Posts by Pascal Monett

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

Okay, somebody tell me why Internet access is not properly locked down

As a consultant, I often work in banking environments.

In one of those, Internet access was not allowed from the desktop, but you could launch an Internet Explorer session which connected to a VM that allowed to go on the Internet - except you could download nothing because the VM had no access to your PC. It seems to me that this is the solution to that problem.

This solution is probably not easy to implement, I have no idea since I'm just a lowly programmer and not a sysadmin, but dammit somebody has found the solution, so it is possible. And knowing the bank in question, it likely did not cost an arm and a leg to set up.

So let's get cracking. Forbid everything from the Internet, create a sandbox environment that can access Internet, and this kind of problem is gone.

We're great, you don't understand competition law, Google tells Europe

Google is just being disruptive

As its immense money pile allows it to. Like every Internet-based company these days, it believes that it can redefine the law of any land by virtue of simply saying that things are like it wants, not like they actually are. Uber is starting to learn the limits of such behavior.

Contrary to most, jurists are experts at listening to arguments to better destroy them, and the law is not defined by an Internet company.

Still, Google (and others) have deep coffers and know how to use that to lobby and get the laws they want. So Google may be right one day, but I am personally pining for the judge who would take such declarations and slap a $10 billion fine for contempt of court.

Never going to happen, of course.

Accessories to crime: Facial recog defeated by wacky paper glasses

Alternatively the facial recognition neural nets will be trained to totally ignore glasses

I don't think that is possible. Glasses, by definition, cover the eyes and impact the shape of the nose, and that entire region seems to be critical in recognizing someone. Disregarding glasses means not analyzing that zone and that will likely render recognition basically impossible.

Until the day we have AI that can guess how someone looks without glasses, that is. Then we're toast.

This Dazzle stuff absolutely needs to be integrated to the resistance fighters' camouflage in the next Hollywood dystopian future film that will undoubtedly come out soon.

UK prison reform report wants hard-coded no-fly zones in drones to keep them out of jail

"hard-coded no-fly zones in drones"

Right, because criminals will immediately cease to try and get their drones into the prison anyway because of such a strong obstacle. Sure.

It's not like criminals have any IT-capable people available to, oh I don't know, replace the chip containing the zones ? Hack into the drone's innards and erase said zones ? Create an entire new OS that simply disregards that information ?

I really don't see that this is in any actually useful. The only people it will hinder are the honest ones that, by definition, should have no interest in flying their drone over a prison anyway.

I have a better idea : give a shotgun to one of the wardens and appoint him Aerial Defense Officer. Let him have a bit of fun and improve his marksmanship at the same time. Let's see the crims circumvent that.

Build your own IMSI slurping, phone-stalking Stingray-lite box – using bog-standard Wi-Fi

Can't see that happening

2FA is you on your computer going to a web page that sends an SMS with a code to your phone, code that you have to type in on your computer keyboard to access the web site. I fail to see how your computer could capture the SMS and get the code and use it on its own. The procedure described a method to get your phone's IMSI code, but the article specifically and clearly indicates that it cannot be used to spy on your messages or calls.

So no, your computer is not going to self-2FA. Not without growing some arms to grab your phone and some eyes to find the SMS and the code it contains. If it does have those functional extensions, I would be very interested in the software that would make them accomplish such an act.

Personally, I only have wi-fi activated when I am using it to connect to the Internet. I can't leave it on like that or my battery will be flat in half a day. Funnily enough, using the 3G connection does not deplete my battery so fast.

Five-a-day energy drink habit turned chap's eyes yellow, urine dark, caused anorexia

@Def

Definitely a regular surrender monkey now.

Soon become a Light version :)

Have an upvote for humor !

Thank you, boltar, for your shining example of tolerance, humanity and understanding.

The world is like it is today because of people just like you.

Re: But do you REALLY have to give up pork?

Pork is apparently a cause of cholesterol, and when you've passed the age the 40 things start to add up. At one point or another, you will have to adjust if you want to stay fit.

I intend to stay fit before my heart forces me to make that decision. That is why, in accordance with my doctor, I have removed Coke from my diet entirely, and almost entirely removed pork as well. My evening meals are now almost exclusively vegetable-based, and I have reduced my cheese intake by an order of magnitude (a difficult decision for a Frenchman, but it had to be done).

Live your life fully, by all means, and take advantage of your youth while you have it because otherwise where would the fun be ?

But pay attention to the signs. When the direction they take points to a negative value, I strongly suggest you sit back and take stock of the situation. Living on any medication is a nuisance, and diabetes - although manageable - is a very real threat. I believe it is best not to have to deal with such things, and I have made my peace with the consequences.

Which does not mean I don't have pizza every now and then. It means I only have it every now and then, once a month on average. And I avoid spaghetti carbonara entirely. I prefer having made those decisions before a doctor tells me that I have to.

Far be it from me to throw the first rock

I've never been interested in any soft drinks except Coke (the original - with sugar please). Since I was fifteen I'd been drinking more than a 1.5 liter bottle per day. Right up until my 48th birthday I thought everything was fine and I'd never have to change - a carryover from teenage invincibility, I guess.

Except invincibility does not last. I did a blood exam that year and my doctor called me back a few weeks later to explain that I had to change my died because of cholesterol and elevated acid in the blood (that was the Coke). That was a mean surprise, not because I had to abandon Coke, bacon and pork in general, but because I'd never had anything wrong before in my life. My blood tests at 35 were perfect - I still have the results.

But here I am, 50, and avoiding pork and Coke like the plague. My blood tests are better, but I need to lose some more weight.

This just to serve as a cautionary tale. 33 years of not drinking water will create issues.

Drink more water, kids.

Brexit may not mean Brexit at all: UK.gov loses Article 50 lawsuit

Re: "People said the pound would tank [..]. UK votes to leave, pound tanks. There's a fact."

I'm guessing that's not a fact that the Brexiters advanced, now is it ?

Re: By "project fear", I presume you mean the inconvenient facts

Oh, so now there were actual facts ?

That's news to me, I was under the impression that it was all demagogic waffle and pandering to the racist knee-jerk part of the arguments.

Could you point us to one of those "facts", so I can learn ?

Ubuntu Core Snaps door shut on Linux's new Dirty COWs

"Everybody is moving to a view they are responsible for anything they have sold."

Go tell that to IoT makers.

Watch them laugh their heads off.

'Inventor of email' receives damages from Gawker's collapsed empire

"a world-renowned systems scientist, inventor and entrepreneur"

We're talking about Thomas Edison, right ?

Because Thomas Edison is world-renowned. As is Albert Einstein.

This Dr Ayyadurai guy seems to be world-renowned in his own little world. Kudos to him for inventing something he called EMAIL all by himself at whatever age it was, but I'm sorry, world-renowned he ain't.

Why Apple's adaptive Touch Bar will flop

The MS Tablet failed because Bill G insisted it had to run Windows when the hardware of the time was clearly not up to it. If the iPad worked, it is because Apple wisely decided it should have an OS that worked with the hardware.

Apples and Oranges, again.

Adblock overlord to Zuckerberg: Lay down your weapons and surrender

Eyeo says it [..] wants "user empowerment"

We had user empowerment. We used to be able to install AdBlock and we would have no ads.

Now I install Adblock and I still get ads - the one you're paid to let through. That is a reduction in my empowerment.

So I uninstalled Adblock and I now use Ublock Origin which bloacks ads and hasn't sold out. How's that for empowerment ?

Microsoft's chaps slap Slack chat brats with yackety-yak app

"since before the great y2k hoax"

Agreed, Doctor Syntax. Y2K was absolutely not a hoax. I was just one of the thousands upon thousands of people who poured days and months of time over more than two years combing over code with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that business operations would continue after that day.

And I am certainly not the one who had the hardest customers or the most difficult code base to handle.

If Y2K was not a catastrophe it is because of that effort, the first ever made on such a scale.

I am proud to have been a tiny cog in that massive project that was definitely no hoax.

@JDX

Office and Windows are the only Microsoft products that have had any such influence. Nothing else that MS has put on the market has survived anywhere near half as long.

So yes, MS does indeed screw up everything it touches.

Facebook chokes off car insurance slurp because – get this – it has privacy concerns

Re: Dreadful idea anyway...

The logical endpoint of Admiral's idea is that if anyone doesn't have a "social media" profile* then they don't get car insurance....

Um, no. The logic, if you re-read the parts you missed in the article, is that first-time drivers can opt in to having their FB posts analyzed in the hope that their first-time premium will be lowered.

Nothing in this scheme has anything to do with established drivers because those already have a cast-iron reputation with the insurance companies (either good or bad, they have their reputation).

Leaks password, check. Leaks Wi-Fi password, check. Can be spoofed, check. Ding! We have an Internet of S**t winner

Let me get this straight

"Every time it starts and at regular intervals, the device sends an UDP message to the authentication server, containing device data, an ID number represented by the MAC address and a 36-character code. However, the cloud server does not verify the code, it trusts the device’s MAC address to perform the authentication."

They went through all that trouble to include a 36-character code generation program in the camera software, program the server app to recognize and accept it, then they decided not to use it ?

Could someone please explain the rationale behind that decision ?

"Here, we spent this much money on creating a somewhat secure dialogue between our server and our products, but nah, let's just accept the MAC address that can be spoofed and consider everything okay."

"Brilliant ! We can call it a day."

This is why IoT security is hopeless. Even when they make a half-hearted attempt at it, they just bungle it royally.

Dark matter? More like diet matter: Super-light axions may solve universe's mass riddle

"Topological quantum fluctuations in quantum chromodynamics"

Inverse the polarity now !

Um, sorry, for a minute there I thought I was reading an excerpt from a ST:TNG episode.

Quest celebrates first day of independence from Dell with layoffs

Yeah but that's how you spin it.

NetApp gives Data Fabric a little nip, tuck and some filler

"think digital botox"

Funny that, it's what comes to mind each time I see an Android or Iphone thingy.

And the way the expressions in users' faces kind of melts away to a fixed, stony gaze just reinforces that impression.

Capita STILL hasn't delivered usable Army recruitment IT system

"I want to see it next year"

And I want to win the lottery next week.

Let's see which of us gets theirs first. Any bets ?

ESMA urges companies to disclose potential Brexit impact

"two thirds do not know how the change will affect their balance sheets"

That, in itself, is not entirely surprising. The future is difficult to predict.

What they should know, however, is how the change can affect them. Banks should definitely have previsions for that.

Except that, these days, banks are just money-counters. They have lost the ability to forecast anything because they are blinded by the short-term, just like politicians.

Microsoft ends OEM sales of Windows 7 Pro and Windows 8.1

It has, and it will continue to do so because 90% of the user base is hopelessly borged into the Windows environment.

But that is changing. Not because Linux is getting better (it is, constantly), but because the user base is shifting. Today's younguns are growing up with smartphones grafted to their hands, and Microsoft is nowhere in sight there. They will enter the job market with next to zero influence from Microsoft, and when they occupy the IT managing spots, they will throw that shit out and get something familiar that just works - which will be some version of Linux.

They'll just need to hire some bearded guy to get it running, but they will not care about that. Microsoft is adapting to the future, and the future is Open Source. Linux is its prophet.

Arch Linux: In a world of polish, DIY never felt so good

How odd

I really see no reason for this article other than to unveil Yet Another Linux Distro.

Touting the expertise needed as a bonus for a Linux distro ? Since when was that necessary, or even useful ?

I like Linux, always have. I like the independence, the stability, the solid architecture. But if Linux is only a few percentage points in the desktop market it is because of how hard it is to grasp to the basic Windows user. Some distros are attempting to bridge that difficulty and bring Linux to the forefront of market share, and they are doing a good job of it.

But please, let's not start panicking. Linux will always have distros that true experts will be the only ones to use, while basic users will have other distros to use. That is the beauty of this OS - there is a version for everyone.

Hm, is that a minefield? Let me just throw my magic bomb-sniffing spinach over there

"using plants as chemical sensors"

I do believe they had great use for that on Giedi Prime. Sounds exactly like the kind of thing that universe would use all the time.

Chalk up one more step to our bold, dystopian future.

Stiff upper lips and sun glasses: the Chancellor bets on Brexit feeling

"the UK is already a technology world leader"

Of course it is ! That's why all major international technology firms, like Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, etc were created in the UK and then went international. And that will be immensely helped by draconian immigration measures.

Oh wait . .

Which job is AI going to eat next? Step forward, CCTV operators

One could eventually hope that these surveillance powers (need to re-watch that cracking documentary called Person Of Interest) will be used as they should, meaning to detect hoodie-wearing individuals loitering near a store for a while, then darting in and out and running away. For me, that is suspicious behavior. Actually, running away from a store is suspicious in itself, hoodie or not.

The reality of this world, and the continued demonstration that police forces everywhere abuse the tools at their disposal with depressing regularity, means that these surveillance abilities will be used to allow a cop to follow his wife while she shops, along with anyone she appears to talk to. Alternately, some cops will certainly prefer to go crowd-surfing, picking some good-looking girl and following her just for visual gratification. In short, the system will mostly be used for anything except catching actual suspects - unless a draconian usage surveillance system is put in place around it. A system that would, for example, require a request form including a picture of the person to watch - form which would need approval in the system before the cop would be able to launch surveillance on that picture and that one only. During the procedure, other individuals could be tagged and additional requests made, each one having to await approval before being followed.

But, of course, all that would create unacceptable delays for the one time in the year when the system will actually be used to follow a would-be terrorist, so no usage surveillance will ever be implemented.

When I retire I will stay at home and get everything delivered.

Windows 10 market share stalls after free upgrade offer ends

"Windows 10's impressive rise"

The only thing that is impressive about Windows 1 0 is how it did not reach 70% market share in the first six months of its release.

Every single version of Windows has been trumpeted as the fastest-selling version ever (except Vista*, which was the mongrel dog right from the start).

This free (for a year) version has not even managed to capture a quarter of the total market and that is being touted as a success ? It took SIX MONTHS for it to take over XP, for Pete's sake.

There is nothing about Windows 1 0 that can be touted as a success. Not its bloody interface, not its shameful, ham-fisted-down-our-throats, borderline malware-type distribution, and certainly not its "rise".

* no, I haven't forgotten ME. Nobody mentions ME. It is being erased from all family pictures as we speak and will, in time, be erased from all web pages as well.

NASA's asteroid orbit calculator spots a hot rock zipping past

@ Vikingforties

More like "puny carbon-based life form killer".

Planet Earth is not going to be bothered by anything less than a stellar body barreling through and sucking it up or head-on smashing into it. A wandering black hole sucking it up would obviously destroy it without trace. The Sun, in a few billion years when it enters its Red Giant phase, just might engulf it in its atmosphere and melt it down. Otherwise, Planet Earth laughs at your puny asteroids. It will shrug off any impact, wait a few million years and spawn another bunch of life forms.

Current carbon-based life forms are much, much less resilient. And the threats do not come only from space, as this article points out.

Of course, space-based threats are not negligible either.

How fun, eh ?

Good to know that we're improving our prediction speed

I perfectly agree that a five day notice is much better than a "oh my God there it is !" notice, and I fully support any and all efforts to improve our species' awareness of any and all threats to this planet we call home.

In a totally different register (heh), buzzed ? It passes outside the orbit of the Moon and you call that buzzed ? Call me when it passes at an altitude of 60,000 brontosauri. THAT's buzzed.

F-35 'sovereign data gateway' will stop US reading pilots' personal data? Yeah right

"sovereign data gateway"

Sovereign ?

I believe Merkel has a good idea of just how important that is to the US Government.

Iceland's Pirate Party wins 10 seats, will need unlikely coalition to rule

I totally agree with you. Democracy can only exist when citizens are directly engaged by what is happening around them.

The current situation is that a government exists in the stratosphere of the country, where ordinary citizens have no access because "national security" or some other excuse for secret negotiations. To save appearances, citizens are fed the fairy tale of elections and that their vote matters when, in truth, everything is arranged to ensure that citizens vote the way a very small group intend them to. The distancing of the citizenry from the meetings where actual, important decisions are being made ensures that the ruling class can go about their business without answering to much anybody that isn't in the know.

There should be no secrecy in a truly democratic regime. Everything the President says should be on YouTube, streamed live and saved for free access by anyone who wishes to see it.

It would throw a humongous monkey wrench in the current backstabbing diplomatic affairs and private enterprise lobbying, but it would do a world of good as far as actual Democracy is concerned.

Obviously it will never happen. Wayyy too much money/influence at stake.

Boffins one step closer to solving nanoscale computer challenge

It's just as relevant as stating that hyperspace travel is possible but hyperdrives that would allow it are not commercially available yet.

In other words, we're one step closer to the solution, but no one can tell how many steps remain for us to actually get there.

Although I must admit that I feel confident that memristors will be available before hyperdrives.

Obey Google, web-masters, or it will say you can't be trusted

Re: Conflicted emotions

Damn right. I had buried Do No Evil a long time ago and now I'm looking at the grave and feeling quite annoyed actually. Couldn't evil companies just stay evil and be done with it ?

Okay, I will console myself by thinking that Google has a vested interest in this scheme since . . ummm . . . scammers don't use Google Ads. Yeah, that must be it.

What a relief, I almost thought I was going to regret something.

Schneider Electric plugs gaping hole in industrial control kit

What has caused problems is the failure of those building industrial control systems to realise how quickly hackers work to develop exploits.

I see your point and agree with you fully. I would just like to append to this by saying that it was not a failure on the industrial control systems maker's part to not foresee the impact of the Internet on the security of their components.

The Internet has revolutionized our entire society in less time than it takes to reach voting age. Every part of our society needs to adapt, and this is just a normal consequence of things.

"nothing specific to cybersecurity was inherently built within them"

Systems built 20 years ago did not need cybersecurity because there was no such thing.

Industrial equipment takes time to update, no surprise there.

Coming to an SSL library near you? AI learns how to craft crude crypto all by itself

"Although impressive, the cryptographic algorithms aren’t yet practical"

Um, are we sure it's all that impressive ? It specifically says that "the magic" is "locked in a black box". How can you say it's impressive if you can't take a gander to find out ?

Look, I'm sure there are very intelligent people working on this, but even if they do devise a successful method to train an AI on the wonders of encryption, what good will it do if they cannot extract a procedure to implement the AI encryption scheme in the boring old rest of the world ?

In other news, I've just been given a pamphlet from a guy calling himself a time-traveling freedom fighter. The pamphlet is dated 2065 and it says that some Lord Abadi is dead and now is the time to strike against Dictator Andersen and his army of robots.

Geohot gone geocold on georides: Comma.ai self-driving car kit cancelled

"Would much rather [be] building amazing tech than dealing with regulators and lawyers"

If you are serious about "building amazing tech" then you should be fully aware of the requirements of security and the notion of responsibility when selling to the general public.

You should have approached the NHTSA yourself with a description of the project and requested a meeting where you could defend the project and get information on how to proceed to have it approved.

Instead you act like a teenager whose pet concert project got a harsh question from his parents and you shut everything down.

Well I'm glad you shut it down. If you are that thin-skinned when confronted with a minor administrative issue, then I shudder to think of how you would react when faced with hundreds of actually angry people.

Continue playing in your garage, at least there your lack of maturity will be limited to only hurting the people in your own house.

Internet of S**t things claims another scalp: DNS DDoS smashes StarHub

Oh, right, cars. Perfect comparison. The wild west of IoT is totally comparable to vehicles which are regulated, drivers licenses which are only given with government authorization, and let's not forget police which have radars and helicopters and can even just stop you to randomly control your papers.

I do agree that the day that IoT is as heavily controlled and regulated as vehicles, such DDoS attacks will undoubtedly be a thing of the past.

"by compromised kit owned by its customers"

It's called karma, bitch.

Serves them bloody right.

Possible reprieve for the venerable A-10 Warthog

"keep the A-10 flying indefinitely"

That's what happens when you design properly and create a great product - shit has a hard time time replacing truly useful things.

Kudos to the designers of that great airplane.

And so we enter day seven of King's College London major IT outage

Definitely agree. Unfortunately, that also means you need to stagger the acquisitions, which means planning ahead which is becoming something of an exotic science these days.

When I decided to go for a home NAS, I first spent four months buying one 3TB every month, to make as sure as I could that not all disks would be from the same batch. On the last month, I bought the 4th disk and the Synology station that would make them all useful.

I do not see that most management types would be able to have that much patience.

Spoiler alert: We'll bet boffins still haven't spotted aliens

The controversy doesn't matter

I agree that the guy is most likely wrong, for whatever reason we'll likely never hear of in mainstream news because nobody will be able to insert "aliens" in the headline, but it doesn't really matter.

That the guy published something that is very likely to be totally debunked is not a surprise either. He probably needs to garner some attention to show his department exists in order to secure some funding for next year. This is as good an opportunity as any other, and if debunked he has a gold-plated reason to say "see, I need more money for better equipment".

Whatever the reason why this study will be debunked is going to be just one more pebble on the beach of knowledge that Science is creating. The information will be consigned to History and future scientists will benefit from it either way.

That's the beauty of Science : even inaccuracy makes it stronger.

Existing security standards are fine for IoT gizmos in electrical grids

"existing security standards are adequate, for now"

They always are. Right up until the moment they get hauled into a dark alley and beaten to a pulp. That's when we find out they were not sufficient.

So this guy is basically saying we need to wait until something blows up before worrying. He may be right, he should be an expert, so good.

Could we have a demonstration of how right he is ? Security through obscurity and all that.

Accountant falls for sexy Nigerian email scammer, gives her £150k he cheated out of pal

Re: "Can't have been a very good one"

Yeah, because all accountants worth anything only drive expensive European cars, live in luxurious mansions and have dozens of employees at hand to boss around.

It has to be true, I saw Law & Order !

DARPA hands space junk spotting scope to US Air Force

"objects the size of a softball"

So apparently it costs $150 million to detect a softball 36,000 km away.

I wonder how much it will cost to detect objects the size of a bolt ? Because there are a lot more of those up there, and they can be quite dangerous as well. Although it is possible they are less common in geostationary orbit, I don't know.

Is Google using YouTube to put one over on Samsung?

Coincidence ?

With the billions of dollars that are implied in this market, I doubt very much that coincidence has anything to do with it.

At this level, we are talking board meetings, highly paid specialists and very intelligent people that are also likely to be ruthless. Samsung has very much dropped the ball, and such people are not likely to miss out on the opportunity.

When there's blood in the water, the sudden appearance of a shark is hardly a coincidence.