Posts by Pascal Monett

152k cameras in 990Gbps record-breaking dual DDoS

Good news

All this IoT malarky is going to have to tighten up, and this kind of massive screwup is just the thing needed to bring big guns to make it happen.

IoT makers do not care if a consumer gets his kit hacked, but if a Google or major ISP gets into the legal game with a valid claim that the IoT maker did not do its due diligence in preventing massive communication disruption, that might start turning a few heads.

Likewise, it is impossible to use a lawsuit to prevent Joe User from getting his PC infected, but it is quite easy to demonstrate that equipment made by a specific company is the source of a problem.

I'm hoping this will happen and shake things up in the dismal security landscape of IoT.

Narcissist Heidi Powell wants her dot-com and she wants it now, now, NOW!

Re: "do you know who I am?"

Whenever I hear that question, I always think of the cashier lady who responded by picking up her microphone and making a public message to the effect of "if anyone knows who this person is, could they please come and tell him".

I don't know if it's a meme, an urban legend (probably), or just a joke, but I love the idea.

Scrapped NHS care.data ballsup cost taxpayer almost £8m

“The money invested in the care.data programme ha[s] not been wasted"

Of course not. Your pork-barrel buddies have immensely enjoyed and profited from it.

Add 'fattism' and hacker stereotyping to the list of Donald Trump's list of non-PC positions

“There is no doubt Russia has used cyber attacks on other nations,”

Well, as far as I know, there is no doubt that the USA has used cyber attacks on other nations either. You gonna get all high and mighty about that ?

Didn't think so.

The server's down. At 3AM. On Christmas. You're drunk. So you put a disk in the freezer

I have no trouble imagining the sense of relief that must have flooded the room at that point.

The trip back home must have been like surfing a cloud.

Brexit at the next junction: Verity's guide to key post-vote skills

Re: Mul/Div of mixed radix is left as an exercise to the insane

That might actually explain a lot about the current situation.

Unlucky Luckey: Oculus developers invoke anti-douchebag clause, halt games for VR goggles

"Palmer acted independently in a personal capacity"

Looks very much like PR disaster-management to me. Saying such things do not hold water next to declarations such as "I will fly my jet one minute less".

First of all, if one minute of your jet costs less than one glass of Scotch, your jet ain't worth boasting about. Second, you can hardly fly a jet (unless it's a virtual one, in which case I'll take you on any time).

Public opinion is a thing since Vietnam. A crash course seems to be required for the board at FOculous, because they're going to get it in the rear now. And I have to say I am not sorry. I hated the day I read that Facebook, of all things, had got its grubby mitts on what promised to be a great product.

This is just another step into oblivion.

Brain plague or estate agents? I know which I'd prefer in Virtual Reality

"2D porn just wouldn’t cut it any more"

Um, I've heard that 2D porn has one great advantage : you're not shutting yourself off from the world and therefor are not liable to be totally surprised by someone walking in on your, ahem, fun time.

If you remain tuned into the world around you, you have time to recover and set things right when you hear the garage door open (I've been told).

In any case, I'm quite sure that VR has a place, most likely in gaming (obviously). I do not see that VR is going to bring anything to teleconferencing, not does it improve in any way people analyzing floor plans. What does VR bring to a virtual tour of a building that a flat screen does not ? A mouse costs less than a VR headset and likely always will.

This whole VR fad is like 3D cinema. It's nice to see a new tech becoming available, but the hype will have to pass before we see the true, boring applications that actually survive and thrive.

Hubble spies on Europa shooting alien juice from its southern pole

Or rather : "I wonder what it tastes like ?"

Let's face it, we are the most advanced intelligence in our solar system and we can hardly boast of being inquisitive and comprehending. The basic reaction of 99% of Humanity in the face of The Unknown is panic and/or aggression, just like any animal out there.

Actual animals, on the other hand, usually have the intelligence to not hang around when they're out of their depth.

If we do encounter another life form, either we are technologically superior and will be a hell of an effort not to slaughter them all for their Unobtanium, or we are technologically inferior and we had better pray they don't need our Unobtanium. The chances of a draw most are, in my humble opinion, next to nil, so I will not consider that option other than to say : First (Last?) Interstellar War.

And! it! begins! Yahoo! sued! over! ultra-hack! of! 500m! accounts!

Looks like the beginning of the end

I've always wondered how Yahoo! has managed to stay afloat after so many years of bumbling incompetence.

If there is a major class-action lawsuit over this I doubt Yahoo! will be able to continue operating at all.

It's about time a class-action happened anyway. This kind of nonsense has been going on for too long already, especially since it seems to always be for the same basic reasons : improper handling of user credentials.

The book has been written on that. It is high time CEO's get the message : Apply proper security, OR ELSE.

Double KO! Capcom's Street Fighter V installs hidden rootkit on PCs

"We apologize for the inconvenience"

No, what you should apologize for is confusing your game with your right to the user's computer. And for being too stupid to not let the user cheat locally where there is no problem, and not being capable of finding a server-based solution to check server-based multiplayer.

I suggest you meekly go, hat in hand, and beg Blizzard to tell you how they prevent cheating on Diablo III without fucking over people's personal property.

You might even gain some intelligence in the process. God knows you seem to need it.

Microsoft: We're hugging trees to save the 'world'

"The leading cloud companies have a responsibility to address this energy usage"

Here's an idea : how about pushing molten salt reactors that use Thorium ?

That would be responsible in many ways, pushing the economy towards an energy technology that is plentiful and without any of the risks currently associated with nuclear tech.

Plus, given the amount of energy consumed by these data centers, they would be independent from the local grid and thus have a redundant energy source in said grid if anything went wrong.

This tech has been pushed aside from the cold war imperative of creating plutonium for nuclear bombs. We don't need plutonium any more, and nobody wants the hydrogen risks that pressure water reactors can create.

So think outside the box, people, and do something that is truly useful for Humanity and our future.

Moron is late for flight, calls in bomb threat

Re: "That tells you a lot about him"

I think that going to an airport with drugs in the bag also says a lot about him.

Windows Server 2016: Leg up or lock in?

Nice way to push page views on your profile, Jim.

@Milton

The only value for money MS still has is the millions of coders that are used to coding for it, and the thousands of programs and applications that it can still run.

Plus : gamers. The PC still has the largest library of games and is still the best gaming platform as far as diversity is concerned.

However, the bell is tolling because the upcoming generation has not been raised on Windows, but on Android or iPhone. When they get to the professional arena, they are going to consider Windows as a boring office platform and, when that generation attains the level of IT Management and sees the pain that is licensing and maintenance, they are going to replace everything they can with some form of Linux.

It is just a question of time, and that probably has a lot to do with why MS is porting some of its key jewels over to the platform that it used to qualify of "cancer".

Lethal 4-hour-erection-causing spiders spill out of bunch of ASDA bananas

This comment forum is getting positively sticky.

The perimeterless, ever-shifting enterprise: What would a real, red-blooded IT team do?

"They have their own empires to build"

And that is the problem right there : more importance is given to the appearance of progress rather than to the security of the data.

I wish them all luck, I really do. But I'm also willing to bet that all that empire building is going to look a lot less good for the first manager responsible for getting a hundred million or so customer details leaked because he chose a cloud solution that got hacked. Sure, he can try to deflect the blame on the cloud provider and it might even work, but his career will likely suffer, and deservedly so. Because he won't be able to hide the fact that his IT department did not think the idea was a good one.

So go on and put your data on someone else's server. When enough of that has crashed and burned, the real solution will rise from the ashes.

And then computing will really take off.

Brits: Can banks do biometric security? We'd trust them before the government

@ WibbleMe

I suspect you've never heard the term "money mule", nor ever gotten spam offering an easy, stay-at-home job that will make you thousands per week ?

And you certainly missed this article as well.

Oracle takes aim at AWS with cheap, fast public and hybrid cloud

"complained about his salary"

I don't care if it was in jest or not, from a person with his wealth that's just petty.

T-Mobile USA leaked free access to sites with '/speedtest' in the URL

"the educational benefits of sharing my findings with the community"

As in your street cred, you mean ?

Come on, if nobody was getting hurt you had no pressure to publish, now did you ?

Responsible disclosure means you give the company a chance to react. If there is no hurt, you can give them even more time to react.

United States Air Force grounds F-35As after cooling kit cracks up

Re: Insult!

Probably because the Tiger Moths were specifically good, and the comparison is in the sense that the F35s are not - they are toothless.

So it remains an insult, but for the F35s.

Apple's tax bill: Big in Japan. Like, $120m big

Then spoil their game

I look forward to a new tax regime : you pay taxes in your home country on your global profit, and can deduct taxes paid in other countries. Every country does the same, and we can say goodbye to these despicable practices.

Of course, it will never happen.

Rise of the Machines at Sea: The British firm building robot boats

"do things in a very responsible way"

So, not using Microsoft software then, are they ?

Trump website server config snafu left interns' CVs exposed

Re: "attempting to insinuate that Trump is a hair-trigger kind of guy. With zero credible evidence"

What, you haven't seen his hair ?

Encryption backdoors? It's an ongoing dialogue, say anti-terror bods

"secure comms are the point at which people move from curious innocents to national security risks"

False argument. The US Constitution, if it were still respected, is that point.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

This Amendment does not care if unreasonable searches are conducted via electronic surveillance or by goose-stepping through the house. Neither are permitted. The Constitution says you need a warrant to invade a suspect's privacy, period.

Why this point is not driven home with a bat sledgehammer is beyond me.

French hackers selling hidden .22 calibre pen guns on secret forums

"bagging between €5 million to €10 million a month"

How is it that such financial volume is not tracked down and under surveillance ?

We're not talking about cash changing hands in a dark alley, this is online financial transactions. The police have all the tools they need to track this, so how do scammers not get caught ?

Is there only one cop on duty at any given time ?

Songsmiths sue US antitrust over Google-friendly rules ruling

"To understand [..] requires understanding how song licensing works in the United States"

Short version : it's fucked by corporate interests.

You can say that about most of the American judicial system as well.

So, time for a little revolution ?

Dell overtakes HPE in server shipments as worldwide sales shrink

If you lose money on everything you sell, volume is hardly going to help.

Good luck squeezing saturated market, Euro mobe firms, say Orange, Telefonica

Re: accept that they're in a mature market.

Agreed. Except one thing : when's the last time you've heard of a Bord accepting anything that didn't increase their share value ?

Great British Block-Off: GCHQ floats plan to share its DNS filters

"allow the public to be protected from [..] attacks that have already been spotted by GCHQ"

Sorry, but what attacks have the GCHQ spotted up to now ?

Apart from those the NSA told them about ?

I don't think a blind man is the best thing to warn me about obstacles on the road.

Top infosec vendors, cops, liberate thousands from ransomware

Excellent

No cat to pat right now, but I am immensely pleased that the scum are getting their rug pulled from under their feet.

There are intelligent people on both sides of the judicial fence. Kudos to this group for hitting crims where it hurts.

HPE EMEA boss confirms shuffling of exec deck

“We will have a big bank of money to hopefully allow us to do things moving forward.”

Sorry, but if you have a "big bank of money" and you don't manage to "do things" then you are a waste of time.

That simple sentence is everything wrong with out civilization today. Hey, I've got mountains of cash ! Maybe I'll get lucky and accomplish something !

Scarcity is what prompts true greatness. Let's see you get along on 1% of your bank. It will be harder, but your efforts will actually bring something to the table.

VMware Workstation's installer loads danger-junk, so patch it ASAP

Before pitying Microsoft, check its bank balance again.

Sports doping agency WADA says hackers lifted Olympic athletes' medical records

Re: I don't agree that it should be *public* knowledge

Everything is public knowledge these days, because people trust nobody.

Ironically, people spaff every detail of their lives on Facebook anyway.

Explain if you can, I'll just have another whisky.

Using a thing made by Microsoft, Apple or Adobe? It probably needs a patch today

Patching, in itself, is not the issue

having patches means the software is maintained, which is a Good Thing (TM), because the threat landscape evolves constantly. It is ridiculous to imagine that any group of developers, however smart they may be, could preconceive every single possible threat scenario that will crop up.

Given the complexity required of today's software, that must interface almost with everything under the Sun, some bugs obviously slip through as well. It is nice to have those bugs squashed in a timely manner.

The issue is not with the patching. The issue is with the fuckups that insufficient whiteboarding and testing introduce into patches that pretend to solve something and either don't, or fuck something else up along the way.

I am prepared to accept that a patch does not wholly solve a problem. Writing software is difficult and I know by experience that edge cases are a maddening nuisance to deal with.

I cannot accept that a patch bricks a computer, or otherwise trashes an entire environment. That can only happen when next to no testing was ever done, in a case of "oh that problem ? Just flip the bit to 0 and we're done with it". Seems obvious, but even when it is, test, test and test again, especially when your customer base numbers in the millions.

And I accept that, even when you do test against every single scenario your PC catalogue has, there's always some extreme case that slips through. PCs are the ultimate hardware platform, they can modified in uncountable ways.

But if you fuck up a console, you deserve to be fired, if not shot.

Yelp wins fight to remain morally bankrupt

Editorial immunity ? That is a thing ?

I think that a lot of websites slammed for being responsible for the posts on their site should take a loooong look at this ruling.

I'm ordering the popcorn now.

It actually will be Obama who decides whether to end US government oversight of the internet

Re: ICANN needs much stronger controls in place before it should become independent of the US

Indeed. In that spirit, here is my flamethrower range called "The Persuader" . . .

Google's become an obsessive stalker and you can't get a restraining order

It will continue for a while longer

Social inertia is holding up this kind of thing and will likely do so until people start getting annoyed by it in massive numbers. From the enthusiastic gushing I hear around me concerning phone abilities, Cortana and Siri, and "how practical it is", I don't think we will reach that stage anytime soon.

But something, someday, will cause a massive change of perception, and then Google will have to dial back, which it will because Google is not full of idiots. Google employs very intelligent people and they are measured against the ultimate benchmark : ad revenue. Anything that makes that go down is anathema, and what was declared the month before in PR speak doesn't count.

So, one day, people will get fed up with this, just like one day, people will vote intelligently.

In other words, not during this century.

Daddy, what's 'P2P file sharing'?

"Thanks to the "user-generated content" loophole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act"

Funny that, YouTube has absolutely no qualms in citing that very act when its automated infringement tool decides your "user-generated content" is a copy of something a bunch of lawyers decided was copied.

And in that case, you have zero recourse, because the choice is accept and keep at least your account, or contest and then, if decided against you (by whom, already ? Ah right, some guy at Youtube you didn't vote for), your entire account is cancelled.

Talk about balanced.

Post-Brexit UK.gov must keep EU scientists coming, say boffins

"attracting European students and staff members to the UK was necessary"

Sorry, but Brexit means that is over. You have specifically voted the EU out, so there is no incentive for EU students to deal with you any more.

Next question ?

Nvidia: Eight bits ought to be enough for anybody ... doing AI

"increasing our reliance on stable internet connections and trust in far-away platforms"

Far-away platforms hosted in NSA land ?

Nope, no trust there.

Meet DDoSaaS: Distributed Denial of Service-as-a-Service

"buying DDoS protection offered by CloudFlare is almost mandatory"

Nope, no need. Just put down some money for a DDOS attack on Cloudflare. See how they like a spoonful of their own medicine.

VMware eases Windows Mobile 10's turn-your-phone-into-a-PC pain

Great news

I'm sure the 5 owners of Windows Phone will be overjoyed.

Bug in Microsoft's StorSimple arrays can kill backups

It's Microsoft

Microsoft doesn't need a bug to kill your backups, it does it through sheer force of habit.

Dropbox apologies for clunky administrator account access on Macs

Re : it works for some people

It works for way too many people, which is why these "apps" continue to request - and obtain - access to elements that have nothing to do with their stated purpose or requirements.

Since when does an app retain the passwords it needs ? It hands the request to the OS, which hands the answer back : fail or pass. Then the app deals with the result. That is called managing security.

This is just the consequence of the phone-app environment where everything accesses everything and the clueless masses bleat in unison while accepting the situation.

HP Inc dumps Salesforce, adopts Microsoft's cloudy CRM

"perhaps [HP] just reckons Microsoft offers a superior CRM"

Nah, you see it's just that Philip is the nephew of a board member and he just got a job at Redmond.

Now his uncle is going to get a shiny new Mercedes SL.

Phones exploding in kids' hands, shares tanking – but it's not all good news at Samsung

Indeed

I find it hardly a good point to know that a phablet is less likely to spontaneously combust.

Like having a car that only has a 1% chance to explode.

Nope, don't want.

Delete Google Maps? Go ahead, says Google, we'll still track you

"basic features of your device may no longer function as intended,"

It may be that they won't function as Google intended, but they will function as I intend them to, meaning not at all.

Google Play is not something I have use for. It is never called on and I have disabled updates on it.

Turning on GPS, WiFi and mobile data are things I do when I need them, not when the phone goes on.

It's a fucking phone, not an extension of my life.

Tesla to stop killing drivers: Software update beamed to leccy cars

"it was the car's failure"

Sorry, but no. It was the drivers' failure to stay alert and in control that caused this regrettable accident.

Blaming the car, the software or anything else is just trying to justify his unacceptable behavior.

Until truly self-driving cars exist on the market, it is the driver who is responsible for what his car does, nothing else.

Kneel before Zod! OpenText claims mighty Documentum from Dell

Re: just so they have new fields of potential customers to harass

From a marketing point of view, that's a pretty good reason.