* Posts by diodesign

3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

Microsoft's axeman Nadella fills baskets with 2,100 fresh heads

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Nadella fills baskets with 2,100 fresh heads ?

Sir,

Your suggestion that the headline was optimized for search engines so as to nestle the story within coverage of a bloodstained medieval terror campaign is, to use a technical term within the industry, complete cobblers.

Respectfully yours,

C.

iPhone 6: Most exquisite MOBILE? No. It is the Most Exquisite THING. EVER

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Hmmm.....

It is neither.

C.

Permabit builds shrink-your-SAN dedupe box

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Shame..

Just to be clear: As louisPTC has mentioned in earlier comments, he works for Permabit.

C.

Speaking in Tech: 'I'm an Apple guy and I COULD CARE LESS about the iWatch'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: How much do you care?

It's just a quote, mate. Have a listen.

C.

What the BLOCK? Microsoft to gobble Minecraft-maker 'for $2bn'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Absolute stark raving, swivel-eyed, dog fingering insanity

"The company has revenues of $2.9 billion, but a tiny profit of $150 million."

It was $290m.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Absolute stark raving, swivel-eyed, dog fingering insanity

It was $290m in profit.

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Sellouts! Fans snap up iPhone 6 Plus pre-orders to avoid store queues

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: How many articles now?

"Tired and bitter journalists brow-beaten into churning out articles a company they loathe"

Actually, we quite enjoy it.

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Sun's MASSIVE solar storm belch to light up Earth's skies

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: OK so

The leading edge is moving that fast, not the whole flare.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: A small clarification, please

It will likely intercept us.

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Apple's Watch is basically electric perfume

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: industry subpar knock-offs

Yup, there are 32-bit ARM and x86 CPUs with 40 or 48-bit address buses to physical memory.

(As an aside, 64-bit virtual address space gives you a bit more headroom for applications. Whether or not that's really useful in a handheld device is another thing for debate.)

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BBC Trust candidate defends licence fee, says evaders are CRIMINALS

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: hah keep it !!

"There are *no* advertisements on the BBC. That is kind of the point."

Sorry to be picky, but overseas, such as here in San Francisco, the BBC website and TV channels have adverts. :-)

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Apple's big bang: iPhone 6, ANOTHER iPhone 6 Plus and WATCH OUT

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: iBonk surely

AppleCart!

They should have called it AppleCart.

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Is that a 64-bit ARM Warrior in your pocket? No, it's MIPS64

diodesign Silver badge

"So, not simultaneous then - or have I misunderstood something?"

I suppose I should have made clear that in four virtual core setup (four hardware threads), they feed into two execution queues that do all the hard work simultaneously. A two virtual core setup feeds into one. The hardware scheduler keeps the queues topped up so something's always happening, in theory.

C.

(Posting on my day off hence no Reg badge; I cba logging into work.)

Comcast-Time Warner merger: CloudFlare's fare flare fair warning

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Franklin

Imagine my concern ;-)

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Galileo! Galileo. Galileo! Galileo frigged-LEO: Easy come, easy go. Little high, little low

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: NoneSuch

Don't worry, it amazes me too.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: They are not insured, for a good reason

Please don't forget to email corrections@thereg if you spot any problems.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Schadenfreudean Slip?

Deliberate.

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Super Cali signs a kill-switch, campaigners say it's atrocious

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Nice try

One step ahead of you – see the footnote on the story.

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6 Obvious Reasons Why Facebook Will Ban This Article (Thank God)

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: AsherGoldbergstein

Hell! No! You! Leave! Our! Yahoo! Headlines! Alone!

C!

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "cancer ruining internet journalism"

There's no need to put a hyphen in there. US or UK English. Inserting a hyphen will ruin the meaning.

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Wall Street's internet darlings require an endless supply of idiots

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"There's no other reason to own a copy of that book signed by Hitler himself."

(Pssst, don't let FrankAlphaXII know about the history shelves in the library. Or the biographies. Or the autobiographies. Or the library. He's going to go apeshit.)

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Silicon Valley jolted by magnitude 6.1 quake – its biggest in 25 years

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: I feel for the grocery store workers and wine cellars

Judging by the pics of smashed bottles and fallen kegs and barrels, this quake clearly hated booze.

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ISIS terror fanatics invade Diaspora after Twitter blockade

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Medieval terror bastards?

Whatever

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What a pain in the mass! Euro craft Rosetta to poke its probe in 10-BILLION-tonne comet

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Mephistro

Billion is always 1,000 million.

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Microsoft refuses to nip 'Windows 9' unzip lip slip

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: FrankAlphaXII

"What exactly does a desktop/laptop OS made by Microsoft have to do with a new iPhone?"

Headlines and deadlines. It'll be interesting to see the two go head to head for coverage, if they happen at the same time.

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Need a green traffic light all the way home? Easy with insecure street signals, say researchers

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Sorry that handle is already taken

"This needs to be qualified by a statement that they've taken over a particular system"

Which is explained in the article.

"Can be used on any traffic signal site, anywhere in the world"

Read the article. What you've claimed is not reflected, overall, in what's published here.

C.

RealVNC distances itself from factories, power plants, PCs hooked up to password-less VNC

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Does Yahoo really go around taking screenshots of peoples desktops?

I think the keyword here is "similar" – it's in the interests of web giants to avoid indexing or accepting email, etc, from obviously insecure hosts.

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Did you swipe your card through one of these UPS Store tills? You may have been pwned

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: What OS & server platform was infected?

"Any idea what the OS and server platform that was infected with the Malware was?"

No. I did ask the UPS PR team on the phone as desk editor. They wouldn't tell me the malware type. When I asked: "This is Windows malware, right?" There was a pause and the reply: "I couldn't possibly comment."

As soon as I find out, I will push out an update. UPS right now is in alert-affected-customers mode. Once they've got through the financially tricky stage of supporting pwned citizens, they'll release the techy details – or so they tell me.

C.

Speaking in Tech: Meet the man who SURRENDERED to Facebook

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: JDooley

"I actually *was* just catching up with some old friends."

I wouldn't worry, that's kinda how SiT is supposed to go :-)

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What happened to the Citrix story ?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: What happened to the Citrix story ?

Sometimes we agree to publish stuff on a particular day if it means we can ask questions and get answers ahead of an official announcement being made. It means our take on some development appears at the same time as the vendor's, rather than hours later. There are pros and cons to this approach.

In this case, a story ran a day early. Check again tomorrow, I'm afraid.

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Microsoft Azure goes TITSUP (Total Inability To Support Usual Performance)

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Total Inability To Support Usual Performance (TITSUP)

"May I have permission to officially use this acronym when describing issues to our company's customers?"

Go for it: IT giants ask why we use the word 'titsup' in headlines to describe services suffering outages, some even going as far as to suggest we should stop using the word. Today we spell it out.

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Supervalu supermarket stores stung by sneaky sales system scammers

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "Wait, there really is an ACME company?"

There's quite a few.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Two different organisations?

Sure, that's why the article says "It's not the first time the Supervalu brand has been targeted."

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Time to ditch HTTP – govt malware injection kit thrust into spotlight

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Come on El Reg.....

"Not even SSL on account creation????"

Yes, we know. Hopefully this will change.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: HTTP?S?

Yes, The Reg doesn't serve over HTTPS. Hopefully, we can change that soon.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Missing information

"What systems can it infect?"

You name it, your government can own it.

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Hackers' Paradise: The rise of soft options and the demise of hard choices

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Cynic_999

"It is impossible to have hardware segregation to prevent malware attacks because the hardware cannot know the legitimate purpose and scope of an application"

You're absolutely right, IMHO.

C.

Intel forced to shoot down viral 'Israeli boycott' whopper

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Boring Green Re: Anon Cluetard

"Time for more multiple posts to try and work out what has upset the PCness of El (or should that be Al-) Mod."

Stone me, stop your crying.

C.

AMD's first 64-bit ARM cores star in ... Heatless in Seattle*

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Why compare it to a Xeon?

"A fair comparison would have been to the Atom C2758"

Ah, good spot - fair enough. I'll add it in.

C.

Flying United Airlines? If you could just scan your passport with your phone, that'd be great

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Why not

"just use your facebook login?

Don't joke, the UK government floated the idea of using Facebook accounts as official ID for accessing public services.

Exclusive - Facebook and other social networks could be used by British citizens to sign into public services online

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Hacker crew nicks '1.2 billion passwords' – but WHERE did they all come from?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Hold Security

I kinda feel sorry for Alex Holden because he's proven in the past to be an investigative infosec bod - such as helping to uncover the massive Adobe hack with Brian Krebs.

Announcing a Russian gang had, one way or another, obtained a lot of passwords and then asking ppl to join an ID-theft alert service is going to rub people the wrong way.

C.

Now even Internet Explorer will throw lousy old Java into the abyss

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: WTF ????

Calm down, love. You're causing a scene.

From Microsoft's IE Blog (it's linked in the article):

"As part of our ongoing commitment to delivering a more secure browser, starting August 12th Internet Explorer will block out-of-date ActiveX controls."

The keyword here is "out-of-date". Yes, IE blocks dodgy ActiveX controls but what's significant here is that MS has decided to rule out all but the very latest Java plugins. So if you'd OK'd an earlier version, tough: it's now out of date.

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Not a load of Tosh: 5TB 'surveillance drive' from Toshiba hits shelves

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: It'll outlive me!

Yup (according to Tosh).

C.

no commenting?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: so we have a new bug

Nah, that was to avoid a flamewar in which we get loads of people reporting each others comments. In the end, I donned the fire-proof suit and switched the comments on.

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BANGKOK-BLOCKED: Thailand's dictators 'ban dictator sim Tropico 5'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Too good to be true?

It's only right to have a healthy level of skepticism. If we can stand it up any further, you'll be the first to know.

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The Register editorial job ad

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: A tabloid journalist for El Reg with Fluency in English eh

"in case you weren't so aware, a tabloid press / outfit, is generally associated with sensational news"

We're very aware of it :-) I love being accurate and in-your-face; it drives boring people mad.

"I wonder why El Reg would require fluency in English"

Editing is a PITA if the writer isn't fluent in the language. Plus, you need to be fluent to be funny, interesting and informative in your writing.

"I learned from what I consider the best."

Whom, mate.

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Plug and PREY: Hackers reprogram USB drives to silently infect PCs

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: I call semi-bollocks

"This isn't a tool for the S'kiddies, this is potentially grown-up stuff."

Absolutely. This isn't for Anonymous. This is for cops and g-men. Strike up a conversation with someone at a conference, you've had a few beers, he or she suggests you whack in a USB stick to copy over some stuff you'd be interested in. You're savvy, you know you've disabled autorun and open documents in a VM or a non-sensitive machine. You're confident.

Doesn't matter in this case. Game over.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: This is nothing new... this has been done for years!

"This type of hack has been done for year."

Again, like the modified mouse above, this is custom hardware. You have one evil USB plug, there. Just one. What are you going to do? Go around plugging it into everyone you want to pwn?

With this BH exploit automated, you can modify USB sticks using purely software again and again and again, whenever a device with a supported micro-controller is plugged in to an infected PC. That's the point of this BadUSB.

"We need better reporting."

I need a better reader.

C.

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Errmm.. old news?

"There was stuff about this *years* ago. I saw a demo of an 'infected' USB mouse infecting a PC it was plugged into"

You're talking about this? Look at it. It's been *physically* modified. This BH talk is about rewriting the firmware in an undetectable manner.

Imagine automating the process of rewriting the firmware using just software: every time a supported stick is plugged in, and your malware is on the PC, you get to infect the stick's firmware silently and reliably.

Which means, in theory, you can spread your software nasty from thumb drive to thumb drive (if they're using supported micro-controllers), creating an infection.

Having said that, this process is not /that/ new - see the links in the story to older presentations. What I believe is new here is reliable and realistic firmware rewriting that can be demonstrated on stage and weaponized.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Michael C

"I may be missing something but how does the malware get on the USB device in the first place?"

I imagine you reverse engineer a vendor tool that updates the firmware, so you can see the magic packets needed to put the device into program mode. You then either read the firmware off the chip (if poss) or download a firmware update and work out what the raw binary is.

From there, you work out how the chip works internally: where registers are and so forth. You add in your new code, hook it up so it runs, and then upload that modified firmware to the controller in program mode.

Now you're all set. After that, make sure the PC malware you install has the capability of automating the above. And now you're cooking on gas.

IMHO it's the reverse engineering of the firmware and the firmware programming that's impressive. You shouldn't trust USB sticks anyway on machines that are sensitive. If you genuinely care about information security, you'd compartmentalize your data and systems so that plugging a random USB thing into your gaming PC doesn't screw over your machine with your PGP keys.

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