Posts by Potemkine!

Hard cheese: Stilton snap shared via EncroChat leads to drug dealer's downfall

It may not be a smart move to tell how that guy was caught, it may help others to avoid to make the same mistake.

Anyway, I fear the vacancy will (if not already) be filled by another thug.

Blue Origin sets its price: $1.4m minimum for trip into space

Re: "One wonders what good that money could do"

aircraft started off as "toys" for the super-rich, who then put lots of money into their development.

Not true.

Aviation started with enthusiast engineers who wanted to fly. The industrial success of the first aircraft companies was because of the military use and was propelled by WW1.

Freenode IRC staff resign en masse, unhappy about new management

Death to Kings!

All monarchies are parasites on our planet.

That Salesforce outage: Global DNS downfall started by one engineer trying a quick fix

PR BS

"We're not blaming one employee," but "We have taken action with that particular employee"...

Apple's macOS is sub-par for security, Apple exec Craig Federighi tells Epic trial

Everything in Apple, nothing against Apple, nothing outside Apple

Do the older ones remember the time when Apple was advertising as being the anti Big Brother?

Nowadays it's all the opposite, Apple is glad to tell it will control everything.

Parliament demands to know the score with Fujitsu as Post Office Horizon scandal gets inquiry with legal teeth

Responsible but not guilty

Don't worry, anyone at the top-level, may they be ministers, judges or part of the C-suite will be left off the hook. Subalterns will pay instead.

Those people know how to defend each others. The castes who dominate us feel rightly that they are above the common law.

UK pharma supplier put into special measures after new IT system causes almost 10,000 missed medicine deliveries

The truth

"We find innovative way to solve the retirement cost rising problem and you are still not happy!"

Miscreants started scanning for Exchange Hafnium vulns five minutes after Microsoft told world about zero-days

Re: Hobson's choice then!

Note: Exchange would normally fall into the latter category.

Problem is, Exchange needs to be interfaced with an AD controller. I know many occurrences where both are on the same physical server.

You get what you pay for

Many SME companies doesn't consider that paying a competent IT guy is required. Many big group prefer to externalize everything to the lowest bidder. Those companies get the service they pay for: a shitty one.

New Zealand hospitals infected by ransomware, cancel some surgeries

Estimations say that automatic systems can avoid 1/3 of the incidents. Avoiding the other ones is users' job. They are the first line of defence.

Even if they think they have other things to do than mastering their IT tools, they are wrong. It's now part of everybody's job as long as you have to deal with a computer. If you disagree, then don't approach those boxes, they can be nefarious.

If the personnel hasn't the time to think about cybersecurity and basic precautions, then these attacks will succeed again and again. It learned to use medical devices to avoid accidents, it has to do the same with computers if those are now part of the medical chain.

It seems that email phishing is the main reason for successful ransomware attacks, doesn't it?

There are many technical answers at different levels (firewall, mail server, client) to mitigate, but the most efficient one is users education. And by education I mean repeat the information again and again.

Us? Pwn SolarWinds? With our reputation? Russian spy chief makes laughable denial of supply chain attack

Maskirovka

Sometimes the truth can just be a lie repeated over and over....

China all but bans cryptocurrencies

If China also forbids the mining of bitcoins, it will avoid a lot of coal burning, probably the worst source of energy

Fancy trying to explain Microsoft Teams to your parents? They may ask about the new Personal version

Re: They don't use Microsoft...

That's the advantage to be under an autocratic regime, you haven't any worries about making choices. You only have to follow the Master's voice and everything is OK.

For the video meeting with the family, I stick with Signal, thank you.

Re: I guess it may work here...

I've got the totally opposite experience with Teams and Webex.

Teams also use a lot of bandwidth, a problem not present with Webex.

When we do a meeting/conference with 50+ people, there's never a problem with Webex. With Teams it's often a hassle.

I also hate in Teams the inability to delete messages, you can just 'mask' them. It gives the feeling to be constantly tracked and under surveillance.

China says its first Mars rover Zhurong has landed on the Red Planet

War of the Worlds

Will rovers fight each others with lasers?

Apple's expert witness grilled by Epic over 'frictionless' spending outside the app

Hitt blamed the error on his research team

Bloody interns. Not even to do the job properly despite the pittance they royally get.

Your private data has been nabbed: Please update your life as soon as possible while we deflect responsibility

I've got a new anthem for you Mr Dabbs ^^

Britain to spend £22m influencing Indo-Pacific nations' cybersecurity policies against 'authoritarian regimes'

We've got the world-beating coders, the world-beating scientists, the ground-breaking innovators. And at the same time, we've also got GCHQ, the NCSC, the National Cyber force, the capacity to defend our liberties at home, and to protect the world's online freedoms from those who would poison the well. And that's our mission as global Britain to flourish as a tech superpower and to serve as an even stronger force for good in the world.

And don't forget world-beating modesty!

alongside French-built Mirage 2000s in the late 1980s.

India also bought 36 Rafales in 2019. Its Air Force has an impressive mix of aircrafts in term of origins. There's clearly a political choice to have an equilibrium and not choosing a side against the other.

South Korea orders urgent review of energy infrastructure cybersecurity

“In the wake of the disruption, it is necessary to thoroughly examine whether cybersecurity preparations and countermeasures for our energy-related infrastructure are properly in place,”

I'm guessing the answer: No.

You get what you pay for, and if like (quite) anywhere money was the first criteria when building and maintaining the system, cybersecurity was sacrificed.

SolarWinds CEO describes overhauled Orion build system after that 'very small, unique' security breach

PR stunt

"but 18 000 is nothing compared to the 37 billions customers we have"

Train operator phlunks phishing test by teasing employees with non-existent COVID bonus

That's insensitive, but efficient. But insensitive. A good manager has to take into account he/she's dealing with human beings, and has to take care of their feelings.

If that company had a little clever management, it would have given the bonus afterwards to everybody, explaining the people that registering to get one is not a standard policy, and educating on phishing. Giving a extra-bonus for the ones who didn't fell in the trap could be a good idea, but i guess the ones who missed the test would have protested anyway.

43 years and 14 billion miles later, Voyager 1 still crunching data to reveal secrets of the interstellar medium

If one can value sent by a 43-old space probe, imagine the value of the data collected from any online usage.

Anyway, Voyager is the proof that nuclear technology is very efficient to be a long-lasting and reliable source of energy!

As another vendor promises 3 years of Android updates, we ask: How long should mobile devices receive support?

Limiting update durations is just another way to incite people to buy a new handset.

Trend Micro hosted email service is down, inboxes still stuck in cloudy limbo

Re: WOPR spam

Would you like a carrier pigeon?

Ah ,the good old RFC 1149! Very bad latency, but very good bandwidth.

Amazon says it destroyed two million knockoffs in 2020, a fraction of the amount it ships

In 2020, Amazon invested over $700m and employed more than 10,000 people to protect our store from fraud and abuse

So I guess the ones I contacted were the lazy ones.

I ordered a screen guard for a smartphone. When I received it, its dimensions were inaccurate, several millimetres short in length and width. I posted then a negative comment. A couple of weeks later, I received a mail from the vendor asking me to remove my comment, giving money in exchange. the vendor contacted me three times, despite my constant rebukes. I don't like bribery, so I contacted Amazon, asking them if it was a standard policy to allow vendors to try to corrupt people to get positive feedbacks. I contacted the support twice, and contacting the support is not an easy task. The only answers I got were automated ones who were totally irrelevant. Nowadays, the crappy screen guard is still on sale on Amazon.

Indian government says 5G doesn’t cause COVID-19. Also points out India has no 5G networks

"5G doesn’t cause COVID-19"

But so-called "social" media cause obscurantism.

'A massive middle finger': Open-source audio fans up in arms after Audacity opts to add telemetry capture

Idiots are taking over.

"

There's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated

"

Looking at so-called "social" media, it seems to me stupid people are a majority, so we have the elected official we all collectively deserve.

Fixing education may help, it's a long shot.

Meme crypto-coin literally going to the Moon, if Elon Musk is to believed, on DOGE-1 mission courtesy of SpaceX Falcon 9

Having another cryptocurrency to pay for ransomware is indeed what we required.

We were 'blindsided' by Epic's cheek, claims Apple exec on 4th day of antitrust wrangling

Re: 30% is extortion, pure and simple

The cost to Apple is no where near 30%

Value != Cost.

Is value worth 30% of the price is another debate.

Facebook: Nice iOS app of ours you have there, would be a shame if you had to pay for it

I don't see the connection between opt-in in users tracing and antitrust laws?

I'm all in favor of FB eradication. However one can expect it will be immediately replaced by a similar BS. Most of the problems come directly from between chair and keyboard.

US declares emergency after ransomware shuts oil pipeline that pumps 100 million gallons a day

Re: One word:

Airgap

Agreed, but making myself the devil's advocate, how do you update your systems with an airgap? Upload new configuration files? Backup when you have no backup infrastructure?

For a real airgap, you require a lot of hardware for two environments, development and production. I see many companies whose beancounters don't like to invest in the IT part we can kick.

That Pulse Secure VPN you're using to protect your data? Better get it patched – or it's going to be ransomware time

Re: Yeah but...

I also don't know of any corporate vpn hardware/software provider that's had 0 bugs of this severity.

Isn't that incredible? I guess these apps are checked, rechecked and re-rechecked, but they are still holes in it.

Chinese rocket plunges into Indian Ocean, still lands sharp rebuke from NASA

de rigeur => de rigueur

Visual Basic 6 returns: You've been a good developer all year. You have social distanced, you have helped your mom. Here's your reward

People using VB are developers as people using smartphones are digital experts.

Since when VB is in any way related to development or programming?

Basecamp CEO issues apology after 'no political discussions at work' edict blows up in his face

Ever heard of a concept named freedom of expression?

Everything can be labelled politics as soon as two people interact. If your concept of being an employee is being a mindless robot executing his/her task without any social interaction, I'll be happy never to work for you.

Being open-minded is a strength, especially in IT. And happy people are more productive at work

Dammit!

This CEO is stupid. Why couldn't he engage a discussion with his workforce before publishing this new policy? Office dictators unable to listen are a PITA.

Signal banned for booking obviously targeted ads? That story's too good to be true, Facebook claims

Could you please tell Signal...

... I love them?

East London council blurts thousands of residents' email addresses in To field blunder

Best way to sort it out: reply to all, Hi all, "have you the same problem?"

Just for the fun of it ^^

Samsung stops providing security updates to the Galaxy S8 at grand old age of four years

Planned obsolescence

The software way.

Isn't there any law against that?

WTH are NFTs? Here is the token, there is the Beeple....

Priceless

"One thing that humbles me deeply is to see that human genius has its limits while human stupidity does not."

Norwegian telco Telenor writes off its Myanmar operation

Bravo!

It's extremely rare that a company considers human rights as a factor in its business decisions. So congratulation to Telenor to do the right thing.

Those Norwegians are astonishing.

Yahoo! and! AOL! sold! for! $5bn! as! Verizon! abandons! media! empire! dreams!

Refuse! Resist!

The! exclamation! point! cannot! be! removed! it! is! part! of! mankind! history!

Streaming mad: EC charges Apple with abuse of dominance, distorting competition in Spotify case

Re: Apple responded to El Reg!!!!!??????

while(true){

subjectLine += "!!??";

}

// :-P

Philanthropist and ex-Microsoft manager Melinda Gates and her husband Bill split after 27 years of marriage

Just because he's jealous of Bezos and want to have the most expensive divorce ever... Ha, these rich people, they really have an impressive ego.

Börk returns to its spiritual home of Sweden as duff disks take down Stockholm signage

You mean,

Bjorn Bork?

Ex Netflix IT ops boss pocketed $500k+ in bribes before awarding millions in tech contracts

"Gifts"

I've seen this kind of behaviour a lot of times, without any conviction. However the level of greed was not so high.

China cracks down on ‘excessive’ user data harvesting, gives 33 apps ten days to clean up their acts

Re: Yes?

Some are worst than others.

Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

China's government killed and continues to kill a whole part of its own population: the Great Leap Forward (between 23 to 55 millions deaths), the Cultural Revolution (20 millions deaths), persecution of uygurs....

There's no Laogai in western democracies.