Posts by Doctor Syntax 42420 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"but there are plenty out there that silently do their work for weeks before activating"
Do you have a citation for the frequency of this? It keeps being raised but all the reported outbreaks seem to be pretty well instant or nearly so. According to TFA this one spreads for an hour before kicking in but that's very different to working for weeks.
"it could be argued that the NSA protected the business world by keeping it a secret."
This is an argument for security through obscurity. The main problem with this is that you have to maintain the obscurity for ever. By far the best approach is for the vulnerabilities to be notified back as soon as discovered, fixed and the fixes incorporated in future products and in updates to existing ones.
Why?
Clicks File. Ooh, look, Open Remote File is an option. Select that, Click on Add service. Google Drive is actually the first choice there.
If you don't want to put your business in the hands of MS or Google for storage you could always turn to NextCloud, either running your own copy locally or sign up with a commercial vendor to host it.
"There are many in the (mainland) UK would happily cut the cord"
That could have happened a century or so ago had it not been clear that the result would have been an extremely bloody civil war. It might have settled matters but at a much higher cost than anything that's happened since.
"Yet, bizarrely the majority of voters claim that's what they want. Obviously they don't understand how to fill in a ballot paper, or lie to pollsters."
Back in the day it was hoped that PR voting would ensure moderates and even cross-community parties such as Alliance would thrive. It didn't work.
"it does essentially come down to the fact that English/Dutch protestants invaded the island in the 1680s"
A bit more complex than that. You appear not to have heard of the Elizabethan plantation nor of the Ulster Scots (where do you think that name Paisley comes from?). Then, of course, the Scots did come from Ireland in the first place - there's been toing and froing across the North Channel since it opened up (e.g. Argyll is derived from the name of an Irish tribe). You simply can't put a marker into the chain of events and say everything that side is right and everything the other is wrong. Attempting to over-simplify a situation is a sure-fire way of making things worse.
"and needs to get work done?"
Yes, they certainly need to get work done now to recover from this.
I take it you've no personal knowledge of Linux or other Unix-like systems. I've got a little secret for you. Most of those of us who use Linux have also had experience of Windows, including sorting out the problems it's caused for friends and family. We can actually reach an informed opinion of what actually works.
In my case I was using Unix systems to do real work years before Windows was thought of. Lab management, logistics management, industrial control systems, all grist to the mill.
"someone talking about it attacking the MFT of NTFS - that's a more severe attack than the MBR."
Providing the files themselves aren't corrupted something like photorec reads the sectors, tries to work out what they are and copies the results out to fresh media. Obviously it depends on the extent to which the files are fragmented. If the files are encrypted then it depends on whether they're overwritten. The only experience I had with this was with ransomware that wrote out the encrypts as new files and deleted the old ones which, of course, just marked the files' sectors as free but didn't do anything to the contents. The only problem was sorting out real images from junk heap of odds & sods from the browser cache.
"They should be jointly and severably liable. SBS and Sopra Steria cocked this up. Just send them the bill and leave it to them to sort out who pays what."
From TFA The NHS Shared Business Services is a joint venture between the Department of Health and Sopra Steria set up in 2004 to provide support services to the NHS.
It's not SBS & Spora Steria, it's DoH & Sopra Steria so any costs involved in working out how to split the costs will be at public expense, as will the cost of fixing it.
"I presume the suggestion is that there should be new US legislation allowing them to retrieve things held overseas without bothering to consult with that nation's government/law enforcement."
Given the attitude they've taken I'd have thought they'd want US legislation that makes it quite clear that the US's jurisdiction is limited to the US and that the appropriate treaty arrangements must be used.
" Even if there were anything in Irish law to prevent Microsoft's US employees handing that data over if they have access then there's no way to enforce it."
1. Big fines - and even bigger if it gets strung out until next May.
2. Privacy Figleaf completely shrivelled out of existence.
"The issue, overall, is fairly complex"
It shouldn't be. There are treaties in place which lay out due processes to be followed which would have enabled the relevant prosecutor to get the information they wanted without trampling on anyone else's sovereignty. For reasons best known only to themselves - arrogance, ignorance or indolence - the US authorities have opted to ignore them. The apparent complexity arises out of that.
"${US Co} contracts with ${NonUS Co} for data center and storage service located physically outside the US ... Where does the US government go for assistance when they find a US-based (alleged) criminal enterprise is using ${US Co}'s service for its email and data processing needs?"
To exactly the same place where they should have gone in this case. To the courts of the country where the servers are operating via the MLAT which exists for this exact purpose.
It's called due process of law. Of course other countries' courts might take a dim view of that well-known US abuse of process, the fishing expedition.
"So you ask the database to delete something, then you have to ask the database to *really* delete it."
Or maybe really, really delete it. Or even really, really really delete it.
My brief encounter with Oracle simply left me with the feeling that it was thoroughly obfuscated. I'm glad I was able to make my living with saner alternatives.
"Still, it does sound a little like blaming the victim though, doesn't it?"
Not really. They were both abusing basic security, albeit in two different ways. If, say, this guy had been more adept at covering his tracks and there was a current employee might easily have come under suspicion. Changing the passwords ought to be routine and is in everyone's interest.
"outside ... its design parameters (since corrected)"
If I were to trust my life to an automatous vehicle (and with trials permitted on public roads I might have no choice) I'd want the design parameters to cover what actually can happen on the roads, however unlikely. A vehicle from one carriage way turning across another at a road junction doesn't sound like something that ought to have been outside design parameters in the first place. Correcting design parameters after obvious omissions have come up against reality isn't the best way to proceed. And just wait until one of these ventures down a Devon lane with passing places.
"t is worth mentioning, btw, that current production systems use optic and/or radar "vision", with LIDAR being very much an emergent technology in this application. At least one manufacturer (Tesla) currently has no plans to use LIDAR in their cars."
And radar is surely going to be subject to the same attacks. The "dar" in their names is a clue - it means "direction and ranging" in both cases. Optical sensors are also going to be subject to dazzling, at least in low light levels.
"At least one manufacturer (Tesla) currently has no plans to use LIDAR in their cars."
And Tesla has already been shown to miss a large object in front of it under adverse seeing conditions.
"You'd slow to a stop and pull over to the best of your ability, using your last memory of the road ahead."
Not so easy if it's on a multilane road and is now blind to traffic between itself and the side of the road. If multiple vehicles are being attacked there may already be a stationary vehicle at the side of the road waiting to be hit from behind.
"Microsoft are constantly trying to force me to use Edge and Bing, just because I use Windows... How is that ANY different?"
Yes, other market abuses are available. But why do you expect a news article to deal with other issues which aren't in the news today (and if they were would have their own article)?
The first sentence of the second paragraph of the executive summary (executive summary - six and a half pages: do executives read that far?): "In enacting section 1201, Congress aimed to create a legal foundation to launch the global digital online marketplace for copyrighted works."
Is everyone OK with putting an act of Congress and global in the same sentence?
"The paper isn't really free, it's paid for by the advertising companies. The assumption is that every paper handed out will be read by at least one person, and thus the fee set for the advertising space."
True. But the public (including the accused*) aren't party to the agreements so why should they be bound by them?
*Unless they're running the sort of circulation-boosting scam mentioned elsewhere.
"'Free' is not the same as 'worthless' or 'without value'. Just how many commentators on here don't realise this is outstanding."
I think you're missing a couple of points here. One is that commentards are free to apply their own evaluations of the said rag and do find it to be worthless other than as a raw material. The other is that if the papers are offered to be taken away free of payment without clearly displayed T&Cs than it becomes difficult to characterise taking away large numbers as theft.
