Posts by Michael Thibault

Re: Just wait...

>gigabytes worth of double sided floppies

Cool! HD?

Re: when looking for car keys...

>... spend ages searching through this forest of utensils looking for the spoon that is right there in front of us.

"There is no spoon."

Didn't you get the memo?

>I trust that the update process has much better security? Or can attackers force an update with their own code?

All things considered, it's hoped that "much better security" will have included locking out the very fools who designed the sieve of security that allowed for a stealth update (of any kind) in the first place. The white-hats, for their part, should go once around the park and come back for a close, second look. It's the only way to be sure.

Re: no doubt

there'll be an even more dramatic sequel: 'Glass Flowing'.

FTFY

Re: The best from when I was a lad.

ObPedant: 'when I were a lad'

The last thing I remember before the being-unconscious part was laughing. Ah, memories! Sadly, too few of that particular kind.

Re: Good Riddance to Lewis Page

>extremely harsh

Much too harsh.

Re: "a detention facility"

Shirley "a retention facility", no?

A reminder, Mr. Trump: "Location, location, location".

As for "Apple will ... just move its company to China": unless, of course, Mr. Trump (if ever mistakenly actually elected PoTUS) also simultaneously holds out a carrot that takes the form of a tax holiday on repatriated profits--giving US companies reason to bring home the bacon and, thereafter, begin producing domestically in earnest. It takes a considerable length of time to spend as little as a billion $US. A couple of dozen of those and you're talking terms--two, maybe three.

Re: exponents....

Small, yes, but clever. And curious. The horizon has ample time and room to retreat.

That would be:

"Access-as-a-service gangs refer to their victims as 'milkers'," he explained. "They want the reputation of being reliable because it encourages people to pay up if they want their files back..."

It seems to me that any 'trust' they're developing, any 'goodwill' among their 'customer' base could very easily by completely vaporized by the first instance of ransomware that shows up a second time, jonesing for 'just a little more'. This wouldn't necessarily occur--users jonesing for access to their feeds will likely simply cave and get used to a new anything--, but if the milking machine fired up a second time and did happen to drop jaws widely, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Re: Prepare for disaster...

The hole that MSFT is digging is getting wider and deeper. Please can someone, anyone offer tips on how to get them to concentrate on digging down.

FTFY

Re: Public Safety Issues

>I suspect that the reasons governments want to reduce traffic deaths is ...

I suspect that you are being presumptuous.

>3 1/2" disk wouldn't read, wouldn't even show. Took a minute or two of puzzling, some of which was spent testing other diskettes to verify the drive, eventually to get around to flipping the diskette case over, to find the label stuck, neatly and squarely, to the backside.

Who, rationally, would downvote the above? Methinks truly petty individuals with a hate-on. You know who you are, I suppose. How sad your existence!

Re: How about improving comments?

>The only comments system I can think of that's even more idiotic ...

has to be 'Most popular' first, the default on e.g. CBC.ca; in case people weren't already sufficiently sheep-like, here's a mechanism to expose site users to 'popular' thought(s)--which they can reflexively 'like' with barely so much as a twitch, reinforcing the lop-sided-ness of such perspective on the given topic. Unthinking, yet insidious, design.

Relative to anticipated changes to the site: "It is always appropriate to use the abbr element for any abbreviation, including acronyms and initialisms." (Tried this in this post, but it seems not to have taken.) Such use will reduce the number of head-scratchers like "SFTW", "CVE", and so on, and--for such use within articles--make IT a bit more accessible to readers at the margin, where growth occurs.

Agree that there's something a bit off about the tale as told. Imagine: someone hid a standard hard drive in a place a trained, motivated cop wouldn't think to look, yet within reach of the snout of a glue-sniffing Lab.

Re: Name and shame

I get the private heads-up, then a public announcement of the general state of the world, and, eventual making the list of apps considered public.

Alternatively, skip the last part and do a follow-up, unannounced and naming names, some time after the public annnouncement of the general lay of things. No possibility of interpreting that as a shake-down, or as a threat.

However, the convention of 30 days is a courtesy and a mis-guided convenience to businesses (banks, in this case)--particularly if it becomes more and more entrenched, as that will give businesses ample opportunity to scramble to protect what really matters: their public image. In the publishing regime under consideration, there isn't any in-built incentive for businesses to do more than foist the security assessment on someone else (researchers, for example), and the costs onto users/clients. That incentive is necessary if there's any expectation that businesses will become otherwise than simply reactive to security issues brought to their attention from without. The unannounced that-was-then-and-this-is-now assessment might serve that purpose, if it--instead--becomes the convention.

The downvote pettiness, or peevishness, described is plausible. People seem to need an outlet...

Re: How was it installed?

Here's a primer. Check the August 2014 article.

It looks like the major impediment to successful skimming is the reluctance of the criminals to lay out the necessary capital up front for a design that is compact, authentic in appearance, and easily manufactured. I expect that just over the horizon lies an armada of such things--indistinguishable from the real deal, easy to install, and difficult to detect... When that sails into view, things will get very interesting.

Re: Exam question

@LK Interesting. With MK being re-published, it might be useful to have an e-edition that reframes sections randomly (and with appropriate changes to detail), as you've done, each with a different 'target'--the better to highlight the offensive nature of what underlies the work.

> some people find this kind of money between their sofa cushions when the pizza delivery guy shows up.

Site needed.

Re: 5 years is a long time

Given the uncertainties we all must face with imperfect foresight, Mr. King, we envision that you will (probably) be able to pick up your pay cheque for this week in early 2020. In such case, you will, of course, have to sign for it.

Thank you for your contribution to Strategy Analytics, and for being such a good a team player.

Re: Misuse of computers act, here we come

By the time that case crawls bloodied and bruised down the courthouse steps for the last time, there will be worse digital thuggery in the neighbourhood. The processes of justice have long been considered slow--and they're much too slow now that we've moved, practically everywhere, out of the realm of hours, minutes, and seconds into the realm of milliseconds, nanoseconds, and picoseconds. Reaction times aren't matching up to the pace of change. Catching justice up to a seemingly ever-quickening moving ethical and moral horizon seems a very unlikely possibility. A different kind of change is required.