Posts by John Smith 19

"Worst case scenario: Someone unleashes on Christmas Eve."

Indeed.

Timing the release of a major malware event at a time when the people being targeted are least able to respond to it would clearly not be the act of a gentleman.

OTOH since they are malware writers should you be very surprised that they would?

"Why did they put it there in the first place though?"

Simple. The NSA does not (in theory) work for itself. Such attacks are a policy decision.

And if the policy changes you have to be able to shut it down.

Likewise if you target a group of businesses in order to gain access to an installation once inside and spreading any further infection is unnecessary. Ideally you want the other copies to also self destruct to prevent hardening against them (or perhaps having them used on yourself?)

The documentary "Zero Days" on Stuxnet mentions this stuff briefly.

"..a binary system of TLAs &black hats, in effect working together to crap on the rest of the world"

From the PoV of most people who have to support IT systems there is no difference between these groups. I don't give a f**k what their motivations are.

Developers who work for TLA's. You are not keeping the world safe for Democracy/Socialism/Islam. These are stories you tell yourself or are told to you.

This is you

IRL the best assurance of a "safe" world (WTF that is) is safety and privacy for everybody, rather than surveillance of all under the nebulous excuse of "protecting" society from the usual 4 Horsemen.

"(although the TLAs and politicians are too dim to understand their complicity in this)"

Oh they see it.

They just don't wish to acknowledge it.

"No man's ignorance is so great as a man whose livelihood depends on that ignorance" Upton Sinclair.

They believe that these weapons can be secured the way nuclear, chemical and biological weapons can be secured. If you steal one of those you'll leave traces (and probably kill or injure yourself in the process).

They are wrong.

"I'd guess through a privilege escalation code flaw. "

Not even necessary in the NHS as El Reg has reported many of those patient management systems (which IIRC are the prime reason the NHS has not updated, since they don't run on anything but XP) only run with Admin rights.

Presumably any US hospitals that have been hit by this were in the same state.

"the SMB server bug is the result of a buffer overflow in Microsoft's code. "

BTW People make a big thing about XP but this SMB stuff is in all versions of Windows.

Remember when MS claimed they'd spent $Bn training their devs to not write insecure code and totally re-written the code base to eliminate these flaws?

How do you know when you're dealing with a monopoly?

Simple. When s**t this serious still does not force CTO level management to think "Maybe I should think about running something else on the desktop?"

"So that's who is going to play the part of the idiot-in-chief"

While on the surface this sounds completely ba***it crazy that actually sounds like a plan to me.

Let's do lunch.

"I do wonder when Nixon's nickname will be..changed to "Respectable Richard".

Umm, never?

Tricky Dicky's behavior requested getting his aides to organize burglaries of political opponents. That's never going to be acceptable.

We'll see how the D's behavior shapes up the next 1350 days.

Along with the hands on the Doomsday Clock of course.

"Maybe cheeto will fire the Congress next."

You know, deep down, he's not a natural democrat. His preferred form of government (were he to spend the time actually articulating it) is aristocracy in the literal sense of the word IE "The best rule."

And by "best" of course he means himself.

"and promised we'd get the situation back under control in about four years. "

Sadly I'm not quite so optimistic. Rumor has has it the D has already worked out his 2nd term election slogan.

"Keeping America Great."

Catchy, don't you think?

1350 days before he tries it out.

"So not only does the Trumpeter have small hands, but he's not got all his marbles?"

Just saw "Deadpool" again.

Are they KFC Spork small?

"Richard Nixon. Another guy who absolutely did nothing wrong while in office."

"There's no White wash in the White House."

Turned out, there was.

"nothing to see here, really."

Indeed.

Trump supporter produces fake news (massive haul of sensitive emails is not massive haul) and Trump shows him the door.

Here's an old fashioned idea. Let's try to get a consensus on what the Congress should do.

How about

1)There is evidence that serious efforts were made to influence the outcome of the last Presidential election by at least one foreign government.

2) This is wrong.

3)The Congress should investigate

a)What efforts were made b) Which powers were involved c) Wheather they were successful d) What should be done about it e) What should be done to stop it happening in future.

I think that's an agenda every member of Congress and the Senate could get behind.

" created at manufacture and only stored by (say) the FBI/NSA/GCHQ"

And you don't see the flaw in this cunning plan, following the Edward Snowden documents release?

Think carefully.

"The tiny hand wrecks the cradle."

Well played, sir.

"will ask each agency for a feasibility plan for combining IT infrastructure for departments "

Could we call this "shared services by the back door?"

He might like to have a little chat with his new BFF Mrs May on how well that's worked out in the UK.

Of course done right it could result in yuuge cost savings

"What ports are open on my machine?" "I'm sorry, can you say that in English?"

Actually I can.

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Follow the instructions and watch the pretty pattern form. If it's all Green it's a start. If it's partly Red go find someone who does know about these things and ask them for help.

"sold to and installed by people with no IT skills. "

Which if I would were callus about it would not bother me.

The problem is that s**t then starts attacking everyone else's stuff.

So instead of being a problem for the ignorati only it now becomes a problem for everyone.

"More space junk and rare minerals burning up..doesn't really sound like the sanest plan ever?"

Like shipping laundry from the Klondike to Hawaii to be washed.

Yet that was done and people made money doing it.

You seem to think that sanity is a prerequisite for getting funding or making a profit.