"Only single player is allowed"
Video game? Or a forecasting program which government's use to practice world domination tactics.
A highly advanced piece of malware, dubbed Gazer, has been found in embassies and consulates across Eastern Europe. The software nasty was discovered by security shop Eset, which says the code uses a two-stage process to insert itself into Microsoft Windows machines. In a report published today, we're told the initial point of …
"Video game?"
My thought exactly but for a different reason to yours. Unless there are more gaming related strings then my *dar would be going berserk. That phrase is missing the indefinite article which isn't a smoking gun as such - some proportion of programmers of a game may have a tenuous grasp of English even when it is their first language. However the error is unlikely to be repeated for all occurrences.
So, you start with the subset of speakers who might routinely drop an "a" when describing single players in English as a second language and correlate with other clues. Obviously you might want to consider that as a deliberately dropped clue to put you off the real scent.
*crackle* *crackle* (tin foil cloak to go with the hat)
which shouldn't really be there at all if what we learned about programming were put into practice.
Which reminds me:-
YOU ARE IN A LITTLE MAZE OF TWISTING PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT.
YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTING LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT
P.S. I'm not shouting, in them days there weren't no lower case.
It's simply low-hanging fruit. However, given this is a targeted attack (hint: spear-phishing was used as the initial vector; that's mainly social engineering), there's nothing to say any other OS available could be penetrated as well, no matter what safeguards may be in place. Few products of man can ever truly be declared perfect, and it's hard to get rid of the human vulnerability.
"Why does everything seem to state 'Microsoft Windows' on the system requirements recently?"
Stop whining, I for one would like to know if my system is compatible with the latest stuff doing the rounds.
Besides, you must be new here, you cool anon numpty you, MS bashing (and supporting) is par for the course and we are sometimes generous to those with high handicaps provided they have something useful to say or at least try to but you don't.
"Stop whining, I for one would like to know if my system is compatible with the latest stuff doing the rounds."
Compatibility was never an issue until Microsoft made it so ..
Security as a lock in: "I believe as we evolve security capabilities there must be some way to set this up so that our operating systems have shared secrets with each other that make them work better with each other than with other operating systems - whether it's JAVAOS layered on top of us or clones or anything else. I think we need to make this an explicit goal of our security strategy."
Openness: "Our most potent Operating System competitor is Linux and the phenomena around Open Source and free software. The same phenomena fuels competitors to all of our products. The ease of picking up Linux to learn it or to modify some piece of it is very attractive"
Lotus Notes R5 Competitive Analysis aka Microsoft Innovation.
Which north western european nation would most benefit from information obtained about other european countries over the next 20 months?
If you were MI6 would you
a, deliberately make your spy software look Russian to throw off the enemy
b, have spy software so simply super that nobody ever found it
c, not use spy software because it is ungentlemanly
d, have no idea what anyone is talking about because you rely on aged Oxford tutors to recruit all your staff and they haven't moved to fountain pens yet
e, see no need to spy because johnny foreigner will give in to all of Boris's demands anyway
It's time for places like embassies not to use computers with Microsoft Windows. Everyone else uses it, so there are plenty of viruses. Instead, each country should under great secrecy design its own hardened secure variant of BSD to put on its machines.
Of course security by obscurity isn't real security, but it's better than nothing, and nothing seems to be what you will usually get.
I mean, it's not as if computers for issuing passports or sending encrypted messages home have to be able to run all the latest games.
Well the 'open' part of GCHQ provides guidance on most common OS that are a sensible starting point:
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/end-user-device-security
Some might normally be laughable from a privacy point of view (Android, Chrome OS and consumer Windows 10) but I guess when configured their way (i.e. all using corporate VPN, Win10 enterprise options) they become acceptable for "official" work. Reading the Ubuntu 16.04 notes is interesting, they make a point of making user-writeable areas no-execute and enforcing apparmor restrictions on various process.
Reminds me of the saying "he who checks behind the door has once hidden there before".