Posts by Pascal Monett

Internet users don't understand security or privacy, says survey

When your secrets are bad, if they are a threat to other people's lives or livelihood then the Government damn well has the right to make it its business.

But only if it harms others. If you harm yourself, well I guess that's your business.

Teen tricks leaky Valve into publishing hot new Steam game: Watching Paint Dry

A bit miffed about the whole "ignored the warnings" part

I thought Valve was better than that. I am disappointed that someone had to go and actually perform the hijack in order to get Valve to move on it.

That was a serious bug. Valve can be happy that the guy didn't post something truly disgusting or horrifying, or simply malware. Chances are, if some true scum had found out, Valve would be publishing meek excuses for having riddled x thousands of gamer's PCs with the latest-harddisk encrypting malware. Methinks that would have been a much worse thing, and this guy alerted them to exactly that fact.

When someone is nice enough to alert you to a problem that serious, you get fixing the issue, you don't ignore it. Shame on you, Valve.

Oculus Rift review-gasm round-up: The QT on VR

But then you have to have a real-time MPEG4 decompression chip on the headset, and that thing adds a rather heavy power requirement, but more importantly a heat evacuation requirement that may be not so good either for the headset or its wearer.

Unless it's freezing outside.

The car is something most people actually need to get/from work.

A VR headset is an optional add-on for what is already a hobby, a time-waster, an occupation during one's free time.

The two are absolutely not comparable.

Amen to that.

William Hague: Brussels attacks mean we must destroy crypto ASAP

"The interception of the contents of an individual’s communications in this country ..."

I salute the performance in political absence of logic. Touching on individual data interception and bulk data surveillance in the same speech without anyone getting a clue is a major success over the eternal enemies of politics : Intelligence and Logic.

Well done Mr. Hague, continue like that and you'll persuade everyone to impose backdoors in encryption schemes yet !

Some old SAP systems have default kernel user accounts. Guess what happened next?

"SAP said it had fixed the problem"

Oh good. Now can someone please explain why SAP thought hardcoded kernel users was a good idea in the first place ?

Because that is something I'd really like to know. Hey guys, we're making this really complex and hard-to-configure enterprise software application that will be available over LAN, WAN and wireless. Why don't we include a hardcoded kernel user to make sure we can always debug a client installation ? After all, what could possibly go wrong ?

R&D white coats at HP Inc will make corporate ID into wearable tech

"replace the badge with something you are already going to wear today"

So now we not only have the malarkey around biometrics to contend with, but soon we will also have the corporate garment you have to wear to access your work zone. And said garment will be something you have paid for, but the company will put its stamp on it. And it will be the thing you wore on your first day at work, because obviously. You will be forced to have that garment every single day for the rest of your career at that company.

Else, even better, the company can just hop over to your house with a portable thingy and take control of your entire wardrobe. Sweet ! Isn't The Future just peachy ?

A badge has many advantages over any garment : it is easily and quickly washed, it is small and therefor mainly discreet, it imposes nothing on individual clothing preferences and it does not absorb odours. I think that last point is the most important one.

Ransomware now using disk-level encryption

Nothing good will come of all this

Not only do the miscreants hassle innocent people and destroy their data, but this scumware risks helping the US Government message on backdooring encryption. Of course, that is not the solution to the problem, but since when has that stopped a politician from pushing a point ?

Three-bit quantum gate a step closer to universal quantum computer

"one can build larger quantum circuits in a more direct way "

So, in the quantum world, size matters ?

Cunning scam: Mobe app stalks victims then emails booby-trapped bogus speeding tickets

"They" are not the ones tracking you. The app on your phone is snitching on you, to a person who has zero authority to send citations.

Since it is the phone doing the snitching, if it is off, no snitching can happen. And yes, we've all heard about how the FBI can turn on the microphone of a switched-off phone. We're not talking FBI here, just some Internet scum.

Intelligent Internet scum.

Re:"occupants of a vehicle would need to be mere passengers"

I do believe that flight has traditionally been more strictly controlled than driving. When a plane crashes, there is always an inquiry. Full examination is made of all the debris, and a lengthy report is written to establish the cause and possible procedures, or changes in procedures, to mitigate said cause in future.

When a car crashes, if no one is injured it is generally self-declared to the insurance. If the car is damaged enough, an "expert" will be dispatched to put a price on the repairs, but he won't be there to find out what happened - that is not his job. Only when people have been severely injured or killed is there a more thorough investigation, but that practically never results in instructions to car makers to change this or that. It is just an official record that this many people died because car crash.

So I find it perfectly believable that autonomous cars will, in time, not require a person to physically capable of driving, or even have a license. Not immediately, but there will be a time in the future where people will only learn to drive as a hobby, an eccentric fad, when everyone else is just driven everywhere by Johnny Autobot.

Snowden 'more helpful than dangerous' says ex-Colin Powell aide

The US Government is psychotic, corrupt, hypocritical, expansionist, protectionist, economically totalitarian, spiteful, aggressive and cannot be trusted, but one the one thing it certainly isn't is crippled.

Dodgy software will bork America's F-35 fighters until at least 2019

But of course ! If they hadn't put so much coal in, the ship would have hit the iceberg gently and only been dented.

From a manager's point of view, that is.

How's that for planning ahead ?

Brand new carrier won't have any planes for half its life span.

Sir Humphrey would be proud.

In truth, from a Canadian point of view, everyone else is south of them.

Google to unleash Android Pay on UK shoppers within 'months'

If you "don't believe in plastic" . . .

You'd have to be a friggin' numpty to think that this is better.

"Plastic" at least has some hardware security around it. It may be vulnerable, but it will not fall over if you download the wrong app.

How one developer just broke Node, Babel and thousands of projects in 11 lines of JavaScript

Re: Sweepstake

Heh.

In any case, I'm guessing we have a new student of the Streisand Effect. Kik is going to find out the hard way what it costs to stir a dev's nest.

Who knows, might even teach a lawyer or two a lesson.

New UK cyber security centre to work with Bank of England

"assist in the recovery of any stolen assets"

Um, look, it's nice to have a statement of intent, but if the IP was sent by email, that horse has bolted and closing the stable door won't bring it back.

Not even sure you'll really find out where it went either.

This chap's maintained an Apple game for 32 years – from Mac to iOS

Re: Go for it...

I checked out your link. I take one quote from it : "it can give you big success if you manage to tick a lot of boxes and get a little bit lucky.”

Seems to me that that is par for the course in any domain. If big successes were commonplace, the notion of "big" would just be pushed higher.

Now, far be it from me to say that mobile is no more difficult than any other area. It seems indeed that success on the mobile platform is tied to Apple itself heavily promoting you, and good luck getting that far.

But to consider that not having many "giant successes" as a yardstick for difficulty seems a bit naïve.

Error checks? Eh? What could go wrong, really? (DoSing a US govt site)

Re: Moral on the -1 passed as array index?

The moral is never do it, period.

Don't say "unless you really know what you're doing". Cowboy developers are always certain that they really know what they're doing until it blows up in their face.

Or yours, if they're not there anymore and you're left holding the candle.

Google's call for cloudier, taller disks is a tall order says analyst

@ Jacques Kruger

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Google is a mighty behemoth on the Internet, no doubt there, but it is not a hard disk maker - yet. It therefor relies on the disk makers to get its storage products.

The disk makers have the imperative to be profitable in order to survive, and that profitability is getting thinner and thinner every year. If the disk makers decide that they cannot risk it, they won't and Google will just have to go buy existing disks.

Or it plops money on the table and creates the Google disk. That would be Google doing "as it pleases".

In any case, the number of Cloud Service Providers is irrelevant. They all buy disks, they cannot not buy disks and they're not going to change how disks are made simply by pouting.

"Apple provides a counter-weight to Kim's arguments"

Just how a purely cosmetic change destined to enhance consumer lock-in provide in any way a counter-point to said arguments ?

Were the disks of larger capacity ? Faster ? More reliable ?

Don't think so. The point is irrelevant from where I sit.

It's nuts but 'shared' is still shorthand for 'worthless'

Re: All well and good

I think that the basis of this article's comment on education is that school is a place where things are learned by rote. From my experience, I do not think that we are doing nearly enough to teach children to think for themselves. What we are doing is cramming a large pile of data concerning various domains down student's throats and hoping that all that data will sift through the brains and somehow result in intelligent people.

There are times when it is good to test knowledge in isolation. If everyone just becomes a terminal for a Google search, we're just moving the issue to another slot.

I do believe we need to modify the scholarship curriculum to make our young, upcoming adults have a better grasp on the realities of life in general, and business in particular. One thing I strongly believe we should put some emphasis on is the notion of patience. It takes time to get good at anything, and when I look at people around me, at all ages I see people wanting results immediately and, if none are forthcoming, they just drop it and move to something else. That is not an attitude that brings results, it is an attitude that brings frustration and worse when people are stuck in a situation they cannot escape.

The first thing that needs to be done is re-educate our youth to understand that Dancing With The Stars, The Voice and other shenanigans are not a path to success. It takes years to become proficient in any domain, anything that makes you think otherwise is a lie. Once we have re-established that basic truth, we can get them back on grinding their intelligence because they will understand that they have no other choice if they wish to succeed.

Then we can start working on accepting difference, and the right to disagree. Hammering that home will inescapably create people who are able to exchange and thus learn from one another in a much more efficient manner and that will benefit all of us in the long term.

Finally, we need to instil the notion of the right to fail. Nobody succeeds on their first try, therefor one should not make fun of someone who fails. Failure is the best learning process, because the result is unavoidable. Teaching children to not be ashamed of failure will help them concentrate on why they failed instead of just brooding over the fact that they didn't succeed, which will speed up solving the problem and turning failure into success.

Learning how to Google search is something students pick up on their own, no problem there. Learning how to interact with people better than a caveman is something some people never learn. Let's start there and work our way up.

Gov to take axe to big IT contracts soon, will hand chunks to SMEs

I understand now. God save us from a viciously efficient government indeed. The blundering, drunken, corrupt powerfests of governments we have now are bad enough.

"No one knows exactly how much money is spent on IT across the public sectors"

And how exactly is that justified ? It's the PUBLIC sector. Amounts should be known to the cent.

This is really just one sign of how badly this whole thing is managed.

Champagne supernova in the sky: Shockwaves seen breaking star

@MT Field

Rule of thumb : if it's outside our solar system and not a galaxy, it's generally an artists impression.

Spotting a wave from 1 billion light-years away

Well that's it for today's high score. Nobody's going to do better than that.

Well done Kepler & team !

Azure's wobbly day as three services glitch around the world

That is a stain that is going to take a loooong time to fade.

And rightly so.

But Microsoft doesn't need to actively forget maintenance to sabotage things. That happens pretty regularly regardless.

Apple Macs, iPhones, iPads, Watches, TVs can be hijacked by evil Wi-Fi, PDFs – update now

Reality check

Because you think the Feds are going to trouble themselves with updating that phone ?

That said, if they do manage to update the phone before cracking it, I'll stop making fun of government firewall administrators ever again.

Promise.

Re: perhaps some people just have a really really slow internet connection

Sir, you are apparently under the impression that some people choose to not update their Androids. Although I am sure that there are people who do so, I do believe that there is a fair amount of people who do not have the choice because their phone is locked by their carrier.

So what you are actually saying is "perhaps some carriers should take the finger out and get patching".

PC World's cloudy backup failed when exposed to ransomware

"years of work and important documents"

If your stuff is important, then the onus is on you to make sure it is available. Need to send your Tax Returns ? You photocopy the document, or scan it, and send the original. The copy is to be properly filed so you can find it back if necessary. It is that mechanism that people just completely forget about when they sit in front of a keyboard. The Cloud is NOT a replacement for that procedure, it is an additional precaution. One that is only as good as the service offered.

Until this kind of thing happens. The lesson, unfortunately, can be very painful.

As for PC World's so-called "backup", it never failed - it was never useful in the first place. That is also something she should have checked once in a while. The dates of the latest backup. If she had done so, she would have noticed that PC World does not offer a backup service, but a copy service. That might have tipped her off sooner that she needed a proper backup solution.

Swedish sysadmins reach for the hex key, reassemble services after weekend DDoS

"the weekend attackers were more coordinated"

So they're perfecting their procedures and getting better at being a bloody nuisance.

Bad news for the rest of us.

Former Intel CEO Andy Grove dies, aged 79

Salutations

Mr. Grove is basically responsible for a number of joys - and frustrations - in my life. Not to mention the hours wasted in leisure. And the fact that he was a major force in creating my entire career - without him I'd have probably ended up an accountant.

So thank you, Mr Grove. Thanks to you I was able to make my life something I appreciate very much.

One in five PCs will be a tablet with detachable keyboard by 2020

Re: To have and have not

"NSA will get a cut in funding"

Nope, won't happen. Ever.

At least not until there's been a revolution - and even then, no guarantee.

Buhtrap hacks whack Russian bank chaps; phish bait works great

Re: "privileges on their PC's"

That happens because most companies do not take the time to properly audit their procedures and do not set the proper policies.

Not to mention that most companies rarely have personnel competent enough to do the job in the first place.

Banks, however, do not have the luxury of such an excuse. Not having PCs locked down and proper policies in place in simply shoddy IT practice for financial institutions in general. It's not like they don't have the money for it.

Steve Jobs, MS Office, Israel, and a basic feature Microsoft took 13 years to install

There are many reasons. The real reason is a dark story of whoopie cushion, rigged mike and a bottle of Soy Sauce made to look like Worcester Sauce.

Or so I've heard.

Allegedly.

Attackers packing malware into PowerShell

Re: "most computers in an enterprise setting, even smbs, won't execute macros"

Dear God in Heaven, do I wish that were true.

Security in SMBs is only as good as the technical know-how of the CEO. If he fancies himself a programmer, or if one of his buddies showed him a Word macro that reveals the picture of a flying pig and he found that funny, you can kiss that notion adieu.

Who watches over your data – and how do you know it won't go AWOL?

The first rule of security procedures

No one talks about security procedures.

F-me! Couchbase yoinks $30m in yet another fundraising round

"should be our last round prior to an IPO"

What I thought when I read "a series-F funding round".

The "F" stands for "you're fucked if you don't".

Millions menaced as ransomware-smuggling ads pollute top websites

"accidentally pushing out booby-trapped adverts via ad networks"

Yeah. Accidentally. Sure.

They are accidentally absolutely not virus-checking the ads they push. They are accidentally not vetting the ads they accept because they accidentally didn't want anything to do with the notion called "responsibility" and made the whole ad chain deliberately obfuscated so as to be able to say, at each step, "I had no idea !"

Accidentally my ass. They don't give a rats ass, that's what. Well I'm actually happy about all this because it means bad headlines and damaged reputations and we all know that that means risk to the ever-so-important bottom line. And only when it hits there do companies decide that Something Must Be Done.

Looks like decision time is getting closer.

Watch six tiny robo-ants weighing 100g in total pull a 1,769-kg family car

"they form into long chains and synchronize their footsteps"

Wuh ? How ? Is there a tiny ant with a tinier whip to keep time ?

Seriously though, I can't wrap my head around that one. How on Earth do dozens of ants in a chain synchronize their footsteps ? They can't talk, so . . . how did Mother Nature evolve a method of transmitting time signals to and by creatures with a brain the size of a grain of sand ?

<mind blown>

Yahoo! kills! search! APIs!, games! and! Astrology! site!

Well they didn't say a billion unique visitors a day.

Feds tell court: Apple 'deliberately raised technological barriers' to thwart iPhone warrant

@Charles 9

"how do you arrest someone who's protected by sovereignty?"

Thank you for revealing that you work for the NSA.

Because only the NSA thinks about arresting people in other countries.

The rest of the world writes an extradition request - because the "suspect" is PROTECTED BY SOVEREIGNTY. Way to demonstrate that you forgot to engage your brain when posting. Which explains how you could think of having his phone when he's in another country.

You must live in Colorado. Go on smoking, it's apparently good stuff.

Obama puts down his encrypted phone long enough to tell us: Knock it off with the encryption

And to think that this is the guy who got a Nobel Peace Prize simply for being elected.

He has finally shown what he actually is : a puppet in the hands of the true power in America - the men who have the money.

Those men are white, old and paranoid. They are the 1%ers who need to keep the money flowing (towards them), and the only way they to do that is to keep people scared and under control.

Breaking encryption is not going to help against terrorists. The CIA knew all about the men who committed the atrocities of 9/11 and they did nothing to stop it. Had they had access to encrypted data, nothing would have changed.

No, breaking encryption is just another feather in the cap of the fascists who are now running this once great country. One more means of tapping into the lives of people in order to break the ones who risk being a nuisance - the people who want to stand up for their rights.

But that is the one great thing that America still is - a country that can. I'm hoping that, when it comes to doing, the solution will not be too bloody.

I beg you, please don't back up that secret directory full of photos!

I have to say I'm a bit frustrated here

All those years of IT support for mates and some acquaintances and I have never, ever found anything even remotely racy on any of them.

And I know none of them have ever had anything as technical as an external disk.

I must have very boring friends.

Microsoft adds 'non-security updates' to security patches

Re: Reverse class action lawsuit

Sorry ?

You mean for Microsoft to sue all its customers ?

Nope, I'm not really with you on that one.

I think the real point is that, with Vista and 8, Microsoft learned the hard way that users who have the choice risk exercising that choice. And that risk cost Microsoft money.

Knowing that Microsoft, despite all its money, still doesn't actually own the government, and knowing that goon squads are generally frowned on, Microsoft could not actually, physically force everyone to go to Windows 1 0. So how could Microsoft eliminate the risk ?

It's like micropayments in the pseudo "free"-to-play games. When everything is based on micropayments, you end up paying. Well Microsoft took that idea and turned it into micro-updates. Every little update is now an opportunity to shovel another way of getting the user to install Windows 1 0. And with the price point at $0, most users should logically make the jump. Except they're not, not in massive numbers anyway.

What really surprises me is that Microsoft is still so candid about it in its KB articles. I suppose that, at one point, there will be a security patch where Microsoft just says "Fuck it, Windows 1 0 is the security patch".

I'm already watching this from the side lines. Windows Update is disabled on my machine, so I can learn about the surprises like this beforehand instead of blindly walking into it and having to clean up after the fact.

How a Brexit could stop UK biz and Europe swapping personal data

But that is the beauty of the wording

"Sir, an ISIS faction is planning an attack on us !"

"Oh yeah ? Are you sure ?"

"Yes sir, we have intercepts that Youssouf Benterrorist is in contact with several other elements for an upcoming action:"

"And are you sure it is him that is implicated ?"

"Well, the intercepts . ."

"But are you sure of the validity of the intercepts ?"

"Ah, I see. No sir, not 100%"

"Good man. Go for global collection, then."

"Right away, sir."

Web servers should give browsers a leg-up, say MIT boffins

"Those dependencies are why pages load so slow"

Those dependencies are why I use NoScript and UBlock Origin.

I rarely have page loading issues.