Posts by Pascal Monett

Ransomware scum offer free decryption if you infect two mates

Re: @everyone

It's interesting that just about everyone here answered my post with variations concerning NAS and/or company backup procedures.

Funny, I clearly indicated that I was talking about Joe User.

Joe User does not have a NAS and wouldn't know how to set it up if you gift-wrapped it and installed it for him and, if you did do that for him, it would do eff all for his data when he gets infected with an encryption virus as is such the rage right now.

And please stop going on about how optical discs "are not forever". Nothing is forever and it is hilarious to think that optical discs without any moving parts are more at risk than spinning rust. Your optical drive can fail, it has no bearing on the data on the disk. The same cannot be said about hard disks.

Optical discs can fade (or so I've heard as well), but I take my data seriously enough to not buy the cheapest sort and, for the moment, I have indeed been lucky - if you call "luck" the staged multi-copy process I go through.

Once again, optical discs are the best bet for Joe User. When/if he gets around to it, he'll have a valid copy that will be stable and reliable long enough for him to completely forget what was on it in the first place.

You guys are experienced enough to choose your own path and take your own risks.

Re: So...

You forgot a step : pay twice the extortion amount

Up to you, but I don't see how that is better.

@MyBackDoor

And therein lies the mistake : hard drives do not a backup make.

I am constantly bleating this horn and next to nobody is listening : the only valid backup system for Joe User is the optical disk. Use DVDs or BluRay, I don't care, but write your data on something that cannot be changed afterwards.

Hard disks can be wiped by magnets, they can fail outright, the data can fade until it is not readable any more. In a word, they are not a reliable backup system. They are a perfect transport system for large amounts of data, but they are not backup.

The WORM disc is a far better backup support, cannot be modified once written and can reliably store data for decades. I wrote my first CD backup in 1995 and it is still perfectly readable. It does take longer to write, but it lasts way longer once written.

BT's hiring! 500 more customer service folk to answer your angry calls

Re: Can some one please explain

And can someone please explain how all of sudden management decides that they need to hire FIVE HUNDRED more people to staff the call centers ? I seriously doubt that call center staff is 50,000 and these 500 more are just a 1% increase.

Even if, and I think that is a big "if", even if the call center staff currently number 5,000, it's a 10% increase, and that means that manglement knew bloody well that the call center was seriously understaffed in the first place and, that being the case, it is manglement that is entirely responsible for minimizing the call center and ensuring customer dissatisfaction.

On top of that, they publicly declare that, with 500 more call center staff, they expect to only answer 90% of calls. Sorry, you're supposed to answer ALL THE CALLS.

Of course, to minimize the number of calls, you could hire and properly train another 500 technicians who would then go out and actually SOLVE THE PROBLEMS people are calling about - but yeah, that's silly talk.

Top tech company's IP was looted by China, so it plans to hack back

Great news for me

I am very pleased to learn that there is some kind of intelligent discussion on the matter. Whatever the results and however long it takes, a proper solution starts there.

Good to know that participation was of apparently good level, that means that the results will hold up to scrutiny and "startup-level" bollocks will have a harder time inserting itself into the scheme.

The road to public security is long and hard, and we've just set foot on the path. I look forward to the progress reports on this crucial matter.

ESA to try tank-to-tank fuel switch on sat that wasn't designed to do it

Here's hoping it works

Good ol' square-peg-round-hole problem. If anyone can solve it, it's the engineers at NASA.

Good luck !

Germany warns Moscow will splash cash on pre-election propaganda and misinformation spree

What ?

Are you trying to inject some actual, verifiable DATA into our comfortable preconceived notions ? And that in a pre-election period no less ?

This is the Internet ! We don't need your stinkiiiin data, we KNOW what want to know !

(if your sarcasm meter isn't broken here, you need a new one)

Linus Torvalds releases 'biggest ever' Linux 4.9, then saves Christmas

Still counting on last millennia's knowledge for snarky comments ?

Japanese robot space maid will incinerate Earth's dead satellites

Re: hope the cells weren't from Galaxy Note's

I think that, if our mobile phones had space-rated batteries, there would be a lot less reporting of said batteries blowing up.

There would also be a lot less people with mobile phones, given the cost of said batteries - which might not be a bad thing after all.

That's due to the current fad of trying to make oneself look intelligent by extracting "key phrases" and making them into headers. Allows for the TLDN crowd to skim those and pretend that they read the article - enough to criticize it anyway, which is the only thing that kind can do.

There are some who even do that in these hallowed halls.

I'm hoping that this fad will fade away, but I'm also hoping that people will finally learn the difference between there, they're and their and other such modern literary nuisances. I'm stupid like that.

Sysadmin told to spend 20+ hours changing user names, for no reason

Re: And what about Sting, Cher and Bono

I seriously doubt that any one of those millionaires are ever going to have to deal with the hassle of any kind of Active Directory issue ever.

Has Samsung, er, rounded the corner with Apple court win?

Well it's Friday, right ?

The Editors are off to the pub, obviously.

UK.gov state of the nation report: Infosec's very important, mmmkay

"cyber-security remains a key priority"

The first condition for successful cyber-security is : having a fucking clue.

Count UK Gov out of the race right there.

HBO slaps takedown demand on 13-year-old girl's painting because it used 'Winter is coming'

Re: what the fuckity-fuck was the Trademark Office thinking when they approved this?

They weren't thinking, they were counting the dollars coming in to their account.

Icon is for how much I hate the current legal landscape. Hey RedBubble : grow some balls !

Shame on you RedBubble.

Earth days are getting longer – by 1.8 milliseconds per century

@ Ledswinger

When I say "corroborate or invalidate the figures", I mean go over the calculations, the methodology, the data, and find out if there are any mistakes in how the experiment was conducted.

If one can find an error in the calculations, or prove that the initial data set was flawed, or derive a different conclusion from the same data set, then the conclusion can be put in question - which will entail more funding for more experiments.

But if no one can dispute the figures, if no discrepancy can be found in the data, if the methodology is sound, then there's a good chance that experiment is valid and the conclusion is valid.

Until a new discovery puts in question the initial data set or the methodology.

Re: "I don't understand how that can be measured"

Neither can I. That's why we have scientists, who publish their results and their methodology so that other scientists can corroborate or invalidate the figures.

Us plebians can only take note of the paper's conclusions and wait for the fallout.

All aboard the warship that'll make you Sicker

Dead ?

Stealing, scamming, bluffing: El Reg rides along with pen-testing 'red team hackers'

It's a bit disappointing

Very interesting read, but it is slightly disappointing to learn that actually getting into "secure" areas involves things as simple as not having a responsible answer his phone.

In my mind, if I do not get confirmation of something from a known authority, you can leave and come do your audit at a later date when I have been notified.

Everything that happens after that point is just icing on the fail cake. If the guy who knew nothing about the "audit" did his job and did not let anyone past him, the mission would not have gathered any useful information.

Once in, it is vastly easier to gather data because, by definition, if you're in it's because you've been allowed in so you're authorized and people are naturally going to be helpful.

Playtime's over: Internet-connected kids toys 'fail miserably' at privacy

Re: What's wrong with just pulling a string and a dozen phrases?

What's wrong is that that has been the tech we've had for the past thirty years and it is now obsolete because electronics and social pressure.

If you do not wish to pass for a bad parent, society dictates that you have to offer your children the latest and greatest in toy tech because if you don't, you're a has-been unworthy of having children.

It doesn't matter if the toy is less fun, it doesn't matter if the child plays with it for five minutes before moving on to the next toy, it doesn't matter that the toy does not allow their imagination to roam free.

What matters is that it is the latest tech. That is now the only thing that matters.

The UK's Investigatory Powers Act allows the State to tell lies in court

"The authorities [..] are forbidden from forcing you to testify against yourself"

Trust me, they're working on that point.

Another confirmation . . .

that V for Vendetta was actually a documentary written by a time-traveler from the near future.

Apple Watch sales go over a cliff: Down 2.8 meellion per quarter in a year

"if watch-makers can crack productivity, they're in with a show"

The fact that they haven't up to now tells me that there probably isn't anything left to crack at this time.

Before smartphones, the only use for a watch was giving the time. Today, we have a vast communication network available, for sure, but a watch can't have a vast screen and most certainly cannot have loads of CPU because you're wearing it on your skin, so no scorching flesh thank you very much.

Limited in power and display surface, watchmakers have done the only things that are likely to ever be done : transform a watch into a multi-function detector of various things that are simple to detect, and use a smartphone to gather and manipulate results with the smartphone's immensely superior CPU power.

If anything is added to the (short) list of watch functionality, it will likely derive from some new technology that has not been invented yet which will benefit from that format. Until then, I don't see that anything will change.

Standards body warned SMS 2FA is insecure and nobody listened

"the statement has had virtually no impact some six months after its announcement"

Not surprising. In the current social climate, companies must appear to be doing something about security.

This is something, therefor they are doing it - especially since the competition is doing it.

The fact that the technology is insecure and deprecated is less important than the polish it gives to the company's image. In time, when another equally-useable tech is developed, there will undoubtedly be a move toward that new tech, but this is Good Enough For Now - from the company's point of view..

In the three years since IETF said pervasive monitoring is an attack, what's changed?

Just one cotton-picking minute there

"if you believe that NSA employees are not allowed to contribute, you're making the same mistake they're making"

The NSA has subverted encryption before, there is no reason to assume it will not do so again. So deciding to let the NSA in on discussions around encryption implies that the door is open for the NSA to inject another obscure, hard-to-find weakness which might take years or even decades to find and weed out.

When someone has stabbed you in the back, it is not a mistake to not turn your back to him again.

Elon Musk-backed OpenAI reveals Universe – a universal training ground for computers

Mandatory question

Does it run Crysis ?

Okay, enough with tradition. the real question is : does the game list include Minecraft ?

If we are training AI on games, might as well throw in the best open-world sandbox there is, because if an AI can't handle Minecraft, it won't handle anything worth anything.

Can we have a 2 cents icon ?

King's College London staggers from outage, replaces infrastructure services head

I certainly have, but I've never lost anybody's data but my own.

This outage is not a technical issue, it is a major organizational failure. It is not the underlings who should pay the price, the board itself should be hauled over the coals and explanations should be given as to how the board allowed the situation to become so fragile.

'Toyota dealer stole my wife's saucy snaps from phone, emailed them to a swingers website'

Re: PS - Streisand effect

Gautreaux is married and his thoughts are about his wife, that's about as biblically pure as you can get.

It's Thomas that has impure thoughts, likely falling under the cardinal sins of Lust and Envy. He's the one that needs to pray, hopefully under the baleful eye of Gautreaux.

VCs to Trump: You know what would really make America great? Tax breaks for VCs

And so it starts

This is just a "hey buddy" call. It's obvious that these VCs look at the President Elect, see a billionaire, and imagine him razing all those pesky rules that prevent them from becoming trillionaires overnight.

There will be more of this, every time served with an excuse to make people think it is "for the good of the American worker", even though the only "worker" they're thinking about is themselves.

In the linked PDF, there's no less than 3 paragraphs on how to reform immigration rules to allow more skilled labor in. A passing mention to illegal immigration is made to confuse the readers into thinking the argument is valid. America's immigration rules have always been about limiting immigration to skilled labor only. There is no need to "Encourage talented immigrants to build or work at American startups", they're beating their heads at the door already.

I sincerely hope that this disastrous election will not result in the complete destruction of the legal framework that has been 200 years in the making. Unfortunately the bull is in the china shop now, so hope is all that remains.

Exclusive: Team Trump's net neutrality guru talks to El Reg

Re: "It's a publicly traded company"

I meant private as opposed to the NSA, which is a government organization.

Private meaning that there is no publicly-accountable body that answers to what Google is doing, although the fact that there is supposed to be one for the NSA makes eff all of an effect.

Re: "on who's vested interests is he trampling"

I doubt that list is going to be getting shorter any time soon.

Re: This Google obsession is getting old

This Google obsession will be old when Google is a forgotten, last-decade fading souvenir like Yahoo!.

For the moment, Google is still the privately-owned Internet powerhouse that can only be rivaled in its data-gathering by none other than the NSA.

Begin obsessed about that seems quite normal for democratically-oriented mind.

HMS Queen Lizzie to carry American jets and sail in support of US foreign policy

So, umm

When is your Queen going to announce formally that the UK is now the 51st State of the Union ?

Yikes, I'd better get outta here fast . . .

What's the first emotion you'd give an AI that might kill you? Yes, fear

Re: "My kids learnt to ride a bike because, despite the fear of falling off, it was fun"

My daughter is doing very well, thank you.

Riding a bike is fun when you've mastered it. When you're still afraid of falling off and scraping your knee, it can be terrifying. Especially when you're only 5.

Fear is the barrier. And it applies to education as well.

You basically teach your children to avoid a situation for fear of punishment.

They learn to ride a bike for fear of the pain of falling.

They learn to drive properly for fear of accidents.

An AI will have to learn to not like punishments, then it can learn to fear situations where it can be punished.

Same thing.

Microsoft goes all Tiananmen Square on its Chinese AI assistant

Xiaoice filters Trump's name ?

Can't fault them for that.

Microsoft's Neon project to redesign Windows for nerd goggles – reports

Re: "Has anyone who's criticising it actually used it?"

Because you have to go and shovel shit before being able to decide whether or not you like shoveling shit ?

Since when ?

Loyalty card? Really? Why data-slurping store cards need a reboot

Just digging deeper here

This whole article filled with buzzwords and dripping with false solicitude is just explaining how Big Business is pushing for the next step : having a truly global view of our spending habits.

For now, Business is limited to a per-shop knowledge base, they want to go global. Of course, it is entirely for our sake (cough).

So, in future, look for not needing to sign up to a loyalty scheme anymore, it will come automatically integrated with your VISA or Master Card.

I'll bet Big Business is already frothing at the mouth with the idea of all that sweet, sweet marketing and profiling data it is going to get its hands on.

Because you know it's going to happen.

No spoilers! Norway won't tell Snowden if US will snatch him on a visit

I doubt there is anything simple in this whole affair.

The Internet Society is unhappy about security – pretty much all of it

"[..] has no way to learn how well it has been protected from attackers.”

Another nail driving the coffin of IoT security in the minds of the masses. Enough of this, and we just might get the message through to the companies responsible for this mess.

Of course, one response to the problem would be a Board of Certification, judging IoT products and giving a rating, including security concerns. That, however, would probably end up as useful as MPA ratings and just as ignored.

Official ratings on computer games or films do not have for consequence the possible loss of one's identity to a hacker. Bad or nonexistent security in an IoT thingy does and, as these bloody are invading the vehicular aspect of our lives, danger to life and limb is looming.

That needs legislation and enforcement, not just certifications.

IoT security should literally be open source, it's the only way to be sure.

Japan investigating defence network break-in

Why do Defense networks insist on being accessible via Internet ?

The need for security being what it is, I think that any Secure Defense network should only be accessible via dialup.

Speeds today are quite reasonable and should be adequate, and having to phone in to a defense server means that you are eminently traceable, virtually eliminating any outsider attempt because of the very real risk of the door being beaten down in minutes and your ass being hauled off for a possibly very long time.

In addition, you could seal off international calls, thus ensuring only people physically in your country could attempt the call, therefor ensuring that your police forces are fully capable of putting down any spurious attempts.

It would indeed have to be one hell of a state actor to attempt anything at that level without insider knowledge.

So why does super-important defense information keep being under threat from any pimply-faced miscreant with an Ethernet port ?

The future often starts as a toy, so don't shun toy VR this Christmas

"Toys frame our capacity to dream about the future"

When I was a kid, I played with Lego. As I grew up, I often found myself lacking enough blocks of a given type to complete my projects properly, but I made do with what I had.

Nowadays, I fool around in Minecraft, and the number of blocks is no longer an issue. I introduced my nephew to the game, and it's all he wants to do any more. His constructions are that of the 9-year-old he is, but he is building stuff and that is what is important (in my view).

I do believe I have an active imagination, but VR is a miss for me. I cannot see the advantage of having to move one's head to move the field of view when you're still virtually tied to the chair in front of the PC. Moving the mouse seems a lot easier, and I'm used to that.

On the other hand, the day VR is a full-body suit encased in a sphere where you actually experience walking around endlessly (or frantically running from enemies) because you don't move in the sphere, then yes, I can totally see the interest of the VR and I will be right there, waiting for my next exercise session with my heart beating with anticipation. That kind of VR system will undoubtedly transform geeks and computer nerds into the spitting image of muscular Greek statues, with hormones, better than any gym room could possibly hope to.

So, for the good of couch-potatoes everywhere, please bring on the VR Sphere. It's a question of national health, after all.

Trust me, they're working on it.

Microsoft update servers left all Azure RHEL instances hackable

$3500 for having found a risk of that magnitude ?

Risk that MS was entirely responsible for due to shoddy security implementation ?

For shame, Microsoft. He should get ten times that to start with, because if a blackhat had found that out and used it, the damage to your reputation would have been orders of magnitude higher.

Three certainties in life: Death, taxes and the speed of light – wait no, maybe not that last one

Re: "wouldn't the charges involved modify the trajectory"

The only thing that can modify the trajectory of a photon is what is called gravitational lensing, and apparently you need a cluster of galaxies to obtain that effect.

So no, I don't think individual plasma ions are going to have an effect on the trajectory of photons.

Interestingly though, we are taught that light (ie photons) "bounce off" of objects, which is what allows us to see them. So you need entire galaxies to bend their trajectory, but a grain of sand can send the off in an entirely different direction. I still have trouble wrapping my head around that one.

Re: "could lead to a young universe with a young Earth and a young fossil record"

The currently-accepted age of the Universe is 13.7 billion years. The age of the Earth is given to be 4.5 billion years. The Earth thus came about in the last third of this Universe's current existence.

If the speed of light was different in the early days of the Universe, it might indeed mean that the Universe could be younger than is currently accepted, but I doubt that would change its age by 50%. It would likely be a lot less than that, if we can find a way to prove anything.

As far as the age of the Earth is concerned, nothing about the speed of light will change anything because the age of Earth's crust is not determined by light but by the degradation of uranium into lead which is a fixed constant. So no, whatever happens to the age of the Universe, the Creationists are not going to be able to twist that into a 6,000-year-old Earth.

"the speed of light could have been faster during the early universe"

I'm an idiot.

If it were me, I would look at that idea and say : "okay, so it might have been different. No way to prove it, why bother ?".

But these guys went on and not only wrote out their theory but claim to have a test that can prove it. And they're putting that up in front of a community of people who are very capable of putting said theory to the test and either thoroughly trashing it or conclusively proving it, or somewhere in the middle where proof is not definite but could be possible if some more intelligent people could be found to find out.

And I, the caveman, can only look on and wonder who will bring an answer to these questions while all I'm capable of doing is wash the dishes.

Kudos to these enlightened people who have questions that I couldn't even begin to ask myself. Whatever the answer, you will have improved Humanity's understanding of the Universe, and that's more than I will ever be capable of.

Poison .JPG spreading ransomware through Facebook Messenger

Re: Garbage, nobody has to use Facebook, I don't.

You probably don't smoke crack either, I gather. Unfortunately, that does not prevent crack addicts from existing.

Drops the mic... Hang on, hackers could be listening through my headphones?

"take advantage of the physical properties of the connected equipment"

Too often do we forget what it is we actually use, so deep is the habit of just considering what it does.

This is truly what is called thinking out of the box. Kudos to the team that put this experiment together.

I have no idea what the impact could be though. Granted, there is some pretty intelligent scum out there, and the NSA must be paying great attention, but I can't see that this is going to be a risk to the general public. Your run-of-the-mill scammer is not going to waste time setting up an entire software chain and phone-home capability just to hear traffic, crowds or people burping and farting.

Sysadmin denies boss's request to whitelist smut talk site of which he was a very happy member

Yup, that definitely sounds like the proper response to such a situation.

An underling, of course, would have just been sacked.

Hacker dishes advanced phishing kit to hook clever staff in 10 mins

"unless they are "dumb""

Yep. That's where all security stops : at the idiot who will repeatedly click OK/Yes without looking, who will answer all information requests without thinking, who will do whatever is written on the screen.

I believe the only solution to that is to keep those people away from computers. Of course, then we there is a host of new problems to take care of. I know ! Raise them to Management - with secretaries who take care of the typing and the clicking.