* Posts by cotsweb

19 publicly visible posts • joined 24 May 2012

British Airways: If you're feeling left out of our 380,000 passenger hack, then you may be one of another 185,000 victims

cotsweb

Re: Close call?

The malicious code wasn't generic, it was specifically crafted to work with the BA website then added to BA's copy of a third party library.

I still haven't seen any report about how the code got into their codebase, that bit at least looks like malice. Including the malicious code on the payments page may just be incompetence.

What's that smell? Oh, it's Newegg cracked open by card slurpers

cotsweb
Alert

How did they get the code on the page?

It isn't 100% clear to me but it looks like they managed to edit the aspx page to include the magecart script. This is similar to how they amended a local copy of the modernizr script on the BA site.

The script could be blocked by Content Security Policy but if they have access to the server they may be able to change the CSP headers too.

Does anybody know how they got the code into the page?

@Spazturtle NPM dependencies are definitely a problem but from what I have seen that isn't what happened here or in the BA case. at least not directly.

Boffins' keyboard ELECTROCUTES Facebook addicts

cotsweb
Coat

Re: Rather than going through all that analysis

<q>[1] Other timewasting URLS are available.</q>

Including El Reg of course.

NSA gets burned by a sysadmin, decides to burn 90% of its sysadmins

cotsweb
Joke

Re: 1000 System Admins?

The agent smiles and says "that's what they want you to think".

Mozilla links Gmail with Persona for email-based single sign-on

cotsweb

Better for most people

In my experience most people use just one or two passwords for everything and just one or two email addresses too. We all know that this is a bad thing but I can't even persuade my wife (who is quite tech savvy) to change her ways; what chance with the rest of the world?

Persona isn't perfect but it is a lot better version of the single password everywhere option. Who knows we might even be able to persuade people to change their passwords occasionally if they only have to change it in one place.

Jimbo Wales: ISP smut blocking systems simply 'ridiculous'

cotsweb
Stop

Re: MP in 'completely clueless' shocker ...

Extreme content should have adult verification so that children cannot access it. This stuff is damaging and will cause trauma to any ones mind.

What constitutes "adult verification"? I can't think of any viable way of verifying that a person is an adult on the internet.

PM writes ISPs' web filter ads for them - and it must say 'default on'

cotsweb

Re: Top 4 ISPs only

Yes; I used to be with Nildram before they got swallowed by Pipex and then as you say...

Pipex. Wait, TalkTalk did what to Pipex??

I have been very happy with Zen for several years now and they still look strong, my main worry is that the politicians may eventually see past the top 4.

cotsweb
Go

Top 4 ISPs only

A quick search tells me my ISP is only number 8 in the list.

Perhaps this will be a self-selecting measure if only those who use BT, Virgin, Sky and Talk-Talk will be affected. If you care enough about it you will change to a smaller (and almost certainly better) ISP.

The majority will be "protected" and the rest of us can carry on taking responsibilty for our own lives (and those of our children).

Gadgets are NOT the perfect gift for REAL men

cotsweb
Go

Re: Dutch Oven...

That was a usage of "Dutch Oven" that I was unfamiliar with, have an upvote for making me smile and for helping me stay out of trouble

Bigger than Twitter: Opera releases rebuilt Chromium-based browser

cotsweb

Dragonfly isn't dead

The thing I like best about Opera is Dragonfly, other browsers have similar tools but Dragonfly works best for me. I am a little sad about the move to webkit but I understand the reasons, but I am much sadder that Dragonfly isn't in Opera 15.

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/opera-features-and-release-cycle

says And one more - Dragonfly is not dead though we cannot give you more information yet.

I do hope it makes it into 16 or 17 I would hate to lose it. In the meantime I will stick with Opera 12 which still works fine.

Facebook's Winklevoss Bros file to launch Bitcoin Trust for investors

cotsweb
Thumb Up

Re: Hoping for the greater mug to come along?

There's another forum I'm a member of ...

Sounds like a great forum for advice on when to sell your investments, simply do the reverse of the advice given and you should do quite well.

Korean doctors: Smartphones really ARE doing your head in

cotsweb
Childcatcher

Re: TBH

Please come back to this post once your kids have reached say 10 years old and let us know how it went.

Google goes on the Blink in WebKit fork FURORE

cotsweb
Happy

No vendor prefixes in Blink

I found this interesting; from http://www.chromium.org/blink

"Historically, browsers have relied on vendor prefixes (e.g., -webkit-feature) to ship experimental features to web developers. This approach can be harmful to compatibility because web content comes to rely upon these vendor-prefixed names. Going forward, instead of enabling a feature by default with a vendor prefix, we will instead keep the (unprefixed) feature behind the “enable experimental web platform features” flag in about:flags until the feature is ready to be enabled by default. Mozilla has already embarked on a similar policy and the W3C CSS WG formed a rough consensus around a complementary policy."

So no more vendor prefixes! (at least in Blink) That will make the CSS tidier but it does mean we can't use shiny new features as soon as they become available in one browser.

MasterCard stings PayPal with payment fee hike

cotsweb
Unhappy

"most will see this as an embedded duopoly using its market power to undermine competitors"

Yep. Though Callam McMillan might be right about the competition commission, and/or the EU blocking it on this side of the pond.

Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC

cotsweb
Happy

Re: NZ Has No TV Tax

It looks like Jolyon Smith and I have swapped places, it must be part of some programme to keep the world from spinning off it's axis.

NZ used to have a similar system to the UK but the smaller pool of licence fee payers wasn't sufficient to fund what was essentially a copy of the BBC. They had to add commercials to the NZBC channels to make up the funding shortfall, for a while they had the worst of both worlds. I guess you could say they still do but at least they don't have a separate licence fee.

I think the BBC is great but I hate the licence fee, the collection policy is very aggressive and it must be very inefficient to run a whole extra tax system to fund one goverment department.

Outlook 2013 spurns your old Word and Excel documents

cotsweb
Stop

The changes are trivial

The original blog post only seems to be talking about import/export functions, which I must confess (as a non-user) I didn't even know existed.

<quote>

Outlook has traditionally supported importing and exporting data to and from many different file formats. Many of the formats Outlook has supported are outdated and are no longer in mainstream use. Outlook will continue to support comma-separated-value (.csv) files as well as .PST files, but other file formats are no longer supported.

This list includes:

- ACT! Contact manager files

- Word 97-2003 (.doc)

- Excel 97-2003 (.xls)

- Outlook Express archives

</quote>

This may be important to some users but I suspect not to the majority.

Metric versus imperial: Reg readers weigh in

cotsweb
Pint

" I can't see Brits welcoming signs in euro-kph."

But what if you changed the actual speed limits at the same time, 70mph to 130kph on motorways for instance?

I'll have a pint but I don't care if it is actually 560ml.

Cash in the asset: Nokia may flog global headquarters in Espoo

cotsweb
Meh

Re: Move out.

I can't imagine that there are a lot of other businesses in Espoo who could use a building like this. And of course Nokia have to live somewhere, in their current position building a new office (even a more efficient one) probably isn't viable.

I think Nokia are probably stuck with occupying it whether they own it or lease it.

World+Dog to demand ever larger tablet-phones

cotsweb

Re: How about

Sounds a bit like the Asus Padfone to me.

Smartphone when you want one, tablet when you want more and you can add a keyboard if you actually want to do some work.

Looks to me like the best of all worlds except for the price.