Posts by RussellX

UK bans Chinese CCTV cameras on 'sensitive' government sites

Wrap security around insecure components

Whilst the inevitable march towards tight cloud-integration may present problems for some systems, there should never be a complete reliance on any individual vendor or component to maintain overall security... it is all about the architecture.

For Hikvision NVR appliances, you do not need to use the Hik-Connect cloud service: you can just stick the NVR into an isolated subnet, with filtered / blocked access to the Internet or the rest of the internal network and use your own VPN to remotely connect to it.

I do appreciate that for the average home or small business, they will just connect these devices to a single network and rely on whatever cloud service is included to bypass NAT, so there is an argument for protecting less sophisticated users who just want to Plug & Play...

But is it unrealistic of me to expect that for any government facility, especially sensitive ones, *any* brand of CCTV equipment would be deployed and integrated in a more secure and thoughtful manner?

(Perhaps I don't want to know the answer.....!)

A moment of tension as the James Webb Space Telescope stretches sunshield on way to L2 destination

Re: GoPro

I concur that even limited video images of the unfolding process would be great for the wider public to watch, even if the team believed they could get all the info they needed via sensors and feedback.

Here is the official answer: https://youtu.be/AxO3Wm9uPq8?t=3546

100% focused on the technical benefits (or not) of cameras for the unfolding the telescope, but ignoring the benefits of an individual or pair of wide angle cameras mounted at the top, looking down...

Galileo satnav system gets two new somewhat confusing satellites

User count?

>> The satellite constellation has provided satnav positioning to over 2.3 billion users since 2016

I assume that this figure was provided by the Galileo Consortium marketing / finance justification department?

Not sure how they could determine the number of devices, let alone the number of "users", given that the reception of location data is a purely passive activity....

Or is the Galileo team just indulging in some untriangulated guesstimate 'calculations' based on the number of GNSS enabled devices capable of receiving the Galileo signals sold in the EU, combined with the assumption that they are *all* using Galileo signals in preference to an other alternative navigation platform hovering above Europe...