iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 21/08/2026

Reposted by Simson Garfinkel

Samuel Tunick faces a felony charge for deleting his phone’s data during an airport customs search last year. He called the government’s peering into people’s private lives “creepy,” in an interview with The New York Times about the incident.

nyti.ms

U.S. Citizen Who Deleted Phone’s Data Says His Prosecution Puts Privacy at Risk

Samuel Tunick, who faces a felony charge for deleting his phone’s data during an airport customs search, called the government’s peering into people’s private lives “creepy.”

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 18/08/2026

bulk_extractor 2.2.0 is out! This release fixes CVE-2026-24857 and adds a standalone 64-bit Windows executable, Windows raw-device input, runtime scanner plug-ins, improved Wi-Fi PCAP preservation, and extensive reliability improvements. github.com/simsong/bulk... #DFIR #DigitalForensics #OpenSource

github.com

Release BE v2.2.0 · simsong/bulk_extractor

What's Changed Update continuous-integration-pip.yml by @simsong in #479 Update identify_filenames.py by @h-ssh in #482 Update LICENSE.md by @simsong in #478 add missing include by @rick-gnous in ...

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PR #674 is merged. bulk_extractor 2.2.0beta1 is available now with a precompiled 64-bit Windows executable, source archive, and Snap packages: github.com/simsong/bulk...

bulk_extractor 2.2.0beta1 download graphic listing a precompiled Windows x64 executable, source archive, and Snap packages.

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Why Codex could move quickly: bounded position-aware data, modular scanners, structured diagnostics, separate recorders, real fixtures, and focused tests. AI didn’t replace software engineering; it amplified excellent underlying structure.

Architecture diagram listing bounded position-aware data access, modular scanners, structured diagnostics, separate recorders, real fixtures, focused tests, and reproducible builds.

This was not exploitable out-of-bounds access: reads and slices are mediated by sbuf_t. The fix preserves the recognized PE feature, skips an incomplete carve, safely hashes short buffers, and adds a real-fixture regression test.

GitHub production diff showing the added size check and guard before carving data from the winpe scanner buffer.

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The PE metadata implied an executable extent of 24,390,512 bytes—beyond the bytes available to this scanner invocation. The input-derived length reached sbuf_t, whose bounds check rejected the slice with a controlled exception.

Diagram showing certificate-table offset plus length yielding a 24,390,512-byte required extent that exceeds the current scanner buffer.

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 11/08/2026

Developed with Codex. I saw exceptions from bulk_extractor’s winpe scanner and asked Codex to reproduce them, trace execution, find the cause, and prepare a tested fix. It did: github.com/simsong/bulk... A thread 🧵

Graphic titled Developed with Codex: AI-assisted software maintenance. A flow shows logfile, trace, fix, and regression test for bulk_extractor PR 674.

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#bulk_extractor beta 2.2.0 has been published on github. This version closes more than 100 open issues and improves reliability and performance. Thanks to Codex and Copilot for all of their help. Please give this release a try! #DFIR github.com/simsong/bulk...

github.com

Release BE v2.2.0beta1 · simsong/bulk_extractor

What's Changed Update continuous-integration-pip.yml by @simsong in #479 Update identify_filenames.py by @h-ssh in #482 Update LICENSE.md by @simsong in #478 add missing include by @rick-gnous in ...

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 07/08/2026

You are welcome to meet my wife! We could come down to Providence again or you could come up this Somerville ?

Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 07/08/2026

I didn’t know about him. My question is: where we always surrounded by people like this, or is this something new?

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 07/08/2026

My wife’s mother wants eight a piece of bread mold to see what it would do. It made her very, very, very sick.

Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 05/08/2026

All the scammers want to migrate to Signal to send me a private message. So annoying.

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 02/08/2026

I am looking for help to test bulk_extractor release 2.2.0. The new release closes over 83 open issues and resolves CVE-2026-24857. Most of the work was done by AI with my guidance. The progress has been phenomenal. #DFIR Here's what's been fixed: github.com/simsong/bulk...

github.com

simsong/bulk_extractor

This is the development tree. Production downloads are at: - simsong/bulk_extractor

Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 31/07/2026

Is anyone in my network an expert on exhibit design for science museums?

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 29/07/2026

What an honor to be part of this team!

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Reposted by Simson Garfinkel

Author M. I. Verras (She/Her) @miverrasauthor1.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Every time I post my novel outside Bluesky I have to mention that "Cover and story are not AI," and that they're made by us, humans, Niko, the cover artist, and/or me, the author and cover creator. I have to constantly remind some readers that my novels are human-made. What an era. #booksky #books

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 22/07/2026

I reviewed The Shockwave Rider, a classic sci-fi novel from the early 1970s that could have been written yesterday open.substack.com/pub/database...

open.substack.com

The Shockwave Rider (Review)

The classic sci-fi novel from the early 1970s that could have been written yesterday...

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 16/07/2026

What day does Chinese start with?

Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 15/07/2026

I numbered then the way we do in python unfortunately… date.weekday() vs tm_wday…

Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 15/07/2026

Should SUN be 0? Or should it be 6? Probably not 1?

Reuven M. Lerner @lernerpython.com · 04/07/2026

Reposted by Simson Garfinkel

Dictionaries in #Python remember their insertion order, but equality ignores the ordering: d1 = {'a':10, 'b':20, 'c':30} d2 = {'b':20, 'c':30, 'a':10} d1 == d2 # True!

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 03/07/2026

There's a fun article in today's Data Colada blog that discusses the many places metadata is stored on MacOS and Microsoft Excel, and why this is all relevant in the Francesca v. Harvard lawsuit on data falsification. datacolada.org/136 Also some side comments on @benedelman.org

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 03/07/2026

What a great way to start the morning with an email from Sara. Or Xanna. Or whomever… Summer in #Seattle open.substack.com/pub/saraabra...

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 23/06/2026

Our intern Sunny Bell just put out her first article on the Sabinok Substack! It's about AI in PropTech - Property Technology. Check it out! sabinok.substack.com/p/five-start...

sabinok.substack.com

Five Startups Pushing AI into Proptech

Proptech has been slow to adopt AI, but that’s changing: A growing number of startups are developing AI-based systems targeted for the proptech industry.

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Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 16/06/2026

Great article in Foreign Policy Journal about the potential impact of the U.S. Department of Commerce's decision to prohibit noise infusion as a privacy protection method. www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2026/06/14/t...

foreignpolicyjournal.com

Trump Administration Ban On Statistical Noise Threatens To Gut Census Bureau Data Output

The Trump administration has issued a Commerce Department order banning "noise infusion," a key privacy protection technique the Census Bureau has relied on

Simson Garfinkel @simson.net · 16/06/2026

foreignpolicyjournal.com

Trump Administration Ban On Statistical Noise Threatens To Gut Census Bureau Data Output

The Trump administration has issued a Commerce Department order banning "noise infusion," a key privacy protection technique the Census Bureau has relied on