* Posts by bungle42

12 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Sep 2017

You leak our secrets? We'll leak your book sales, speech fees – into our coffers: Uncle Sam wins royalties fight against Edward Snowden

bungle42
Windows

An Alternative Option for Publishing?

Well I suppose Snowden could have gotten into bed with the America's other arch-nemesis and published his book on Wikileaks.

If he could find his way to the UK then I am sure it could be arranged for him to share a cell will Assange which would give them ample time to compare notes.

Russian FaceApp selfie-slurper poses 'potential counterintelligence threat', FBI warns

bungle42
Big Brother

"The FBI considers any mobile application or similar product developed in Russia, such as FaceApp, to be a potential counterintelligence threat, based on the data product collects, its privacy and terms of use policies, and the legal mechanisms available to the Government of Russia that permit access to data within Russia's borders," wrote Jill Tyson"

Exactly like the US does with data inside (and outside?) its borders, utter hypocrisy!

All roads in US cable biz GTT's Brit network seem to lead to Menwith Hill

bungle42
Big Brother

I Remember the Early Days of Menwith Hill

I grew up in Harrogate during the late 70's & early 80's and we would often drive past the Menwith Hill site to visit relatives who lived a few miles away in Pately Bridge. My Uncle would often comment about how the height of the land was continuously increasing along the road to Dacre as the underground complex was being expanded. I believe that the site was originally setup as an early warning station against missile attacks from the USSR but that purpose faded with the end of the Cold War so a new purpose needed to be found. Something that I remember from back then was that a cable trench was dug between Menwith Hill and Hunters Stone about 5 miles to the west. Why Hunters Stone? well that was a microwave tower that relayed all the phone calls and faxes up and down the UK. It was common knowledge at the time that the underground computers would scan all the calls and faxes for key words which caused the content to be set aside for further analysis. Over the years the number of Radomes has steadily increased which I understand are used to tap into satellite downlinks across Europe. The Radomes prevent you from seeing which direction the dish is pointing which could be used to determine which satellite was being monitored. With the advent of fibre connections and thousands of satellite channels I can't even begin to imagine how much data this place is processing and forwarding on to the Five Eyes partners.

Go fourth and multi-Pi: Raspberry Pi 4 lands today with quad 1.5GHz Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cores, up to 4GB RAM...

bungle42

Curious ...

Out of curiosity what is it that you plan to do with 6 of the new PI's?

Eggheads confirm: Rampant Android bloatware a privacy and security hellscape

bungle42

Re: a critical application like Google Play Services

OK, you can argue whether Google Play Services is truly "critical" or not but my understanding is that it is intertwined with other Apps and Services so I thought it best not to uninstall it. I'm not sure what would happen it you uninstalled it.

bungle42

Re: Oh but you can remove bloatware to a certain degree ...

Yes I think you are correct in that it removes the package for the current user.

If you consider that Bloatware is basically three parts: 1) consumption of storage space; 2) crapware/security vulnerabilities running in the background; 3) cluttering up the UI then I believe this solves the last two but not the first.

I consider it a small price to pay for not having to root and still receive updates.

bungle42

Oh but you can remove bloatware to a certain degree ...

It is possible to de-bloat your phone without root access by using one of the simple guides such as the following which uses the ADB Shell command prompt over a USB cable to uninstall packages identified using the Application Inspector App:

https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatware-without-root-access/

I have successfully used this method to remove several Android and Samsung Apps that I know I will never have any use for. Just be careful not to remove a critical application like Google Play Services however it is possible to re-install these if you decide that you made a mistake.

Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress

bungle42
WTF?

Are Cow Farts Worse?

I used to share an office with a bloke who would really kick off whenever I tried to I sneak one out.

He really did not get it when I pointed out that because he lived next to a diary farm he was probably inhaling much more cow gas on a weekly basis than I could ever hope to expel in a lifetime. Maybe there is a psychological aspect to this in that human farts are somehow deemed to be worse that animal farts.

Ransomware drops the Lillehammer on Norsk Hydro: Aluminium giant forced into manual mode after systems scrambled

bungle42

Re: Ransomware outbreak hits Norwegian ‘computers’

Totally agree but that's the connected world we now live in.

You could air-gap your home PC to protect yourself from online threats but that kind of makes surfing the web a little difficult.

Responsible home users can keep their software and AV up to date.

Because of the greater attack surface, responsible businesses have to take this to a whole new level https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-82r2.pdf

bungle42

Re: Ransomware outbreak hits Norwegian ‘computers’

"Traditionally, good practice has been to fully isolate SCADA-type systems from office LAN's as they tend to receive less frequent patching (i.e. once or twice a year managed by the vendor) and often won't have AV installed due to either vendor recommendations or conflicts with fragile applications."

This may have been the case in the past but these days many departments within an organisation need access to data from the process control systems for their day-to-day duties. I work for a large automation supplier where the typical system architecture consists of various layers (Plant/Process Control/Operator HMI/Servers/DMZ/Business LAN) separated by firewalls. Most modern control systems (rightly or wrongly) are windows based these days so there is a server that regularly rolls out Hotfixes, Windows Updates, and Virus Definitions.

A few specific examples of how the control system data is used are: Maintenance can interrogate or even re-calibrate field instruments from a workstation in the maintenance shop; Accounts can review tank inventories in real time; Process Engineers can optimise plant performance by reviewing data from the history servers; Corporate can compare production rates in real time between different plants all over the world.

Isolating a SCADA or Process Control System might seem like a good idea but even an air-gapped system can be susceptible e.g. as in the Stuxnet virus that could be introduced via a USB thumb drive.

Er, we have 670 staff to feed now: UK's ICO fines 100 firms that failed to pay data protection fee

bungle42
Facepalm

Ironic?

Wouldn't it be ironic if the ICO was one of the companies that failed to register?

Brit broke anti-terror law by refusing to cough up passwords to cops

bungle42
Go

Possible Solution?

You video yourself stood behind your laptop while a firend/colleague explains that they are changing the password and will send this to you after you arrive safely at your destination. You then post the video on YouTube before leaving and give the authorities the URL if stopped.