Posts by Allan Dyer

New Yorkers to pay for RFID in driving licences

Islands...

And how often do NYC drivers attempt to drive to Bermuda and the Caribbean? Last I heard, they are surrounded by water.

Glasgow tube gets phone coverage

How backward can you get?

'Round here (Hong Kong), coverage in tube (MTR) tunnels and road tunnels has been available for years. SOP is to talk at a volume that renders telecommunications unnecessary. The other effect is to allow phone companies to increase their prices... there is a non-optional monthly "tunnel surcharge", about 20% of my bill, even for a phone that never leaves my office.

Mine's the one with the earplugs.

Boffins use heartbeat to thwart wireless implant hack

Beware of door handles...

So, if you can monitor someone's heartbeat, perhaps when they touch something, e.g. a door handle, you can take control of their implants.

On the other hand, wiring the door handle to a high voltage supply is probably a more effective, though less subtle means of attack. And you don't have to wait for your target to hold the handle for 16 heartbeats.

Mine's the one with the insulated gloves...

7-year-old faces M&S Inquisition

Outraged!

I'm outraged that M&S could use such an obviously insecure method of confirming identity. The caller could have asked any 7-year-old to answer the questions! They should have asked him to do an RSA signing operation (in his head) using his secret key!

<remove tongue from cheek>

As long as a package arrived, they didn't need the identity, or to confirm the identity. They only needed two questions:

"What's the tracking number on the label?"

"What's missing?"

"We're sending it now, have a nice day."

NSFW CP

You linked to a picture of a 7-year-old in his birthday suit!

Scottish beavers (and Cali cacti) get their chips

Ouch!

While a lush growth of cacti might be environmentally friendly, I thought common uses for lawns included games and sunbathing. Only a fakir could enjoy sunbathing on cacti - though it might explain why americans feel it necessary to wear body armour to play football.

Flame icon... well, it's sort-of spiky.

Boffins produce aerobatic copycat-copter pilotware

I watched the video but...

all I could see was a stupid fly buzzing round.

Where's a fly-swat icon when you need one?

Someday, somewhere, there'll be a "minor clerical error" when that autopilot is uploaded to a commercial airliner.

Hmm, no sick-bag icon, either.

Joss-sticks increase cancer risk: Official

Not a frequent traveller

"This would have nothing to do with the big fat joints eveyone who's burning incense is smoking then?

I've not once been anywhere where there's been incense that hasn't had someone smoking weed in. And that includes shops."

So you haven't been to Singapore (where the study was conducted), or any other territory (e.g. Hong Kong) where these are frequently used for Taoist, Buddhist and ancestor worshiping practices.

Generally, I close the window when there's a religious festival, and the local shrine gets busy.

Flame - obviously.

Logic-gate 'supermolecules' play noughts & crosses

Smart as kids?

So do these molecules cry at bedtime, and sneakily blame the "accident" on their siblings?

SF's silent sysadmin pleads not guilty

Have they offered him chocolate?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/17/chocolate_password_survey/

Hey, I wanted to offer the perfect solution from a safe distance too!

Airshow Blighty hits town - 100 years of UK powered flight

@kain preacher

Alexander Graham Bell didn't become an USA citizen until several years after (1882) calling his assistant about an acid spill (1876). Therefore, the Scots are to blame.

No puffin icon?

MS takes Windows 3.11 out of embed to put to bed

I used 3.1, not 3.11

Couldn't understand the fuss about "for Workgroups" when we already had a proper Netware 3 network. Yes, the NDS in 4 & 5 is brilliant for management, but the speed never seemed as good as 3.12.

We're still using DOS 6.2 on one quite important machine - it works, so leave it alone.

Gmail uses DomainKeys to lock out eBay phishing attacks

@Jay Zelos

Yep. Good summary.

I think we're in the "Extinguish" phase, where the confusion caused by M$ wipes out a promising standard they didn't like.

eBay Terror Ambulances of DEATH menace UK - top cops

Beating traffic jams

I used to find an ex-ambulance very useful for taking Scouts to camp... the cars getting out of the way didn't see the trailer full of camping gear 'till we were past.

Cardiff 'copter coppers give chase to UFO

What does the "U" stand for?

"They are convinced it was a UFO. It sounds far-fetched, but they know what they saw."

No, they don't know what they saw, that's why it's unidentified. Doh!

What colour was the Police 'copter...

Malware not man blamed in child abuse download case

@Alan Donaly

Unfortunately, this sort of information is quite well-known among the child porn scumbugs, so friends in law enforcement tell me. The scumbags pass around instructions on how to infect their PCs with backdoors, trojans, etc., so they have deniability if they are ever caught.

The forensics guys have to be good to tell the difference, which is what the line, "there was no sign that any user had viewed or attempted to access this content" alludes to.

The two obvious scenarios in this case are, i) someone with a grudge against the victim; and ii) a conspiracy of paedophiles aiming to get more cases like this, so they are less likely to be convicted if they are caught.

Cambridge woman in £90m 'leccy bill shocker

@ Andy Worth (and others)

"So she's saying she'd have taken a £90m+ bill seriously if her daughter hadn't been there then?"

No, her daughter is a multi-billionaire, who immediately paid it from loose change in her back pocket.

Kremlin pushes Cyrillic alphabet net

Business Trumps Nation Pride?

Imagine you're a business startup, choosing a domain name... which character set will be usable by all potential customers around the world? I guess far-sighted businesses will choose ASCII.

I'm typing this on a Chinese keyboard, Ctrl-Shift can switch me through multiple Chinese input methods and Latin quite quickly, but to use Cyrillic I'd have to install a new input method, and then learn how to use it.

Lowest Common Denominator wins.

UK electricity crisis over - for now

@A J Stiles

"As long as your UPS output is *not* earthed (and not sharing a neutral terminal with the real mains), and all wires are kept short, it should be safe to touch only one side."

Not things I've seen listed in UPS spec.s, so somewhat a risk. And what is "short"? Scope for a new El Reg unit, the Zap, defined as the minimum length of wiring required to electrocute a small, curious child by capacitive coupling.

How about using a laptop instead - has it's own battery, not used for generating mains-voltage electricity. Much safer - apart from the risk of the battery exploding.

Sigh... I'd suggest stone tablets and chisels, but I've heard the silicon chips can cause injuries.

Home UPS = Population control

"could someone knowledgeable comment on the need for UPS at home?"

Home power circuits usually have an earth leakage circuit breaker (ELCB), a fail-safe device that cuts the power if the current on the live & neutral is not equal (i.e., possibly leaking to earth via a warm, fleshy object).

Conversely, a UPS is designed to keep the power on when the supply is cut. Not exactly what you want if you have small, curious children who might explore a power socket with a metal object.

I'm not an expert, but, before ELCB's became common, I was once a small, curious child who inserted a paperclip into a power socket. Luckily, I chose the earth.

Mass SQL injection hits English language websites

Re: Just block APNIC on the firewall

What a good idea! Instead of fixing the problem, just take apart the internet.

Any SysAdmin who does that kind of blanket blocking should be prosecuted for a criminal denial of service attack, and gross stupidity. Think about it, there's not even any evidence that the attacks are *originating* in the APNIC, it could be the scumball in the cubical next to you supplementing his income breaking into poorly-protected home user PCs in APNIC to bounce the attacks. Or, from an economic perspective, look at China's GDP growth - think your multinational companies are going to want a piece of that? How will they communicate if idiots like you block them.

I'm physically in Hong Kong, China, but I'd like to think that this inter-thingy is making the world more connected...

30 years of Spam - and we ain't finished yet

@Gordon Fecyk additional statistics

How much spam is for invalid addresses?

Difficult to say, particularly if you want to separate obsolete addresses from "intentionally invalid" addresses (and what about address guessing: sales@, accounts@, info@...). After staff leave, there's a grace period when the messages are redirected to their manager or replacement, then, when there are no more useful messages, the address is made invalid, like any other invalid address. Also, I think the SPF check is happening before the recipient check, so messages from an invalid source AND with an invalid recipient won't be counted as having an invalid recipient.

So, FWIW, the statistic I can give:

Messages rejected for invalid recipient: 3.9% of total messages, during the last 7 days.

Less than I would have expected. Perhaps I've missed some other factor, or spammers are fairly efficient at targeting real addresses.

@Gordon Fecyk and the REAL first spam...

Full disclosure: my company sells Sophos products, and their competitors.

I can say the same for Sophos: I can get full statistics from my installation. 95% is about right for my domains at the moment. Service industries have a nasty choice: publish an email address and get LOTS of spam, or stop providing email service.

I think Mark Sunner failed to anticipate the change to criminality in attacks: mass outbreaks don't make money, so we see more trojans, less viruses, and drive-by downloads put the malware on websites, not in email where it can be caught be Messagelabs scanners, and count for the prediction. This is what often happens when you extrapolate too far.

Bill Gates' prediction was overconfidence to the point of stupidity: predicting a quick victory over a motivated, intelligent opponent, but he isn't the only prominent American to have done that in the past few years..

Of course, the real origin of spam was over 2700 years ago: the Chinese King You of Zhou (reigned 781 BC - 771 BC) used his military beacon network to amuse his concubine, Baosi. When the kingdom was really attacked, the army no longer responded to the beacon and the Western Zhou Dynasty fell.

[flame icon, because beacons are a genuine binary system]

Boffins ponder 100-year archive made of TOMES

Who pays the power bill?

The TOMES "power down almost completely".. with "almost" being 13W. I make that about 11,396KWh over the 100 year archive life.

On the other hand, a paper book or CD-ROM powers down to zero Watts. Add a little to copy it to a new medium once every decade.

TOMES will contribute to global warming... a book in a library is a carbon sink.

Brit tourist blags his way onto Iron Man set

Confused...

So this guy worked on a movie set, didn't get paid, and is boasting?

Apprentice contestant to offer Zeppelin trips above London

@Ian Ferguson

"did the original Zeppelins really mount bombing raids?"

Yes, my dad recalled seeing one over Portsmouth in WWI, nicely illuminated with searchlights. Being 2 or 3 at the time, he found the unusual nighttime excursion and the sight of the shiny cigar thing in the sky as the family fled in terror great fun.

@Chris Williams

"made some significant raids on maritime centres on the East Coast of England during the First World War."

and also the South Coast.

T5 opening turns into Airplane 3.0

@ Jeroen Braamhaar @AC:: RE: I remember....

Almost all correct. The airport at Hong Kong is Chek Lap Kok, Lantau is the large island it sits next to. But the official name is (rather boringly) the Hong Kong International Airport.

Since the problems during the opening it has worked pretty well, which can't be said for the new cable car from near the airport up to the big Buddha on top of Lantau.

China has world's largest online population

Extra "N"

"According to CNNIC (that second N is a mystery)"... OK Austin, can you tell me the two-letter country code for China?

And Hong Kong has already provided a Chinese Paris Hilton angle... the Edison Chen scandal:

http://articles.yuikee.com.hk/newsletter/2008/02/a.html

Polish builder sacked for humping hoover

He was lucky

Check the medical literature for penile injures caused by vacuum cleaners... some men have discovered very painfully that the distance between the opening and the fan blades is quite short!

Virus writers charged with copyright violation

Japanese Cybercrime Law

Of course Japan has a cybercrime law, it was covered in a presentation at the AVAR Conference in 2004:

www.aavar.org/2004web/AVAR2004/Presentations/ps013.ppt

It does cover data damage, so why wasn't it applied here? I have three guesses:

1. None of the victims would admit loosing any data because it was all pirated.

2. The wording of the law doesn't cover intermediation by malware... the *victim* chose to run the program.

3. That Police unit doesn't know what it's doing.

More comments:

articles.yuikee.com.hk/newsletter/2008/01/h.html

Hackers re-poison Google search results

@Morely Dotes

As an information security specialist based in Hong Kong, I recognise that many people around here communicate with .cn addresses on a regular basis, and "add to DENY Tables on sight" would not be an appropriate response. Also take a look at international trade statistics... a lot of other people, including, perhaps, your customers or employer, need to communicate with China.

Whether or not the Chinese military is hacking, I don't know, they don't tell me. However, broadband usage is growing in China, and millions of new users getting onto the internet means millions of poorly-secured machines to be turned into zombies. A lot of the non-Chinese spam I get comes from Chinese IP addresses. I guess that most of the malicious traffic from Chinese IP addresses is from botnets controlled from elsewhere. I would expect the Chinese military to bounce their attacks through non-Chinese addresses, to conceal the source.

BOFH: Skip diplomacy

@ andy rock

I've been using that trick for years too. Independent discovery: bloody obvious, looked at whiteboard, thought, "I'll need some solvent to get that off, what's the nearest thing with solvent in it?"

The decline of antivirus and the rise of whitelisting

Whitelisting also Imperfect

The controller of the centralised list would wield enourmous power. Suppose it was controlled by a company, call them "Monopolistic Software", how could competitors and open source developers get a guarantee of fair treatment in the validation process? Anti-virus does not have this problem because preventing a rival's software from running would require a positive act, blacklisting, that can be verified, demonstrated and used as evidence in court. The unfairness of "delays" in validation could be glossed over.

My further comments are here:

http://articles.yuikee.com.hk/newsletter/2007/06/k.html

Minister: ID cards 'another Great British Institution'

In Hong Kong

To update the remarks about HK ID cards:

They are biometric now, they've been replacing them for a few years, so I've got a SmartID card with my thumbprint on it.

Spot checks on gweilos are still rare - I've never been checked on the street. From observation, most of those checked are young Chinese males.

Is the Government repressive?... Still plenty of free speech and jabbering politicians here, the Mainland Government is still repecting the "One Country, Two Systems" principle, but we don't have direct elections for the Chief Executive yet.

Hong Kong does have a very low crime rate, the streets are very safe, but I don't see a causual link with the ID card, probably more to do with a large, efficient Police Force.

Yes, the MTR ("Tube") and other public transport is great, and it has just been announced that the MTR will be managing the new London Overground.

As for 19th century railways, wasn't Brunel's Broad Gauge Betamax to Stevenson's Standard Gauge VHS: technically superior, but lost on marketing?

How do you carry your mobile phone?

Strapped

Straps aren't useless, I use mine to hang the phone round my neck. Convenient for me, inconvenient for pickpockets, and, if phone radiation is dangerous, further from the organs I'm most concerned about: brain and gonads.