Posts by Destroy All Monsters

Hubble spots ALIEN NAVY world – and it's pelted with GLASS RAIN

"Microsoft Azure"

Microsoft biz heads slash makes Ballmer look like dead STEVE JOBS

"Collaboratation issues"

An interesting neologism...

Re: Microsoft are going down the tubes

This tunnel to Stormfront opened by APERTURE SCIENCE for your CONTINUED ENJOYMENT.

APERTURE SCIENCE. TUNNELLING TODAY WHERE HOLES WILL BE TOMORROW!

Snowden leak: Microsoft added Outlook.com backdoor for Feds

Re: Not a bit surprised. Ask youself these questions about Windows privacy.

NOW LOOK HERE MY GOOD MAN.

I HAVE NEVER LOOKED AT THINGS THAT WAY.

AND NOW I AM LOOKING AT THINGS THAT WAY.

AND I DON'T LIKE IT ONE BIT!

LOL

NSA Even Spied on Google Maps Searches, Documents Suggest

I'm eagerly awaiting a new "Big Brother" icon with CoolShades shopped in.

Re: Remember...

> The Luxembourg spook squad has been proven to be well out of control

What I hear from the street, that's only "medium rare" stuff. Typical entitled bureaucracy shenanigans. Unrequired spying on about 30 "persons of interest". Tarring ops. Plus making money on the side by selling service vehicles at discount prices. Still, there will be new elections (will anything change? RUH..ROH!)

Oh yeah, there is also a false-flag terror thing that's been disinterred, from the 80's.

@Andy Prough

Standard AES is vulnerable to the new supercomputers because they can do brute force attacks so much faster.

They need to be much much more faster unless there is some computational shortcut and/or additional information reducing the problem (there may be: AES crypto broken by 'groundbreaking' attack; Faster than simply brute-forcing).

But still:

How secure is AES against brute force attacks?

As shown above, even with a supercomputer (50 PetaFLOPS, which is the wrong kind of oomph, but let it rest for now), it would take 1 billion billion years to crack the 128-bit AES key using brute force attack. This is more than the age of the universe (13.75 billion years). If one were to assume that a computing system existed that could recover a DES key in a second, it would still take that same machine approximately 149 trillion years to crack a 128-bit AES key.

Re: Nominating Eadon

> You mean the VMS security model that Cutler took from DEC to MS?

WHO CARES!

IMPLEMENT IT NAOW.

I have to confess I gave up in SELinux. I have had the item "learn about SELinux" on my agenda for the last 10 years or so but I never find the actual time. And I'm not sure how it will help me.

Tears of distress...

> Standard AES encryption doesn't stand a chance

I don't believe that for an instant. You can't decrypt everything all the time.

It's virtually pointless

Xbox kid

"The great thing about being at NSA is not slurping everyone's traffic, its is making everyone suspect that I do"

Re: Remember...

Upcoming EU regulation (already watered down by USUK intervention) have something to say about this. But I'm not sure anyone knows exactly what.

"Not all countries have equivalent oversight requirements to protect civil liberties and privacy," they said. "In practice, US companies put energy, focus and commitment into consistently protecting the privacy of their customers around the world, while meeting their obligations under the laws of the US and other countries in which they operate."

And nothing at all was being said.

Re: You mean, above and beyond

Yeah...

Anyone remember the mysterious gitBitKeeper push in which a "==" was actually a "=", opening a root access backdoor hey presto?

Linux Kernel Backdoor Blocked

Software developers on Wednesday detected and thwarted a hacker's scheme to submerge a slick backdoor in the next version of the Linux kernel, but security experts say the abortive caper proves that extremely subtle source code tampering is more than just the stuff of paranoid speculation.

The backdoor was a two-line addition to a development copy of the Linux kernel's source code, carefully crafted to look like a harmless error-checking feature added to the wait4() system call - a function that's available to any program running on the computer, and which, roughly, tells the operating system to pause execution of that program until another program has finished its work.

"That's the kind of pub talk that you end up having," says BindView security researcher Mark 'Simple Nomad' Loveless. "If you were the NSA, how would you backdoor someone's software? You'd put in the changes subtly. Very subtly."

"Whoever did this knew what they were doing," says Larry McVoy, founder of San Francisco-based BitMover, which hosts the Linux kernel development site that was compromised. "They had to find some flags that could be passed to the system without causing an error, and yet are not normally passed together... There isn't any way that somebody could casually come in, not know about Unix, not know the Linux kernel code, and make this change. Not a chance."

On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 04:48:09PM -0600, Chad Kitching wrote:

> From: Zwane Mwaikambo

> > > + if ((options == (__WCLONE|__WALL)) && (current->uid = 0))

> > > + retval = -EINVAL;

> >

> > That looks odd

> >

>

> Setting current->uid to zero when options __WCLONE and __WALL are set? The

> retval is dead code because of the next line, but it looks like an attempt

> to backdoor the kernel, does it not?

Why I'm sick of the new 'digital divide' between SMEs and the big boys

14 Reasons To Fire Your IT Staff

Reason 6: An administrator offers virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions without understanding Remote Desktop Services (RDS). RDS is a cheaper, denser, simpler version of VDI that's also nearly two decades old. RDS doesn't work for every application -- but it does work for most.

Could links to entitled pomposity blogposts be specially marked? "Not Safe For Rage" for example?

Greg Shields is a senior partner and principal technologist with Concentrated Technology. ... Greg has been a multiple recipient of both the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and VMware vExpert award.

I bet he did. I bet he did...

Sysadmins: Everything they told you about backup WAS A LIE

Re: Well, yeah.

Checklists gave Hitler the key to Europe!

If you want to nitpick ... the numbering is off.

Numbering should be machine-generated.

Ubuntu 13.10 to ship with Mir instead of X

Re: linux...

If you want a terminal, you know how to install it.

Re: It is even worse than fragmentation

Each time I see the 300 distros listed on DistroWatch it makes me want to cry for all the wasted effort in creating a different variation of the same 4 basic distros.

Welcome to the planned economy mindset recovery clinic. How can we help you today?

Your "wasted effort" is another person's "learning experience". And until this sodden earth has been absorbed by the hivemind, that ain't gonna go away.

Re: Mir, where did I hear that name before...

Russian engineering. Still holds together when shitty western tacticooled stuff dies on arse, no? Even if fungus grows in it. And even if breaks, can be repaired with duck tape, WD-40 and maybe compiler.

Re: BULL!

> .a university student can create a better API/protocol than the entire X team did for decades

I can tell you that you sadly overestimate the skills of university students.

Unless you are a university student.

In that case, the Dunning-Krüger effect may apply.

I can agree that clean slate starting with the the new "what works/what doesn"t" laundry list gained since the 90's is probably a very god idea. Go Mir, show what you can do!

Google brings Blink-powered Chrome to Windows and Mac OS X

So Google got this Blink on track between April and June?

Do they have The Red Flash as project manager??

'Clippy' coup felled by Microsoft twitterati

Re: Uh, nope!

Rumors. Clippy is just doing honest, gainful work in the underground library bunker of the Laundry.

Google Groups blunder exposes thousands of Japanese govt emails

Re: So what did they say to each other? Talk about tea ceremonies?

You must maintain face, grasshopper!

So what did they say to each other? Talk about tea ceremonies?

“Our security awareness was weak”

Followed by ritual sepukku...

Re: But - transparency is supposed to be good

You know what Hillary Klingon has to say to that. Just check her comments when the story of State Department sniffing broke.

US Navy robot stealth fighter in first unmanned carrier landings

Re: phuzz

"Because a human pilot can face an infinite number of possible scenarios, assess each one, and make a decision on the spot."

Utter crock. No wait, it's Matt Bryant. Talking whatever.

Could you dig out any commentary of yours on chess computers before Big Blue, Matt? Just want to check.

> refer to that process as testing

In this case, statistical testing.

US Congress proposal: National Park will be FOUND ON MOON

Re: Not a bad idea...

The teddy can become the next prezident?

A warmer, cuddlier president for the all of us.

Re: Do ya think...

Smallpox is an invention to be able to harvest human DNA for our secret alien overlords and store it in disused underground mines.

Re: This should be done via the UN or treaties

I, for one, would welcome a commercially exploited Moon.

Finally some space action!

Re: Dumb idea....

FUND IT!

Re: Damnit

Hell yeah! Hiring now: Park Ranger on the Moon! Cloning may be involved. Must stay for at least one year and leave beautiful girlfriend behind. Robot assistance provided for free.

STEVE BALLMER KILLS WINDOWS

Re: Farewell, old firiend

> SQL Server

You misspelled PostgreSQL

> and Exchange

Ughhhhkkk.

Clearly...

A company-sized Microsoft version of the Lament Configuration.

Pray, just PRAY for a blue screen!

...or Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain, will appear.

HP admits to backdoors in storage products

Re: Complexity !

No.

Re: Complex passwords?

It's a complex/lawyersafe way of saying that it is "admin"

(just guessing and no-one shall act on information alleged or not alleged to be true in this statement)

I'd like to know how they came to the conclusion that remote access is more secure than requiring physical access.

Business Analysts and a Decision Chain of Monkeys?

Daddy-o, you're all wet... baffled by your own kids on the web - survey

I only did 87.5%. ASL? LMIRL.

4. Which of the following sentences would raise alarm bells?

I'm going to get the latest Will.I.Am song off iTunes

I'm streaming the latest Will.I.Am song on Grooveshark

I'm going to torrent the latest Will.I.Am album

I'm hitting up Spotify for Will.I.Am's latest track

Hmmm... no "any"? Something is wroooong!

Oh please, PLEASE bring back Xbox One's hated DRM - say Xbox loyalists

This was to be the future of entertainment.

No, wait. What? Microsoft-issued stuff the future of anything??

Boffins chill out with new temperature measurement

Something is wrong here

a particle's temperature and its energy

While a particle has a well-defined energy (subject to some caveats due to non-zero h), it doesn't have a temperature, which is a statistical property of large ensembles of particles.

HTTP 2.0 interop tests slated for August

Re: Hmm.

How many application developers really know what a floating point number is, and, more to the point, how it behaves and has to be used??

Re: Why the Internet clusterfucks

> There's absolutely no way for those input parameters to indicate which output parameter is the bottleneck.

Which is why there are more protocols than TCP or TCP over UDP...

Big Beardie is watching you: Lord Sugar gets into facial recognition

Re: Know your place

I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.

Certainly sir. VISA or Mastercard? We no longer take cash, govnmt regulations, don't you know. This map of the Village is on the house, btw. Be seeing you.

It's the Shudder creen!

Oi, jobless yoofs: Upload a witty video bio if you wanna find work

I feel bad about this!

European Space Agency goes for mostly solid Ariane 6

Re: newsflash Arianespace is no government outfit

CNES Hands most of it to EADS Astrium

I seriously doubt the "geo-return" (industrial handout in proportion to pay-in) percentages are fully in the hand of CNES.

They are however a royal pain in the arse and cause havoc with sensible allocation of tasks. Moreover, some aerospace companies are based in several countries and collect in each of them.

Re: There are other issues

> Ariane5 is liquid fueled because the bottom half is a French SLBM

You get this pretty ass-backwards.

"The three-stage engine of the M51 is directly derived from the solid propellant boosters of Ariane 5."

US gov SMASHES UP TVs and MICE to nuke tiny malware outbreak

Ever heard of "burn pits"?

1) Make big hole in the Iraqi desert

2) Contractor carries in brand-new IT gear at enormous cost (fuel, transport, security, fresh trucks, bribes...)

3) Turns out this is "surplus" gear

4) Off to the pit it goes

5) Douse in diesel, light it

As a side effect, military personnel's cancer risk is heightened to "pretty much a certainty", but you can't burn them too, right?

Re: 250 computers

You mean it would have been cheaper to shut the whole outfit down?