Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Resident evil: Inside a UEFI rootkit used to spy on govts, made by you-know-who (hi, Russia)

Re: Call me cynical

>designing vulnerabilities in UEFI.

Why when they can call Intel/HP/Dell/etc up and ask for the UEFI signing keys ?

You are a bank with say 10,000 desktops.

The bill for sending somebody to every desk to open up a PC, move the jumper, wait for update, move jumper back - is probably higher than the bill for making sure your firewall blocks UEFI phoning home

Re: Hardware button?

>that would require the IT staff to leave their dark basement and have human contact

Robots !

If you have a desktop on the floor and the USB port at a reachable height you could even have a fleet of modified Roombas going around doing it.

Now if only robots could shake empty toner cartridges and push lusers down stairs we wouldn't need on-site admins at all.

Attempt to clean up tech area has shocking effect on kit

Re: Where would you plug a vacuum cleaner in?

"plonked an IBM ‘Shark’ storage array across one exit route."

With laser beams ?

Re: Electrifying

That's why the world was a better place when you wired your own plugs = evolution won out

Re: It's not always the cleaners

"Believe it or not the bottom 2 lines above bicycle were Fireworks & Rocket Motors."

Every Health and Safety rule is the result of at 3 occurrences

Re: Clean room?

You can let clean clean room cleaners in to clean a clean room

They also run retail distribution of bivalve mollusks in littoral area

Re: Why is it always the cleaners?

Similar, possibly apocryphal, story about a new Intel fab.

They were getting terrible yields, blaming the wafer manufacturer who said they fine etc.

They detailed a guy to follow the wafer from maker to plant.

All was fine until it arrived at the fab and the brown coat in stores took each one out of their ultra clean package to count them.

Re: C

So in the UK you have to stand there breathing in the carcinogenic fumes from the evaporating petrol generated by the hot British sunshine ?

NASA to celebrate 55th anniversary of first Moon landing by, er, deciding how to land humans on the Moon again

Re: That's no space programme ...

>What vision and moral fibre did 'Tricky Dicky' have exactly?

Compared to some of the recent inmates ?

Re: Back when I was 7

We had clangers -

Re: Bitter times are coming...

But they will have an awsome app on their embedded 4d VR implants that let you see a really cool Powerpoint about how great it would be

Re: It just make me sad...

>watching the moon landing on my schools library power mac from a CD encyclopedia

Amazing they managed to get to the moon with that technology

Re: It just make me sad...

Basically the future is blade runner - but the nearest thing to replicants are little robots that fail to clean to your carpet properly

I have a cunning plan

The ISS was built because a once mighty nuclear power was about to descend into anarchy and there was a concern that all its nuclear + rocket scientists would go and work for dodgy 3rd world dictators rather than starve or have to work in the fields picking sprouts.

Suppose you could arrange for another once mighty, and still nuclear armed, power to fsck up its economy, make all its nuclear/rocket scientists redundant when JET/Galileo closed and need to find something for them to do so that they don't defect to Belgium or have to work in the fields picking sprouts?

That would be a perfect justification for a new ISS (Imperial Space Station)

Trump's axing of cyber czar role has left gaping holes in US defence

So you are saying that the purpose of the President is to think he has all the power in the world but is actually a poor deluded narcissist whose only job is to distract attention from the person who really makes all the decisions?

I think my pussy cat would like some fish, or at least I think that I think that. Perhaps the pussycat isn't real ...

Re: There More than One Way to Skin a Skunk RAT and Address a Virtual Land Grab

There are many theories of amanfromMars

Is it a broadcast source of entropy to seed encryption algorithms for some deep state conspiracy

Is it proof that the reg isn't written by a secret AI project

Is it proof that the reg is written by a secret AI project

Is it a bug in the Matrix

Is it really a man from Mars ?

Personally I think it's a Perl script convicted of a crash it didn't commit which now roams the internet, if you can find it maybe you can hire the AmanfromMars.pl team.

Re: Stupidity or cunning?

>Czar is a Russian word

Actually it's the Russian pronunciation of latin Caesar

Perhaps the Republicans would prefer the closer pronunciation Kaiser ?

The 2018 ThinkPad X1 Yoga: A bendy-legged workhorse walks into a meeting

I thought the point of thunderbolt was that it supported all the peripherals+charging - so you could plug any old thunderbolt hub into any old machine and use it as a dock?

No experience - I'm not high enough on the C suite / need my machines to get work done - to own one of these

Pain spotting: Russia's Aeroflot Docker server lands internal source code, config files on public internet

Now I'm confused

Do we have to not ban docker because it wasn't not used by the Russian secret service to leak secret of a Russians to foreign agencies ?

US JEDI military cloud network is so high-tech, bidders will have to submit their proposals by hand, on DVD

Naturally

How else are you going to leave the details in the back of a taxi ?

Eat my shorts, watchdog tells every city mayor in the US – FCC approves $2bn 5G telco windfall

Cities still have power

When the Feds rule something there is still a lot local cities can do to block them (over here in the former colonies every street corner is its own separately governed city)

Classics include environment impact assements that cover every last leaf of grass, punctilious enforcement of bylaws so you are fined if a worker coughs before 8:00am or drops a cig butt. Then you put every site knee deep in OSHA (=HSE) inspectors and shut them down at the first sight of a missing approval tag on a safety boot.

If that fails you require them to get unanimous approval of half a dozen local Indian bands - all of which hate each other.

A 3G tower has been stalled here for years because an Indian band claims it will broadcast across their sacred territory and want something (it's not entirely clear what) but by the time it's settled there won't be any 3G.

NSA dev in the clink for 5.5 years after letting Kaspersky, allegedly Russia slurp US exploits

The link between Kaspersky and the Kremlin has been made by US officials only, without any evidence.

They both begin with the same letter, in Donald's (colouring) book - that's enough

Linux kernel's 'seat warmer' drops 4.19-rc5 with – wow – little drama

Re: Inclusiveness demands tolerance

I checked his blog. There is no treatise on Choosing the Right Ammunition for Gunning down Unicorns.

I don't play DnD - can only virgins shoot unicorns?

Open-source alt-droid wants to know if it's still leaking data to Google

Re: Lineagoes + FDroid?

My Moto G is still on 7.1.2 / 14.1 builds

Lineagoes + FDroid?

Anyone want to comment what's different from using LineageOS (highly recommended by the way, I get weekly updates for my old Moto G) and sticking to FDroid instead of GApps / Play store

WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigma until long after the war

Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

pretending to believe that such a highly detailed cracking was faked decades after those alleged spies needed protecting makes no sense.

Three reasons.

Enigma machines were handed out to allies who weren't told that they were broken - so the UK/USA could read the secrets of 'friendly' countries for decades.

To keep the USSR underestimating the achievements of western cryptanalysis in the hope that they would be less careful/put less effort into advanced codes. Pointless wiht the number of KGB agents working for MI5

Possibly most important. To prevent the story that the Nazis only lost because of crypto becoming a political norm in Germany. If you lost because the other side 'cheated' then there is a justification to try again ( but this time with better OPSEC). Similar to the German belief that their army was superior in WWI but had been betrayed by traitors at home - so if they could only remove 'non-Germans' they would be victorious and so it was worth trying again....

Re: Cribs from touch

>And you discovered this without having to decrypt a single message.

But it's only meta-data there are no privacy implications from collecting all your meta-data...

Brexit campaigner AggregateIQ challenges UK's first GDPR notice

Re: GDPR

>But there is nothing to stop them banning company trading with the EU

Which doesn't help because DataTheft (Panama) LTD simply closes down and DataTheft (Grand Caymen) LTD takes over...

The ICO, no because Britain has no power on the world stage - this isn't 1914

But the Eu? Yes, it cannot have a trade deal with Canada that allows Canadian companies to snub their noses at Eu data protection law that other countries have to obey.

If Canada refused to cooperate in prosecuting the offenders the simple result would be that Canadian companies cannot process data on Eu citizens.

>Serious question but how are the ICO going to enforce the GDPR against a Canadian company?

Assuming Canada wants to trade with the Eu in future - quite easily.

Although if they can hold out till march it is likely the UK will be more understanding toward any future trading partners

.

US cities react in fury to FCC's $2bn break for 5G telcos: We'll be picking up the tab, say officials

Re: Money, Money, Money

Because public transport is more common in the UK than the USA you just have to write the policy on the side of a bus - it makes it much cheaper to run election campaigns

They were telling the truth

Specifically it would have created more jobs as non-exec directors for the politicians that approved the merger.

Re: Just proves...

There is a downside in having a central comittee planned state economy.

OK - so you get workers rights, free education and healthcare and equality for all - but you need to pay more for advanced technology services than in a capitalist country

UK cops run machine learning trials on live police operations. Unregulated. What could go wrong? – report

Re: Sigh...

Remember just because all terrorists are Catholics it doesn't mean that all Catholics are terrorists

I want to buy a coffee with an app – how hard can it be?

Re: Cash

> does a full English breakfast as a bonus if you feel like it.

Is it Bacon Spiced Latte season already ?

Spent your week box-ticking? It can't be as bad as the folk at this firm

>I was thinking Sports Direct.

Minimum wage? We can't afford that !

Can they do it in zero hours?

Guilty: The Romanian ransomware mastermind who infected Trump inauguration CCTV cams

1, Because this was a reverse backward double false-flag operation by the Belgian Illuminati being organised by the North Korean Bruce Forsyth appreciation society as a front for the Milk Marketing Board to allow a deep state take over of ......

2, Because they are idiots

No, that Sunspot Solar Observatory didn't see aliens. It's far more grim

Re: The surprising thing is....

>that a janitor was able to do all that stuff on the Internet

It's a university observatory.

Observatories tend not to have strict levels of network access security - cos the universe is pretty public.

It's hard enough getting some staff to use decent passwords = "None of my stuff is secret - I don't care who reads it, why do I need a password?"

Re: Unconvinced

Can't take any chances, should probably shut down all the other telescopes as well

Flying to Mars will be so rad, dude: Year-long trip may dump 60% lifetime dose of radiation on you

That would be a reasonable arguement if you hadn't put in Obaka

But since we can now only picture you as an obese southern ignorant Boss-Hog character living in your parents basement and masturbating to your portrait of Der Furherer your point is somewhat diminished.

re: vikings

Vikings, or the early European explorers had been so recklessly timid and afraid

I think that explains the difference between modern Sweden and say Scotland/Ireland/NE England.

All the vikings who through that the longship lacked proper life saving equipment and that the sea looked a bit cold and wet - stayed behind and their descendants built Volvos.

The ones who were too dumb to realise how dangerous it was went out raping and pillaging - and their descendants are still raping and pillaging in the Bigg market in a T-shirt in the snow today

Re: Artificial magnetosphere

All we need is a Blue Peter type appeal for children to send in enough fridge magnets...

Oi, you. Equifax. Cough up half a million quid for fumbling 15 million Brits' personal info to hackers

Re: GDPR can't Fix this

Would GDPR fines apply in this case?

It wasn't that they were deliberately selling customer information - they got hacked.

We don't fine banks when they get robbed (ok. we don't fine them when they deliberately mislead and rob customers either but that's a different story)

They were obviously incompetent, but imagine - if you get hacked because of a zero-day exploit in Windows should you get fined 4% of your turnover, or should Microsoft be fined? If your AWS bucket is hacked does the Eu get 4% of Amazon book sales?

But if you aren't responsible when your cloud provider gets hacked - what stop Equifax setting up "Equifax data processing Europe Inc", a subcontractor with no assets.

National Museum of Computing to hold live Enigma code-breaking demo with a Bombe

Re: Enigma Flaw

I always wondered if this was enough of a flaw to make the system breakable?

From all the accounts I have read, and the talks by the people who used it, it was failures in OPSEC that led to the breaks. Picking the same daily 6 letter groups, re-sending the same message with the same settings, sending identical weather daily reports by both Enigma and easily cracked simple codes etc,

Anyone know of a modern cryptanalysis of the Enigma?

30-up: You know what? Those really weren't the days

Re: Yellow and blue

We old timers used stone circles, survives hurricanes really well - but takes for ever to reboot

Re: "who had a computer at home (with a modem)"

And local calls in the UK, even assuming you had a local BBS, cost more than long distance calls in the USA.

Re: You have not lived ....

>Why would anyone have bought a RM380Z for cassette only?

In 1981/2 it was still fscking expensive and we wor poor up-north

The nice thing was that all the cool kids wanted to play games on the BBC-Bs a few later - but the old box was left in the corner all for me....

The most interesting feature was that the TV modulator was so powerful you could tune any of the B&W TVs on other machines in the class to it without a cable and confuse people (we didn't have monitors when I started)