Wael Nasreddine kalbasit

FAQ on the xz-utils backdoor (CVE-2024-3094)

This is a living document. Everything in this document is made in good faith of being accurate, but like I just said; we don't yet know everything about what's going on.

Update: I've disabled comments as of 2025-01-26 to avoid everyone having notifications for something a year on if someone wants to suggest a correction. Folks are free to email to suggest corrections still, of course.

Background

How to remove git-crypt and maintain your history

I've been successfully using git-crypt to provide provide partial encryption to some of my repos. It's a great program and I'd definitely recommend it for your git repository encryption needs.

However, while installation is quite simple, I couldn't find good instructions on how to uninstall git-crypt and maintain history intact.

This guide provides simple instructions on how to accomplish that. In the end,

Backup android app, data included, no root needed, with adb

Note: This gist may be outdated, thanks to all contributors in comments.

adb is the Android CLI tool with which you can interact with your android device, from your PC

You must enable developer mode (tap 7 times on the build version in parameters) and install adb on your PC.

Don't hesitate to read comments, there is useful tips, thanks guys for this !

Share an area of your screen by using vlc screen capture, and then sharing the vlc capture window

Make sure the VLC window floats

In i3 config:

for_window [window_role="vlc-video"] floating enable move down 100px;

We float it so the tiling window manager doesn't resize the window and mess up the scale. We also move the window placement down at launch so it easy to drag somewhere mostly offscreen.

	# I've been using a combination of yabai, skhd (with modal keybindings), and sketchybar.
	## Recently, with the deprecation of the window border in yabai. I had to find a way to
	## keep track of the skhd current mode.

	# Add the following lines to sketchybarrc:

	sketchybar --add item mode_indicator left
	sketchybar --set mode_indicator drawing_method=separator
	sketchybar --set mode_indicator label="default-mode \| "

	#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
	#! nix-shell -i bash -p bash gh

	set -eu

	# MIT No Attribution (SPDX Identifier: MIT-0)
	#
	# Copyright 2023-2025 Lorenz Leutgeb, Peder Bergebakken Sundt
	#
	# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this

	{lib, ...}: {
	toBase64 = text: let
	inherit (lib) sublist mod stringToCharacters concatMapStrings;
	inherit (lib.strings) charToInt;
	inherit (builtins) substring foldl' genList elemAt length concatStringsSep stringLength;
	lookup = stringToCharacters "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/";
	sliceN = size: list: n: sublist (n * size) size list;
	pows = [(64 * 64 * 64) (64 * 64) 64 1];
	intSextets = i: map (j: mod (i / j) 64) pows;
	compose = f: g: x: f (g x);

	# Reads analog data using an ads1115. Three moisture sensors and a battery sensor.
	# Goes to sleep for an hour at a time.
	# Uses a helper input_boolean to keep it from going to sleep, in case you want to update it.

	esphome:
	name: moisture-1
	platform: ESP32
	board: esp32dev
	on_boot:
	then:


	# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39928401/recover-db-password-stored-in-my-dbeaver-connection

	# requires pycryptodome lib (pip install pycryptodome)

	import sys
	import base64
	import os
	import json
	from Crypto.Cipher import AES

	#!/bin/bash
	# Modified version of https://github.com/Ashark/hliss/blob/master/vlc-hangouts

	# Script to share a portion of the screen in VLC to be used by Chrome/Firefox to share the screen
	# By default, when run, it asks to click in some window. The area of that window is what is going to be shared.
	# If executed with "sharescreen area", it asks for a portion of the screen to be shared.

	unset x y w h

	# Old code to choose a monitor