I’ve asked Claude to read this article for me and explain it to me. Somehow that makes it better, as then at least I know I’m talking to an AI:
“The fix closed two chained flaws in RouterOS’s shared crypto and login libraries: a lax PKCS#1 v1.5 RSA signature verifier that failed to enforce the total encoded length (256 bytes) or pin the digest to its correct length for the claimed hash, allowing an attacker to forge a valid-looking signature without the private key — a pre-auth authentication bypass sitting on SSH public-key auth, IPsec/IKE, and TLS simultaneously.
“The second flaw was missing input validation on the terminal-login username path (SSH, Telnet, MAC-Telnet), which permitted argument injection (a leading -) and control-character/log-forging injection.
“Chained, the forged-signature auth bypass plus the hostile login-parameter handling turned an unauthenticated network position into a path toward code execution, which is why MikroTik backported it silently across all branches on the same day.”
I'm so weary of seeing Claude-isms everywhere. It makes everything so much more of a cognitive burden to read, whether you're reading for leisure or comprehension.
The info was also almost certainly not human authored. AI is almost certainly capable of writing this up given a prompt like "explain what this security update is about. Format it as a blog post."
Nick and I were at AusNOG when this dropped. Yes it was generated by AI, but it has evolved over time, and there has been at least three revisions of it.
The three different issues are a username called "-2", incorrectly parsing/validating certificates, and tftp paths.
There's also a dhcpd issue that was just fixed in a new release
God damn this writing is just a string of pure claudeisms. I can’t see the actual content because I’m cringing so hard.
Why not just post the info you want to convey and the prompt? It would be easier for everyone involved.
I’ve asked Claude to read this article for me and explain it to me. Somehow that makes it better, as then at least I know I’m talking to an AI:
“The fix closed two chained flaws in RouterOS’s shared crypto and login libraries: a lax PKCS#1 v1.5 RSA signature verifier that failed to enforce the total encoded length (256 bytes) or pin the digest to its correct length for the claimed hash, allowing an attacker to forge a valid-looking signature without the private key — a pre-auth authentication bypass sitting on SSH public-key auth, IPsec/IKE, and TLS simultaneously.
“The second flaw was missing input validation on the terminal-login username path (SSH, Telnet, MAC-Telnet), which permitted argument injection (a leading -) and control-character/log-forging injection.
“Chained, the forged-signature auth bypass plus the hostile login-parameter handling turned an unauthenticated network position into a path toward code execution, which is why MikroTik backported it silently across all branches on the same day.”
I'm so weary of seeing Claude-isms everywhere. It makes everything so much more of a cognitive burden to read, whether you're reading for leisure or comprehension.
I agree. I would prefer just the info, if the write up was not human authored
The info was also almost certainly not human authored. AI is almost certainly capable of writing this up given a prompt like "explain what this security update is about. Format it as a blog post."
Nick and I were at AusNOG when this dropped. Yes it was generated by AI, but it has evolved over time, and there has been at least three revisions of it.
The three different issues are a username called "-2", incorrectly parsing/validating certificates, and tftp paths.
There's also a dhcpd issue that was just fixed in a new release
It's incredible that we can have full security writeups done without a human involved at all.
Wasn’t Claude - but it was AI, I don’t care. Roast me. Whatever.
Would’ve taken weeks before to get to this point
Now it takes just hours.
Not going to lose any sleep if people don’t like the writing style.
Do it yourself next time then :-)
- Nick
All you had to do was to identify this as AI authored since it was going to be obvious anyway. Still valuable to have someone post the write-up.
Banner added.
For the record - I used AI to add the banner too!
Fair. I’ll put a big banner at the top when I am at my desk next, so it’s obvious.
Not even trying to hide it though.