Posts by Cav

CISA slammed for role in 'censorship industrial complex' as budget faces possible $500M cut

Re: Dumb

"Anything Trump and friends do is immediately jumped on and spun as bad. "

It isn't spin. It is bad.

EU gives staff 'burner phones, laptops' for US visits

Re: Good practice

"Yeah, what did England, Spain, France, Germany, do to 3/4 of the world."

Not kill most of the natives... Only the US has carried out such "successful" ethnic cleansing and genocide.

FDA clears Google watch feature to call 911 if you flatline

Re: So...

I'm in the Midwest. A couple of years ago I temporarily lost the sight in one eye while playing with my toddler - most disconcerting. I was rushed to hospital with the ambulance tech doing little more than keep talking to me for the hour long journey (I live in the middle of nowhere). I got a bill for $8,400 (along with a $2000 bill for an MRI). I was panicking about the cost a little but my insurance did eventually cover it. If I hadn't had insurance then they would still have taken me and I would have been stuck with the bill. Some religiously run hospitals have charitable donations that cover the costs for those who can't pay. Most hospitals do not.

Related: My son was ill with a stomach bug, at a different time, and needed an anti-emetic. Even with insurance the charge for the meds would have been $165. At the time that was a lot so I took the option to just get a half bottle for just over half the price - I could buy another bottle later if needed. Fortunately, he didn't even need the whole of the one we did get. That $90 was with insurance. We could pay it but anyone who couldn't would be out of luck. That's for a sick kid.

I have a medication that, without insurance, costs $1,500 a month. My insurance and my employer cover that. I wouldn't be able to pay it. There are cheaper, much less effective, alternatives. If I didn't have the insurance then I would have to go with one of those with increased risks to my well-being.

So yes, people are left to die for being short of cash but there are some safeguards.

Medicare is federal healthcare for people over 65, some disabled people under 65 and people with end stage renal failure (I don't know why that one condition specifically). Medicaid is for low income people in certain categories such as childen or pregant women. Someone is considered low income if they earn less than about $1,500 a month. A healthy, non-pregnant adult would not qualify, even if they earned less than the low-income level. They are the ones who have to choose whether to call an ambulance or not and who will be hit with massive bills.

BTW: my problem turned out to be a detached retina. All fixed now. I hope your Mom continues to be well.

Euro cops arrest 4 including suspected LockBit dev chilling on holiday

Re: And what looks like proof stolen data was never deleted even after ransom paid

No, they don't. They facilitate payment in order to get back access to the data that has been encrypted.

Ransomware forces hospital to turn away ambulances

This just shows a very poor understanding of how modern hospitals work. Even something as simple as viewing x-rays is done via a PC today. And no, they can't keep old technology such as developed films as bavk up. All that old tech would clutter the place and then you have the cost of maintaining it and training people on it. For a situation that may never happen.

And how do you get test results to clinicians when they are now electronically sent to their devices instead of having people running all over a medical campus? The people who may have done that in the past are no longer there.

Reducing incoming patient numbers is entirely sensible.

Do you keep a horse as backup, in case your vehicle breaks down?

Red team hacker on how she 'breaks into buildings and pretends to be the bad guy'

And no, they won't be using costly, wasteful ink jet printers when there are networked, cheap printers available for things that absolutely have to be printed.

Nonsense. Execs have those dashboards you mention and automatically generated reports. They will be logging in to authorize payments, time off, read minutes of confidential meetings, policies etc, etc. Many things that are not distributed via insecure email.

UK government's bank data sharing plan slammed as 'financial snoopers' charter'

"Because this is not in the spirit of Keynesian economics."

Yes, it is. Keynesian economics favours government intervention and, correctly, states that the economy is demand driven. UBI is both these things. Government intervenes to provide a basic level of income to all, giving more people more discretionary cash to spend and so stimulate the economy.

Australia’s government spent the week boxing Big Tech

Nonsense. In the UK, at least, any effort to classify as disinformation any truth the establishment did not agree with, would be pounced on by the media.

To suggest that hundreds of independent media outlets would conspire not to challenge such assertions of disinformation, by government, is simply conspiracy paranoia. The evidence is overwhelming that outlets, such as the one whose site we are on, are perfectly happy to challenge anyone and everyone.

Re: "off limits until kids turn 16"

You started off well, with your first paragraph, but then veered into conspiracy idiocy.

There are already controls on long established media, from TV to newsprint.

These social media companies are globe spanning, free for alls that use their power to track users, siphon up as much of their data as possible, steal intellectual property and distort society. They need reigning in.

And the comment about vaping is ludicrous. Government are cracking down on both vapes and tobacco, in the interests of health, at least in the UK. Further restrictions on smoking are being proposed.

So you paid a ransom demand … and now the decryptor doesn't work

Re: Hope springs eternal

That isn't always the case though. Negotiators often know perfectly well who they are dealing with. The problem is catching the perps in hostile jurisdictions.

Re: Hope springs eternal

Did you read the article? It tells you why they would decrypt your stuff: any group that had a reputation of not decrypting would fimd that no ome would pay them? Why would you?

Mind the talent gap: Infosec vacancies abound, but hiring is flat

Re: Get decent HR people

The article appears to indicate that the problem is lack of budget, not lack of people.

Planned Parenthood confirms cyber-attack as RansomHub threatens to leak data

A ridiculous comment. Are you going to send special forces into Russia or China to kill their citizens? You want WW3? And if they are caught and paraded on TV?

Absolutely clueless.

Re: an especially low act

Just how do you think you are going to get people from Russia, China or Belarus into those body bags?

And whyever would you need two PCs?!

Few hackers are breaching customer interfaces. They are breaking into networks and then poor segmentation means they spread through the whole network.

There will always be accounts that can access the data, encrypted or not. If someone breaches the network and installs sniffers or key loggers then they can easily get access to the credentials of such accounts.

Do you work in IT?

Plane tracker app FlightAware admits user data exposed for years

Re: SSN?

I recently checked in for a hospital appointment, for me and only me. They asked for both my full SSN and that of my wife. We didn't provide either of them and my appointment still went ahead. I proved my ID with my drivers license and my health insurance with the appropriate card. That's all they needed. Just fishing for all they could get...

Texas sues GM for selling driver data to analytics, insurance companies

Texas did something good?!

Oh look, a flock of flying pigs under a blue moon!

Keir Starmer says facial recognition tech is the answer to far-right riots

Re: Only for the Far Right

Absolute nonsense. One can object to Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians without supporting terrorist attacks on Israel and Jews in general.

Re: Only for the Far Right

Garbage. I've been on some of the Facebook pages that supposedly "defend" England. It's absolutely the far-right, anti-immigrant intellectually challenged morons whipping up the trouble.

Re: Buy Shares In Hoodies.....ASAP......

Plenty of idiots have been photographed\filmed with uncovered faces.

Re: Buy Shares In Hoodies.....ASAP......

"the new Labour government announced that 5,000 prisoners would be released early,"

It was the Tories that announced that, before the election.

Israeli hacktivist group brags it took down Iran's internet

Re: Not convinced

"tenterhooks"

CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made

"how language changes over time"

Language should evolve to cover new uses, not stupidity and laziness. There is no need to use "leverage" as a verb (which it isn't) when the verb "to lever" already exists.

UK Electoral Commission slapped for basic cybersecurity fails

Re: Methinks the political spin is strong in this one.

Yes, companies are allowed to buy the data. For example, I research my family history. Ancestry, for one, has access to current electoral roll data and offers it as hints when people are researching even living individuals.

Ransomware infection cuts off blood supply to 250+ hospitals

"don't put business critical / sensitive personal information on the internet?"

It isn't necessarily on the internet. If anything on the network is externally connected and the internal network is not adequately segmented, with data protected, then a breach can give access to everything.

Germany names China as source of attack on government geospatial agency

Re: .. oh-ah my gosh

Google translate, Chinese to English, is hopeless, isn't it?

CrowdStrike update blunder may cost world billions – and insurance ain't covering it all

Re: Y2K24?

"and was a non-event due to to everyone doing their jobs."

Exactly! Another article on the BBC just today indicating that Y2K was an unnecessary panic because nothing really bad happened... Too stupid, too young or both, to appreciate all the work we programmers did for years at the end of the 20th century.

Re: If insurance ends up making significant payouts

Nonsense. That's like saying regulators would be at fault for insisting that ocean-liners (Titanic!) had lifeboats and the lifeboat manufacturer didn't seal all the joints and the lifeboats sank.

Cellebrite got into Trump shooter's Samsung device in just 40 minutes

Re: You know...

" The vast majority of gun crime in the US is committed with illegally owned guns, just like in the UK."

And illegally owned guns in the US are primarily only available because legally owned guns are available. Corrupt dealers - ccording to the ATF, 70% of crime guns traced from 2017 to 2021 came from dealers. Then they are stolen from legal dealers, purchased in private sales, stolen during burglaries, robberies and car theft. Then there are guns "borrowed" from family members.

"hardly something that will break the bank"

Hardly something that will break YOUR bank and mine but a lot to many people.

CrowdStrike Windows patchpocalypse could take weeks to fix, IT admins fear

"A better solution might be to ensure diversity of minimal underlying environments"

How would you do that? Again, not everyone can afford to have multiple solutions within an organization. And between organizations, if suppliers A, B and C all provide solution X and B can supply a good standard of X at a lower cost then more people will use B. Which is exactly what happened with CrowdStrike. It wasn't the whole world that was affected and the majority of organizations have got back to some sort of running in hours.

Re: Will Cloudstrike be held responsible for the damage (financial and otherwise)

What is this "Cloudstrike"? CROWDSTRIKE will face lawsuits.

"How affordable was it not doing that?"

Irrelevant. If you don't have the funds then it doesn't matter how much it might have saved you in the long run.

Many places just don't have the resources. The consequences might be expensive or they may just be salaried techs having to fix numerous machines after hours or instead of working on other projects. That costs 'nothing'.

Absolute nonsense. No one forces anything on you. 1. You don't have to use a given supplier's products and 2. you don't have to allow updates.

Who can afford to mix and match security across their systems? People usually buy in bulk, from one supplier, because you get a better price. Go with a few sites on supplier A and others on supplier B etc and you might not be able to afford the contracts. Only the biggest organizations could afford to do that.

And if you mean limit the numbers of customers per product then how will you enforce that? It's customer choice. If half the world chooses to use one supplier then there's little you can do about it. What are you going to do, issue quotas per supplier? Who will maintain that on a global scale?

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: The elephant in the room

"Where is it engraved in stone that outside companies can reach into your computer and silently alter its software". The conditions you agreed to when you chose to install the software.

Most AV software gives you the option to automatically install updates; you aren't forced to do so.

Kaspersky culls staff, closes doors in US amid Biden's ban

Israel is not a direct threat to the West.

Privacy expert put away for 9 years after 'grotesque' cyberstalking campaign

Re: A Simple Matter

"Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. "

This does not agree with animal studies. Chimps have an appreciation of morality, within their groups, and, of course their morality is different to ours. But they do have a sense of right and wrong. In lab tests chimps have been shown to share food and be outraged if they are wronged in the share they receive. So they have a sense of fairness. Even rats will help trapped individuals with which they are friends, or again, give food to an individual, in testing situations, that can't reach food itself.

CISA director: US is 'not afraid' to shout about Big Tech's security failings

Re: What a heaping pile of bullshit

"The pathetic "I would hope so" when asked if companies will work with them is proof enough."

Did you read the bit detailing the lack of authority to compel companies to work with them? What are they supposed to do?

Microsoft tells yet more customers their emails have been stolen

Or perhaps you could learn how to do maths more carefully...

DCdave is correct. The IRS impersonation is about 3.73%.

TeamViewer can't bring itself to say someone broke into its network – but it happened

Re: " significant compromise of the TeamViewer remote access and support platform"

You do know that this is TeamViewer and not MS Teams?

Organized crime and domestic violence perps are big buyers of tracking devices

Re: "Prohibiting sales for illegal applications"?

Don't sell to known criminals.