bern

Third Rust Bern Meetup

North America

2023-09-05 | Chicago, IL, US | Deep Dish Rust

Rust Happy Hour

2023-09-06 | Bellevue, WA, US | The Linux Foundation

Rust Global

2023-09-12 - 2023-09-15 | Albuquerque, NM, US + Virtual | RustConf

RustConf 2023

2023-09-12 | New York, NY, US | Rust NYC

A Panel Discussion on Thriving in a Rust-Driven Workplace

2023-09-12 | Minneapolis, MN, US | Minneapolis Rust Meetup

Minneapolis Rust Meetup Happy Hour

2023-09-14 | Seattle, WA, US | Seattle Rust User Group Meetup

Seattle Rust User Group - August Meetup

2023-09-19 | San Francisco, CA, US | San Francisco Rust Study Group

Rust Hacking in Person

2023-09-21 | Nashville, TN, US | Music City Rust Developers

Rust on the web! Get started with Leptos

2023-09-26 | Pasadena, CA, US | Pasadena Thursday Go/Rust

Monthly Rust group

2023-09-27 | Austin, TX, US | Rust ATX

Rust Lunch - Fareground

Oceania

2023-09-13 | Perth, WA, AU | Rust Perth

Rust Meetup 2: Lunch & Learn

2023-09-19 | Christchurch, NZ | Christchurch Rust Meetup Group

Christchurch Rust meetup meeting

2023-09-26 | Canberra, ACT, AU | Rust Canberra

September Meetup

If you are running a Rust event please add it to the calendar to get it mentioned here. Please remember to add a link to the event too. Email the Rust Community Team for access.

Jobs

Please see the latest Who's Hiring thread on r/rust

Quote of the Week

In [other languages], I could end up chasing silly bugs and waste time debugging and tracing to find that I made a typo or ran into a language quirk that gave me an unexpected nil pointer. That situation is almost non-existent in Rust, it's just me and the problem. Rust is honest and upfront about its quirks and will yell at you about it before you have a hard to find bug in production.

– dannersy on Hacker News

Thanks to Kyle Strand for the suggestion!

Please submit quotes and vote for next week!

This Week in Rust is edited by: nellshamrell, llogiq, cdmistman, ericseppanen, extrawurst, andrewpollack, U007D, kolharsam, joelmarcey, mariannegoldin, bennyvasquez.

Email list hosting is sponsored by The Rust Foundation

Discuss on r/rust

[dcpwebdesigners-blog]

Best Helper Sites for Web Designers

Web designers constantly seek ways to improve their workflows, enhance creativity, and accelerate the design process. Thankfully, there are countless online tools and resources available that make the job easier, whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your website design journey.

Download Infographic

In this post, we’ll explore some of the best helper sites for web designers, covering tools for design inspiration, code generation, asset creation, and productivity.

Get Waves

Get Waves is a fantastic resource for creating beautiful, customisable SVG wave patterns. These waves are perfect for adding a dynamic visual element to your website backgrounds or section dividers. The site offers a simple, intuitive interface that allows you to adjust wave height, colour, and smoothness before exporting the final SVG file. This makes it a favourite among web designers looking to add a touch of fluid design to their projects.

Key Features:

Generate unique, customisable SVG wave designs

Easy export options

No design skills required

Wordmark

Wordmark is a powerful tool for previewing and selecting the perfect font for your design projects. Simply type in a word or phrase, and Wordmark will display it in every font installed on your computer. This is a huge time-saver for designers who want to quickly compare different font styles without manually cycling through each option in their design software.

Key Features:

Preview text in all installed fonts

Filter by font style and weight

Supports Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts

Omatsuri

Omatsuri is a collection of simple, open-source tools for everyday web design tasks. It includes utilities for generating CSS gradients, SVG shapes, base64 encoders, and even lorem ipsum text. This all-in-one toolkit is a must-have for web designers looking to streamline their daily tasks without switching between multiple apps.

Key Features:

Wide range of design tools

Free and open-source

Clean, ad-free interface

Haikei

Haikei is a creative generator for unique, high-quality SVG backgrounds, patterns, and abstract shapes. It’s perfect for designers looking to add visually engaging elements to their projects. With its wide range of patterns, textures, and gradients, Haikei offers endless design possibilities.

Key Features:

Generate complex SVG designs

High-quality exports

Real-time design adjustments

Playbook

Playbook is a collaborative design platform that helps teams organise, share, and review design assets in one place. It’s ideal for agencies and freelance designers who need to manage multiple projects and clients. Playbook also offers powerful search and tagging features, making it easy to find exactly what you need when you need it.

Key Features:

Centralised asset management

Collaboration tools for teams

Powerful search and tagging

Tiny Helpers

Tiny Helper is a curated collection of small, free, and incredibly useful tools for developers and designers. It covers a wide range of utilities, including CSS generators, favicon creators, colour pickers, and accessibility checkers. Tiny Helper is perfect for quickly solving small design and development problems without the need for bulky software.

Key Features:

Huge collection of bite-sized tools

Free to use and regularly updated

Ideal for quick design and development tasks

Conclusion

Whether you’re creating custom wave backgrounds, selecting the perfect font, or managing your design assets, these helper sites can significantly improve your workflow as a web developer.

By integrating these tools into your daily routine, you can streamline your creative process, reduce time spent on repetitive tasks, and deliver polished, professional results to your clients.

Give these tools a try and take your web design projects to the next level.

Article first published on: https://dcpweb.co.uk/blog/best-helper-sites-for-web-designers

[tenaciouschronicler]

November 16 2024 2009

Welp. Lots happened in the past two weeks so this is gonna be longer to get through it all.

Nov 6

Finally we get to see Dave's strife animation. It wasnt what I expected but given all the context it makes sense. Dave is a bonafide fighter with 8 options with the new ones being:

Abuse - treat with cruelty

Accuse - claim someone commited offense

Assail - make a planned, violent attack

Assault - physical attack

Unfortunately, Bro slashes his options leaving Dave unable to us them. This is the first fight were we cannot do anything but watch Dave get beatdown by a puppet. Thats right, Bro isnt even seen beyond a few flashes. The main fight is with Lil Cal.

We switch over to Jade who is talking with Rose back before Rose loses power. Jade continues to be cryptic about her knowledge in the whole situation but its not too bad as weve already seen parts unfold.

We switch to Rose back in the mausoleum, grabbing Jaspers and decending into the secret passage Mom revealed.

We go back to Jade (lots of switching perspectives this day) whos finally decided to go downstairs.

Nov 8

But before she actually descends we get to see John! Very cool idea using the color reminders for transition.

John is in the middle of a fight loop with the two ogre halequins we saw scaling the platforms Rose created. There are some great movements as John powers up his pogo hammer to try and attack but unfortunately he gets beat back with the Sassacre book. From there hes flung around with the tire swing and deftly saved and healed by Nanna.

Nov 9

We jump to the far future with Peregrine Mendicant who is very surprised by the worm that appeared from the apple and vice versa. This worm decides the mailboxes are a great snack much to PMs disdain. They are fitted with a very nice black sword that does not bode well for the worm.

The gameFAQ page is updated by John. A twist but very welcome. I wonder when he had time to do so. I didnt get to fully explore the punch card code before the reveal of how it functions so I only figured out half of it (being that the code on the back was base64) while John figured out the binary part first to convert to the captcha code. For supposedly not knowing how structures work, John is surprisingly very knowledgable! Im gonna have to place John very firmly in my 'favorite characters' list. We have a lot in common honestly and Im curious on how the game will change him over time.

We are back with Rose after this who is now exploring the secret lab. Above the door is a SN logo (skaianet?) with and atom symbol on the top of the S and the spirograph on the bottom.

Nov 10-12

In the lab we find a giant HUBGRID of what I believe are server drives. The pattern of the layout is very familiar, a checkerboard devided into four parts glowing in pulsing green.

Back with Jade, we get to see some levels of the house filled with her Grandpas interests. The Harleys seem to like breaking established patterns as Grandpa does not have a single interests instead he has:

big game

valient knights

decrepit mummies

beautiful portraits of ladies bleached blue by the sun

Out of these I would be happiest if he stuck with knights. On the last level is a giant worm creature which looks very similar to Johns Typheus browser.

Before we get any further to the outdoors, one of those Trollslum people finds a way to pester Jade. New character unlock? (imagine this said in the most scathing polite southern church goer accent for maximum enjoyment) CarcinoGeneticist seems like *such* a pleasant fella, they have manners but bless, they dont say much.

Truly though, whoever this is seems inordinately angry over what is happening. Who is this and why does it matter to them? Apparently they know the world is ending, believe its Jades fault, believe it was going to be so, and then fail miserably to live up to the troll name. Just calling someone stupid isnt enought to really troll someone, friend.

Going back to Rose, we use the kiosk to see the grid better with the third hub encompasing 0288-0431 is unlocked. In the center of the hub is a transportalizer, though Rose doesnt know it. Rose shows she is just as bad at modi systems as everyone else, grabbing her laptop and transporting Jaspers to who knows where. After switching to leaf instead of root, Rose finds the unlocked hub (which after counting is #0413) and plugs in her laptop which leads to some of the coolest visuals of sylladex operations as the cable connects the two cards.

At the back is a countdown (Hussie really likes countdowns) that for us starts at 3 min and 14 sec until 'unestablishment'.

Nov 13

We jump to PM who has gone through the whole rigamaroll WV did to start the timer to also start a journey to, hopefully, where WV landed. The worm was beheaded, the 'apple' is sideways, and three more worm 'legs' appear to right it before takeoff.

---

(I wanna say again, thank yall for understanding me taking time away from this. I really wanted to at least read the updates but even that was hard. But Im back and better so lets see where this comic takes us!)

[govindhtech]

UNC4057 LOSTKEYS Malware Targets Western NGOs

UNC4057 LOSTKEYS

The Russian government-backed outfit COLDRIVER targets Western and non-governmental organisations with its latest spyware, LOSTKEYS.

The Russian government-backed threat organisation COLDRIVER (also known as UNC4057, Star Blizzard, and Callisto) has stolen data from NGOs and Western targets using LOSTKEYS, a new virus. The Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) been tracking COLDRIVER for years, including its SPICA malware in 2024, and believes LOSTKEYS is a new tool.

COLDRIVER focusses on credential phishing targeting well-known targets. People at NGO or personal email addresses are generally targeted. They steal login passwords, emails, and contact lists after gaining access to a target's account. COLDRIVER may also access system files and infect devices with malware.

COLDRIVER has attacked journalists, think institutes, NGOs, and past and current Western government and military advisors. Plus, the gang has kept targeting Ukrainians. COLDRIVER's principal goal is to acquire intelligence for Russia's strategic goals. In several cases, the gang hacked and leaked NGO and UK official data.

January, March, and April 2025 saw the discovery of LOSTKEYS malware. The malicious application may take files from a hard-coded set of folders and extensions and transmit the attacker system details and active processes. COLDRIVER normally utilises credentials to access contacts and emails, although they have utilised SPICA to access target system documents. LOSTKEYS has a unique purpose and is utilised in certain scenarios.

The multi-step LOSTKEYS infection chain begins with a tempting website featuring a fake CAPTCHA. After the CAPTCHA is “verified,” the PowerShell code is transferred to the user's clipboard and the page invites them to execute it using Windows' “run” prompt. The “ClickFix” approach includes socially engineering targets to copy, paste, and run PowerShell scripts. Google Threat Intelligence Group said many APT and financially driven attackers use this method, which has been well documented.

PowerShell does the first stage's second step. In numerous instances, the IP address 165.227.148[.] provided this second step.68. The second step computes the display resolution MD5 hash and stops execution if it matches one of three specified values. This step may avoid virtual machine execution. The request must contain IDs unique to each observed instance of this chain to proceed. In every observation, the third stage comes from the same host as the previous phases.

Base64-encoded blobs decode into additional PowerShell in the third phase. This step requires retrieving and decoding the latest LOSTKEYS payload. It does this by downloading two additional files from the same host using different identities for each infection chain. The first-downloaded Visual Basic Script (VBS) file decodes the second file. Each infection chain is decoded with two keys. One unique key is in the decoder script, while stage 3 saves the second. Keys are used to replace cypher the encoded data.

The final payload is LOSTKEYS VBS. File theft and system data collection are its purposes.

Two more LOSTKEYS samples dated December 2023 were uncovered during this behaviour investigation. These previous PE files posing as Maltego files change greatly from the execution chain starting in 2025. It is unclear if these December 2023 samples are related to COLDRIVER or if the malware was reused from another operation into January 2025. Exchanged Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) include binary hashes and C2 addresses like njala[.]dev and 80.66.88[.]67.

Google Threat Intelligence Group uses threat actor research like COLDRIVER to improve product security and safety to safeguard consumers. Once detected, hazardous websites, domains, and files are added to Safe Browsing to protect users. Government-backed attacker warnings alerted Gmail and Workspace users. Potential targets should enrol in Google's Advanced Protection Program, enable Chrome's Enhanced Safe Browsing, and update all devices.

Google shares its findings with the security community to raise awareness and help targeted companies and people. Sharing methods and approaches improves threat hunting and sector user protections. The original post comprises YARA rules and compromise indicators and is available as a Google Threat Intelligence collection and rule bundle.