Posts by Pascal Monett

Cyber sleuths reveal how they infiltrate the biggest ransomware gangs

Fascinating insights

Just one question : what keeps those scum from reading this article and drawing some conclusions for their own benefit ?

They're not stupid. We're way past script kiddies, these days. These are intelligent scum. They can analyse data.

This is data. Are you not giving them them keys to better protect themselves ?

Don't get me wrong, I'm very interested in finding out how the scum are taken down, but I think there's a reason why the police doesn't reveal their methods. This article seems, to me, to reveal methods.

So I ask : is this article really a good idea ?

Bricking it: Do you actually own anything digital?

Re: When does something become truly "owned"?

When it's in my library.

That's MY book. You don't touch it until I give you permission.

BOFH: The Christmas party was so good, an independent inquiry is required

Yeah but, incredibly, they seem pretty happy with themselves.

Intel trims a few hundred workers in Cali just in time for Christmas

"These are difficult decisions"

Ho ho hoo. Sure they are.

They're just in time to ensure bigger management bonuses.

Merry XMas !

Artificial intelligence is a liability

"Artificial intelligence, meaning" . .

Meaning marketing bullshit invented by people that couldn't invent a way out of a paper bag if their life depended on it.

We don't have AI. All we have is vast arrays of climante-change-inducing silicon that obey the rules of statistical engineers in a black box that makes the ignorati exclaim "marvellous !".

Agreed. I don't care that civil lawsuits will follow. Two lives have been lost due to the carelessness of an imbecile.

He should be jailed for life.

At the very least.

Why Nvidia and AMD are roasting each other over AI performance claims

"benchmarking shenanigans"

AMD and Nvidia have been at that schoolyard game since forever. Tech sites have long learned to point out how either present their performance in the best possible light, such as showing a bar graph with a vast difference between competitors, but the graph doesn't start at 0. If you take a look at the numbers, you see that marketing avoided doing that because otherwise the bar graph would have shown just a pixel or two better. And other such sleight-of-underhand methods where neither of these companies come out looking honest.

Something nasty injected login-stealing JavaScript into 50K online banking sessions

I think the only real solution for Joe User is to deal with a bank that uses MFA.

My bank gives me a website, but I also have a keyfob that presents me with a OTP. To log in, I have to input my credentials and password, then I need the OTP.

If a miscreant manages to fool me via email to let him install stuff on my PC, when I log into my bank account, he'll get my credentials and password, but he won't get the keyfob, so my access is still secure.

The one thing I do not do is access my account from my smartphone. I do not care giving my bank data to a platform that can be remotely hijacked via a simple SMS I don't even have to read.

Data loss prevention isn't rocket science, but NASA hasn't made it work in Microsoft 365

Re: all they really required to pass audit

Ah, the beauty of auditing. You can get certified and flaunt that, but when disaster actually strikes, you'll be running around like headless chickens (and just as useful).

The advantage of being on The Board is that you can decide just how much you want to be bothered by procedures. The disadvantage is that it will be difficult to find someone else to blame when the chips are down. And if you do find a scapegoat, there's a fair chance that your faulty procedures will find a way to get published, which will demonstrate just how incompetent you are.

And the next audit might be a bit more harsh.

Re: Complex Things

Human politics is simple : someone is always trying to screw over someone else.

Europe classifies three adult sites as worthy of its toughest internet regulations

So, a few porn sites are now VLOPs

I think this is a right move. Obviously, porn sites are a magnet for a large part of the (male) population, and I'm guessing that the 15-18 bracket is not insignificant. If I'm not mistaken, porn sites are already putting up a popup requiring that you are of age, but obviously there is no verification yet. I don't see that being a VLOP is going to change that. The regulations concern security, privacy and consumer safety, not age verification.

Obviously, age verification could be added for porn sites.

That'll throw a spanner in the works !

Singapore wants datacenters, clouds, regulated like critical infrastructure

Interesting

When will Singapore start considering operating systems as critical parts of digital information management ?

That's going to have an interesting effect on Microsoft . . .

Biden urged to do something about Europe 'unfairly' targeting American tech

"ultimately makes America less globally competitive and less secure"

Less globally competitive = less able to run roughshod over other people's rules. Yeah, I agree. You're competitive enough, I think. It's already all about you.

Less secure ? Beg your pardon ? What does your security have to do with our right to police your wanton data mining ?

Pakistani politician deepfakes himself to deliver a speech from behind bars

It had to happen some day, I guess, and now it has. And indeed, this is liable to become a political tool to wreak havoc with the opposition. However, in democratic countries, even being a politician does not grant you immunity from libel cases if you put words in someone else's mouth, and your opponent will pounce on you if you try (and he'll win). So doing it openly is a big no-no, but that doesn't mean that covert machinations are impossible to realize.

After all, a well-known politician who specializes in nothing but demonizing his opponents to the everlasting joy of his base only needs to drop a hint and at least some of them will rush to realize a deepfake of their "hated" opponent saying ugly things.

It will happen, the only question is when.

Beijing demands government apps must shed their bureaucratic skins

Beijing should check out Luxembourg

The Luxembourg government portal Guichet.lu is exactly what Beijing is looking for, apparently. From getting my commercial authorization as a freelance, to handling my yearly income tax procedure, whatever I need administratively for Luxembourg, I go there to get it done.

A good idea done right.

Apple's easiest to replace battery is in... an iMac

"twice as repairable"

Twice of not much is still not much.

Google Groups ditches links to Usenet, the OG social network

"binary (non-text) file sharing"

Is that the new designation of pirated content ?

Halley's Comet has begun its long trek back toward Earth

"Scientists believe Halley has been around at least 16,000 years"

After 16000 years of losing mass to the Sun's stellar wind and energy, I would think that Halley's comet doesn't have much more mass to lose so spectacularly.

Anyone know its mass ? There must be loads of ice on it, but there can't be 16000 more years of ice left. How much longer can it have ?

Shame about those wildfires. We'll just let the fossil fuel giants off the hook, then?

Re: This is a natural phenomenon

Yes. Death is also a natural phenomenon.

So basically you're saying that people being killed by guns is not a problem ?

Because that "natural phenomenon" is something we've been seriously contributing to for the past few centuries.

Um, there is nuclear energy. Thorium reactors are fail-safe solutions that produce energy reliably.

Might want to look into that while we wait for fusion.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto stolen after Ledger code poisoned

"someone slipped malicious code into one of its JavaScript libraries"

Thank $Deity that there are still courageous warriors to stick it to The Man. Of course, mishaps will happen, but it is worth it to avoid the Eye of Sauron government.

Instead, you're exposed to the eye of every hacker in the world and, since you don't have the required experience, you get hacked.

Unlike actual banks.

But hey, you keep fighting the fight. Whatever.

Very butthurt, apparently.

Probably lost some funny money there. Maybe even real money.

SpaceX cleared to test satellite phone service via Starlink

"approximately 60 of which will be serving handsets in the US"

that is, as long as His Muskiness allows US citizens to do so.

If ever they start dissing him too much, or if Putin asks him to, he is clearly liable to cut off the service without warning.

Last Vega rocket launch delayed over fuel tank vanishing act

"they were accidentally scrapped and crushed"

So, I deduct that absolutely nobody responsible was present when it was decided to do the "renovation".

Another case of right hand doesn't know what left hand is doing.

You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused

Re: Question

At the beginning of the whole Regomization thing, I proposed that every On Call hero should just be called Brian, but, for some reason, it was ignored.

Re: We refered to the CYA written confirmation as a "Shirt Tail Exercise"

Nothing like a monthly bill to get manglement "aware" of a situation.

First remark : two days after having said he'll "let them know", he's still saying "I'll let them know" ?

Cue the cluebat and a vicious beating.

Re: is 10x $$$ normal?

Well, I can't say anything about where it happened or when, but what I can say is that there was a bank in Luxembourg whose leased line went down.

Cue absolute batshit panic everywhere and red-hot phone lines to get it solved.

I don't know how much the bank was paying for the line, but I heard that every hour it was down cost that bank over $100 million.

The line was back up in a quarter of an hour. I don't think 10X the cost of broadband was a serious issue.

"Actually, this is precisely the service you paid for"

I just love it when you can shut the trap of a stupid manager mouthing off like that. Good on Doug, and kudos for being prepared.

England's village green hydrogen dream in tatters

And who said that was bad thing ?

You cold-hearted bastard. Shame on you for imposing UK weather on a poor Siberian woman !

Re: Correction

The only thing the UK has net zero in is intelligence in government.

Unfortunately, they're hardly alone.

To BCC or not to BCC – that is the question data watchdog wants answered

Came here to say the same thing.

You cannot misuse the BCC field. It is purpose-built to protect email addresses.

What you are doing is misusing CC, or SendTo.

But, obviously, administrative busybodies are not email-savvy enough to understand the difference.

The truth about Dropbox opening up your files to AI – and the loss of trust in tech

Don't think so

"There's a lot of confusion about how code, algorithms, cloud services, and business practices work"

We don't care how they work. What we care about is the fact that they are all oriented toward mining our personal lives to sell ads.

And we don't like that.

Google pencils in limited third-party cookie purge for January

What ?

"embedded analytics capabilities through dashboard interfaces, which often rely on iframes and cross-domain third-party cookies for authentication"

So you base your "embedded analytics" on a monstrosity that uses iframes ? One of the most-used tricks of malware writers ?

How's about you clean your shit up instead of complaining ?

Everyone's talking about AI but industry reps say few are ready to implement

"customers begin to realize [that a] quick fix will not solve deeper problems"

Well, whaddya know ? Maybe some good will come from all this pseudo-AI malarky yet.

Oh, and I really like : "Musker mused that AI's potential is limitless, but customers are focussed on trying to solve business problems".

Gosh, ya think ?

Microsoft embraces its inner penguin with Linux-powered Windows AI Studio

Microsoft's inner penguin ?

Ballmer must be spinning in his grave.

What ? He's not dead yet ?

Damn.

Tesla to remote patch 2M vehicles after damning Autopilot safety probe

Well thank you for both enlightenments.

I appreciate learning from whence this citation came (finally), and I appreciate learning that there is an element of English humor that, obviously, escaped me.

Thank you again !

a sticky brown smear

I found this quote ages ago (cannot source it) and I think that this is the right time to republish it :

"Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac. It's an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out."

Brown, we can all agree, is color. Sticky, I think, corresponds to opinion. It's certainly not material or origin, and purpose even less.

So sticky brown smear it should be, I think.

Re: There's a movie in there.

I'd really rather not imagine that.

NASA engineers scratch heads as Voyager 1 starts spouting cosmic gibberish

So, Voyager 1 is reaching the end of its useful life

Guys, it had to happen one day. Voyager 1 is one of the top achievements of scientific discovery. I would hardly be surprised if the famed NASA engineers managed to eke out some more usefullness from its tired frame, but maybe, if that doesn't happen, it would be time to let it rest.

GM's Cruise sheds nine execs in the name of safety and integrity

"dismissed nine execs"

Well, nice to see that they didn't go after a rogue engineer. Kudos for that.

Now, to get that car secure for the road. Seems that the job isn't finished.

Europe inches closer to insisting gig workers are treated as employees

If said plumber is registered, he already has a company. If he DIYs for you, he'll be DIYing for many other people if he is to make ends meet.

Not sure that simile applies. Unless said plumber is actually offering his services on PlumbersRUS, and you subscribe to get his service which PlumbersRUS oversee and guarantee their prices, paying a part to said plumber who also subscribed to get the gigs.

Then yes, but otherwise, not really.

I think.

Let them game the edge while they can. As long as no new rideshare service can screw everyone while pretending to only be a website/facilitator, I'll be happy.

Eh, Uber ? How's that for "disruptive" ?

Surprise! Email from personal.
[e-mail] is not going to contain good news

"Many of these victims reported [MFA] was not enforced"

Well, now you know why you should enforce it.

Some people only learn the hard way.

SAP admits attempt to adapt on-prem security for its cloud flopped

Wow. You get screwed and never know why.

"Attackers that do get in may try to create new VMs to do things like mine crypto. Those VMs will not use your templates and will not therefore run your security agents. Thus, you'll struggle to see them."

That really makes me want to go Cloud. What a vote of confidence. And why is it that hackers will be able to create a VM that doesn't use my templates ? How is that possible to create a VM on my environment without being subject to my rules ? I think that's something you should correct ASAP.

But what am I saying ? SAP doesn't need to correct anything. It's making money hand over fist, so everything is A-OK.

Right ?

FCC really, truly won't give SpaceX nearly a billion bucks for Starlink rural broadband

So, Mrs Rosenworcel is cleaning up Pai's mess

Heck of a job, but someone has to do it. I like that she's laying down the rules.

Cardaci doesn't like it ? He can take a hike. Nobody owes SpaceX subsidies. Private companies take the risk, then reap the rewards. That's the rule. If you are continually begging for subsidies, you should be under government control and no longer a private company.

There was good reason to subsidize the Falcon Heavy, NASA needed a solution now that the Shuttle was decommissioned. But subsidizing satellite broadband ? Nope. Not necessary. There are existing solutions that, additionally, do not depend on giant firecrackers that might go boom.

Solar wind gave Mars a breather and its magnetosphere inflated

Woah there, Mercury has a magnetosphere ?

That tiny thing ? The smallest of all official planets has a magnetosphere while Mars and Venus don't ? I mean hey, Mercury is smaller than our own Moon (check the mass figures) !

Well blow me down. I would've thought that, if Mars was not big enough to keep a molten core and its corresponding magnetosphere like Earth, then Mercury was damned by default, but hey, this is Real Life^(TM). Things don't always go like you expect them to.

Britain's Ministry of Defence fined £350K over Afghan interpreter BCC email blunder

So BCC not good anymore ?

I fail to see how using BCC is any more subject to human error than bulk email. It's when you're not using BCC and bunging everyone into SendTo that things are worse. That is what must have happened here. Instead of using BCC, they sent the mail out with addresses in the SendTo and probably got people killed. That fact will be on their conscience forever, fine or not.

And who are you going to fine for the brilliant decision of not bringing along those fine Afghan people who helped you and stood by you but didn't have the proper paperwork done in the madness of a hasty withdrawal ? You could have gotten them out and bothered with the paperwork later, when they were safe, but noooo. You don't have your paperwork ? We thank you for your service during all these years, and wish you good luck with the Taliban. Next !

Cloud engineer wreaks havoc on bank network after getting fired

"Brody worked as a cloud engineer for First Republic Bank"

And he'll have the rest of his life to reminisce fondly about that while flipping burgers.

No pity. You get fired, you go. You don't touch your former employers' network or anything else. You want revenge ? Tell everyone you know that you unfairly dismissed - whether it is true or not.

Now, the only thing everyone knows is that he watches porn on the job and abuses his knowledge to wreak havoc when being caught.

He'll never work in a bank again, that's for sure, and there's a good change he'll never be in an IT position ever again.

And he doesn't deserve to be. Not for a long time.