Deus ex machina.
Literally.
Deus ex hackina: It took just 10 minutes to find data-divulging demons corrupting Pope's Click to Pray eRosary app
The technology behind the Catholic Church’s latest innovation, an electronic rosary, is so insecure, it can be trivially hacked to siphon off worshipers' personal information. The eRosary, which went on sale this week at just $109 (£85) a pop, consists of ten metallic beads, and a metal cross that’s Bluetooth enabled, has …
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Friday 18th October 2019 23:23 GMT Danny 2
Saint Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore of Seville was well known in his time as a tireless scholar and historian, he was later called “the last scholar of the ancient world”, and it is this studiousness and love of information that lends itself to his modern patronage.
Per the Roman Catholic Church, Saint Isidore is the patron saint of computers and their users, programmers, and repair men, as well as the Internet as a whole. So the next time you’re faced with a computer problem of such magnitude as to require a miracle to fix it, rest assured Isidore is on it.
Apparently he invented the first Wikipedia, his Etymologiae had quaecunque fere sciri debentur, "practically everything that it is necessary to know".
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Saturday 19th October 2019 06:37 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Saint Isidore of Seville
Apparently he invented the first Wikipedia,
Unless anyone could have edited or added to its contents it would at best be just an encyclopedia, not a wikipedia.
And I very much doubt that there were more than just a select few editors involved, if it wasn't old Ididore on his own.
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Saturday 19th October 2019 18:51 GMT Muscleguy
Re: Saint Isidore of Seville
Considering back then books were all bound manuscripts and the monks copying them often put little bon mots in the margins, unlike the later post Gutenberg pinted books it would indeed have been user updateable.
But then post Gutenberg books are as well. I have a personal copy of Eunice C. Green's Anatomy of the Rat with pages I have inserted (laser written naturally) detailing where moust differs from rat in terms of muscles and tendons (my area of expertise). For eg mice do not have a Sartorius muscle in the thigh but rats do, just like we do though we add a Tensor Fasciae Lata as well.
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Monday 21st October 2019 08:50 GMT Kane
Re: Saint Isidore of Seville
After all this time your handle now makes all the sense in the world! Whenever I saw your handle, for some reason I always pictured a large musclebound weightlifter in a gym flexing in front of a mirror. Now I will forever see diagrams of rat and mouse musculature.
I'm not sure which is better...
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Sunday 20th October 2019 19:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Saint Isidore of Seville
So the next time you’re faced with a computer problem of such magnitude as to require a miracle to fix it, rest assured Isidore is on it.
Despite resorting to offerings at the alter of Ada, the High Priestess of Computer Programmers, the quality of "code" that the programmers under my charge write has not improved one iota.
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Monday 21st October 2019 10:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Have you tried sacrificing one of the programmers?
According to Father P Brooks, there may be more improvement to gain by sacrificing all but one of the programmers, thereby reducing overheads, reducing opportunity for miscommunication, etc,
How would today's readers choose which one programmer to keep? Text your answers now to I'm a Crap Manager Get Me Out of Here, on 070xxxxxx.
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Monday 21st October 2019 11:32 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: Saint Isidore of Seville
Probably because the sacrifice type of offering makes a mess of the floor.
Now, the Spanish Inquisition had the right idea - they "didn't" spill blood
"Inquisitors weren't allowed to shed blood, and that included doing the actual killing. The Church didn't actually want to be associated with killing the faithless, either, so that was left up to secular authorities, who stepped up to do the killing and burning after the guilty parties were publicly scorned and humiliated. The transfer of prisoner from Inquisition custody to secular was called "relaxing" the guilty party, who would then be taken out of the church's line of sight and disposed of in a way apparently suited to the most heretical in history."
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Friday 18th October 2019 23:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Why should buyers (believers) worry about this?
God knows all, so a bit of leaked info surely won't worry them.
The church has moved on from accusing Galileo of heresy, funny how those 'red lines' keep getting nudged every time they are proved wrong by irrefutable science.
I really couldn't care less about this particular fuck up, but it is indicative of a wider security issue I do care about.
We need some regulation on security of personal information and from recent things I've read (mostly here on El Reg) I hope this might be on the cards.
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Monday 21st October 2019 09:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why should buyers (believers) worry about this?
The security on the login is kinda pointless.
The existence of the app on a phone, and a device on a desk would be sufficient to identify a user as belonging to the faith.
Electronically, the apps API is pinging Vatican.IT (or whereever) - so again, wether there is encrypted content - doesnt matter for a state actor.
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Sunday 20th October 2019 17:41 GMT Mike 16
Tri-state Boolean?
That was Boole himself, IIRC. The original form of "Boolean Algebra" was (radically simplifying and paraphrasing) about probabilities and their combinations. Think of something like a precursor of Fuzzy Logic. It was much later when the computer-nerds redefined it to only zero and one for their own purposes, like Baud, Byte, and "Fitness for Purpose".
Babbage and Lovelace may be thought of as early practitioners of Computing, but surely Humpty Dumpy was the inspiration for modern terminology. :-)
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Saturday 19th October 2019 00:32 GMT petef
Premature disclosure
Why have Fidus gone public with this now? It is customary to give reasonable private notice so that security holes can be plugged before every skiddie is given a chance to exploit. According to Fidus they reported the vulnerability on the 18th and it was patched on the 19th. That is way too recent to have rolled out to all users. Fidus should have kept quiet.
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Saturday 19th October 2019 02:34 GMT Danny 2
Ave Satani
The Omen! It is worth noting that we geeks fact-checked those wannabe Satanists,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Satani#Lyrics
I have to admit that in Scotland we didn't catch the lyrics, and that chant is known as "Dah dah dah dah. Dah dah dah dah. Dah dah dah dah deh"
Another shitey anecdote. All the tough punks went to see The Exorcist at our local cinema when they were too young, and all of them left in fright. That made the movie just irresistible to the rest of us. A girl invited me - and this just didn't happen back then- and then in her bedroom she confessed how she'd stabbed her older sister in her stomach. And then I had to go and watch The Exorcist and Friday The 13th with her.
I was so terrified of my date that I missed out on the movies. What sort of a first date tells you she has already been arrested for stabbing her sister? Did I put my arm around her in the cinema? Aye, right, I kept my hands around my stomach.
Women, don't stab your sister no matter how much she deserves it. And certainly don't tell your date after.
The Exorcist didn't scare me, Friday the 13th didn't scare me, but the girl sitting next to me scared the bejesus out of me.
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Saturday 19th October 2019 07:04 GMT Stoneshop
From the picture
my first association was that there would be a small motor inside the cross that moved the beads along, and the cross being part of the stand. Because, progress. After all, Buddhists have their wind- and water-powered prayer wheels, that pray without further human intervention, so why not an autonomous rosary?
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Monday 21st October 2019 13:50 GMT jelabarre59
Re: From the picture
"The 9 Billion Names of God" had a Tibetian monestary buying a computer to print out the aforementioned names far quicker than they were doing them by hand. Other than the cutting out and pasting into the ledgers, I could expect the task could be completed in an hour or two (allowing for printing time).
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Saturday 19th October 2019 09:16 GMT Mage
Bit daft, but...
Perhaps more innovative and less stupid than a Nest camera, Amazon doorbell or any of those "voice assistants."
Meanwhile, the Catholic believers should consider nothing more threatening related to Faith, IT wise, than an eBook version of the Jerusalem Bible.
I added an icon even though that's Orthodox.
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Saturday 19th October 2019 09:23 GMT Detective Emil
Why does this product remind me of the mobile-phone-in-a-crucifix in The Pope Must Die[t]?
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Saturday 19th October 2019 14:47 GMT FuzzyWuzzys
Eternal guilt
What I love about this is that Catholics are all about "eternal guilt", they love a bit of guilt. This thing tracks you, reminds you constantly that you must feel guilty and remind you to punish yourself for whatever it is that you did or thought that you shouldn't have. So rather than sneaking off and having a few crafty happy thoughts, this thing will remind you that must never be happy.
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Sunday 20th October 2019 13:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Crazy Catholic magick
Notice how Catholicism rituals play out like a dungeons and dragons campaign.
The old spells and their mysterious magic rebranded. Rosary beads, symbols of divine power, spells, prayers, Amulet talisman special words of power... Difference between a practicer of old dark magic and Catholicism is but skin deep. Catholic church, it's dark rituals and the practice of worshipping the Pope has got to be one of the largest practices of idolatry. To idolize anything, whether it be a person, institution, systems of law, rituals, etc to practice idolatry. Despite that idolatry is strictly prohibited by the ten commandments and reported to be particularly to disdained by God.
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Sunday 20th October 2019 20:18 GMT Martin an gof
Plenty more where this came from
Gadgets for God is always worth a laugh. As is the rest of the Ship of Fools site to be honest.
M.
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Monday 21st October 2019 11:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Plenty more where this came from
Some years ago I was browsing in a Poundland shop, and came across a Jigsaw puzzle with a picture of the Pope on it. Thought that was so "Father Ted", reading this article I just thought - Father Ted for the 21st Century!
Not being a religious person, what is the point of this device?
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Sunday 20th October 2019 22:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Standard process.
Sales representative: “[XXXX] technical sales, [XXXX] speaking. How can I help you?”
The Pope: ”This is the Pope speaking. I want you to design an electronic rosary for me. Customer price may not exceed 90 euros, including VAT.”
S: “Very well, Mr. Pope. Let me first...”
P: “I’m not Mr. Pope, but The Pope. You know, the one who sits in Vatican and speaks to God.”
S: “Uh, yes... um... your holiness. I was about to say that I need a bit more information to prepare a quote for your holiness on an electronic rosary. Like details on the device and accompanying software. Those details are called specifications. If it suits your holiness, I will next make a number of detailed questions about your expectations.”
P: “Great, let’s begin!”
[ discussions goes on for a fair amount of time ]
S: “... and finally, your holiness, we need to discuss about system security and its implementation. Our standard...”
P: “How much will it cost?”
S: “Well, I cannot give your holiness an exact figure now, but it will cost about [XXXX] euros to implement in your case.”
P: “Bloody... what was that phrase again? ...yes! Bloody Mary! That’s too expensive! Just put a four-number PIN on it. Just like in my credit card. If it’s secure enough for banks, it’s secure enough for me.”
S: “But your holiness, it’s completely differ...”
P: “Nonsense! Just give me a quote.”
S: “Um, very well, sir.. uh, your holiness. Design and non-recurring manufacturing costs are [XXXX] euros, and then [XXXX] euros per device, which will meet your initial requirement of 90 eur...”
P: “Great, send them to me ASAP! Keep up the good work! Thanks!”
[click]
Sales process in this case was like any normal discussion between a VP and technical team. In other words, standard industry procedure was followed and the security features are nobody’s who is anybody fault (may the code monkey rest in pieces), and there is nothing to see. Move on, folks!
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Monday 21st October 2019 00:04 GMT Blofeld's Cat
Er ...
[Flash of lightning, clap of thunder, heavenly choir]
Look the security on this device is very straightforward - you hack this thing and something turns up to smite you with a flaming sword, before dragging you down to Hell for all eternity.
Which coincidentally is where we outsourced our help desk to.
Sent from my iSaiah.
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Monday 21st October 2019 10:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Tinder for priests?
Ah the ancient Joke:
"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose girl."
The priest asks, "Is that you, little Joey Pagano?"
"'Yes, Father, it is."
"And who was the girl you were with?"
"I can't tell you, Father. I don't want to ruin her reputation."
"Well, Joey, I'm sure to find out her name sooner or later so you may as well tell me now. Was it Tina Minetti?"
"I cannot say."
"Was it Teresa Mazzarelli?"
"I'll never tell."
"Was it Nina Capelli?"
"I'm sorry, but I cannot name her."
"Was it Cathy Piriano?"
"My lips are sealed."
"Was it Rosa DiAngelo, then?"
"Please, Father, I cannot tell you."
The priest sighs in frustration. "You're very tight lipped, and I admire that. But you've sinned and have to atone. You cannot be an altar boy now for 4 months. Now you go and behave yourself."
Joey walks back to his pew, and his friend Franco slides over and whispers, "What'd you get?"
"Four months vacation and five good leads!"
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
