Posts by Mr Sceptical

Governments can't seem to stop asking for secret backdoors

Gibson already predicted the outcome: Columbian Data Havens

I can't find the passage now but in one of the Neuromancer era novels was mention that the logical end game of the competition between criminals and gonverments was the Columbian cartles got VERY good at cyber security - to the point they just opened up for business storing other's data.

I mean, if your criminal enterprise relies on good InfoSec and you have Beeelion$ in profit to throw at it, why wouldn't you spend a bit on ensuring you keep it?

And once you've done that, spin it off as a profit making service: Cartel Web Services anyone?

Even modest makeup can thwart facial recognition

So it doesn't change with a Gandalf length beard then?

Re: "However, gait recognition is becoming quite powerful..."

One of those, "spy disguise secrets" articles had the reference to putting a pebble in your shoe to force a change of gait.

Similarly, tighter clothing can restrict upper body movement too. Or carry a heavy bag in one hand to alter balance.

It's tiring to maintain but I think most of El Reg readership have the nous to be proficient at escape and evasion for at least a day or two.

Not entirely sure how prominent makeup is less obvious than a face mask though, did the researchers try a trollala mask instead?

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

Re: No real statistics

Clearly, none of the architects of smart meters considered my wife - who will only put on the washing machine (or other large appliances) at a time convenient to herself, and screw the cost of leccy at that time. Trying to convince her it will save £10s a year is going to be met with a negative response.

She also doesn't like the machine running at night since the vibrations from the spin cycle resonate up through the floor.

Unless you are unfortunate enough to be rationing your power use, smart meters won't change the behaviour of people who only want to do things their way.

(Icon to illustrate the response)

IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4, argues APNIC's chief scientist

Would be nice if IPV6 support was actually the norm

Having some locations in primarily IPV6 parts of the world (the Caribbean) having so many services still having no intention of supporting IPV6 results in much head to wall contact.

E.g. I can't even get TrueNAS Scale to update cause the supposed v6 endpoints don't respond properly. Or Ubuntu...

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Re: Well...

"I have had no issues with my zen + HE tunnel setup."

HE on Plusnet is up OK, but setting up a tuinnel from the other end (in the Caribbean), less so. Bit of a learning curve on that part, and needs a run-up each time I get a chance to look at it.

I do get random wanings from Google my connection now looks suspicious for some reason, but nothing I can seem to influence.

Re: Well...

Problem 4: if connecting out from an IPv6 only location, various parts of the internet, e.g. TrueNAS repositories are bloody unreachable, making updates an absolute PITA.

Ubuntu and others also very unstable, must of the time.

Trying to build a gateway via a UK ISP with only IPv4 and an HE tunnel has not been successful, despite many profanities uttered.

Some of my cloud system manufacturers have said they also don't have IPv6 compatibility on the roadmap yet.

It's almost like people aren't that interested in getting IPv6 rolled out...

Green Berets storm building after compromising its Wi-Fi

What now - Security system's WIFI ???

Only consumer grade cameras or access control would be running over WiFi - anything professionally installed is normally hardwired for reliability and, you know, PoE for power!

Door controllers might have ethernet to the controller but unless you can take over their server or MITM Comms to an off site system, forget hijacking it. Far faster just to clone some access cards or obtain one from a card holder (with prejudice?)

Next, the kind of places the military would be interested in attacking are also those would that would have at least a few people aware of how to create VLANs, access control lists, etc.

Unless they think drug barons, foreign powers and terrorists are so cheap they only stuff from Alibaba?

Echoes of Necromancer (Colonel Corto / Op. Screaming Fist) - maybe they're just Gibson fans?

Shuttle Columbia's near-miss: Why we should always expect the unexpected in space

Re: All the more reason to send robots, instead

We need meatbags in space because latency makes it a bugger to control anything more than 200ms away (as dial up gamers will remember). Maybe quantum entanglement based Comms is the answer to that.

And while Boston Dynamics & others are making good progress with movement, they're still a bit limited at carrying out complex operations autonomously.

CrowdStrike shares sink as global IT outage savages systems worldwide

Quiet in the comments - is everyone busy firefighting?

The Reddit Crowdstrike thread has gone nuts with horror stories, poor BOFHs looking at 1000s of endpoints in boot loops. Glad we don't use it, bullet dodged even for our small footprint...

My condolences to those looking at RSI from entering zillions of bitlocker keys.

Had a call with a client; "can we reschedule to next week, we use Crowdstrike." = Weekend ruined

Ransomware scum who hit Indonesian government apologizes, hands over encryption key

Re: "not all victims would get the same treatment"

That's a failure or society, not the bank.

E.g. leave the keys in a car, with the engine running, in the UAE and it'll still be there when you return, albeit with less fuel in the tank.

So no, it's not the banks fault at all, it's the people walking into it.

Humans: the reason we have locks on doors!

Fintech engineer grounded by crypto fraud caper, including $300m spoof trades

Re: Ponzi

FOMO driving demand (thus price go moon).

Initial investors directly benefit from space bound numbers, so close enough to a pyramid for me.

Shocker!

Crypto bros caught fleecing shills, sorry, skilled investors.

In other news, sun rises and moon orbits earth but some people believe the opposite, so...

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

Testosterone

Biologist here, ring finger length relative to index is an indicator of testosterone exposure in the womb, with a direct correlation to athletic performance.

E.g. longer ring fingers are faster sprinters, which the Fail article confirms.

Sounds like the psychologists were trying to fit their argument to the data, it was a tiny sample size.

So, is Usain Bolt a psychopath?

National Grid latest UK org to zap Chinese kit from critical infrastructure

did someone say Eternal blue?

Not me obviously, must be that dodgy guy in the shades and overcoat with the earpiece...

Saying that, China have shown repeatedly they're no friends of ours, more frenemies and once we've served our purpose will be absorbed into the Borg run by Pooh.

Vodafone signs a 10-year, $1.5B deal with Microsoft that sheds European DCs

Thousands of servers???

Ok, so which clapped out 386 they run the SME customer portal on?

GUI dating from the mid 2000s, performance on par with dial up from the 1990s and pages loading times in excess of 10 seconds for a 99% text interface!!

Absolute garbage and should face the fate of the Office Space printer immediately.

My assumption for why they keep it around is it makes it so hellish to use few customers ever query their wildly incorrect bills.

Privacy advocate challenges YouTube's ad blocking detection scripts under EU law

Re: Good.

Adnauseum extension has been working well for me. Slight delay on video start but then straight through.

Says it's just acknowledging all the ads on the background, making the responses as worthless for profiling as me liking every single item I watch.

Britcoin or Britcon? Bank of England grilled on Digital Pound privacy concerns

Re: It is all about control during the next Covid crisis...

#rant: Ok, I have to stop you there. Vaccines are for the benefit of you and your loved ones. If my mum had access to a COVID vaccine in Dec '20 I wouldn't be a core participant to the COVID inquiry now.

Billions of people haven't turned into zombies, fascists , sheep or tree frogs so I'll go with the statistics that it was both safe and effective at reducing the numbers of families not mourning loved ones. #rantover

That said, governments all tend to more control over time and this pointless idea is just another crappy example.

Re: @jmch

Err, I doubt the current plastic ones would be much use for that, but at least you could wash and reuse them?

You're probably better off with some leaves, you can get several billion to a ship's peanut at the current exchange rates (HHGTTG ref).

If AI drives humans to extinction, it'll be our fault

Current AI = Automated Stereotyping

Nothing currently available comes anywhere near Sci-Fi AI requirements, let alone being able to make three laws levels of judgements.

Until an 'AI' can ask the questions 'why?' we are perfectly safe

Even then, toddlers manage it and we don't consider them a threat to anything but soft-furnishings, breakables and our patience & sanity.

Only if we REALLY wanted to copy the War Games/Terminator plots and entrust our nuclear launch systems to a program could there be consequences and even then it would be a straight desgin error.

FUD=panic. Keep the sharp objects away from the children & 'thought leaders' and we'll be fine.

Re: Ignorance is Bliss and Heaven Sent and Much Appreciated by AI and ITs Likes

Aren't we just talking about the back story for the Matrix now?

I for one, will happily sit in the gruel fed tank of our metal overlords, as long as I subsist in the Matrix as a vastly wealthy big knob, dining on fine steaks, whilst lording it over the plebs

Everyone back to the office! Why? Because the decision has been made

who'd have thought less interruptions could boost productivity?

Feedback from one of our clients during lockdown - IT productivity increased, Sales team decreased.

Looks like IT could focus on real work while the Sales team didn't have anyone to badger to urgently fix their missing icon issues...

Some clients are tempting staff back with free meals where they had a paid canteen previously. Ones who already did that spent lockdown refurbishing offices to even swankier levels but still have hardly anyone in.

We've gone hybrid for the long term, vacated half our office space and now coming in for the day feels like a novelty rather than the daily grind into Waterloo.

Did have to implement a desk booking system to prevent everyone piling in one day of the week, but occupancy is still only 1/3 over the week.

BOFH: Something's consuming 40% of UPS capacity – and it's coming from the beancounters' office

Re: The security system

As an installer, most systems will fail open by design - hence why we state they should not be the sole lock on perimeter doors.

Only specific locks fail secure and they normally have a manual release on the secure side so you can get out when power is out.

Presumably the beancounters office both fails secure and EMPs their phones to prevent them calling for help before starting a small fire...

You'd have thought that pros would do it better...

Was involved in a migration of on prem Exchange servers to a C&W datacentre in the mid-2000s.

The blurb on the DC was it's got two mains supplies from separate cites, UPS up the wazoo, state of the art control room, etc.

Cue a power cut the weekend after the bulk of the migration - there was an actual grid outage and both mains feeds died. The dual UPS architecture immediately failed due to a cascading overload. Unfortunately, due to the design of the control room - all their kit was on the same UPSs so they were dark too.

Come Monday morning, lots of screaming to the C&W team as to why the hell they didn't bother alerting anyone that all our kit was down and why several thousand staff now had no email...

Simon's no dummy - the farm is being fed from the two adjacent buildings' mains supply and has the bosses new electric car hooked up as the UPS ;-)

Govt suggests Brits should hand passports to social media companies

Re: They want a passport ...

I identify as an iPhone - who's pic should I use?

Icon for the PFY -->

Yeah sure, what could possibly go wrong with this idea!

I'll hand my passport over when all government ministers publically post theirs and details of their DOB, mother's maiden name, first pet, first school and all the other 'security questions' commonly asked...

Idiots!

$600m in cryptocurrencies swiped from Poly Network

Re: Blew my mask off my face

I dunno, $600 mill pays for your own private army, or any number of assassinations of irate gang leaders. It's just business so I'm sure they won't take it personally.

On the other hand it's probably easier to move to a banana republic and pay off the chief of police for your protection - cheaper than the Merc army anyway.

Put it this way, if you'd nicked a few Billion the idea you'd personally be in danger is fairly low as you simply how enough specialists to keep you safe, providing your actually follow their advice and don't start flaunting your ill gotten gains in public places.

Just a thought...

Crane horror Reg reader uses his severed finger to unlock Samsung Galaxy phone

Re: Biometrics should not be part of ID or Security

There was a news report years ago about some guy in South America who thought it was smart to protect his expensive car from theft by installing a biometric reader to start it.

Guess what the theives did to steal it then??

Can't remember if he survived or not, but would answer to Stumpy if he did.

Re: severed finger unlocker

For amusement and morbid interest, I checked out a book on hand injuries from the pre-clinical library at Uni.

I'm not squeamish, but my housemates did struggle with many of the graphic photos.

One that stuck in the mind was a poor guy who had all his fingers on one hand torn out, including 30cm of tendons that controlled them, preventing them being meaningfully reattached...

Icon for what his hand looked like afterwards --->

Yes, there's nothing quite like braving the M4 into London on the eve of a bank holiday just to eject a non-bootable floppy

"OLD interactive whiteboards"???

Those things were pure science fiction when I was at school!

I had an idea they'd make a brilliant product, but then did a 'Tension Sheet' and forgot to patent the damn things.

Could have been drinking fresh mango juice, with goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes.

Smeg!

"I had a go at fixing it..."

Do they follow that with, "Good news, the fire is out now"?

Could have been either the fire OR murshroom cloud depending on level of incompetence -->

OVH reveals it's scrubbing servers – to get smoke residue off before rebooting

Re: Worth saying again......

Damn skippy!

"But, but, but - surely clouds just float around the sky? Did it dry up or something?" - an Exective Team, last week.

Aaaaaand, that's why you always need someone who actually understands IT sitting on the board at every organisation that uses technology....

Clouds: someone else's servers (TM)

Your average user's comprehension of IT icon ----->

Ship stranded in Suez Canal shifts, but not before spawning some choice tech memes

Dual redundant canal jokes?

C'mon, no one posted a joke about a second backup canal? For shame...

At least our elebenty-gazillion hamsters (I forget the correct Reg units) worth of consumer tat can start blocking up ports again. Show's over!

BP Chargemaster's Pulse rebrand let crims send IcedID banking trojan from formerly legit mailboxes

Re: Inevitable?

We whitelist the IP/domain for our marketing drone emails by including it in our SPF records. They should be being flagged as spam if they don't but YMMV...

ESA mulls sending waves of robot explorers into dark depths of lunar lava tubes

Re: U-drone

In that case we know what will happen next...

Icon for the Nuke from orbit, its the only way to be sure option -->>

Where in the world is Jack Ma? Alibaba tycoon not seen since October after slamming Chinese government

You flick the tiger's nuts, you get mauled!!!

Funny how these suddenly rich (and feeling powerful) people can seriously underestimate their corporeal vulnerability. He's clearly got a crappy security team who failed to stop him shooting himself in the face.

Same thing happens in Russia to the oligarchs - toe the party line and you can enjoy the rewards you stole from the people, piss Putin off and you can enjoy a poison jockstrap.

As long as they value their own flesh, shut the hell up - or better still, get an anonymous front organisation to express your true feelings as you tuck into your virtual steak in the Matrix.

Julian Assange will NOT be extradited to the US over WikiLeaks hacking and spy charges, rules British judge

Re: I'd rather we keep Assange

Stick to the facts - Snowden released details on activities of the US government that they themselves would be screaming as illegal espionage if it was being done by anyone else.

Hello, pot & kettle - oh, suprise, you're both the same!

What would you rather them have done - tried to stand and fight an entire army? They aren't Rambo/Commando/Superman you know!

Alleged Ponzi mastermind on the run from FBI hid in lake with sea-scooter, collared after he surfaced half-hour later

Re: Sounds like he was a dick but...

I can see we share follow the same logic in escape route planning, you've got most of my points too ;-)

For the corpse, it's probably an advantage if it can be left somewhere it's going to have time to decompose enough to confuse the investigators, so could be left to defrost on it's own. Really though, you need somewhere warm, preferrably with sharks/alligators to take the blame.

Think I might be watching too many heist movies...

Rank amateur...

Good grief, if your master escape plan involves an underwater getaway (in winter!) then you'd better spend some of your ill-gotten gains on:

1) A rebreather tank so you don't leave a trail of bubbles (and maybe a faster model submersible?)

2) A decoy air tank to fake your own drowning

3) A decoy body (optional) - depends on access to a morgue/corrupt undertaker

4) A covered location to surface in & second getaway vehicle (the most common one on local roads c.f. Drive, The Sentinel, etc.)

5) Route to your non-extradition country of choice with home already set up (Heat, etc.)

Various other steps too, but jeez, if you're going to go to the effort of maintaining a Ponzi scheme, plan the out!

He'll have plenty of time to do 20/20 hindsight planning in the pokey, I'm sure...

I'll give you my passwords if you investigate police corruption, accused missile systems leaker told cops

Re: failing to hand over his passwords to police on demand – a crime in the UK

That's exactly why we need to replace passwords with something else, but not an obvious biometric either - it's far too easy to grab a corpse's finger to unlock their phone on TV.

How about an erect todger? It would imply you are at least relaxed enough with your surroundings that you're unlikely to be in a police cell - unless you're a shameless exhibitionist, in which case you need the opposite.

"Honestly officer, I swear this doesn't happen often - oh well, I can't unlock the phone now..."

Paris, as that might be their secret weapon ->

US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year, more than startups can hope to afford, say VCs

Wages are not comparable

We' ve got an embedded engineer (read: technician) at a client in the US - his package is $125K for what would be a £35-45K role in the UK...

There ain't no problem that can't be solved with the help of American horsepower – even yanking on a coax cable

45 degree electricians

I had the same thing in our flat - you could clearly see diagonal channels up the living room wall. God knows what the sparky was thinking (or not)...

Never work with children or animals?

That said - I've often wished for a trained weasel or something strong and agile enough to pull a cable through a difficult run!

Penguins are probably only suitable for aquatic cable runs... >>

Cops called to Singapore golf club after 'wrongdoers' use scripts to book popular timeslots

Re: Is it hacking?

My keyboard can record macros - is it hacking if I record a previous session, then replay it the next time I want to book?

After all - I (not a bot) have entered the text and had to manually trigger the input the second time.

Case close, M'lud and off to the 19th hole for a celebration!

Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope

A Keyboard Killer...

... Providing you've got one of the early IBM keyboards you stand a good change in any hand-to-hand combat.

Deserved a good BOFHing

That's the kind of user who clearly deserves to get up close and personal with the stained end of a bulk eraser or cattle prod...

Or maybe they'd care to inspect the Halon system in operation?

Re: Self-Inflicted Silliness

I think you're right about PCW - it was a massive tomb back then and I spent ages lusting after all the hardware I definitely couldn't buy as a kid.

You do learn your most important lessons from those moments though, so it's good you managed it on a system you had no issues accessing and were also able to fix it!

Re: Self-Inflicted Silliness

That's the bitty! It was back in the early 90s, so memory is equally as fuzzy...

Re: Self-Inflicted Silliness

I once disabled my uncle's CD ROM drive for a couple over year by editing the resources file so I could get the sound working in Wolfenstein on his 386 ;-)

In my defence, I did fix it next time I was there, but seeing they lived in a different continent, we weren't exactly over weekly.