Posts by Sir Runcible Spoon

Hollywood offers Daniel Craig $150m to (slash wrists) play James Bond

Of the current generation of actors, Tom Hardy is right up there alongside Ben Kingsley for versatility, he gets my vote. He was brilliant in Chopper :)

Re: Here are some outliers...

"Boris Johnson" You beat me to it! Mind you, it's definitely more right-field than left :)

Obama says USA has world's biggest and best cyber arsenal

Assuming this is an incoming list, you might want to consider adding the rfc-1918 address space in there too :)

It's time for humanity to embrace SEX ROBOTS. For, uh, science, of course

Re: Dr Kate Devlin

Speaking to my wife, it's astonishing that as a society we can create millions of different ways to pleasure a vagina (or anus if that's your thing) but apparently quite incapable of creating a sanitary towel that couldn't double up as some kind of mattress in case of emergencies.

I guess it's a question of priorities. Part of the discussion was a conclusion that if it were men that suffered periods (directly that is) then this particular issue would probably have about 500 solutions by now.

Not sure if it is men who design these things, but surely they must be designed by women too?

NBA's Golden State Warriors sued for 'mic snooping' mobile app

Re: Answer Is Simple

I use an app called NoRoot Firewall on my Samsung phone and whatever permissions an apps gets or manages to finagle, I can use the rulebase in the firewall to stop everything in it's tracks. It's amazing what the most simple apps will try and do if you let them!

Latest Intel, AMD chips will only run Windows 10 ... and Linux, BSD, OS X

As much as this piece of news is irritating and indicative of M$ trying to force more people into Win10, nowhere does it state any kind of parallel to what you just noted.

No-one is dropping support for older CPU's here.

A plumber with a blowtorch is the enemy of the data centre

DC Deluge

Back in the late 90's I was hopping around Europe evaluating DC's to extend our network to and encountered the most bizarre setups you could imagine, one place even had a swimming pool on the roof that was plumbed into the cooling system - genius :)

However, this wasn't the place that flooded. That place was the one where we had put some pilot kit and were prepping the whole place with raised flooring etc. when we got a full on DC outage alert - including power.

When we inquired as to the cause we were told the place had flooded, like it was under a foot of water! This was a surprise because the place was fairly high up compared to the surrounding area.

Turns out that a moronic truck driver had driven into the corner of the building, causing a small section of it to collapse. Along the way he had also managed to take the head off a water point (the kind fire engines to connect to) which was now merrily spouting water upwards and then being diverted into the newly opened hole in the wall by the underside of the truck, the front of which was lodged 3 feet inside the DC!

It was so bizarre I was convinced they were winding me up, but they sent pictures to prove it :)

L0phtCrack's back! Crack hack app whacks Windows 10 trash hashes

"I'm going for a curry tonight, so mine will probably be revamped in the morning"

Let me guess - omfgmaiof!!

'NSA' hack okshun woz writ by Inglish speeker trieing to hyde

Re: The 'insider' theory

"which I would hope the NSA would be using."

That's a bit like saying you expect the banks to be using all the latest super-secure technologies etc.

Re: The 'insider' theory

Suspend the logging process for the duration of the data copy, or even just change the destination IP of the log server for a few minutes while you do the deed.

I'm sure there are other (cleverer) ways.

Sir

I'm not sure about US English, but certainly for English English I've noticed that a lot of foreign nationals display a much firmer grasp of grammar and spelling than a considerable number of the natives.

Privacy advocates rail against US Homeland Security's Twitter, Facebook snooping

Re: It's Not Surveillance If You Volunteer

"yet have driving licenses and passports that do the job instead by another name."

Not so. You don't need your passport or DL on you as you go about your business do you? No.

Can you get in to see someone at your GP/Local Hospital without them? Yes.

So, nothing like National ID cards then.

'I found the intern curled up on the data centre floor moaning'

Re: Early hours of the morning

I've noticed that once you reach a certain level in this business, reputation counts for a lot more than qualifications or a well polished CV.

Re: What are the odds

"The Transdimensional Personnel Locator was a BT skunkworks project"

Post of the week for me, have some virtual beer and 100 pseudo upvotes :)

"but I suppose it could happen"

It can indeed, I posted such a story above - no idea how it happens though.

Re: What are the odds

This one is so weird I'm not sure I believe it myself anymore, but I swear it happened.

I was walking through the local town with a couple of mates on my way to a friends house (this was before mobile phones mind) and as we were walking past a couple of phone boxes, one of them started ringing.

I love that sort of shit, so I went over and answered. The other person on the line immediately new it was me (it was my mum), and in fact had rung to ask me to get something from the shop on the way home.

When I asked her where she thought she had rang, she said my friends house. When I told her where I was she didn't believe me.

A small bit of info, my mum used to work as an operator for BT and had a good memory for numbers, so it is just possible that the payphone number was lodged in her memory somewhere - but how and why she rang it we'll never know - she swears to this day she rang my friends' number.

Weird eh?

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook's ad-blocker buster: It's a block party!

Unfortunately they probably have enough information on you to make your life difficult if they chose to

Re: You know the arms race won't stop until...

fnord

Re: arms race

You could always just use Teamviewer (for private use it's free)

Thailand plans to track non-citizens with their mobile phones

Re: Ahhh... simply more great news courtesy of "Fearless Leader"...

That's what I thought at first, but this is a story about Thailand.

</confused>

Re: Ahhh... simply more great news courtesy of "Fearless Leader"...

Can't you get into bother for that kind of comment, if your handle is to be believed?

Linux security backfires: Flaw lets hackers inject malware into downloads, disrupt Tor users, etc

Re: Just Linux?

I think you need to be able to stop one side sending out ACK checks so you can anticipate the packet sequence numbers reliably.

Re: Won't you think of the children?

He's a Red Sea pedestrian and proud of it :)

Funny story, this. UK.gov's 'open banking app revolution'. Security experts not a fan of it

Re: Am I the only one?

@Nick, apologies for the assumption, but it seemed to fit.

That's me that is -------->

Re: API

maybe it means

Accidental Priority Incursion

Re: API

Gives you a warm fuzzy feeling to know that they are experts eh? :)

Re: Am I the only one?

"You need to jump through hoops if you want to opt out."

Do you consider a phone call to opt-out of a smart meter to be 'jumping through hoops' ?

I will say that the letter I got informing me that they were coming to change the meter over didn't give any indication that it wasn't mandatory - quite the opposite (without explicitly saying you *had* to have it).

When I phoned up to say I didn't want it, ever, they asked for a reason. I just said 'security' and that was that - account updated with note to say not to install smart meter. Took about 5 minutes, Annoying, yes, but hardly what I would consider multiple hoops at height.

Re: Security?

I suspect in the same way that you ensure your account doesn't accept contact-less payments - don't set it up in the first place.

Brexit Britain: HP Sauce vs BBC.co.uk – choices that defined voters

"I don't know whether I'm coming or going anymore"

Time for a colour and consistency check

Facebook to forcefeed you web ads, whether you like it or not: Ad blocker? Get the Zuck out!

Re: Hosts file

Save yourself a few ergs by routing to Null0 instead :)

Re: Errrmmh....

Considering that when I first started using the internet I had a 14.4k baud modem and I now have a 20M+ ADSL connection, web pages seem to be slower than ever.

Not only that, but when I try to scroll down a page my browser seems to continually lock up and make my whole machine unresponsive, sometimes for 20 seconds!

Perhaps I've misunderstood the concept of a faster internet connection and that the relationship with how quickly I can view material online is actual an inverse ratio.

Either that or the web has a deadly disease that sucks up all available bandwidth, has memory leaks and poor process queuing to the point where it can lock up a PC.

The day that people wake up and treat intrusive adverts as reasons *not* to buy a particular product from a particular vendor - then the disease just seems to spread and spread and spread.

We're doomed.

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

Re: Portrayal of computer tech guys in films/tv.

"was in fact a Perkin Elmer 3030 Atomic Spectrometry setup."

I prefer the Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain myself.

Re: "Lightening"

Yeah, scorch marks definitely don't make the object lighter (unless some of the material was detachedin the explosion)

"Windows 7! in 2016!"

Probably a downgrade exercise.

Re: Mr Robot

All mistakes/flim-flammery aside, they do at least make an effort (more than most).

I do recall seeing him sat on the floor of a DC with a laptop perched on his <gasp> lap and cabled in to the server. I tried to ignore the monitor with the amazing GUI showing all the servers and their current state, you can't have everything :)

Londoner jailed after refusing to unlock his mobile phones

Re: How long for theft?

"Truecrypt used to have a plausible deniability "

'used to have' being the operative phrase here, because there are ways to detect it. I believe there are things that can be done to reduce those chances of detection, but at that point you're practically taking up witchcraft :)

How long for theft?

If he had claimed the phones were stolen and he couldn't unlock them - would that work?

Hackers unleash smart Twitter phishing tool that snags two in three users

Responsibility to train users

It wouldn't be too much to ask for these major media players to train their users a bit would it?

For example, a PR campaign that uses phishing techniques to push people to a web page that tells them that they "have just been landed, their PC could have been compromised, and oh, by the way, that link you clicked without thinking about it was what go you into hot water"

plus

"Here are a few tips on staying safer"

I know it would be a drop in the ocean, but every little bit helps. The more people do it, the more it seeps into the general mindset of the population that being careful online is as important as not leaving your wallet on a bus seat.

Forget security training, it's never going to solve Layer 8 (aka people)

Re: Layer 8 is Financial

Here's another one for your list (which was impressive - not heard of some of those)..

Chair to Keyboard interface error.

Re: Initially I was surprised at how low the figures were.

"Then I realised the test was on students. I bet if they did the same test on Joe Public the clickees would have been much higher"

That doesn't necessarily follow. When I was at Uni I was amazed at some of the people who managed to make it there - most of them were idiots.

On the other hand, my wife (who is technically illiterate) is quite capable of good security practice whilst browsing the net. She even managed to stop a virus mid-tracks once by unplugging the PC at the wall when it started doing something out of the ordinary - much faster than trying to shut the machine down and not something I had taught her to do either. Doing that corrupted the main virus file so it couldn't load upon reboot, allowing a much simpler clean up operation - only wish that were possible with laptops (and no, I'm not going to rip a battery out when it's powered up, are you mad!? :))

Logic Fail in Article

"trying to train staff not to click on suspect links,<snip> such training mean that some legitimate emails go unanswered "

I don't understand why not clicking on links (or attachments) means the inability to respond to an email. Perhaps I'm missing something there.

My mail settings are such that it doesn't show embedded pictures and any email links are simply copied rather than clicked on (links are disabled too).

None of which prevents me from responding to the original email or using an email address from the content, so what am I missing here?

Argos changes 150 easily guessed drop-off system passwords

Re: Argos data security

@PaulF : "Call centre droid: "I'm sorry, Zur, I can't give out any information until you confirm your identity. It's data protection doncha know.""

My response when that has happened is simply : "I'm sorry, you have failed to verify your identity as a representative of <company x>. Goodbye."

If the call was about a credit card purchase they are making sure was valid, I usually make the effort to get the call escalated to a supervisor that can speak without having to follow the exact words on a piece of paper/screen, If *that* fails, I just tell them that *they* called *me* and that I had already identified myself sufficiently to engage in additional data exchange, and also that if they block my transaction that I will be suing them for breach of contract.

If all else fails, I change bank - but it never reached that point thankfully. I ended up getting HSBC CC services to adopt the data exchange process into their standard procedure, so if they don't agree to do it - escalate - because the droid isn't following his training.

Re: Argos data security

If they ever try this - you can always compromise on the data exchange.

Eg they give you the first part of the address, you give the next; you give the first part of the postcode - they give the next etc.

If they don't show they have enough information already then they get to meet Mr Dial Tone.

Zero-day hole can pwn millions of LastPass users, all that's needed is a malicious site

Re: What goes around...

Answer: Keep all your eggs in one basket, but clone them and keep the clones locked away somewhere safe in case of emergency.

Oh, as long as the basket is in your possession of course, not sitting on a cloud somewhere playing a harp or whatever it does when you're not looking.

Re: It's Risk Management

"The sight's password reset function"

You need a password to see? What about audio?

Also, can I assume that the reset 'button' is pressed with a sharp stick?

Osram's Lightify smart bulbs blow a security fuse – isn't anything code audited anymore?

Re: IoT

IoT = Incapable of Thought

Re: "what kind of security review the products go through"

"Q. "Have you checked ... oh wait, there's a squirrel"

Oy, that's ADHD'ism that is!

Sounds like you need an upgrade Mr. v1.0

Re: Why is it

"it has TWO, read em, TWO functions"

I don't wish to dilute your overall message (it was not I that downvoted!) but a lightbulb has a SINGLE function, with TWO primary* modes of operation, 'on' and 'off'. :)

*Other modes are available on suitably engineered products combined with the correct control device. E.g. adjustable brightness setting ;)

Did the Russians really hack the DNC or is this another Sony Pictures moment? You decide

Re: Really?

"that's pretty sloppy, though. re-generating a server key isn't that hard..."

You are making the assumption that the same people manage the clone as the original.

Re: Malware doesn't wear a uniform

If some agency had managed to crack the Elite VPN server and cloned it, they could have used that clone for the attack.

In short, it could have been anyone. However, if evidence is only collected that supports your theory (i.e. that Russia did it) then it can look like a stitch-up which leaves people thinking that anyone *other* than Russia did it, unless it's a double-bluff :)