Posts by JCitizen

Investors fling fresh cash at Mike Lynch-backed Darktrace

backdoors

Yep

Space Station 'nauts dive for cover from flying Soviet junk

I had completely forgotten that one!

@ x 7 - If I had known as a young man that it was the satire it was, I think I'd have watched it. We were all tired of gummy space stories by then.

FBI updates Most Wanted cyber felons list, offers US$4.2m bounties

We need a modern day Simon Templar

But Rodger Moore hasn't paid his tax yet, so it will have to be someone else! HA!

Mastercard facial recog-ware will unlock your money using SELFIES

Re: What idiot thought this one up?

Also - what about a replay attack? If the app refused authentication for absolutely identical shots, it would prevent malware recording the session and simply replaying it.

Gates: Renewable energy can't do the job. Gov should switch green subsidies into R&D

Re: In addition(@Hans 1)

The original plant system that was adopted in the US (at least) was purposly designed to accept only a proprietary system of fueling. This was the only way they could get the greedy industrialists to actually make a working system. Obviously this has become an economical wreck, but if the proper design is built like Admiral Rickover proposed, the spent fuel laying around would become a valuable fuel source.

Re: So, to sum up, give my companies money...

Bill is full of it - wind has now reached coal in parity by cost analysis. This was made possible by changing the design of the blades to something that is very economical to manufacture. They make these things in my back yard so I'm pretty familiar with the industry. The ONLY thing holding this off becoming a primary source of power, is there is no way right now to store the excess energy that could be generated every day. Right now, if you visit a wind farm, you will see many towers with the blades feathered, or the generator locked, because there is no where to go with the load. There is almost never a day with wind below 7 mph here, and that is the limit to make enough difference to actually make money to receive a return on investment. It only takes 28 days, on average, to pay off a single tower, if the wind maintains a speed above that figure for the entire month.

I've been proposing gravity storage, as in building an electric cog railway into the Rocky Mountains, that can generate electricity on the way back down hill. If there were money used to that end, then I'd say it would be worth it. Wind energy subsidies have already been canceled by the US congress, because it is already making the Midwest very rich. They transmit all they can to California, but the grid can only take so much voltage at a time - hence the need for storage. Another idea is to turn the salt water caverns nearby, into a huge electric saltwater battery. I really think this is solvable - but the coal miner unions and the natural gas industry are in cahoots to cancel this advantage out. They have noisier lobbyists in Washington than the wind energy sector.

We need to know about the Internet of Things, say US Senators

Re: Smart TV

Anything capable of 1080p HDTV viewing has gobs of IAA hardware spy equipment built into it as a requirement for the cable industry for MPAA guidelines. Now for those of you enjoying over the air broadcasts, you would theoretically not be sending anything out, but the minute you plug another device into an HDMI port in the smart TV, I guarantee the MPAA is going to want to know about it. I'd wager there is some kind of broadcast ability for most HDTV sets built after 2008. Mine was built in 2007, but it still reboots the whole TV every time my cable box DVR comes on. That is part of the hardware requirements to attempt to foil anyone trying to copy content in the high definition DRM standard.

You may notice audio and visual artifacts and/or strange behavior depending on how many devices you have plugged into your HDMI ports. The MPAA is the all seeing eye - and you can bet they have a network of spying that makes all the government spy agencies of the world green with envy! I also suspect many bad actors, both nation state and corporate, that have cracked the system DRM uses to track content usage. I'd wager they have an entire other dark net setup on it, as well. If the spy transmission radio is not in the TV, it will arrive in the blu-ray player, or the home theater high definition amplifier/receiver, etc, etc.

As the US realises it's been PWNED, when will OPM heads roll?

@oneeye

Are you kidding? The Chinese have won contracts to service half the sensitive networks in Washington already! Ha! We had our @sses handed to us years ago!

Oh well of course!

We need Trump to win the Presidency, so he can yell, "YOU'R FIRED!!!". It won't do any good as it takes a 2/3rds majority of congress to fire a GS employee, but it will make everyone feel better! Heh! Heh!

Redmond: IE Win 8.1 defence destroying hack ain't worth patch, natch

Not doing us OR them any favors..

I'm surprised they aren't claiming EMET can cover the rest of the mitigation. Oh Well! They don't do themselves any favors for being flippant.

Vintage Ask toolbar is malware – and we'll kill Jeeves, says Microsoft

Ask toolbar is malware - PERIOD!!

I root out and destroy that nasty tool bar anytime I run into it!

Large Hadron Collider gives young ALICE a black-hole ray gun

Hawking is right but..

The type of chaos introduced by the Large Hadron Collider may be different from that of nature.

"The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name hath not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall come." - Revelation 17:8

Could we be initiating a time traveling chaos to the earth? Just wondering! God, who is the King of chaos, is not worried, he warned us of it after all!

NASA hands Boeing first commercial crew contract for SPAAAACE

Fall back option...

Anything they do to get off Russian dependency will be good - as launch failures mount one after the other from Baikonur.

Hardcore creationist finds 60-million-year-old fossils in backyard ... 'No, it hasn’t changed my mind about the Bible'

It has always seemed very odd...

To me that creationists bother to argue a story in Genesis, when it is plain to Biblical studies that many of the stories in the Bible are parables of basic truth. Why in earth they bother to argue against the science, when these stories are obviously representations of Gods plan. Why do they bother to judge God's methods; when many other cryptically written passages in the Bible are agreed by all to be simple symbolic languages about an over all truth? It is a fool's game to argue with non-believers on the subject, and I often wonder what their true motivation for judging God's methods is? Especially since that is dangerous to begin with! Bad enough to judge others when it isn't your job, but judging God is the ultimate sin!

MIT's robo-cheetah leaps walls in a cyborg hunt for Sarah Connor

pushed aside

There is quite a lot of video of this and other four legged robots being pushed over, and it didn't deter them any more than a live deer.

UK's data-snooping regulator steps down five months early

Re: Tin foil hat

Putting on my tin foil hat - maybe it wasn't an "accident" after all?

Weird ARCHAEAN LIFE FORM found at 'Loki's Castle' DEEP beneath Arctic Circle

Re: Showing my age

You mean Khyber Passé don't you?

Spotty dwarf Ceres BARES ALL in NASA's SHINY CLOSEUPS

Re: Bah!

Fer sure! Everyone knows God likes to throw rocks!

VAMPIRE SQUID romps stun scientists: Unique sex lives revealed

I'd imagine..

that most deep sea creatures filter food from above, with all the chaos happening way above them, all they have to do is wait for the detritus to filter down from the upper Epipelagic Zone ! Just imagine how many shallow sea creatures die without even becoming victims of some other hunter specie!?

Nork hackers no pantomime villains, but a hugely unpredictable menace

Attacks for PRC not uncommon...

Back in 2004, I noticed attackers coming from a PRC location that was the same military organisations that made Norinco SKS and AK rifle copies. I had enough information to trace it via Google Earth, back when governments weren't smudging the satellite pics. They were very confident and arrogant until it came out on world wide news, and then they switched to University IPs, and then the current building location all sources point to. It is comical they don't even try to use the bot net or Tor to hide the original attack vector. But who is going to really challenge them anyway?

Bulgarian Bill Gates blagger busted, banged up, again: report

Hey!

That's my card in that picture - who cares about Bill Gates, they got my card with my name on it! (Good think they don't have my middle initial!) :^0 !

RELICS of the Earth's long lost TWIN planet FOUND ON MOON

Re: Front row seat

Ach! Ye probably too young a squirt to know how to use a Tardis; and the bloody rotary dialler mechanism!

Re: Was there even a collision

Not to mention the fact that we have the only surviving liquid core in the near Sol system. Venus, Mercury, and Mars all have dead cores. Hopefully the Mars rovers will gather something that indicates a theory that could indicate the truth.

Our surviving internal heat on Earth, suggests to me that a collision happened about 4 billion years ago, or so. I suspect it wasn't so much an impact as a joining of celestial bodies moving in almost the same orbit and speed. This would explain why water is still existent ( besides the Van Allen belt protections - which also rely on a magneto-sphere)

A MILLION Chrome users' data was sent to ONE dodgy IP address

Like WOW! man!...

Hasn't everybody got tired of Google Chrome's spy shit??!! I certainly have, and don't use it anymore!!!! Doh!! I block Chrome cookies religiously on all my browsers - I'm sure a competitor will exceed their wayward ways, but then, I'm sure I can find an alternative by then too!

This will crack you up: US drug squad's phone call megaslurp dates back to 1990s

The world was not coming to an end before the drug laws

Until 1911 the US had no nation wide drug law to enforce. We were not falling apart back then, despite a history going back since time started; but somebody decided we needed this folly! I say it pays WAY more to spend money helping folks quit addiction, than landing thousands in jail at great tax payer expense to put them away for a term that might as well be for ever!! I thought the US was a Christian nation????

We here in the United States have not seemingly realized that just preventing people from driving drunk has reduced drinking to a tremendously low level!! I can't help noticing one beer and liquor joint has gone out of business every 3 months as more strict driving laws come into play. No out and out prohibition of any controlled substance is required, just the use of such in a civilized world!

Fsck those new emojis! Install iOS 8.3, OS X 10.10.3 NOW to squash all these security bugs

Just more irritating news!

More an more we are understanding all operating system require due diligence!

This tool detects then ATTACKS evil twin access points

The MAC can be spoofed..

I'd was sure I read these evil twin access points could reside on your own network. I can't see how you can get in trouble for Dos targets inside your own network.

Got an Android mobe with a virus? Congrats, you're The One Per Cent

Apps are the usual point of entry.

Even the best operating systems can be pwned if any apps have holes in them. In the desktop environment, applications like adobe flash, and java are favorites for criminal exploit kits. In a Windows PC machine, using a limited account with all applications and the OS fully updated; it has been very difficult to find exploits that can take hold in my honey pot lab. However malware, can sometimes run with the same rights as the user and still do damage to their finances or other personal integrity.

NASA: We're gonna rip up an ASTEROID and make it ORBIT the MOON

I predicted this..

in a paper I wrote in high school, on meteor bombing. At the time, I cheerfully pointed out, we don't have to have radiation to have a weapon just as good as the atomic bomb - just put translinear accelerators on asteroids and position them for later on, when a quick insertion propellant can be attached to said asteroid for future targets in war.

Of course this should be outlawed internationally, and I think it already is. Perhaps this could be seen as a violation of the space based weapons platform treaty? However, I honestly think this is the beginning of the next true "gold rush" for space minerals; that could signal a huge push by space entrepreneurs wishing to exploit mineral resources for what is actually a cheaper way to mine; and if properly regulated, could be cleaner methods for earthlings! As long as we don't clutter up the orbits of our little earth moon system, it could be something on the scale of the '49ers gold rush!

Marathon race ace FOUND ON MARS – NASA boffins overjoyed

Re: Congrats to the engineers and drivers

Yes! Drinks all around for the boffins who done it! >hic<

Chrome trumps all comers in reported vulnerabilities

Secunia PSI...

always reports everything is A-OK! Why? Because I keep up with patches. Yes Secunia PSI will squawk if you never do maintenance, if it can't update it automatically it will tell you to manually do it. Some files just have to be deleted. If you know how to use Secunia PSI it can be very useful, but some comments here lead me to believe some don't. Yes Secunia PSI is for Windows, but the article was taking about the Chrome BROWSER! Google Chrome is just fine now, and updated not long ago for the Freak vulnerability and the last flash update, although it uses its own version of flash, as a built in HTML capability.

I never use Secunia PSI to manually update an application, I use the target application's console, or I use File Hippo's Application Manager, or Avast's scan for outdated software. Any one of them will lead to the solution. After fixing a patch, you must scan again with Secunia PSI if you want the alert to clear, otherwise you can ignore it until Secunia notices the change eventually. I'd almost believe that if you do this religiously and run as a limited user on a Windows machine, you could almost get away with no anti-malware, or anti-virus, as this makes you almost zero day invincible. CCleaner could be the only tool you'd need for complete protection after that, as long as you run it before using a browser for banking, or log off and/or reboot.

However - I'm paranoid, so I use a lot of different methods of building a defense in depth. IBM's free end point protection(formerly Trusteer), can make a big difference too. And no - I'm not a shill for IBM. I'm for free stuff that works!

On 50th anniversary of first spacewalk, Aurorae light up two planets

Thank you Anonymous Custard!

That was an extraordinary story!! When I was a kid, the news didn't like reporting on Russian successes - I was starved for space stories, and would have enjoyed this report immensely! Thanks for providing that link! TGIF!!

Re: Aurora on Mars?

That's exactly what I was going to say. It would seem having magnetic lines of force would help channel the ionic activity. Apparently all it takes is an atmosphere, and a thin one at that. With no Van Allen belt protection, Mars is wide open for radiation.

Microsoft RE-BORKS Windows 7 patch after reboot loop horror

Re: Thank you Mr. Nadella

That's what I say - I've lost count of the borked updates in the last three patch cycles!

SpaceX lofts two all-electric ion-drive comsats to Clarke orbit

May be slow now but...

if you give ion drive enough fuel and time, it can reach a speed about as close to the speed of light as you are going to get with a vehicle that has any mass at all.

Bad movie: Hackers can raid networks with burnt Blu-Rays

Re: Part of HP Bloatware

For HP users, there should already have been an HP program called "DVD play BD" in the programs list, and it should automatically come on anytime you play a blu-ray. As soon as Secunia PSI tagged PowerDVD as vulnerable I got rid of it - which severely pissed me off, because I had payed for an upgrade trying to avoid that. The stupid program got in a fight with all the DRM spies the IAA put on my computer when I bought it, and also seemed to be trying to destroy my built in HP software. So GOOD RIDDANCE Cyberlink. See if I ever try to spend a dime on their crap ever again!!

ASML‬ plays down mystery hack attack

Re: Possibilities

@imanidiot - Perhaps you could enlighten us and explain why a circuit could not be "piggy backed" onto a lithography plate? I knew a technician that was visiting a lab at one of these locations, that saw an obvious "modification" of a chip design through a microscope; when questioning it, they threw this visiting technician out of the lab.

ICANN switches off dot-word admin portal amid security leak scare

Perhaps they should be called..

ICANNOT!

Russia considers keeping its own half of the ISS alive after 2024

Re: Why go to the moon?

Nah! We'll all be crispy crittered by a gamma ray burst event, and the whole solar system will be uninhabitable.

Maybe someone will perfect warp drive! ;)

Not even GCHQ and NSA can crack our SIM key database, claims Gemalto

Re: No air-gap?

There's more than one way to jump an air gap - I think Snowden has featured some of them.

Google looks to scrape away scumware, as only it can

Re: Download.com and the rest

I hope you don't include MajorGeeks in "the rest". I rarely have a problem with crapware over there; in fact I can't remember one incident, although I'm sure they get by occasionally.

Visa's tokenisation scheme to debut in Australia

Not sure this is the end all solution..

Or even close - Just read on Krebs on Security about it and see what you think for yourself. There is no mention of P2P encryption, which depending on how you implement it with the token, could possibly make all the difference in the world - doubt Australians would want to afford that - it would probably be horribly expensive.

Watch a hot, speeding space alien explode all over Earth's Beaver

Re: re: The meteor ... didn't hit Earth so much as we hit it

I do have a problem with that "from behind" report, as the factoid of 45,000 mph sounded way to fast for that vector!

Security hawker gives the bird to mid-east hack group

The lack of posts so far -

Pretty much indicates how much of a threat we feel so far. I'm surprised Kaspersky even filed much PR on this one. I'd defer, in the future, if I were they.

A cookie with a 7,984-year lifespan. Blimey, Roy Batty only got 4!

Re: ... don't forget the LSO "Super Cookies"

That's right - this is really old news, as CCleaner has been removing all known LSO's for years now! I have never read anywhere, that it can't verifiably remove any tracking data no matter what form.

Obama turns back on spooks: 'I'm on the side of strong encryption'

Huh?

Maybe in your narrow point of view yah - but all we hear on this side of the pond is daily, how he has overstepped his authority! But I also notice no one is actually posting a constitutional challenge to what he has done yet. So I reserve any opinions until he is challenged in the courts.

Re: Refreshingly intelligent statement

I have not heard such good words from our President for years! This is the one time since his last election cycle that I've heard such encouraging words! The only way toward freedom in the world is complete informational security for all; including the rebellious lot among us! History has proven that we already had the 911 miscreants in our sights before it happened, but we just had too much protected information gathering in place, to coordinate a defense. Now we have gone ham handed toward the less freedom friendly side of the scale - and not really anymore safer in the whole of it! I would rather have as complete a guarantee of free speech and reasonable expectation of my 4rth, 5th, and 10th Amendment rights; even if it meant a few terrorists got through! Live free or die - I always say! As freely as you chaps on El Reg communicate, I'd expect you'd agree! Maybe not!

Check Point buys bare-metal security upstart Hyperwise

Just a lift up on CheckPoint

I've been using CheckPoint's Safe@Office UTM appliance for years, and even weathered concerted attacks for some of those periods during 2005 to 2008, where by they were never able to break through, despite some mistakes on my part, which I quickly learned how to mitigate.

All during this period, I was supplied monthly attack analysis on who, what, and where these attempts were spawned. My top attack IP address put them in China at a military installation, which was also responsible for industrial manufacturing of the veritable AK-47 that was popular in the US as a semi-automatic sporting rifle. I thought this to be a bold attitude, but then it migrated over the years to universities in China, and finally to undefined addresses of commerce ISPs inside China's borders. Now I can't guarantee you will have such an exciting time in the near future - but I have a feeling this is why they (CheckPoint) are attempting to continue to stay on the bleeding edge of security technology.

I cannot speak for enterprise level companies, but as a small business, I can only say that we were given an edge over some larger businesses in our protection. And this gave us a survival stature, that brought us over the top. I'm not actually saying they had the best tech out there, but they had something a completely clueless small business could make it on, and if only you were aware what was going on, you'd realize just how good it was. It is the lazy or ignorant owners way to a front row security posture.

Jeb Bush, the man who may lead the US in 2016, dumps Floridians' private data on the web

Re: JeB Bush? TL;DR

I actually think Jed Clampett would do a better job as President of the US! HA!

Re: Voting market stifled for lack of choice

Not if I can help it. I go to the caucuses and vote for the candidate I want in the primary elections. However, I'm only one member of one state - you can't control all 50 of them. We actually do try to select who we want before the election starts - Don't folks in the UK do the same?