* Posts by adam payne

1511 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jun 2009

UK.gov's smart meter cost-benefit analysis for 2019 goes big on cost, easy on the benefits

adam payne

My previous supplier tried to put my price up when I refused to have a smart meter saying I had to have one. They didn't seem to believe me when I said smart meters were voluntary so I changed my supplier a couple of weeks later.

Mike drop, DXC-ya later! Lawrie immediately ejects as CEO from IT outsourcing giant

adam payne

"I am looking forward to leveraging these strengths and my proven operational playbook to accelerate the execution of our growth strategy."

I am looking forward to playing with my buzz word playbook while we accelerate the downward spiral of the business.

D-Link, Comba network gear leave passwords open for potentially whole world to see

adam payne

"The path to the file is https://[router ip address]/romfile.cfg and the password is stored in clear text there."

Seriously?!?!? Why on earth would you even do this?

the source code for the router log-in page (again, accessible to anyone that can reach its built-in web UI server) contains the ISP username and password of the user in plain text.

A glaring security oversight this isn't, it's just plain stupidity and laziness.

#captainpicarddoublefacepalm

Deloitte man kept quiet at Autonomy's internal audit committees, says scrutiny chairman

adam payne

Jonathan Bloomer told the court that Deloitte auditor Lee Welham "never said anything at the meetings so he left no impression on me".

An auditor not saying anything, i'm sorry but that can't be true.

All the auditors i've met in my life have loved the sound of their own voices.

Welcome to The Reg's poetry corner... hiQ once again / beats LinkedIn on web scrape case / more appeals await

adam payne

In 2017, the court found that there wasn't much to the CFAA claim as the information was already public...

You can't really have an expectation of privacy when the data is already public and free to see by anyone who wants to.

In Hemel Hempstead, cycling is as bad as taking a leak in the middle of the street

adam payne

I've dodged my fair share of cyclists and been hit by a couple as well.

A lot of the cyclists I seem to meet think they own the road and the pavement. Everybody has to move out of their way, they just don't seem to care and then they play the victim.

Today in tortured tech analogies: Mozilla lets Firefox loose in the hen house, and by hen house, we mean the tracking cookie jar, er...

adam payne

I've been using Firefox for years now and there is no way i'm going to use anything else if I can help it.

I do use IE on occasion, you know just for the nostalgia.

Allowlist, not whitelist. Blocklist, not blacklist. Goodbye, wtf. Microsoft scans Chromium code, lops off offensive words

adam payne

Redmond suggests nuking 'profanity, geopolitical, diversity' terms from browser source

I'd I thought Microsoft would have bigger things to concentrate on.

PC going nutter by the year.

Last one out, hit the lights: UK energy supplier SSE to axe 115 bodies from tech department

adam payne

Energy and broadband provider SSE is set to shed 115 roles within its IT infrastructure division in Britain, and will instead outsource some functions to Indian software supplier HCL.

Outsourcing has worked sooo well for lots of other companies.

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw: Well, lookie here! For once a space game that doesn't promise the universe

adam payne

Re: Privateer 2

DOSBox is good but I still prefer to play on my Atari ST with my Zipstick.

adam payne
Coat

The other was Elite: Dangerous (ED), from Raspberry Pi Foundation co-founder David Braben's Frontier Developments, the latest in a series that stretched all the way back to 1984, though until then I hadn't even heard of the original...

Not heard of the original!?!?!, this is simply unacceptable.

Dixons hits back at McAfee's £30m antivirus sueball: Your AV didn't work on Windows 10S

adam payne

McAfee flung its sueball at Dixons earlier this month, as first reported by the Sunday Times, after the British gadget souk stopped promoting its AV software for use with Windows 10S

I'm not sure why Mcafee think Dixons should have promoted a product that didn't work. If it didn't work wouldn't that have been bad for the consumers?!?

Can't bear to part with that well-worn copy of Windows 7? Microsoft might let you keep it updated an extra year

adam payne

So you can get specialist software that only runs on Windows that connect to GCMS and Mass Spec instruments to run without any problems on a Linux distro. Please feel free to enlighten me.

adam payne

I hate Windows 10, I don't want it and I sure as hell don't want to pay for it.

I would happily go to a Linux distro if the majority of software I need to use actually ran on it.

Biz forked out $115k to tout 'Time AI' crypto at Black Hat. Now it sues organizers because hackers heckled it

adam payne

filed late last week in a New York district court, blames the conference organizers for allowing Black Hat attendees to disrupt Crown Sterling's talk about supposedly disruptive cryptographic technology – a presentation Crown Sterling paid $115,000 to present to hackers. The heckling then spilled online.

They were mean so i'm going to lob sue balls. Talk about throw your toys out of the pram.

Steam cleaned of zero-day security holes after Valve turned off by bug bounty snub outrage

adam payne

The second security flaw report, it seems, along with condemnation from infosec professionals online, was enough to get Valve's attention. Shortly after news broke of the second bug disclosure, the multibillion-dollar biz issued the press (including El Reg) a statement reversing its decision.

Typical, get some bad publicity and then u-turn and fix the issue.

Cali court backs ex-Apple engineer who says he invented Find My iPhone and Passbook

adam payne

In the most recent legal proceedings, Apple ask the court to dismiss the lawsuit altogether, including a defamation allegation from Eastman, by claiming there was "prior art" on the patents

Are Apple trying to invalidate their own patents?!? Is this cut of your nose to spite your face?!?!

TalkTalk's voice-over is writing speeds that its text can't match: Ad pulled from broadcast

adam payne

Reg reader Rich Campbell noticed the TV broadcast's voice-over speeds did not match the ones promoted in the text.

Sounds like a certain ISP was hoping no one was reading the on screen text.

Disgruntled bug-hunter drops Steam zero-day to get back at Valve for refusing him a bounty

adam payne

Valve declined to recognize and pay out for the bug, which they said required local access and the ability to drop files on the target machine in order to run and was therefore not really a vulnerability.

Well at least it's not a repeat of the Steam Guard bug that would allow any code to be used.

Apple is a filthy AWS, Azure, Google reseller, gripe punters: iPhone giant accused of hiding iCloud's real backend

adam payne

Touting itself as the provider of the iCloud service (when, in fact, Apple was merely reselling cloud storage space on cloud facilities of other entities) allowed Apple not only to obtain paid subscriptions of class members who subscribed to iCloud believing that their cloud storage was being provided by Apple,

Amazon / MS / Google provides services to Apple who then in turn provides it to iCloud customers. Apple may not own / run the storage but they are providing a service.

J'accuse! Amazon's Rekognition reckons 1 in 5 Californian lawmakers are crims in ACLU test

adam payne

Ting noted that body cams were meant to increase trust in law enforcement and improve transparency, not be used as a surveillance tool

Increase trust and improve transparency, wow really?!?

Researchers peer into crystal ball to see future where everyone's ID is tied to their smartphone

adam payne

The report, Digital Identity: Technology Evolution, Regulatory Analysis & Forecasts 2019-2024, predicts that millions of third-party app makers will make money from linking operator-provided ID information to requests from other apps and services.

I predict that loads of third-party app makers will make money linking that stuff up but lots of them will be a security and privacy nightmare.

US insurers face SEC probe over web-access bungle that exposed 'up to 885 million' files

adam payne

First American's document identification numbers were sequential

Please tell me someone got the bullet for this?!?!

First American issued a statement claiming that it had identified just 32 customers whose "non-public personal information" was "likely accessed without authorisation", and offered them free credit-monitoring services.

That is still 32 more than there needed to be.

So you make everything better you offered the 32 people credit monitoring for a year, go you.

Printer pwnage, phone poppage, and apparently US Homeland Security needs security help

adam payne

Xerox printers are rife with security bugs that can put the rest of the network at risk.

I wouldn't have thought it was just Xerox with security bugs, I can imagine most of the printer manufacturers having them.

When the chips are down, buy a software biz: Broadcom snaffles Symantec for $10.7bn

adam payne

So is the name Symantec going into the dustbin?!?

If they wipe the name they might wipe the shame.

That's bang out of order: Threesome hookup app 3Fun leaked lovers' data, locations, pix – report

adam payne

According to Lomas, the 3Fun app revealed locations of users in near real time, user birth dates, sexual preferences and chat data. And it exposed users' private pictures, whether or not the evidently non-functional privacy flag had been set.

#captainpicarddoublefacepalm

Ohm my God: If you let anyone other than Apple replace your recent iPhone's battery, expect to be nagged by iOS

adam payne

...though it could be seen that way in the sense that Apple doesn't want to compete with independent repair shops.

Apple doesn't want independent shops to be able to compete at all. Apple would much rather control the whole thing and make it impossible to get your device repair anywhere else but at their stores. Take product it to Apple store they say can't be repaired so you buy another one, yay bottom line.

Rome wasn't built in a day, wasn't teased in a day, either: AMD's 7nm second-gen 64-core Epyc server chips finally land

adam payne

The IT industry is eager for more hardware competition, said Moorhead, but AMD, lacking the investment Intel has made in the enterprise value chain, still needs to lean on vendors like HPE, Dell and Lenovo, none of which have much of a recent track record creating demand for AMD kit.

Or maybe Intel need to stop giving the vendors back handers for not using AMD chips.

WTF is Boeing on? Not just customer databases lying around on the web. 787 jetliner code, too, security bugs and all

adam payne

A Black Hat presentation on how to potentially hijack a 787 – by exploiting bugs found in internal code left lying around on a public-facing server – was last night slammed as "irresponsible and misleading" by Boeing.

What irresponsible is leaving said code on a public facing server so every Tom, Dick and Harry can see it.

IOActive chose to ignore our verified results and limitations

Are those the same kind of verified results you used to test MCAS?

BT flogs off its fleet vehicle maintenance arm to German private equity types Aurelius

adam payne

Munich-based Aurelius plans to work with existing management to, er, "drive growth" via "operational improvements", along with investment in heavy goods vehicles, accident management and vehicle funding. It is also looking to expand both organically and through acquisition.

Drive growth by penny pinching, outsourcing as much as possible and charging customers ridiculous amounts.

UK parliament sends snippy letter to Zuck and his poodle Clegg as it seems Facebook has been lying again

adam payne

Facebook has consistently maintained that it only heard about the problems from press reports, thereby alleviating it of direct responsibility or potential legal liability for the data-slurping company

Facebook lie, of course not! /sarcasm

Networking giant in hot water for selling US govt buggy spy kit? Huawei again? No, it's Cisco

adam payne
Joke

While the details of the bug have not been shared, the complaint stated that a successful exploit would potentially allow for a complete network takeover.

Well the US government want backdoors in other peoples software, so Cisco gave them an unintentional one.

What's the last piece of software you'd expect to spy on you? Maybe your enterprise security suite? Bad news

adam payne

"But the fact that large volumes of data are traveling outbound from a customer environment to a vendor without the customer’s knowledge or consent is problematic."

No not problematic just plain wrong.

Outsourcing giant Capita handed £145m for UK.gov's Personal Independence Payment extension

adam payne

Jon Lewis, chief executive of Capita, said of the contract win: "These contract extensions are testament to the commitment of our healthcare team, our consistently strong operational performance, and the strength of our longstanding relationship with government."

These contract extensions are testament to multiple UK governments sadly lacking any sort of common sense and ability to think outside the box.

Why would you continue to give work to a company that has failed to deliver or delivered late/over budget so many times?!?

'We've done it, we've wasted further time!' Judge raps HP over Mike Lynch court scrutiny

adam payne

The more I read about this the more i'm convinced that HP have nothing in the way of real evidence. It all seems to be smoke and mirrors.

Google pays out $13m to make Wi-Spy scandal go away: Bung goes to peeps and privacy orgs

adam payne

Four months later, the ICO pulled a major U-turn after Google admitted the data included full URLs, emails and passwords. The regulator then stated that the search giant had indeed broken the law.

Typical ICO, spinning around like a record player.

it simply made Google sign a commitment to improve data handling and introduce a requirement for engineers to maintain a privacy design document for every new project before it is launched.

Slap on the wrist and a finger wag, now don't do it again.

Checkmate, Qualcomm: Apple in billion-dollar bid to gobble Intel’s 5G modem blueprints, staff – new claim

adam payne

Sources close to the deal told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that Cook & Co were offering the x86 processor goliath a billion dollars for the intellectual property and staff behind its cellular modem business

£1bn to buy the company, another couple of billion in R&D to get the modems up to a similar level as Qualcomm. Then of course a couple more billion for the lawsuit settlement after they apparently infringe on some Qualcomm patents.

How does UK.gov fsck up IT projects? Let us count the ways

adam payne

"There is little apparent link between successful delivery and the careers and ambitions of the permanent secretaries who are nominally responsible for them."

You still wouldn't be able to get rid of them even if they did make a balls up of it.

It's not just these people that need to be held accountable it's the vendors as well.

Thirdly, it said government should explore the option of outsourcing project management from individual departments to a dedicated central unit. It also suggested creating a new government committee to oversee large projects.

So you want to outsource project management and create yet another committee to add extra levels of bureaucratic nonsense.

Hmmmm...what could possibly go wrong with this?!?!?

London cop illegally used police database to monitor investigation into himself

adam payne

A serving Metropolitan police officer who illegally accessed a police database to monitor a criminal investigation into his own conduct has pleaded guilty to crimes under the Computer Misuse Act.

Why would a person being investigated still have access to the database?!?

You TalkTalk a big game, says ads watchdog, but your testing not good enough to say your Wi-Fi's best

adam payne

Low-rent UK ISP TalkTalk has been told to stop claiming its Wi-Fi signal "can't be beaten by any of the other big providers" after fellow telco BT whinged to the UK's Advertising Standards Agency (ASA)

It's an advert and thus I didn't believe it for a second.

Pot and kettle though BT. How many times have the ASA spoken to you about your adverts?!?

Huawei website ████ ██████ security flaws ██████ customer info and biz operations at risk: ███████ patched

adam payne

Huawei is under the microscope but then go and NDA these people.

Hmmmm...interesting...almost like you want to hush up some really stupid mistakes.

Time to Ryzen shine, Intel: AMD has started shipping 7nm desktop CPUs like it's no big deal

adam payne

"AMD is committed to driving innovation and competition across the computing and graphics markets to give PC enthusiasts, gamers and creators incredible experiences and unmatched value," said Lisa Su, president and CEO of AMD.

and of course sticking it to Intel.

Chrome's default-on ad blocker – which doesn't block adverts on 99% of websites – goes global

adam payne

We are Google and we approve this advertisement

Chinese government has got it 'spot on' when it comes to face-recog tech says, er, London's Met cops' top rep

adam payne

And then he identified one group who was getting it "spot on" – the Chinese government.

Saying that is not going to help your cause only hurt it.

"if you've done nothing wrong, I personally wouldn’t have any problem with it whatsoever because I'd like to think they're doing a great job and trying to catch criminals and terrorists and get them off our streets."

Oh that old chestnut. It's laughable that he thinks you'd get treated fairly if stopped due to a incorrect flag. You'd be on the floor in cuffs before they even identified themselves.

DoH! Secure DNS doesn't make us a villain, Mozilla tells UK broadband providers

adam payne

Mozilla insists that its goal is to build a more secure internet and that it continues to have a constructive conversation about security with "credible stakeholders in the UK." The company didn't say whether it considers the ISPA to be a credible stakeholder.

I think the statement speaks for itself, that would be a no then.

Metropolitan Police's facial recognition tech not only crap, but also of dubious legality – report

adam payne

"We are extremely disappointed with the negative and unbalanced tone of this report."

We are extremely disappointed because it didn't sing our praises.

the deployments have been successful in identifying wanted offenders.

How many successfully identified over all the trials?

Serious Fraud Office fines Serco £22.9m over electronic tagging scandal

adam payne

Serco referred itself to the SFO, and along with outsourcing company G4S faced allegations it had been charging the MoJ for monitoring offenders in the community that were already in jail, had left the country or were, um, dead.

Shouldn't the MoJ know this kind of stuff already?!? Government departments talking to each other...oh yeah OK.

Under the agreement, which is subject to court approval, Serco will not face formal criminal charges.

This should never have been agreed to. Get them all up on the stand and make them accountable for what they did.

Here's a great idea: Why don't we hardcode the same private key into all our smart home hubs?

adam payne

he company has put out a software update that should fix the API holes and has scrapped the single hardcoded SSH private key.

How are they contacting people who have purchased their dodgy boxes?

How many of their boxes will remain unpatched as the people using them don't know about the patch?

Cop a load of this: 1TB of police body camera videos found lounging around public databases

adam payne

he and his team had identified about a terabyte of officer body cam videos, stored in unprotected internet-facing databases, belonging to the Miami Police Department, and cops in other US cities as well as places aboard

Wow just wow.

Yuge U-turn: Prez Trump walks back on Huawei ban... at least the tech sector seems to think so

adam payne

Speaking after meeting the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, Trump said: "American companies that make product, that's very complex by the way, highly scientific... I've agreed to allow them to continue to sell that product."

So did he finally figure that an outright ban would hit the US economy as well or did they just bribe him?