Posts by Christoph

MongoDB ransom attacks soar, body count hits 27,000 in hours

MongoDB only pwned in game of hacking

Insane blackhats behind world's most expensive ransomware 'forget' to backup crypto keys

So if nobody has paid, how do they know the files can't be decrypted? Analysis of all the software's functions?

Busted Oracle finance cloud leaves Rutgers Uni unable to foot bills

So what's the problem?

Why wasn't this found during the period of parallel running of the old and new systems?

And why haven't they implemented the roll-back scheme they prepared before the transition?

Err, they did have those, didn't they? Since it would be so obviously silly not to?

El Reg just saved your Wikipedia Xmas

Having interacted with one of Wikipedia's editors, I can report that there is another expense involved. When they appoint a new editor, they supply an official broomstick for them to shove up their arse.

Beeb flings millions more £s at Capita for telly tax collection

They send me letter after letter after letter. Those go in the recycling unopened.

They occasionally send a bloke round to hammer on the door. I no longer bother telling them yet again that I don't have a television - I just tell them to get off my property, and shut the door.

Meat pies in SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

It's just

Pie in the sky

New US rules on 'vehicle-to-vehicle' communications under consultation

"hazardous location notifications"

That could be very useful:

WARNING! BMW driver approaching.

"identifying what road cars are on"

STOP! There's a car crossing the road right in front of you!! . . . on the bridge over the motorway you're on.

UK Home Office slurps 1,500 schoolkids' records per month

"We take privacy extremely seriously and access to sensitive data is strictly controlled.”

Oh, that's all right then. I'm sure the government will take good care to make all that incredibly sensitive data secure. It might even be several months before the whole database is posted to the net by a hacker.

Remember kids, your teacher is there to spy on you for the government.

Say bye-bye to net neutrality next year, gloats FCC commish Pai

"it's unclear if the proposed revisions will benefit consumers or the companies that sell to them."

No it isn't. Not in the slightest. The companies will get the money and the consumers will get the shaft.

New British flying robot killer death machines renamed 'Protector'

Slaughter McSlaughterface?

Wow. What a shock. The FBI will get its bonus hacking powers after all

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

The US has passed a law saying they can hack into the computers of anyone, including people outside the US.

I wonder what their response would be if a foreign government passed a law stating that in that case, any of their citizens could legally hack into US government computers?

Small ISPs 'probably' won't receive data retention order following IP Bill

Re: Look at the details to find the devil

Or some plod (or anyone else from the long list of agencies who can snoop through your browser history at will) who's a bit short of the ready looking for anyone who has accessed porn sites, then looking up more detail on those people, then selecting suitable targets for blackmail on the treat of revealing those porn site visits.

Snail mail thieves feed international identity theft rings say Oz cops

Secure you mail box? Isn't it lucky that postal workers are so well treated and highly paid that they would never dream of intercepting your mail before it even reaches the box.

US citizens crash Canadian immigration site after Trump victory

Re: and we thought brexit was a bloody stupid decision

I'll just leave this here ...

McDonald's sues Italian city for $20m after being burger-blocked

But why would they object to such an iconic cultural image as the famous Golden Showers?

China passes new Cybersecurity Law – you have seven months to comply if you wanna do biz in Middle Kingdom

"Critical infrastructure providers also have to buy their equipment from a list that has been government tested and approved. "

So by the time the bureaucracy approves it, they will be allowed to buy 10 year old equipment that is no longer manufactured. Or equipment where all the development money was spent on bribes.

Browsers nix add-on after Web of Trust is caught selling users' browsing histories

Re: the appropriate measures to regain the trust of our users

The appropriate measures?

Here is your service revolver, we'll leave you alone with it.

Re: Web of Distrust

But when we've practised quite a bit

We find we get quite good at it!

World-leading heart hospital 'very, very lucky' to dodge ransomware hit

Presumably there would be all sorts of moaning and whingeing if they used the malware senders as donors?

Re: This wouldn't happen if they were running Windows.

"<Sarcasm> needs to be included as a valid tag in the next HTML specification."

No point - the UK wouldn't need it and the US wouldn't understand it.

What should the Red Arrows' new aircraft be?

Re: Thunderbird 2

Anastasia

If we're resurrecting old designs ...

The TSR-2

America has one month to stop the FBI getting its global license to hack

Hopefully all the other countries will declare the FBI to be an illegal organisation, and will arrest and imprison any FBI agent or employee found in their country.

Smoking hole found on Mars where Schiaparelli lander, er, 'landed'

At least the lithobraking worked.

Meanwhile, in America: Half of adults' faces are in police databases

Re: And when it seriously goes wrong?

He was lucky. He actually got to trial and had enough evidence to prove his innocence.

If he hadn't had that, he would have been offered a plea bargain. Confess and do decades of prison, or get a sentence longer that his possible lifetime.

Report: UK counter-terrorism plan Prevent is 'unjust', 'counterproductive'

We've got to punish this child because our (untested, unscientific) theory says he might be a criminal in the future.

If we're sufficiently nasty and evil to him, that will stop him hating us.

Oh God, here comes the artificially intelligent boss bot – look busy!

Sacrificial goat

"We apologise for (getting caught at) our latest mess-up, and we have fired the director responsible"

Blighty's National Pupil Database has been used to control immigration

"There are currently no plans to share the data with other government departments"

(Checks watch)

"OK, it's now five minutes later so we can change our mind."

Snowden investigator slams leaker-detector background checks

"Snowden and Manning made decisions after the checks that they would do something they said they wouldn't do."

When they found out that the US government made a habit of doing multiple vile things they said they wouldn't do.

NASA opens ISS to private sector modules

Free fall porn movies?

But you may have problems with that (NSFW)

Adventures in (re) naming your business: Fire up the 4-syllable random name generator

"invents four-syllable names with extra lashings of “q” and “z” and “j” and so on"

Don't be silly. You'd end up with some ridiculous letter combination like "XKCD", and nobody will ever remember something like that.

Yahoo! spymasters! patent! biometric! online! ad! tracking! IRL!

Will the sensors be able to analyze the exact colour of the spray-paint they were covered with within minutes of starting to spy on passers-by?

Hubble telescope spies massive 'cannonballs' of fire from dying star

Goodness Gracious

Great Balls of Fire!

Early indications show UK favouring 'hard Brexit', says expert

"It would be "some time" before it became clear which UK goods and services, if any, would benefit from any such trade deal, and the terms on which they would do so, Lougher said."

Because any such trade deal is entirely dependent on the goodwill of the EU negotiators to permit us to have such a deal.

If they don't feel like being generous (and why should they?) and we don't have anything to offer in return (and the Brexit people have emphasised repeatedly that we are not going to give ground on anything) then we are out of luck and up the creek.

Psst. Need some spy-on-employees tech? Ask Oriium

We found the details of one of our customers on your phone and you don't work in sales or support so you must have been taking our customer files unauthorised. So we wiped your phone clean.

But that's my wife's work address!

Oops. Tough luck, too late.

Four US states demand restraining order to stop internet power handover to ICANN

Wouldn't it be nice if right-wing american politicians would actually do something constructive, rather than simply throw spanners in every works they can find?

R2D2 delivery robots to scurry through the streets of San Francisco

Re: fixed hazards will be the real challenge

This is the city where the hills are so steep they have to haul the buses up them on ropes.

I want to remotely disable Londoners' cars, says Met's top cop

Re: Disabling vehicles for fun and profit...

Even more "fun" - some bugger would get the bright idea of lurking in a remote country lane and disabling any passing car driven by a young female.

But it's the price we have to pay for the police to keep us safe, innit?

" the CAA aren't very keen on medium sized drones working that would be quick enough and would stay in the air long enough to get involved in pursuit."

I should bloody well hope not. An operator that's concentrating on following a speeding car through urban roads is not going to be able to also avoid obstacles. A car driver can because it's all in the same place, the road route in front. A drone pilot watching the road can't also separately watch the aerial route.

And I doubt if a drone can corner as well as a car can, especially among buildings.

Flying high enough to avoid everything will lose sight of the car as soon as it takes a few corners.

EyePhones packing Iris-scanning authentication to go mainstream

Exploding eyeballs?

"the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 released last month will help spread the technology"

They expect people to hold up to their eyes a phone which has an unfortunate habit of exploding?

Man accused of $180k ass-based gold smuggling scam awaits verdict

There's gold in them thar hills

Will US border officials demand social network handles from visitors?

They have a perfectly valid reason for demanding this information

It's "Because we can".

They don't need any actual use case for it - they simply grab everything just in case. It satisfies the urge to "Do something!" even knowing it's pointless, and it lets them prove that they can impose whatever they want on funny foreigners and those foreigners have to meekly kow-tow.

Re: quote Miranda.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

-- Cardinal Richelieu

Re: Stupid questions...

"you've given them something they don't understand very well"

So they congratulate you on your cleverness while holding you and sending all your electronics off for detailed study by the people who do understand this stuff.

If and when you get it back, you can sit happily on the deportation flight home trying to see if you can find any of the software and hardware bugs they've added to your kit.

Naked, drunken Swede assaults chicken shed after 60th birthday

The yolk's on him

He'll have to shell out a lot of money

He really had egg on his face

(as title)

Conviction by computer: Ministry of Justice wants defendants to plead guilty online

Computers Don't Argue

Gordon Dickson short story

On the computerised form you will have to fill in if accused of not having a TV licence, in the list of reasons for not having a licence from which you are required to pick one, will it include "Because I don't have a television!" or will that be mysteriously absent?

I'm told that already happens with the printed notices they send you threatening to take you to court - I don't know myself, I bin them unread.

There are already far too many computerised interfaces where you have to pick the least-worst option from a list because none of the supplied options are relevant. Trying to force court cases into options the computer can handle is likely to produce occasional dire results.

National Cyber Security Centre to shift UK to 'active' defence

Lawful?

"lawful and carefully governed offensive cyber capabilities"

By whose laws, ours or the laws of the country in which the site being attacked is located?

Does any country make it lawful for another country to attack its local sites?