* Posts by VoiceOfTruth

1628 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2022

British Airways, Boots, BBC payroll data stolen in MOVEit supply-chain attack

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Nice aggregation of numbers, truthful, but...

-> a small number of our customers

Yeah. But how many actual people? BA has about 35,000. The BBC and Boots are well into the tens of thousands extra.

-> another major supply chain attack

Hmm. It almost seems like the supply chain is not very secure.

UK warned not to bother racing US, EU on EV subsidies

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Policy Exchange

-> Policy Exchange, a Conservative group

I met somebody from this group a few years ago and had an evening of social chat with them. Apparently the group came up with the idea that parents want good schools. They actually sit around, chew the cud, and come up with this as a 'policy'.

China EV market share hits 27 percent as tax breaks extended

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Re: One to watch

-> per capita

Amen. Those people who deliberately mislead others (fake news?) practically never mention the population of China vs that of the USA.

Debian 12 'Bookworm' is the excitement-free Linux you've been waiting for

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Re: A welcome change!

-> Excitement is for the desktop - not the server room.

Well mostly. But back in the day when ZFS was introduced on Solaris, it was exciting. And in use it was a 'look how much crap we went through before" moment. Server side stuff can be interesting.

Microsoft Windows latest: Cortana app out, adverts in

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You ain't seen nothing yet

Wait until AI signs you up for some extra 'services' because it decided you needed them. You can always cancel.

Malaysia goes its own Huawei, won't ban Chinese vendor from 5G network

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Malaysia

Showing it is an independent country. Unlike any country in the EU or the UK. Cue the usual threats from Washington.

Meta threatens to pull all news from California rather than pay El Reg a penny

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Do people really only use Facebook?

Isn't the point of having a web site to bring in visitors? If you want, IDK, the San Francisco Chronicle can somebody not visit that web site directly? Are people really just Facebook users?

Smartphone recovery that's always around the corner is around the corner

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Some American Agency

Who can we hit next on our "Crush China" programme?

-> One business that already has its fingers in multiple pies is China's Xiaomi

Google veep calls out Microsoft's cloud software licensing 'tax'

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Re: Would it not be cheaper for Google, AWS, Alibaba

-> Won't help. People are too deeply wedded to MS applications.

So true. Alas I meet and hear a lot of open source advocates who simply do not understand the issue. It's easy enough for a one man band who writes a few letters in Word or works on a few Excel spreadsheets to move to LibreOffice, for example. But in a company where there is a long history of processes using Office, Outlook, SQL Server, it is a completely different prospect. We see it here in The Reg about people saying "try this distro, try that distro" when it comes to Linux. Pretty much all companies are not in the business of "trying distros", they just want to get on with their work.

Criminals spent 10 days in US dental insurer's systems extracting data of 9 million

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Re: Once again

Not just that, they pass the problem onto the people whose data has been slurped.

-> Those with children whose data was taken in the haul were offered advice in the breach notice on how they could "check to see if someone has created a credit file using my child's information."

Your data has been taken, here is how YOU can check what has happened to it.

Barracuda Email Security Gateways bitten by data thieves

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Well

-> No other Barracuda products are affected, according to the security vendor.

Maybe Barracuda doesn't know that for sure. Maybe other Barracuda products are not affected by this exact security hole, but others which have not yet come to light?

Twitter now worth just a third of what Musk paid for it

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Lesson on use of the sed command

echo "The billionaire's purchase of the site required him to get the backing of a number of investors" | sed s'/investors/gullible\ fools/'

Uncle Sam vows to Micron-manage China's memory chip ban

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Good luck, China

The Americans don't like it up 'em. America's economic war against China deserves to fail miserably.

The FBI as advanced persistent threat – and what to do about it

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American view of the world, as shown in this article

-> to plunder the privacy of many thousands of US citizens

US citizens - the Übermensch.

Non-US citizens - the great unwashed untrustworthy unconverted not-like-us commies-under-the-bed.

Top cloud players reject Microsoft's attempt to settle EU licensing complaint

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The only chance the Euro companies have

Is to force data sovereignty - European data must be kept in Europe and not transferred to the spyhole of the world. This would mean MS, AWS, Google would have the same basic infrastructure costs rather than leveraging already-built-at-scale data centres in the USA. Sure, there will always be differences at the scale they operate at. But being unable to (mis)use US data centres would change their business methods.

China's homegrown airliner makes first paid-for flight

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In which case, Apple is not home grown either. I once read somewhere that Apple is a glorified GUI and case designer. A lot of truth in that...

New York county still dealing with ransomware eight months after attack

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Ah, money crime

-> The man behind a popular website that allowed cyber criminals to fake their caller ID location has been sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison... making or supplying articles for use in fraud

If he had stabbed somebody he would likely have got 5 years at most. Or even nothing at all.

US and China trade chiefs aim for cool heads as chip wars heat up

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Re: hehehehe

China has probably woken up. After Huawei there would be another industry-leading Chinese company to be erased. Then another. China will flex its muscles carefully.

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hehehehe

-> the Commerce Department stated that it strongly opposes "restrictions that have no basis in fact"

Huawei?

IR35 costs UK Research and Innovation £36M – the same it spent funding tech projects

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Tie the slaves up with red tape

Said the experts in red tape.

Five Eyes and Microsoft accuse China of attacking US infrastructure again

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How many of the Five Eyes

Illegally invaded Iraq and murdered a million people?

Microsoft appeals UK's block on Activision deal

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Desperately waving a flag

-> the UK competition watchdog

To pretend we are relevant. The British "government" is the MeToo of wannabes.

Ministry of Justice rapped by ICO for old fashioned data leak

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Tut tut

Not a good show, Smithers. More tea? I heard you're in line for a gong.

US mulls retaliation for China blacklisting Micron without evidence of security threat

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Ha ha ha

It's called blowback.

The other day we had the Rishi Sunak telling the world that China is guilty of economic coercion, while neglecting to mention all the sanctions and trade restrictions that the UK has in place against its bogeymen du jour. The difference is, China matters.

Lenovo profits sink 75% as PC demand continues nosedive

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We need to be careful here

-> post-pandemic world

It was not the pandemic which caused the economic slowdown. It was the reaction to the pandemic, the lockdowns which pretty much wiped out over a year of economic output in many sectors.

IT security analyst admits hijacking cyber attack to pocket ransom payments

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I referred to this sort of insider security threat previously

-> Liles, in his capacity as security analyst for Oxford Biomedica

In the comments to this article - https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/12/exubiquiti_developer_jailed/ - I mentioned the difficulty of preventing insider security problems. It is not an easy thing to do. To me it is the trust element which is so troubling. Burglars burgle (for the benefit of our American cousins, they don't burglarize any more than robbers robberize or murderers murderize their victims) , and that is to be expected. It is why we have locks on our doors. We have an expectation that people inside the door are more trustworthy.

-> Liles had attempted to wipe his devices days before his arrest, but the data was recovered.

This git doesn't appear to be the sharpest of 'security analysts', does he? Which is how he was caught, I guess. He deserve a few years in the slammer for this.

SF cops got warrant-free OK to watch protest via private security cameras

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What is needed

Is surveillance of the police by the public. The police have far too many powers which they consistently misuse. They are not to be trusted, which is why they all need to be put under surveillance.

TikTok to let Oracle view source code, algorithm, and content moderation

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They should have got Cisco to do it

Cisco knows how to make software with security holes. Or Microsoft. They're real experts.

UK told it must double low carbon investment to meet net zero targets

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Re: Investment?

-> I look at the Amazon being destroyed

I agree but for one thing. We in Europe, for example, can't point a finger and say "don't cut down those forests" when we have cut down ours. If we collectively want the Amazon to remain as jungle, then we collectively should pay for it. Pay the people of Amazonia not to log. Near to where I am there is a park with some large trees, some of which were cut down last year for "safety reasons". They had apparently become diseased and may fall down. Fair enough, I accept that. But no replacements have been planted. numberOfTrees--

-> I served in the jungles of southeast Asia hoping that the peace we restored would benefit the peoples and the jungle

I'm not sure which campaign(s) you were in, but wars never have such lofty goals. They are about beating an enemy or stealing land and resources (often from an enemy who rightfully owns them). Next up spreading democracy at the point of a gun.

Python Package Index had one person on-call to hold back weekend malware rush

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And I bet

That some people somewhere complained about PPI. 'Tut tut. If only PPI would get off its arse and fix this.' The same sort of people who complained about Log4J while doing nothing at all ever to help.

I tip my hat to the dedicated people in the open source world who maintain this stuff. They are often nameless (until the sh** hits the fan).

FBI abused spy law but only like 280,000 times in a year

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I'm not surprised

-> conduct warrantless searches on George Floyd protesters

But not cops who shoot innocent people. No.

Alas the FBI has a long history of doing things against the American people. Where is the integrity?

That Meta GDPR fine is €1.2B. Plus biz must stop sending EU data to US

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Imagine if Facebook was a Chinese app/platform

These spies, everything is going back to Beijing. Facebook is a tentacle of American spying in Europe and should be banned immediately.

Excess profits on Motorola's Airwave estimated to be £1.3B

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Motorola should call their bluff

And walk away if the terms of the contract are altered in any way they disagree with.

The government (I mean the establishment no matter whoever is 'in power') has for far too long been in the hands of Oxbridge numbskulls who are well-educated but are also as thick as dunces. They are busy chasing gongs while they look down on the peasantry. Failure for them means an upwards promotion, and when they 'retire' it will be to a company which supplies services to the last department they worked for.

If emergency communications are so important the government should build it itself. What is GCHQ for? Apparently spying on grannies' Skype conversations. But actual work?

More UK councils caught by Capita's open AWS bucket blunder

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And the contracts

kept rolling in. And the Capita shareholders laughed like they were on a mixture of funny pills and laughing gas all the way to their offshore banks.

Guess who is collecting and sharing abortion-related data?

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The USA

A surveillance state. Probably worse than China. But with the news-propaganda industrial complex on board it barely gets a mention.

UK government prays that size doesn't matter as it chips in £1B for semiconductor sector

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Re: Hmm

A drop in the ocean compared with how much was spaffed to the banks pre-Brexit.

Meta facing third fine of 2023 for mishandling EU user data under GDPR

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ha ha ha

-> shipping user data belonging to EU residents to the US without proper guarantees it would remain safe from inspection by authorities

Next time Francois or Helmut or Giuseppe goes to the USA they get pulled by the 'authorities' there. Have you now or ever been a communist/human rights advocate/this/that/the other?

No? Well, we have you on record as being that. So now we will charge you with lying to government officials. You are facing 500 years behind bars.

Up to £895M up for grabs in UK Emergency Services procurement

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I wonder if

American companies will be allowed to bid for this. Probably yes, because being spied on by the Americans is OK.

Another security calamity for Capita: An unsecured AWS bucket

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Blah blah blah

-> Capita is facing criticism

But NO action. The contracts with Capita will continue until all information is leaked. Then the leaking of information will be termed uninmportant.

MariaDB CEO: People who want things free also want to have very nice vacations

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They are losing their way

I smell similarities with Mozilla. Let's take the code from a Netscape and make a new browser and email client, rewriting them, etc. OK.

That's done. We've saved the world and become a popular browser. Let's take our eye off the ball and make a file transfer service. Let's make a new OS. Let's turn Thunderbird into a steaming heap. Let's watch as our browser market share becomes irrelevant, used mostly by self-elected 'power users'. Let's become the 2%.

-> We have a whole team of Postgres engineers

It would be better is MariaDB stuck to MariaDB. I've read the article and I know what MariaDB is doing. But they are stepping away from MariaDB by doing this, no matter how they justify it. MariaDB seems to want to be a Swiss army knife, some sort of glue for databases. If I want Postgres I use Postgres. If I want MySQL/MariaDB I use those. I don't want some glue to get in the way.

Cops crack gang that used bots to book and resell immigration appointments

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Re: Do they ever learn?

-> Shirley it's easy to make it a specific crime to profit from this sort of carry on.

The government is far too busy preparing legislation to fine cat owners £500 for not having their cats microchipped. The low-hanging fruit of 'crimes'. Yes, solving block booking seems to me to be easy to control. Require the use of a provisional licence number to make the booking, and give a time window for that number. Once that window has expired, the applicant can reapply. That would probably cost Capita or other outsourced 'IT provider" about £500 million to code up, then not work properly.

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That must be tens of millions of computers, then

-> "a large number" of computers

Wow. The very antithesis of "a small number of users".

Toyota's bungling of customer privacy is becoming a pattern

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Find a way to extradite them

-> Whether Clearview would ever pay either fine is unclear.

If the boot was on the other foot, the USA would.

Ex-Ubiquiti dev jailed for 6 years after stealing internal corp data, extorting bosses

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He deserves going to the slammer

I have a really low opinion of 'hackers' who slurp stuff from the companies they work for. Protecting against such people is no easy task as somewhere along the line there has to be an element of trust. Even with systems auditing, somebody has to be trusted. This dude is a turd.

Britain's largest private pension scheme reveals scale of Capita break-in

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I will believe it when...

-> “reputational damage for a key supplier to critical UK government services such as Capita is likely far greater.”

A contract that was outsourced to Capita is cancelled on those grounds. Or, when some large public body rejects a tender from Capita on those grounds. Or, when HM government, in general, rejects Capita from bidding with those ground stated for disqualification.

Three options. My tarot cards offer no such prediction.

Most of UK agriculture dept's customer interactions are paper based

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Well

-> The ratio of out-of-support applications also increased the risk of failure and cyber attack, the report said.

I cannot think of a better argument for NOT requiring or using IT. We're in this world. It's an eternal upgrade mill. Meanwhile we can still read paper records going back 100s of years using our Mk 1 minces.

EU's Cyber Resilience Act contains a poison pill for open source developers

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So let the Open Source 'community' teach the European Community

Use licences which deliberately disallow the use of their software within the EU. Then watch as the EU back pedals faster than a Frenchman running to his local baguette shop.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch flown to US for HPE fraud trial

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The one-way extradition treaty

The pathetic little poodles who pretend they are 'British politicians' signed this country down the bog hole to suck up to Uncle Sam. Alas few people remember this when they come round every four years or so, wearing their fake smiles saying 'vote for meeeeeee'.

Activists gatecrash Capita's AGM to protest GPS tracking contract

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Re: Just wait

-> I don't know what it is about being appointed Home Secretary

Amen. They are all basically fascists in sheep's clothing. They are all ready to outdo each other in nastiness.

India to send official whassup to WhatsApp after massive spamstorm

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I wonder if they got through to Bob from 'technical support'

The solution is easy - it is purchasing some Target gift cards.