Posts by Doctor Syntax

How four rotten packets broke CenturyLink's network for 37 hours, knackering 911 calls, VoIP, broadband

Re: ...they were generated by a switching module in a node ... for reasons still yet unknown...

Obviously a Huawei box must have been involved. No good ole American kit would ever do such a thing.

KNOB turns up the heat on Bluetooth encryption, hotels leak guest info, city hands $1m to crook, and much, much more

Re: NOB!

"Knob - Door handle thing"

In this case one that opens the back door.

TSO Host no closer to solving customers' email issues as Brit firm pops up on more blacklists

"they know hosting back to front apparently"

Perhaps it would be better to know it the right way round.

Breaker, breaker. Apple's iOS 12.4 update breaks jailbreak break, un-breaks the break. 10-4

Re: So, unc0ver is open-source ?

And didn't bother with regression testing.

It will never be safe to turn off your computer: Prankster harnesses the power of Windows 95 to torment fellow students

Re: More chaos

Or one girlfriend with multiple birthdays?

Re: BOFH potential for sure

It sounds as if the difference between that and TFA is that in your case there was someone, you, who understood what was happening. In the TFA it cost the school money that could have been better spent elsewhere calling in someone to fix things that were perceived to have been broken.

Re: We once...

But only really works if your name actually is Dave (or Rodney, of course).

Canadian ISP Telus launches novel solution to deal with excess email: Crash your servers and wipe it all

It's somebody else's computer

If you want to be sure of access to your own email save it locally and do whatever you feel necessary to back it up. Otherwise you're reliant on what somebody else thinks is adequate.

The Pwn Star State: Nearly two dozen Texas towns targeted by tiresome ransomware

Re: Officials suspect a coordinated extortion campaign

I suppose it's a bit like why armed robbers hit banks rather than, say, second-hand bookshops. It's where they keep the money. If city administrations are poorly defended and provide essential services it's going to be more lucrative than going after Joe Soap's holiday snaps.

Linux Journal runs shutdown -h now for a second time: Mag editor fires parting shot at proprietary software

Re: Yes , there are a few in print

A very wise move.

"they'll come begging you to fix it (with money)."

More likely they'll just take it over.

Re: Yes , there are a few in print

Let me throw in another old-time memory: Unix Review, especially for Stan Kelly-Bootle's column.

Arrow? More like Boomerang, amirite? Computacenter buys back tech disposal biz it disposed of

Re: I just love it

Have to agree but they're amateurs. Consider the BT -> O2 split -> acquire EE at the cost of giving Deutsche Telekom a pound o shareholders' flesh.

Science and engineering hit worst as Euroboffins do a little Brexit of their own from British universities

Re: Well, you're leaving

There's an element of the previous Prime Minister in your argument with your "you(plural)". We didn't all vote the same way and it's unreasonable to base an argument or, indeed a policy, on that. Even a lot of former Remain MPs seem to have adopted that over-simplification. The fact is that the country was split down the middle. The Remain half is not going to let BoJo have an easy life when reality becomes unavoidable and no doubt that Remain half is somehow going to be rather more than half when "but we never voted for this" becomes a factor.

Here's to beer, without which we'd never have the audacity to Google an error message at 3am

"Google does still support some rudimentary Boolean logic in search terms"

But they're doing their best to fix that.

How powerful are Russian hackers? One new law could transform global crime operations

How about using some of those wonderful Boeing hardware filters to control all connections to Russia from the outside world. Stop malware but allow good connections.

Ransomware attackers have gone from 'spray and pray' to 'slayin' prey'

"it seems like a lot of organisations never learned."

I'm sure they did. The hard way.

WTF is Boeing on? Not just customer databases lying around on the web. 787 jetliner code, too, security bugs and all

Re: Irresponsible

"You should not try to rely on security by obscurity."

And even if you rely on that you've at least got to make a better attempt at obscurity than putting it where somebody can find it.

Re: At what point...

"or even scarier for Boeing, let them be present, let them prevent the hackers from exploring certain areas"

That assumes they even know where the problems are.

Re: certification

It's self-certification all the way down.

Re: One Network to Rule Them All

Since when did vendors need a legitimate reason if it might affect convenience and costs?

Re: Delusional

"this really is a case of three strikes and you are out."

And in the case of passenger aircraft manufacture even that seems to err on the side of generosity.

They should be working really hard to rebuild trust but in that the usual PR platitudes are counter-productive.

"hardware filters that only allow data to flow between networks rather than instructions or commands."

Are these "instructions and commands" analogue or different in some other way that distinguishes them from "data"? Normally when stuff's being transmitted it all looks like data.

Transport for London Oyster system pulled offline after credential-stuffing crooks board customers' accounts

Re: We encourage all customers not to use the same password for multiple sites

You know the Iron Triangle for development? Security is an Iron Line: Convenience, security, pick any one.

Re: We encourage all customers not to use the same password for multiple sites

Unfortunately all too often "Contact us" is a web form.

Re: We encourage all customers not to use the same password for multiple sites

For the real win, the CEO's email address if you can get it, failing that marketing.

1Gbps, 4K streaming, buffering a thing of the past – but do Brits really even want full fibre?

There's also the little matter of getting fibre the last few yards let alone the last mile. In my own case the house is unusual in that it's the only one where the phone cable is underground, the neighbours all have overhead distribution. However, in my daughter's street and the surrounding streets all the houses were built with underground feeds and I suspect it would require planning permission to put in an overhead distribution system. Failing that all the roads and drives would have to be dug up and relaid. Would the householders be willing to pay for that? I doubt it, given that FTTC gives sufficient bandwidth to support her working from home.

The bigger problem would be in getting better bandwidth to the more remote houses. The FTTC network has been extended past our house so that the next hamlet now has a cabinet. However there are a few fairly remote farms. FTTP might be as economical as FTTC for these.

Reminder: When a tech giant says it listens to your audio recordings to improve its AI, it means humans are listening. Right, Skype? Cortana?

Re: But, but, but ...

It's a good question. One obvious answer is that it could do so by only intercepting audio from the one who gave permission didn't opt out. But does it work like that?

Re: I forwarded this article ...

"He does not recall ever giving Microsoft permission to record his sons' games conversations."

Translation: Giving Microsoft permission = not opting out.

It sounds like another GDPR case.

Your mid-week infosec news bonanza: Cisco bugs, VMware-Nvidia guest escapes, KDE hijacking, and more

"blockchain powered ecosystem that allows for health data ownership,"

So don't say you weren't warned.

US court nixes Google's $5.5m court payoff over Safari Workaround – no one affected saw cash

Re: Who gets the money?

"putting a cookie on a browser doesn't constitute a monetary damage to the owner or user of the iphone."

They're trespassing on the phone. If someone were to trespass on your land by parking their car on your drive you'd probably feel you had cause to sue them for trespass. At the very least you're suffering damage in that if they'd asked for your agreement you could have charged rent and that amount has been lost to you. In this case they're occupying storage, processing on the phone and traffic on airtime. That's even before we get to the value of the data gathered. And that's only monetary damage which seems to be the only form you recognise. Maybe you don't consider the loss of privacy as a damage; why not?

Re: Good

There's a difference between a fine, a punishment arising out of criminal law, and compensation, which these settlements are supposed to be.

If somebody crashes into your car they may be fined for careless driving - a criminal offence. That's quite separate from your claiming on their insurance - a civil claim.

Even tech giants find themselves telling folk not to use default passwords on Internet of S**t kit

Re: Strontium

http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=181665&Y=761785&A=Y&Z=120

Re: Waste of effort

Experience is a dear teacher but there are those who will learn at no other.

Or to put it less elegantly, reality can come and bite you in the arse.

Re: Waste of effort

"will aggressively resist any attempt to teach him."

But may eventually be taught by experience.

Re: Strontium

"Strange way to spell Russia?"

Maybe they think it's Scotland.

It's the makers who need to be forced to force the punters.

Off somewhere nice on holibobs? Not if you're flying British Airways: IT 'systems issue' smacks UK airports once again

Re: Anyone notice........

Let's hope they're more numerate when it comes to fuelling the planes.

Microsoft hikes cost of licensing its software on rival public clouds, introduces Azure 'Dedicated' Hosts

And not just in the US.

Re: Yay, Azure is now old enough to become Oracle

AIUI it's a path Microsoft have been down for a long time. It's just another step along it.

We've, um, changed our password policy, says CafePress amid reports of 23m pwned accounts

Re: own domain and use a unique LHS

"however I'd still like to be allowed to choose a username instead of being forced to use the email address as my username"

The extreme worst case is a site-issued username generated from other data such as a concatenation of real name and DoB (yes, I have a site that uses that).

Keepass will generate passwords that look like line noise. Perhaps a useful addon would be an option to generate usernames, preferably pronounceable ones.

Is "outright statement" in yours?

"And before some of you attack me about having to access your passwords from multiple locations, not all of Internet users are such power users."

Restricting where and by how many devices you access stuff that you think deserves good security should be a part of your security strategy. Otherwise you're trading security for convenience and we know where that's likely to lead.

"I wonder, if we shouldn't be using unique usernames and passwords for each site."

He's an expert and he's only wondering? What will it take to make him sure?

Of course we should. We all used to until sites decided to use email addresses as user IDs. And it's even worse when some sites - looking at you PayPal - hand out the email address to other parties and can't even see what's wrong with that when it's draw to their attention. Given that most folk only have one email address anyway the password is the only meaningful credential. No wonder people wiitter on about 2FA. With any reasonable policy about user IDs it would be 3FA.

Cloud computing's no PICNIC*: Yep, biggest security risks down to customer, not provider

Rice-Davies applies

They would say that, wouldn't they?

If the customers get things wrong so frequently it has to be asked if the vendors are doing enough to help them get it right.

Seagate spins off a bit of cash from slowing disk drive business

"The disk drive business's revenues have remained more or less flat"

Disks are supposed to be flat.

Mines the one with the round pockets.

Jeff Bezos feels a tap on the shoulder. Ahem, Mr Amazon, care to explain how Capital One's AWS S3 buckets got hacked?

Re: Remember - Cloud computing

"organisations where IT is an enabler for their core functions, and is often being pushed to reduce costs"

Where IT is so deeply embedded in those core functions they are IT businesses whether they like it or not and whether they care or not and attempting to reduce costs is not a good idea. They are businesses whose entire business model depends on having customers trust them to hold their data. That's not a trust they can weasel out of by pushing it onto a third party, nor can either of them get out of it by finger pointing.

Storied veteran Spitfire slapped with chrome paint job takes off on round-the-world jaunt

Probably sound a bit weird too with a V6.

Y2K, Windows NT4 Server and Notes. It's a 1990s Who, Me? special

Re: Even to this day...

I never heard of Hallifax and the one true Halifax isn't in Scotland.

Re: Shutting down the wrong server

"it's never happened again"

Extreme percussive maintenance on the KVM to ensure that?