Posts by Doctor Syntax

BT installs phone 'spam filter', says it'll strain out mass cold-callers

Re: 100% success record

"It's worth a shot - honestly, try it."

OTOH £10 on a PAYG SIM lasts a long time if you have a fixed line.

Re: Free as part of Line Rental? Thought not.

"This sounds like complaining about BT doing nothing about the problem, and now complaining that it is doing something about it."

It does indeed. However a little voice in my head keeps saying "It's free now but for how long?".

Re: answer machine

"can't they just employ a guy to go through whocallsme and block the numbers people flag up as spam?"

What do you think this "huge computing power" is doing?

Re: A Typical Scam Call I Get

"Most of them give up after five minutes, lightweights!"

I just leave the phone for a good while & then hang up; usually they've done that themselves. But I did have a very persistent/dumb company (double glazing, of course) where the sales manager rung back to say the line went dead.

Just give up: 123456 is still the world's most popular password

Re: 123456....

"serious look guys, I finally see the forum is classed as secure."

And has been for about a week. What's more there's a secure version of the front page but the little vulture icon to take you back to it takes you back to the http address. Still, things are looking up.

Re: Any site just relying on passwords should be blamed instead

"That's why banks still hand out those calculator style gadgets."

Mine handed out one and I still have no second factor.

The only time I had to use the useless piece of crap their site refused to accept the result so I had to go into a branch.

Re: Just get a password manager..

(how do you do italics?)

Like that.

It's < em >stuff< / em > without the spaces.

Re: Just get a password manager..

"There are some who will let you buy things without creating an account, and since retailer accounts seem to be used mainly so that a: they can remember your credit card number and b: they can send you marketing emails, frankly if such an option is offered, I'll take it."

I use frequently changed email addresses to kill the marketing emails if I have to create an account.

Like you I prefer accountless transactions and using PayPal is one way of ensuring they don't keep the credit card number but the downside is that PayPal provide your PayPal email - which is also the PayPal login ID - to the vendor. I've had to change my PayPal address twice because of this. I took this up with PayPal; from what I was told they have T&Cs to forbid this but can't be arsed to enforce them. Bastards - twice over!

Re: Just get a password manager..

"Devil's advocate here, but don't these systems actually store all your data online so that you can share passwords between devices?"

Certainly not the password manager I use. If you have multiple devices then share the safe directly, device to device. That may be less convenient than you wish but increasing convenience will almost certainly involve a trade-off with the security you're looking for.

Re: Obvious action, non-obvious why not?

if they emailed users with "we don't want you to lose your hard-earned money/house/job, and we noticed an insecure password and would you please change that to a better password (and here's how)."

And being the bankers they are, they'd embed a "helpful" link in the email, further training their users to click on any link in any random email purporting to be from them.

Why do banks etc persist in training their customers to be phished?

Re: Don't Just Blame Users

The "data dumps" that were perused for these popular passwords; how did they extract plaintext passwords from properly encrypted

In a lot of cases the passwords may have been encrypted but not salted. In that case rainbow tables, lists of common passwords encrypted by popular algorithms, can break them. A strong password is one that's not going to make its way into such tables.

Not only do sites apply odd rules without disclosing them, they also don't disclose whether they encrypt information, whether they salt it etc. The safest bet is to assume that they store it in plain text and that they're easily hacked. Use a password safe and allocate strong passwords everywhere.

Re: Don't Just Blame Users

"Which means that either they're ignoring you, or they're writing their passwords down on paper."

Teach them to use a password safe. That will allocate high entropy passwords and store them. You need never even have to read and type the password.

It means you always have to use your own PC? Even better.

Calls for UK.gov's tax digitisation plans to be put on the back burner

"Their co-operation and trust are both hard won and easily dissipated."

I haven't trusted HMRC or its IR predecessor for decades - does any business?. And I believe the correct word is "coercion".

Brilliant phishing attack probes sent mail, sends fake attachments

Re: Hide extensions for known file types

That option should have been removed the moment it became clear what the dangers were.

Outage-hit Lloyds Bank in talks to outsource data centres to IBM

Re: Amazing that this still happens

"The play today is to automate all of that infrastructure at hyper scale through a Google or Amazon cloud service vs just firing relatively expensive people, hiring relatively inexpensive people"

Same thing, different tech.

Eventually the survivors will be those few business with the wit to realise that to do things well, from both the financial and customer service points of view, requires recruiting and retaining good people and that that requires good pay. A lot of businesses will go to the wall in the meantime.

Re: Outsourcing...

"Unfortunately it'll be too late to even contemplate insourcing when Lloyds looks like its circling the drain due to inability to keep up with the market and various scandals caused by poorly cobbled together IT provided by a giant who cares not about the its customers customers & general lack of IT integration with the core business."

The sad thing is that it won't matter because you've also described the competition.

US Marines seek more than a few good men (3,000 men and women, actually) for cyber-war

Civilian managements who don't want to pay the going rate also have problems recruiting staff. Maybe he should do what they do: outsource to India. What could possibly go wrong?

Microsoft swallows up AI language biz Maluuba

Being bought by Microsoft isn't always the route to success. Even if EEE wasn't the intent there's also the Nokia fate.

Promising compsci student sold key-logger, infects 16,000 machines, pleads guilty, faces jail

I suppose it depends on how the product is marketed. If I sold sodium hypochlorite solution as household bleach I wouldn't expect trouble. If I sold it as something suitable for finishing off someone you didn't like in an unpleasant manner I might reasonably expect a knock on the door PDQ. Same product, different purposes.

In this case we're not told how he marketed it. However, there's no mention of this little sideline on his CV page and he registered a different domain for the job so that might be indicative, as is the fact that he took steps to conceal it from anti-virus S/W. He just didn't do a good job at covering his tracks.

Trump's cyber-guru Giuliani runs ancient 'easily hackable website'

Re: A great slogan for the next election ...

"How exactly do you intend to get back to the times of Calvin Coolidge?"

Well, there are plenty of voters here in the UK who think it's possible to get back to....when was that exactly?

Re: "Do the Ruskies have footage of Giuliani also paying prostitutes to piddle on each other?"

"But is it real, or is it just written just to sound real?"

Does it make a difference?

Re: Awhhhhhh, how sweet

"It simply matters who you know, what you have done for them in the past and most importantly what you can do for them in the future."

It's the American Way.

Re: Big Brother Security to the rescue

"another person who clearly knows nothing about his remit."

Given those reports about his own website I think he's about to learn something PDQ, even if only how little he knows. The skiddies won't be able to resist. The downside is that once he's paid someone to sort it out he'll think he's an expert.

EE brings 1,000 call centre jobs to UK and Ireland

Re: Its cyclical

"Every big firm has done it."

Why do they always appoint CXOs with learning difficulties?

Oh, for F...acebook: WhatsApp, critics spar over alleged 'backdoor'

Re: Have you tried Threema for end to end encryption?

"They are a Swiss outfit and take privacy very seriously."

OTOH http://www.silicon.co.uk/security/swiss-us-privacy-shield-eu-202995?PageSpeed=noscript

"an explanation that has failed to mollify critics."

It's not surprising when you preface your explanation with a paragraph of self-serving dribble.

Strike day struck off as Fujitsu and Unite negotiate job cuts

It's good to talk... with Acas

Providing you know your ACAS from your NALGO.

Mr Angry pays taxman with five wheelbarrows worth of loose change

"5Whbs shall equal $3,000"

You can do better than that. The obvious unit, from the article, is a mature cow. As the article states that it was actually more than a mature cow rounding has to be taken into account so it's a spherical cow.

EU policy makers consider FRAND licensing of machine-generated data

Fair's fair.

It seems reasonable to me. If my data has been anonymised (allegedly) and is then part of what's being licensed I should be entitled to my share of the license fee.

MongoDB hackers now sacking ElasticSearch

"Send to this email your service IP after sending the bitcoins"

So they don't have any way of connecting the ransom payment with the service? The obvious first step for an admin would be to send the email and hope to profit from someone else's payment.

Now that's a Blue Screen of Death: Windows 10 told me to jump off a cliff

Re: Am I the only one

"If you click on the location it will then open a Bing search in Edge when you log in."

Very useful for someone trying to find out where to jump from.

Re: Methinks MSFT (and some here) are taking this too seriously.

"It's an inspiring quote."

It's the sort of quote that lots of employers put on posters around the building thinking it'll inspire their employees. The employees simply regard them as insults to their intelligence.

Re: If you're running Windows 10...

Why would the above be a problem in an operating system that is a "viable alternative to Windows"?

Because there's always some smartarse H/W maker that decides to do things their own way, needs a special driver and only provides a Windows version.

Everything wrong with IoT (and how to fix it) – according to Uncle Sam

It sounds like an exceptionally bad committee document. Everybody wanted to say something different, they couldn't agree so everybody gets what they wanted to say in there, even if they contradict each other. e.g. get your act together vs multistakeholder let everyone stick their oar in.

The top doc, the FBI, the Geek Squad informant – and the child porn pic that technically wasn't

Re: For the sake of argument...

"but isn't it also possible the pictures were in fact of a legitimate medical nature and the feds, perhaps colored by that one deleted image are looking at it all wrong?"

This is a point which seems to have escaped a few commentards who seem so sure of his guilt.

" If I had to send a laptop for repair now I would remove the hdd, I have nothing to hide but it's my data and ONLY I control it."

The problem in this case was that the laptop wouldn't start. The problem may well have been on the drive so removing it wouldn't help. And whilst you and I might be happy to remove a drive before sending it in for repair the average punter wouldn't. So the point is that although the tech can see what's on the disk they've no business looking at anything that isn't strictly appropriate to the task so in practice they shouldn't see other stuff.

"The term you're looking for is a strict liability offence. They were adored by the pre-2010 Labour government, because they are so cheap to enforce and look so good on the crime clearance statistics - no need to worry about mitigating circumstances, if it's there, you've got a conviction."

Let's hope someone takes one of these to the ECHR whilst there's still a chance.

Re: Re. slack space

"Ah, but so rarely find."

Not in my experience. And two of my acquaintance were murdered.

Re: $500 enough to put it there yourself?

"If the evidence is found to be planted you'd be guilty of possession of child porn yourself."

But the article clearly states that it wasn't.

Re: @Sonny Jim "To be clear, our agents unintentionally find child pornography"

"You do bring up a question... what was the reason for the tech to look at the hard drive? That would go back to the reason why he was called."

We're told that: the computer wouldn't start. Looking at unallocated blocks seems an odd way to sort that out.

Re: @Sampler ... Chain of custody

"If the image was planted... you would know "

Who's "you" in this sentence?

The owner of the computer would know but it's then one person's word against another.

I spent years examining evidence in criminal cases. Quite often there were conflicting statements about a case. I could look at evidence and form opinions about how what I saw fitted one statement or another (or both or neither!) and about how it might have happened. But I was very often aware that whatever I thought could have happened, was likely to have happened etc only the people involved actually knew and at least one of them, possibly the complainant, might have cause to lie.

So the weakness of your argument is clear to me. Maybe you lack that experience.

There are also a number of details missing here to decide whether you could actually establish a chain of custody the way you suggest. Was the computer handed direct to the tech? If not, to whom was it handed? Did they hand it direct to the tech? Was it placed in storage between being handed in and being examined? Was the storage secure? Who had access? Was it in sealed packaging whilst being stored?

Re: Lock them all up

Arnaud Amalric seems to agree with you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers

Re: Sometimes I dislike law

Actual child pornography was allegedly found in his home

After an alert by someone who appears to have been paid a fee for finding a not actually pornographic image in unallocated space. Don't you get even a little suspicious about the whole business?

Paying techs to perform unsupervised searches which they can't legally perform themselves is getting onto a slippery slope. Once on there how far have they continued to slip? This is the whole trouble with this casual approach to the legal niceties surrounding collecting evidence, whether it be this approach or mass-surveillance; you get to a point where you can't be trusted to uphold the law. The saying about justice not only needs to be done, it needs to be seen to be done cuts both ways.

Re: Re. slack space

"The kind of policeman we need, in fact."

I knew a good many like that.

Re: "To be clear, our agents unintentionally find child pornography"

"I'd have a guess from the details given that in this case the doctor had a problem with his computer and realising that it would have to go in for repairs deleted his kiddy porn stash, probably by dragging it to the trash and emptying the trash bin."

Given that the problem seems to have been that it wouldn't start that seems an unlikely scenario.

Brother-and-sister duo arrested over hacking campaign targeting Italy's bigwigs

Re: Excuse me?

"They also understand how the law works."

That comes in handy when they're trying to circumvent it.

Re: Excuse me?

"Don't they understand how computers work?"

I'm sure they understand how to make copies before they pass them over.

Oi, Mint 18.1! KEEP UP! Ubuntu LTS love breeds a laggard

Re: Why the negative title?

"I'd opt for stability over cutting edge, especially for those new to Mint or Linux in general."

I'd opt for it in pretty well any production circumstances.

IBM: Hm, medical record security... security... Got it – we need blockchains

What improvement would this provide over PGP? Other than selling more IBM boxes, of course.

FBI takes gag out of Cloudflare's mouth after three-year legal battle

Re: Frightening

"Truth, Justice and the American Way"

Shouldn't that be "or"?