* Posts by Hans 1

3796 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2009

FBI says it can't unlock 8,000 encrypted devices, demands backdoors for America's 'public safety'

Hans 1
Holmes

Re: Face Palm

They're just hoping that the average American doesn't understand so they can move ahead with getting their back door installed.

And how are they gonna put a backdoor in FSF encryption solutions ? If they do, someone will simply fork ...

Listen, Mr Hoover Jr, you cannot get a backdoor, sorry ... ask your NSA buddies, they have access to Intel ME et al, so access to RAM and Ethernet, they can decrypt on-the-fly ... they certainly have the bitlocker key as well, stashed away with a gazillion other data on some storage cluster ... No, you can ask as much as you want, you CANNOT get a backdoor.

Meltdown, Spectre bug patch slowdown gets real – and what you can do about it

Hans 1

Re: So how much will this throw Intels release schedule out by?

does that mean no CPU based speed increases before 2020?

Well, we have not really had a speed increase since 2014 on Intel anyway, in some cases lower TDP, yes, slightly higher clock speeds and 6% performance increase ... negligible ....

I have a 5820K and will not get the 6800K, nor 7800X when the 5820K kicks the bucket ... Ryzen all way

Seriously, Reg, you care about a software licensing standard?

Hans 1

May I make a suggestion ?

Use FSF solutions, then you get none of this licensing crap .... just saying ;-)

How to hack Wi-Fi for fun and imprisonment with crypto-mining inject

Hans 1
Facepalm

Re: Mmmm, JavaScript.

Public wifi is a different matter. MitM attacks are well-established.

Yes, that is why you get a "data plan", public Wifi should NEVER BE USED, f00ls! You use it, you lose!

Microsoft patches Windows to cool off Intel's Meltdown – wait, antivirus? Slow your roll

Hans 1

Re: Huge Baby Huge

Here is a list of files: http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/A/0/DA052502-1178-41A0-83CF-7120155B2009/4056892.csv

Yes, it includes Cortana "listen" ui ... what that has to do with Meldown is mystery!

Hans 1

Re: Huge Baby Huge

Weird, apparently, since it should only need a "kernel" patch, like on Linux, few lines of code, done ... on Windows, they have to patch half the bloody binaries ? Ahhh, of course, that is because that half lives in kernel space, to speed up the monster ...

US border cops told to stop copying people's files just for the hell of it

Hans 1
Paris Hilton

Re: What's the hit rate?

it would be much better stored on a server somewhere else and just accessed when necessary via public Wi-Fi

You use public Wifi ? Sorry, love, but your opinion does not count!

Paris, coz even she knows that!

Qualcomm joins Intel, Apple, Arm, AMD in confirming its CPUs suffer hack bugs, too

Hans 1

Re: The same bug.

Crap, ERRATUM :-(

The only CPU's affected by Meltdown are All recent Intel CPU's, from 2010 on (at the very least), and a AMD Pro CPU with jit (just in time compiler) enabled (which is disabled by default).

s/b

The only CPU's affected by Meltdown are All recent Intel CPU's, from 2010 on (at the very least).

The AMD Pro CPU is vulnerable to Spectre, sorry!

Hans 1
Boffin

Re: The same bug.

You might find this helpful: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/why-raspberry-pi-isnt-vulnerable-to-spectre-or-meltdown/

Thanks, Doc!

Qualcomm declined to comment further on precisely which of the three CVE-listed vulnerabilities its chips were subject to, or give any details on which of its CPU models may be vulnerable. The paper describing the Spectre data-snooping attacks mentions that Qualcomm's CPUs are affected, while the Meltdown paper doesn't conclude either way.

El'Reg, I think you have to understand, we have three CVE's, two l33t names for these vulns, Spectre and Meltdown.

The only CPU's affected by Meltdown are All recent Intel CPU's, from 2010 on (at the very least), and a AMD Pro CPU with jit (just in time compiler) enabled (which is disabled by default).

Spectre is a more generic vuln that affects a bunch of CPU designers/vendors including Intel, AMD, ARM, IBM, and Qualcomm.

What is the difference between Spectre and Meltdown ?

Meltdown exploits are globally easier to implement than Spectre.

Meltdown takes advantage of memory reads in out-of-order instructions, Spectre acts on the branch prediction mechanism.

Spectre allows for cross/intra process memory disclosure, Meltdown allows disclosure of kernel memory to the user-space processes (normally not accessible).

Meltdown has a known software mitigation.

Both rely on a cache side-channel attack, which is a measure of timing differences when accessing certain blocks of memory to deduce the information otherwise unknown.

More gory details available here, idiot-proof read:

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/176803/meltdown-and-spectre-vulnerabilities

Hans 1
Happy

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Qualcomm have understood this lesson, why has Intel frayed away ?

UK drone collision study didn't show airliner window penetration

Hans 1

Re: But does it need to break to create a risk?

A goose hitting the windscreen at 200mph will equally make a loud bang, if not louder.

Maybe, but a goose is wildlife, you cannot just legislate wildlife away.

Here, we are talking spoiled and thick brats operating drones in areas they should not. I have absolutely 0 empathy for these. The takeoff and landing phases are the busiest moments in the cockpit, you really do not want some punks distracting pilots landing or taking off, ever. I do not care if they can damage the aircraft or not, that is entirely besides the point, they distract pilots at critical moments and that is not acceptable.

I would go with "confiscation of equipment" and fine. If they are caught again, slammer. This is crazy and has to stop.

Tsinghua Unigroup: We don't need Hynix chip tech, we have our own

Hans 1
Thumb Up

Some forecasters expect enterprise 3D NAND demand to be high enough to soak up the supply and avoid a glut and associated price crash. ®

I hope not, if the oversupply is soo great that they can offer 2Tb variants for poor punters like me at a reasonable price, I'll have one or two!

Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign

Hans 1

It could be an expensive repair. The CPU chips are likely soldered in.

That was by Apple's design, ach Schadenfreude ...

Hans 1

What if ?

Class action lawsuit -> recall -> Intel chapter 11

UK security chief: How 'bout a tax for tech firms that are 'uncooperative' on terror content?

Hans 1

Wallace justified the semi-proposal by saying that companies "will ruthlessly sell our details to loans and soft-porn companies but not give it to our democratically elected government".

I admit, I read up to there, then my eyelids closed, I was trying to suppress as I had company around me and laughter was not really an option, could not stand it any langer so I escaped here to the comments section .... ahhhhhh

https://youtu.be/kx_G2a2hL6U?t=2m2s

My response to Mr Wallace: Your democratically elected government, or so you call it, that gets elected on lies, scaremongering and more, evil, lies, like all previous British governments for as long as I can remember, and I am not young, has absolutely NO F* RIGHT to get hold of more citizen's data than is ABSOLUTELY necessary for the task that is yours, governing. We have already seen your administration leave details of millions of citizens on some disk or USB key in a train or wherever for anyone to grab, thank you very much. You will notice that pr0n sites are quite a bit better at keeping data safely, not that I would want them to have it in the first place, mind. Besides, your democratically elected government has vowed to do away with the ECJ, the only independent judicial authority in the UK today, but even that is nothing, WORSE, your PM has OPENLY admitted to having a different "interpretation" of what encompasses Human Rights, compared to other European Democracies ... so, no, excuse my English, F* OFF!

BlackBerry grabs trolley for spot of tech shopping

Hans 1

I think the minute they announced they would not be providing updates for their Android phones was when even I chilled.

They were incredibly quick to provide Android updates, faster, sometimes, than Google! <--- needs to be applauded. Then, a few months later, they say some third party refuses to update some driver ...

I have said this time and time again:

As long as we, as an industry, accept BS like that, we will make headlines world-wide for data breaches. I know there are a lot of IE6 fanboys on here who loved their 15 year love-in with that security black hole, or guys who claim that "every morning at 6AM some Ninja comes into their data center with an M16 forcing them to power-on that other obsolete piece of kit", and/or who have "corporate fallacies" to trade just with one purveyor, usually the one with the worst "possible [?]" security track record, who store their crown jewels on the cloud, and, because the software they have in-house is obsolete, have to run obsolete protocols on that cloud ... There really is only one very simple solution to all these problems.... believe it or not!

Astroboffins say our Solar System could have – wait, stop, what... the US govt found UFOs?

Hans 1

Alloys in Vegas

If they have physical evidence, then they should have a bunch of physicists analyze it, video IS NOT evidence, eye-witness testimony IS NOT evidence, a waste of time.

Judge rm -rf Grsecurity's defamation sue-ball against Bruce Perens

Hans 1
WTF?

Grsecurity

Warning: Grsecurity: Potential contributory infringement and breach of contract risk for customers

There, I did it also, sue me, bloodsuckers!

Merry Christmas, UK prosecutors: Here's a special gift... a slap from the privacy watchdog

Hans 1
Happy

Re: Haa Haa Haa

@Credas

Assuming saving NHS was just a lure, the other reason put forward, ethnic cleansing of the British isles, probably means that you will be backing a hard Brexit. You cannot, as Mr Barnier said have passporting rights WITHOUT the other freedoms ... this means that, either the UK does a soft Brexit and thus renounces the ethnic cleansing, and loses ALL DECISION MAKING concerning directives this time REALLY IMPOSED UPON YOU or the UK loses 40% of GDP, at the very least, as I already wrote multiple times pre-referendum ... I as a Brit don't care what you choose, either way, you are worse off ...

And I am so very delighted by this, because, you see, I have always loved watching patriots (whatever the nation, yes, even "mine") get some good spanking they so very much deserve!

Tschüss!

PS: I am also delighted by the prospect of absence of British MEP's, they were only holding us Europeans back anyway.

Missed opportunity bingo: IBM's wasted years and the $92bn cash splurge

Hans 1
Facepalm

If they want to maximize profit going forward, they should sell everything and fire everyone, and become a patent troll.

Lawyers rule!

If they were to do just that, we would not even have electronic calculators, back to pen, paper, and slide rules, maybe, if Apple were to file suit, you know, slide to "unlock the result", nobody could have a patent on Abacus, right ? Well ... not so sure mates ...

Booboo4u, please watch what you are wishing for ...

Hans 1
Holmes

Re: And the consequences ...?

Will *anyone* responsible for this mess pay *any* kind of price?

That's what proles are for, oh, besides making the company money ...

That was fast... unlike old iPhones: Apple sued for slowing down mobes

Hans 1
Holmes

I call BS

This whole story is BS.

Our iPhone 5 is slower than a noname android tablet with 512Mb of RAM and pre-historic CPU at rendering web pages, so, there has to be a calculatePi() in there, I assume iPhone 6 just got the same treatment with the release of the new mobes. No CPU down-scaling, simply the if has been updated to include iPhone 6, admittedly, it might be worsened by CPU scaling, however, I doubt it ... our iPhone 5 even after factory reset grinds to a halt as soon as you install latest updates (I'll re-baptize that iPhone downdates from now on).

Ubuntu 17.10 pulled: Linux OS knackers laptop BIOSes, Intel kernel driver fingered

Hans 1

Re: Jumpers

Sometimes the "analog" way of doing things is simpler, quicker and more effective.

The analog way is the only way that can prevent software from doing stuff ... reason why you have analog switches on sd cards, as you had on floppies etc ... software CANNOT toggle that ;-)

Hans 1
FAIL

Re: Accidental Aardvark

If it turns out X number of laptops ARE permanently borked, what happens then? Can anyone be sued, or is it teeth gnashing time?

Just like MS and every other software purveyor, the software is released "as-is" [...] [without] fitness for any particular purpose.

If your BIOS is already affected by this blunder, you may have to replace the firmware's flash memory chip – or the whole motherboard – if reseting the BIOS or this suggested workaround, or some other remedy, do not resolve the matter.

That is when you appreciate the Gigabyte dual Bios boards ... unless you switch bios and reboot into Artfully Awkward again, of course ... ;-)

This week in 'Bungles in the AWS S3 Privacy Jungles', we present Alteryx – and 123 million households exposed

Hans 1
Unhappy

Re: It would be nice if...

Bastards need to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes...

It will certainly not be televised!

EMC admin? Plug this hole before the holidays

Hans 1
Windows

Who still uses SMB ?

SMB, any version, is vulnerable ... agreed, v1 much more than the others, but still ... quit the folly now!

Oh good. Transport for London gives Capita £80m for WAN, LAN and Wi-Fi

Hans 1
WTF?

Crapita public wifi ????

Who in their right mind would connect a device to a wireless network operated by Crapita ????

UK teen dodges jail time for role in DDoSes on Natwest, Amazon and more

Hans 1
Happy

@downvoters

Come on, don't tell me you were saints when you were teens ... if you were, you have not lived and it's too late for that now ... ;-)

Hans 1
Childcatcher

Come on, the bloke's 16 and committed the equivalent of putting a padlock on the front door of a shop preventing it from opening on time ... Yes, he was behaving like a punk ... but sounds like, for a 16 yo, he is quite computer literate ... not a useless idiot like ordinary crims are ... let him grow up a bit and he will choose an infosec career!

Euro Patent Office fails miserably in key accountability case

Hans 1
WTF?

=?utf-8?B?cHV0YWlu?=

I think the fact that the commission did nothing about corrupt Benoit is already a sign of deeper corruption. Reinstating the bloke to report to corrupt Benoit, are they nuts or taking the piss ?

Windows Store nixed Google Chrome 'app' hours after it went live

Hans 1
Holmes

Windows 10 S

is the new Windows RT ... useless!

Oh good, half of Defra's Brexit projects involve IT

Hans 1
Holmes

I should add that sometimes, we are not even informed of the price ... wonder why ?

Hans 1
Holmes

There's clearly a structural problem. What is it?

They are not spending their money, they are spending yours, so, they either go to the mates, Crapita, or for the highest bidder of dosh-filled tax haven bank accounts....

There is no way it could be anything else ... if you count it up, most of these projects could be done in-house, at a tiny fraction of the cost .... however, for some reason, the original asking price is frequently 5 to 6 times what it would cost in-house and the price at delivery is often 2 to ten times higher ... that money has to go somewhere ... they always favor lock-in, sure, not their money, but ... why is lockin so important ? Keeping the bribes flowing back over the years ... into the aforementioned offshore accounts!

French gov files €10m complaint: Claims Amazon abused dominance

Hans 1

Re: ..filing the complaint was a "strong and unprecedented action"

I've often heard this, but is it really true?

Of course it has no basis I can think of. Yes, you have issues, sometimes, where they take years to implement directives they do not fancy much ... at some point, the fines imposed by Brussels rectify things pretty quickly, once it gets that far ... and I can only think of 5 instances, from the top of my head, over the past decades.

Basically, once more, baseless British eurosceptic propaganda ... always easy to blame the others ... and anti-French sentiment is quite rife as of late, so it seems ? Jealous, maybe, of the privileged relationship France has with Germany ? No, maybe because the French are very happy to fleece our economy on the way out! So sorry to see us leave [not], note, I am staying in the EU, I am, do what you will!

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the data centre temp's delightful

Hans 1
Paris Hilton

"all self-inflicted therefore warranty on our beautiful $15m system was void"

What did you expect?

icon => Lady in Schweppes ad

TalkTalk banbans TeamTeamviewerviewer againagain

Hans 1
Trollface

TeamViewer is sometimes used by ne'er-do-wells to gain remote access to a victim's computer, but it is also used by many more h̶o̶n̶e̶s̶t̶ stupid people for legitimate purposes.

There, FTFY, el'Reg!

[duck for incoming downvotes]

Windows 10 Hello face recognition can be fooled with photos

Hans 1
FAIL

They tried to change the Surface Pro's config to “enhanced anti-spoofing”, but claimed its “LilBit USB IR camera only supported the default configuration and could not be used with the more secure face recognition settings.”

Voila, they ship cheap camera with their pricy kit.

Ex-Microsoft intern claimed one of her fellow temps raped her. Her bosses hired him

Hans 1
Meh

In her letter, revealed to the court, the woman said Microsoft bosses told her that if she obtained and wanted to enforce a restraining order against her alleged rapist, she would have to change departments, something the woman was not willing to do. The tech giant did, however, move the man's desk away from hers.?

This is wrong, both should be moved.

Now, in this story, she went to the hospital, they probably did a rape kit on her which was inconclusive, obviously because otherwise the bloke would have been had. Worst that happened is he stuck his finger up her, which is hard to prove yet is considered rape where I live (France) ... rape is unwanted penetration.

She claims she passed out, maybe he asked her and she consented but cannot remember, I dunno, maybe he undressed her with the intention of raping her and she woke, again, I dunno.

As it stands, she accuses him of undressing her, has faded memories of him raping her ... who says she did not undress herself, again, I do not know, I was not there under the influence of something, incapacitated ... don't get yourself in a position where you are incapacitated, and if you are, don't blame others for it.

I am all for going after rapists, here, however, she does not really have a case.

Then again, I would never f* a USian or Swedish woman without written consent.

So what happened with the patent judge and the Euro Patent Office?

Hans 1
Meh

Re: How has he survived?

Can we not have scientists or engineers in patent offices ? Once upon a time in Bern, they managed to hire an aspiring scientist ... none of this crap with those!

Hans 1
Holmes

#define FRENCH_POLITICIAN "corrupt"

Actually, all standard C libraries should have that constant set, it is as constant as pi, e etc

Note that we can probably drop "FRENCH_" from the name, though, I am not exactly sure we should ... generalizations and such ...

Murdoch's Fox empire is set to become a literal Mickey Mouse outfit

Hans 1
Facepalm

Paolo Pescatore of analyst haus CCS Insight commented: [...] [Disney] to compete head on with the threat posed by the Web providers such as Amazon and Facebook.

Facebook ? You mean Kitten videos on Facebook are gonna compete with Disney ? Insightful, not!

'Subdued' year for poor old Capita means more 'restructuring' needed

Hans 1

I think they need to get rid of 4 to 5 layers of management, the blokes are incompetent anyway .... with the saved cash, hire some top notch field staff ... you cannot win the Champions League with a team of n00bs managed by a bunch of numpties who themselves are managed by an even more incompetent bunch of numpties and so on ...

Please, please, c'mon, just... please, pretty please, just, like, please use our AI – Microsoft

Hans 1
Coat

Please, please, c'mon, just... please, pretty please, just, like, please use our AI – Microsoft

No, F'off!

Why is Wikipedia man Jimbo Wales keynoting a fake news conference?

Hans 1
Mushroom

Wikipedia infaillible ? No!

Britannica contains many inaccuracies, Wikepedia as well, however, studies have confirmed that in general, Wikipedia was better than Britannica.

If you think something is incorrect on Wikipedia, BY ALL MEANS, TAKE 5 F'ing MINUTES and CORRECT IT!

I cannot stand this BS you spread!

Be my guest, go and try to correct something on Britannica ... good luck!

Seagate: Happy Xmas, staff – thanks for everyth... um, you 500. Can we have a word?

Hans 1
Joke

"I am honored to have been included in the list but the real heroes are our employees around the world who continually go above and beyond."

Said he from his yacht in the Bahamas ... I think he forgot the "Happy Christmas!"

Coventry: Once a 'Ghost Town', soon to be UK City of Culture

Hans 1
Coat

Re: Must have known...

Norway [..] and Switzerland[..]

Maybe, I do not care ... I assume, it all depends on the outcome of the negotiations . You might know that both Norway and Switzerland are more than happy to have EU citizens moving to their country. I seem to remember the whole point of Brexit was, to put it Marseille style terms (exaggerate to make the point better understood), ethnic cleansing of the British Isles. You see, not much room for culture ... as for the PR side of it ... I think the Brits will moan, May will blame the EU, as any of our elects has done since we joined ... but for the remaining parties in the EU, it is fair play.

Hans 1
Joke

It comes after the EU cancelled the UK's previously agreed turn to have a European City of Culture in 2023, writing off bids from Belfast/Derry, Dundee, Leeds, Milton Keynes and Nottingham. ®

There go some millions that were destined for the NHS, BASTARDS!!!

Intel beefs up low-end line with Gemini Lake CPUs

Hans 1
Unhappy

In short, these aren't the chips you're going to drop into a high-end gaming rig; that's what the Kaby Lake Pentium Gold CPUs or top-end Core ranges are for.

Where have you been, lately ? Its Ryzen or Coffee Lake for gaming these days, sir! Kaby lake is "obsolete"! I know, 'coz it's almost crimble ... and I have a son into spending^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgaming, of course, as he puts it, "not my money, yours, if I can get away with it! Muuuuuuuuuum, I really need this new CPU for Xmas, I got good grades, you see ...".

Coffee Lake needs a new z370 mb, it better have LDE's, and, of course, we want a modular PSU, because, cable management is a "thing", and, well, water cooler, of course ...

PS: There go the dreams of a self-paid prez I give to the daughter to give me for crimble ....

Elon Musk says he's not Satoshi Nakamoto and is pretty rubbish at Bitcoin

Hans 1
Unhappy

Re: El Reg staff

I am saddened to see a mere 4 downvotes, 2 weeks later, almost ... :-(

Leftover Synaptics debugger puts a keylogger on HP laptops

Hans 1

Re: Can anyone explain

That's why I hate languages that don't have IFDEF or something alike, to easily allow removal of code from production builds.

Feel smart, hey ? In which language were these written, do you think ?

In this case, synaptics f'd up as they left dev stuff in the enduser software. The audio driver, apparently, was another issue entirely causing the same effect, keyloggers on punters systems ....