Posts by Spamolot

Word to the wise: Don't tell your IT manager they're not in Excel

Re: "Surely an IT manager should know the difference between Word and Excel?"

Shirley you mean "mangler"...

China cut itself off from the global internet for an hour on Wednesday

Just a test, do not panic, nothing to see here...

These types of test are routine. Nothing to do with the armada of landing craft, pre-positioned marines and troops of the valiant PLA, assembled aircraft of the PLAFF on the coast opposite renegade Taiwan. Nope just a routine test. Nothing whatsoever to see HERE.

Hey look over there! I think I can see Putin waving a victory flag... nope he's waving a copy of Epstein's little black book.

BOFH: Deepfake or just an idiot? We'll need an audit to confirm

Re: Access help.......

This is probably up there with the old "Press any key to continue" and then you get a puzzled look as can't find that key...

Re: Very interesting.

>You've forgotten the "high security" version of the Post-It - the one that's taped to the underside of their keyboard or inside (or under) a desk drawer!

Gadzooks! You have passed level one of being a security audit specialist. For extra credits check the birthdays and names of immediate family and their pets. (You can safely ignore mother-in-laws and ex-s from your search unless prefixed/suffixed with DiE!die! DIE!)

Funding for program to stop next Stuxnet from hitting US expired Sunday

Re: America's critical infrastructure

...but then some idiot picks up a shiny 256GB USB left conveniently lying outside your TOP SECRET government lab. What's the harm of inserting it into an air-gapped TOP SECRET device to see if you can reformat it (or discover a nice p0rn stash)?

US Department of Defense will stop sending critical hurricane satellite data

Re: Not as bad as it looks.

Obviously the Golden Dome has been upgraded to include the Tornado v.01 and Hurricane v0.05 repentant/mitigation patch so who needs forecasts? Elon and Thiel will keep the Eastern seaboard safe - right!

Visiting students can't hide social media accounts from Uncle Sam anymore

This is essentially a Catch 22 situation. Support the Constitution or the Govt?

25 years on from Y2K, let's all be glad it happened way back then

NYE 2025 caused certain hotel door locks to reset to Jan, 1 1970

Some "unnamed" USA hotel card door lock manufacturer has a Y2K-type problem. Numerous reports started rolling in as 2025 swept across the face of the Land of the Free.

Detailed on this Reddit thread "All our locks died at the stroke of midnight".

China's cyber intrusions took a sinister turn in 2024

The real question - why is critical infrastructure connected to the internet? For god's sake it's 2025 and not 1995!!!

'Open banking' rules will put your financial data back where it belongs

Under modern Open Banking systems the existing incoming and outgoing arrangements are ported to the new financial provider so the consumer doesn't have to deal with cancelling and redoing debits and credits. It's seamless so it increases account portability leading to increased competition between banks to retain customers. Banks know that most customers are ignorant of better offers out there and customers are loathe to change providers; many customer don't realise that they can have multiple accounts at different banks, credit unions or fintechs.

Critical hardcoded SolarWinds credential now exploited in the wild

Obviously this"inadvertent release" wasn't an error. It's part of a post-emptive means to downplay an undisclosed breach of SolarWinds. The company is laying a foundation to point the finger elsewhere - obviously foreign state actors...

Bitcoin creator suspect says he is not Bitcoin creator suspect

I have it on reliable authority that the Great Orange orator is Satoshi Nakamoto. He's running false flag operations so he can pretend to be influenced into pressuring the SEC and Wall Street to adopt crypto into the mainstream when he's mysteriously re-elected come November. There will be another 'staged' assassination where his double will be killed. Thus the Orange man can fade into the annals of American political history, avoiding the looming disaster of divorce, while he quietly offloads his trillions in Bitcoin...

Cigarette break burned out a huge chunk of Africa's internet

Re: Own up to it

Five Eyes is always preferable for... umm, security.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

Re: Being polite is great

Congratulations! You just passed stage four of the Australian citizenship application...

David Mills, the internet's Father Time, dies at 85

Re: Job Description

Too much Stargate will rot your brain. And you might end up like the Ori in their comeuppance.

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Re: Sounds like Tesla drivers should always carry a can of petrol with them in Winter

>You can throw a lit match into diesel, it will just go out.

Except in every film and USA crime drama you see the criminal stuff a rag or shirt into the gas (petrol or diesel) filler. They light the wick with a metal flip-top lighter, then proceed to light a cigar or cigarette and casually walk towards the camera and "Kaboom!!!" (Alternately they flick the metal flip-top lighter or cigarette into a pool of fuel.)

Kaspersky reveals previously unknown hardware 'feature' exploited in iPhone attacks

Rogue Engineer One™ - coming soon as part of the Star Wars Universe.

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

Which is why Japanese and some other countries use YYYY/MM/DD (in Gregorian dates).

CAN do attitude: How thieves steal cars using network bus

Re: Why

Or those horse-drawn cart drivers would helpfully tell you that your kerosene lamps needed refilling.

This US national lab turned to AI to hunt rogue nukes

Re: Officially recognised???

Australia also had a pilot nuke programme back in the 1970s. Disbanded in the 80s but the scientists and research are still around.

Two tech-centric banks strike trouble, spooking markets

Re: Now reported that the CEO of SVB sold $3.57 million of stock in the last fortnight

I'm sure it was all above board and NOT based on insider knowledge. /s

Former Facebooker alleges Meta drained users' batteries to test apps

Re: contract requires him to take the case to arbitration

Hope that this contract doesn't impose confidentiality in any arbitration settlement...

You know, the kind that ends with no admission of wrongdoing and a nice payout in return for eternal silence.

Gootloader malware updated with PowerShell, sneaky JavaScript

Re: Browser code execution

I'd say fire up the old 1200 baud modem and dial up your legacy ISP (is AOL still around?). You'd at least stand a fighting chance to stop any webhack before it could completely deploy the package and launch an attack...

Women sue Apple claiming AirTags helped their stalkers

'Mericans are so sue happy.

So if a 'merican woman is hit and injured by a car or a round from a gun - she'd sue the car manufacturer or gun maker? She can't sue the gun makers as Congress has made them a protected class. Most car makers including Tesla are still grappling with the liability angle of self-driving cars, let along the current meatbag-driven (non-AI) ones. Currently they're only on the hook if their cars are inherently and provably defective.

I can understand going after the deepest pockets: Apple and the stalker's insurance provider, but that's civil rather than criminal law. The stalker is the one at fault.

DraftKings gamblers lose $300,000 to credential stuffing attack

Wait - you're telling me people are still using the same passwords or passphrases for multiple websites in 2022?

Shirley you're joking... don't call me Shirley!

Apple perfects vendor lock-in with home security kit

Re: Here we go again

An old acquaintance, let's call him Derek, was taught that the correct way to open an exterior door was to fire a solid shotgun slug to the hinges from his pump action, then to stand clear as his balaclava wearing mates stormed inside. That was the overt entry method back in the 1980-90s. His employer later upskilled him via the services of an old gentleman from Wormwood Scrubs who taught him the finer points of covert entry i.e. lockpicking, alarm bypassing and how to open several types of commercially-popular safes through physical manipulation with some electronic wizardry thrown in for good measure.

Re: Lock picking lawyer

Friend has a similar problem - had hidden the key around the home somewhere but forgotten where. Batteries were totally dead. Took a hammer and smash the plastic next to the keypad, carefully inserted flat-head screwdriver and pulled back the solenoid. Took all of five minutes...

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Re: Manual is optional,

My favourite support day memories are of phone calls ask the location of the illusive ANY button. As in "Press any button to continue..."

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

Re: Dogs

Let me correct you - "and she tasted good."

ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC

Cambridge joystick interface

Does anyone remember a few hobbyist students in Cambridge selling a kitset joystick interface for the ZX? You could also buy it assembled but it wasn't as cheap or fun as the kitset. It plugged into the ZX backplane and had a standard joystick connector. It was configurable by DIP switches to adjust the joystick for different keys in games.

Study: How Amazon uses Echo smart speaker conversations to target ads

Re: I guess I'm doing it right.

So I'm guessing that the real estate agent failed to mention about the previous owner of your property and the bodies they discovered. I'm sure it'll be a good ice breaker when you have people over for 'dinner'...

Ex-eBay security director to plead guilty to cyberstalking

We're sorry... we got caught

eBay is very, very sorry for this unfortunate mix up. Once our security team were discovered, we disowned them and disavowed all action taken by them in protecting eBay. We will strive to do better and not get caught next time.

Just two die for: Apple reveals M1 Ultra chip in Mac Studio

27" iMac is DEAD

You might have missed it, but the ever-popular with the WFH crowd 27" iMac is deleted from the new lineup. RIP old friend.

Switzerland's SWIFT data centre under guard after Russian banks excluded

Re: The point?

Ah, yes the old "Nuclear Winter will solve all our climate issues" gambit. Quite popular on the 1980s cocktail circuit inside the Beltway...

Beware the techie who takes things literally

Fond memories of Adobe Fonts on copy-controlled floppies

The very earliest Adobe Fonts were distributed on special floppy disks - you could only install said font family (Times New Roman, Helvetica, etc.) on five Macs or PCs. When you installed them, they were locked to the serial number of that particular computer to prevent piracy. Thankfully that particular sales model only lasted a year or so, and later floppy disk releases could be installed without restriction. The early releases were exchanged by Adobe for the free-to-copy versions at no charge.

A tiny typo in an automated email to thousands of customers turns out to be a big problem for legal

Re: ????

Ali mistyped MySQL instead of MSSQL...

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. - Robert A. Heinlein

When the bits hit the fan: What to do when ransomware strikes

Re: Did Mr Connor ask the finance director

> Did Mr Connor ask the finance director if his patronising explanation could be quoted to the press if/when something went wrong?

Get it in writing. First rule of Cover Your Ass...

Splunk junks 'hanging' processes, suggests you don't 'hit' a key: More peaceful words now preferred in docs

Obligatory 1984 reference for all those who neglected to read George Orwell. (Currently re-reading Burmese - sorry Myanmarese Days as it very accurately describes the Burman mindset.)