Posts by CommanderGalaxian

Air-gapping SCADA systems won't help you, says man who knows

Never seen a SCADA system compromised yet...

...without some random technician plugging in a "sheep dipped" USB stick or "clean" laptop absolutely hoaching with malware.

French say 'Non, merci' to encryption backdoors

"So, the watered down alternative proposal is for everyone to provide a set of spare keys to the police, who may use them to enter when they please, in the name of national security of course."

Why exactly do you think insurance companies insist that you have British Standard compliant locks?

Hello?

Ross Ulbricht lodges (another) appeal of Silk Road verdict and sentence

Of course, confession evidence has never been coerced and never been shown years later to have been falsified. We shouldn't worry though on this one, as the main prosecution investigators are now convicted fraudsters. What could possibly go wrong when the state employs people of such high integrity?

Remember - "beyond all reasonable doubt".

Brit 'naut Tim Peake preps for Space Station launch

Not the 1st Brit in Space or on the ISS

At last. Finally. Finally, Finally. An article that doesn't repeat the utterly incorrect: "Tim Peake will be the first British Astronaut in [Space|ISS]".

Well done El Reg for accurate reporting in the face of Establishment and Mainstream Media hooraying propaganda.

No root for you! Google slams door on Symantec certs

Re: What's the problem?

So why are Symantec so bothered when they say they are removing these certs...sometime...soonish..anyway...?

US government pushing again on encryption bypass

Post proof or STFU

"...public concern over both has led for calls to limit the degree of privacy afforded all users of mobile phones."

No. Seriously. WTF? Please post proof of this. Who's really behind your pay cheque?

Goldman Sachs to patent Bitcoin

Goldman Sachs to patent Bitcoin

Seriously.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b0d8f614-997c-11e5-9228-87e603d47bdc.html

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

Re: The word is out - TOR is compromised!

TOR has never claimed to be immune to types of traffic flow analysis (i.e. the "intercept all traffic" thing). The problem is balancing usuability in real time with anonymity. If you want to play with those that are designed to deal with that kind of attack, you need to look at using CypherPunk remailers and FreeNet.

IT contractors raise alarm over HMRC mulling 'one-month' nudge onto payrolls

Re: This does not compute

No. That's not the case. You could be on the payroll after one month.

Believe it not, this is actually a concession by the taxman/George Osborne.

In the previous recent statement on redefing the defintion of self-employment, freelance work and IR35 status, HMRC had proposed, from day one, to ignore contracts, ignore existing case law and ignore existing status tests (mutuality of obligation, substitution, direction and control (that's the how, rather than what and when)) [pass anyone and you are *not* an employee].

What HMRC proposed (and may still be proposing) was contacting the client and asking them whether or not they thought the contractor was under the employer's direction and control - knowing full well that somebody in the personnel department is not in a position to make this judgment - but would almost invariably reply "Yes" - and would instruct them to add the contractor to the payroll and begin deducting tax and NI as though they were an employee - unless the contractor agreed to have their own PSC payroll supervised by the engaging client - and make tax and NI deductions as though they were an employee of the client.

The contractor would be free to appeal the decision and if HMRC agree that he/she should be treated as self-employed, then they will refund what's due once he/she has done their annual tax return.

Re: Long overdue

"how will this kill of the IT industry? you can still be a contractor, you can still do work for multiple companies, just the loopholes currently used to minimise the tax paid will be reduced or closed. You won't get away with earning £10K per year and taking £X0(0)k in dividends paying just 20% (or what ever) tax. Maybe you'd have to pay the same rate of tax as permies."

First off, the income tax position is relatively neutral regardless of whether you pay by salary or by dividend - what is now being proposed (among other things) is in effect an *additional* tax on people *who work* and earn and pay through dividends - noting that those who do not work but collect dividends will only pay at the normal prevailing rate(s).

Additionaly, expenses such as travel, B&B, other accommodation etc which are incurred as part of the job, will no longer be tax deductible. This rule will not be applied to large companies - only freelance workers.

It is certianly going to make it very difficult for anybody to take a contract anywhere other than local.

Shadow state? Scotland's IT independence creeps forth

Re: What is driving this?

Simple - in the case of CCTV - many do not work now and need to be replaced. You're hardly going to waste money replacing them only to find they are incompatible with police control rooms.

And the Scottish Government does not have the intention of bringing in any sort of ID card scheme. This constantly seems to get exaggerated into something Orwelian when the intent is to rationalise different numbering systems across health care systems.

As for the Named Person Scheme (whose intent is to pick up on signs of abuse earlier rather than later) - those leading the campaign against it are not Civil Libertarians - they are the usual cluster fuck of anti-vaxers, home schoolers and right wing christian fundamentalist wingnuts.

PGP Zimmermann: 'You want privacy? Well privacy costs MONEY'

Re: What you pays for...

"My statement to Mr Zimmerman is that there are these things called RIGHTS... And we have a right not to be unaccountably spied on. Those are RIGHTS, Mr Zimmerman..."

Mr Zimmerman is not your enemy. Why are you shooting the messenger?

White House 'deeply disappointed' by Europe outlawing Silicon Valley

Hold On!

Does this mean Indian companies won't be processing and storing our data now?

Police Scotland fingered for breaching RIPA code 'multiple' times

Re: Hold on there commander

Westminster elections are First Past the Post - and with 50.1% of the vote SNP took 56 out of 59 Westminster seats in Scotland (which is 95% not 89%).

But blaming the SNP for UK Westminster election rules seems bizarre.

Holyrood elections (which are the ones of relevance to the day-to-day governance of Scotland) are a combined First Past the Post system and a form of Proportional Representation (known as Additional Member System) - which means it is difficult (though not impossible) for any one party to hold an overall majority of seats; so sorry, no one party state results, despite the rantings of the swivel eyed zoomer Unionists and their lackey running dog press.

Here's an explanation of the electoral system in Scotland (complete with worked examples) if you are really that interested: http://wingsoverscotland.com/ams-for-lazy-people/

And yes, the Quango system needs fixed - yet another problem mess inherited from the incompetent Labour unionists. Funny how they said it was the dog's bollocks when they were running the show, but now that the boot is on the other foot...

"Nice to see the SNP's brownshirts are doing their job."

Please expand - Anonymous Coward - as Police Scotland report to the Scottish Police Authority - a non-political quango (set up by legislation passed by Tory, Liberal, Labour, SNP, Green and SSP in the Scottish Parliament) that is not under the direct control of the Scottish Parliament let alone the Scottish Government let alone the SNP?

Point of Fact here.

The Chief Constable of Police Scotland's contract ran to September 2016. He is voluntarily stepping down in December 2015.

Jump before you are pushed?

Symantec fires staff caught up in rogue Google SSL cert snafu

I smell shite.

Why would you fire somebody for a mistake? Anybody can make a mistake. Why all the drama?

AVG Censorship

AVG Censorship

There's an article in Slashdot (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/1319201/avg-proudly-announces-it-will-sell-your-browsing-history-to-online-advertisers) noting that AVG will now sell on your browsing details to advertisers (apparently just for the freebie version).

However, what is really amusing, is that the paid version of AVG tries to block me from reading the Slashdot URL by informing me that "Could be a Trojan horse Hosts".

A similar article critical of AVG on Softpedia (http://news.softpedia.com/news/avg-proudly-announces-it-will-sell-your-browsing-history-to-online-advertisers-492146.shtml) also triggers the AVG anti-virus alert.

Bye, bye AVG.

Global warming stopped in 1998? No it didn't. If you say that, you're going to prison

Something to hide?

Why would anybody want to stifle open debate about something by threatening to have their opponents thrown in jail?

Unless, of course, they have something to hide.

That's the normal sort of tactics used by the Robert Mugabe's of this World.

Astroboffins EYEBALL 13 BEELLION-year-old galaxy far, far, farthest away from Earth

You tell 'em, fuckchops.

Re: Lyman-alpha

Isn't that the whole point, that it is "wow" early?

The Onion Router is being cut up and making security pros cry

Re: Makes sense

But how will your developers be able to access sites discussing C Programming, Linux and Wireshark? Seriously.

Ashley Madison spam starts, as leak linked to first suicide

Re: Spam started...

"...forced to torrent it and even over tor with encrypted..." RTFM - https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea

MIT boffins identify Tor hidden services with 88 per cent accuracy

Re: surprised...

One of the "design constraints" for TOR is that it can be used for real-time web browsing. Once you start adding in padding, it makes things less responsive.

New study into lack of women in Tech: It's not the men's fault

Don't Worry!

This is all a much ado about nothing. The politically correct have a solution - boys too are now being told that they don't need to bother studying maths and science at school if they want a career in Science or Technology or Engineering or Medicine.

Ashley Madison hack: Site for people who can't be trusted can't be trusted

Re: Using words too lightly

"Terrorism - the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce"

Isn't that how the police go about their jobs? No, serioulsy, think about it.

Facebook flings PGP-encrypted email at world+dog. Don't lose your private key

Re: Security from whom?

You misunderstand how PGP works - you are uploading your public key - whether to Facebook or a public searchable directory of keys - that then allows anybody (NSA/GCHQ included) to send you an encrypted message - but only you can decrypt that message with your private key.

The public key cannot be used to decrypt a message sent by somebody else to you.

Adult FriendFinder hack EXPOSES MEELLIONS of MEMBERS

This could get random.

I've no idea what boxes I ticked...must go check.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B97e2XXxKdM

Ukraine conflict spilling over into cyber-crime, warns former spy boss

So as an "expert" he has stated what was already known to a large degree, by most anyone in the computer security industry - but as an "expert" shouldn't he be proposing some sort of plan of action?

Sony tells hacked gamer to pay for crooks' abuse of PlayStation account

Don't assume that people who purloin details splurge massive amounts. Afterall, how many people actually check there credit card bills thoroughly - and how many would simply think - if they see an unusual 49.99 - "...damn, must have been something I bought, can't remember what it was now though...".

Belgium to the rescue as UK consumers freeze after BST blunder

Stuff BST

I'm guessing you don't live in Scotland - since if you did - rather than accussing "Jock farmers", you'd find just about everyone can't be arsed with BST and would prefer if the damn time was just left at GMT the whole year round - and for exactly the reason you've managed to get arse about face - BST makes it darker in the mornings the further North you live - so as far a light levels go, people in Scotland *are* effictively getting up an hour earlier than people in the South of England.

Princeton boffins sniff Tor users' IDs from TCP ACKs and server sweat

TOR is a rather better VPN than most VPNs! A 2009 study compared various anonymity systems. VPNs in general came up short. Presumably you are envisaging using a commercial VPN to connect to the entry node to obfuscate things further - then it depends on assumptions - the most significant being that those wishing to deanonymise users haven't already backdoored or are actively monitoring the VPN.

Using a VPN with TOR is a bit like putting a layer of 64bit encryption on something already encrypted with 4096 bit encryption. It's better, but the effort to deanonymise the VPN traffic will be a lot less than the effort to deanonymise TOR traffic.

Snowden leaks LEGALISED GCHQ's 'illegal' dragnet spying, rules British tribunal

Re: soo.. illegal things are ok as long s they were done in the past?

No, no, no....not that either - it is because a third party told on you and thus it became known what you had done, that things went from illegal to legal (and henceforth for ever more).

Previously I had thought that sort of thing (witness evidence) formed an excellent basis for prosecution - but apparently I was mistaken.

Fascinating really when you think about - if you rob a bank, then just as long as nobody knows it was you, then you are a criminal, but as soon as somebody grasses you up, that act of grassing by a third party automatically causes you to become innocent!

Superb!

David Cameron: I'm off to the US to get my bro Barack to ban crypto – report

>"Next up, putting locks on your doors to be banned as it may hinder the police when they urgently need to search your house without a warrant."

Hint: there's a reason why all locks made to BSI standards are trivial to "pick" without leaving a trace of damage. Google for "bump key".

Re: We will try!

What you need is for the SNP to stand some candidates south of the border.

Peers warn against rushing 'enhanced' DATA SLURP powers through Parliament

"Even in a country where the Monster Raving Loony Party still exists, the Greens are the ultimate in pissed-away protest votes."

And that's exactly the sort of attitude that suits the established parties just fine.

What do UK and Iran have in common? Both want to outlaw encrypted apps

Re: Risk vs benefit

You've based your figures on a seriously flawed assumption - that terrorism and encryption are the same thing.

Erik Meijer: AGILE must be destroyed, once and for all

The cheapest time to fix bugs is at the requirments phase - before you've even started coding. The most expensive time is once you've shoved the "finished" code out the door.

Computer misuse: Brits could face LIFE IN PRISON for serious hacking offences

"A perpetrator, sitting in their bedroom in London..."

Doesn't she mean an office in Cheltenham?

Hey, non-US websites – FBI don't have to show you any stinkin' warrant

Re: A USA Inc marketing ploy?

Surely then this means it is perfectly OK for some foreigner to hack into US servers if they are looking for evidence about something?

Radio hams can encrypt, in emergencies, says Ofcom

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I can see everybody who might use one of these rushing out to get a HAM licence.

https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/

Smart meters in UK homes will only save folks a lousy £26 a year

Re: Irrelevant

>>Re: Irrelevant

>>You will. You will be made to. And if you continue to resist, your name will be added to the official list of dissenters.

Vote YES. September 18th.

Uber, Lyft and cutting corners: The true face of the Sharing Economy

IR35

"By contrast, London’s biggest firm Addison Lee provides its own cars, but registers its drivers as self-employed."

Surely the whole point of being self-employed is that you provide your own tools and equipment to do the job? Anything else and you are a "disguised employee".

This is the sort of practice that allowed HMRC to bring in the IR35 legislation in the first.

Boffins attempt to prove the universe is just a hologram

Re: Sock gnomes

And, of course, there's the other phenomena of searching high and low for your car keys, then after a while discovering that they are in a place you have already searched.

NEW, SINISTER web tracking tech fingerprints your computer by making it draw

Re: and Ghostery tells me,

"Ironically, the page on which Ghostery was reporting was devoted to an Edward Snowden article..."

No irony there at all. Whoever reads that page ends up on a list. And then gets tracked wherever else they go on the web.

Dungeons & Dragons relaunches with 'freemium' version 5.0

There's just no satisfying some folk.

FBI: We found US MILITARY AIRCRAFT INTEL during raid on alleged Chinese hacker

Re: So

I guess they could have done the same as the Chinese guy who used to work at the same place as me. Just drag and drop endless amounts of functional specs and test documents into an online Chinese portal. When quizzed about it he just said that it was to translate English documents into Chinese so he could better understand them. Management shrugged their shoulders and said - "oh ok then, whatever".

UK gov rushes through emergency law on data retention

Re: No problem for me then !

"Can someone actually provide a detailed definition of "dangerous indiviual"."

Well according to the most recent information, that would be anyone who:

1) Uses Tor

2) Uses Tails

3) Reads Linux magazines

4) Uses Linux?

5) Reads websites whose content is privacy or security orientated.

For example - a website like this https://prism-break.org/en/

HTH.

Virgin Media goes titsup AGAIN. The cause? Yet MORE DNS strife

What sort of tubes downvote correct techincal information?