* Posts by gryphon

204 publicly visible posts • joined 2 May 2011

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These 17,000 unpatched Microsoft Exchange servers are a ticking time bomb

gryphon

Security Updates can be delivered as .MSP files via WSUS etc. but wouldn't normally advise that even with multiple highly-available Exchange servers.

Too much risk of something going wrong and taking out all the servers if patching teams aren't checking things properly between each server.

Plus they should really be properly put into Exchange maintenance mode while carrying out OS patching let alone Exchange itself.

gryphon

Re: 17000+

Can't remember the stats but I'm sure the FBI know, for US at least.

Remember they went in to a massive # of servers in the US and removed web shells back in 2021 so they'd obviously been scanning for all the servers with public IP's that they could fine.

gryphon

Re: Would You Entrust Mission-Critical Business Systems ...

Yup, been there, done that.

Other problem is for a lot of the recent SU's it not just been applying the update and rebooting, you've needed to run extra scripts and so on and so forth which makes things extra scary.

If they've even noticed that there is an update available.

HP print rental service seeks more users to become subscription addicts

gryphon

Re: A fool and his money

have beefy reinforced steel innards instead of plastic - and ruthlessly crush their fleshy victims into a smear of paté on the office floor.

Ah, you've tried to move a 3Si or 5Si with all the extra bobbins on your own then.

Broadcom CEO pay award jumps 164% to $160.8 million

gryphon

Re: Insert obligatory Lord Farquaad 'some of you may die' meme here

Problem is they would just outsource all the lowest paid workers to Holding Company A and Holding Company B etc.

Law would always be playing catch-up.

Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite

gryphon

Re: not suprised.

Thankfully it wasn't failing Grayling.

With him all the live missiles would probably have fired off.

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

gryphon

Unfortunately Douglas Adam's old comment about lizards / politicians comes to mind.

If anyone ever wants to run for office then they should automatically be excluded from doing so.

If AI carries on we'll end up with Asimov's idea of 'The Voter', one person deciding the entirety of the govt. from a discussion with a computer.

Zen Internet warns customers of an impending IP address change

gryphon

A&A don’t seem to be available everywhere.

I can get connected via CityFibre or Openreach FTTP but they aren’t available on either when I do their postcode lookup.

They also have a maximum transfer limit of 1TB per month I think, although few consumers would get near that one would think.

I’m probably going to go with them for their voip though. £2 for the number then PAYG.

My best bets using CF seem to be either No One or Zen (notwithstanding above comments).

Microsoft confirms Windows Server 2025 is on the way

gryphon

HPE ProLiant Gen11 tops out at 8TB with 256GB DDR apparently

Akira ransomware gang says it stole passport scans from Lush in 110 GB data heist

gryphon

Re: There we go again - Passport scans are routinely collected

Problem might be that the immigration service no doubt says that records must be kept for XYZ years to verify that proper employment checks were done when hiring.

i.e. HR would have to prove that they were presented with what looked like authentic documents at the time rather than just have their word taken for it.

Even then they could probably just print out the passport scans etc. and stick them in a handy filing cabinet with a reference rather than leaving them on a computer.

They should certainly be deleting / shredding any that relate to past employees one would think since keeping those would surely breach Data Protection laws.

Lukewarm reception for Microsoft's Copilot Pro amid performance, cost grumbles

gryphon

In Theory

In theory if it can save the average employee 15 minutes a week that they can then spend on something more productive then it's a cheap purchase for many companies.

But, when you compare the price of Copilot to the overall E3 or E5 license price with all you get with that it looks expensive, especially when they are trying to push Syntex, SharePoint Premium and Teams Premium all at the same time.

I think Tony Redmond says he expects to see an E7 type license with all of those rolled in at a lower overall cost which would make sense.

I've tried it, didn't find it very useful so far, especially since it insists on new Outlook client which is being charitable complete garbage.

White goods giant fires legal threats to unplug open source plugin

gryphon

Re: Just bought both a washing machine and dishwasher

Upvote for the oblique Wargames reference.

Shall we play a game?

University chops students' Microsoft 365 storage to 20GB

gryphon

Well McGill have ~40,000 students and 5000 staff according to Wikipedia.

100TB / 20GB per user = 5000 users

MS cost for additional storage = $300 per TB per month so they'll already be forking out a lot of extra money per month just to maintain 20GB per user.

Microsoft 365's add-on avalanche is putting the squeeze on customers

gryphon

Re: Min seats

You can have as few seats as you like now, also with Office E3 &E5 not just Microsoft E3 & E5.

I've been trialling copilot.

The Teams recap is sort of OK if you've missed start of a meeting etc.

Outlook needs the new Outlook client which is horrible and doesn't really work properly for recapping lengthy mail trails.

I always find something it missed.

Writing an e-mail with Copilot is umm, not so good.

My normal style is somewhat terse, it insists on adding fluff like 'I hope this e-mail finds you well', and 'Thank you for your time and consideration'.

Anyone receiving that garbage would definitely know I didn't write it.

At last: The BBC Micro you always wanted, in Mastodon form

gryphon

Re: I still have the real thing

I sold my BBC B with FDD to a friend of my fathers when I needed money to buy a 286 to replace my Amstrad 1512. :-(

Bought a Mac SE/30 about 9 or 10 years ago which has sat in the loft since then, although I brought it down to my study a few weeks ago.

My son was very impressed with how small it is.

Need to extract the motherboard and get it recapped now but I need to get a long Torx T-15 to get the screws out.

On a giving things away the worst offender was my mother.

She gave away all my Scalextric, and more importantly all my Lego, including early Lego spaceship, when I went to Uni.

Came back to find the cupboard bare.

She just didn't understand the concept that while I wasn't necessarily doing anything with it at the time it was being kept for my son/daughter, grandkids etc. eventually.

Planning ahead a bit I know.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

gryphon

Re: As a Non Legal Opinion

It's a difficult one.

COPFS to give it it's fancy name operates regionally I believe so it depends if details of all these 'extra' prosecutions made their way up to seniors who might have gone 'wait a sec, seems to be a lot more of these recently compared to previous years' and checked.

But given there were I think only about 100 horizon linked prosecutions over the years in Scotland and no doubt there would have been a 'normal' level of pre-horizon fraud it might not have made it through any wheat/chaff filters.

While COPFS should definitely be looking internally to see when anyone was aware that there might be an issue with prosecutions requested by PO and tidying their own stable, I was meaning more that they should start on the principle that any testimony / witness statement from PO / Fujitsu staff was probably fraudulent and going from there, i.e. passing to police for investigation. Although of course they might have a hard time proving those people knew they were lying unless they can find the relevant paperwork / email trail.

Hopefully all the evidence submitted to the PE will help with that, although PO have had to be pushed very hard to turn over evidence I believe and no doubt a lot of it is 'missing presumed deleted by mistake / archive policy etc. etc.'.

Obviously if as seems to have happened with many of the private prosecutions in England the prosecution are found not to have handed evidence which might prove innocence over to the defence any compensatory damages should be massively increased and the lawyers involved investigated for misconduct.

gryphon

Re: Installation

That might just be network connectivity though which is different to live remote access to the financial system itself.

gryphon

Re: As a Non Legal Opinion

CPS / Crown Office also need to start charging people with perverting the course of justice / perjury since obviously many PO/Fujitsu staff have lied under oath at trials or in written witness statements.

Although I guess they might want to wait until the end of the public enquiry to get all ducks in a row.

UK officials caught napping ahead of 2G and 3G doomsday

gryphon

Re: Millenium bug 2.0

BT switched me over to 'Digital Voice' a few months ago.

Give them their due, which I wouldn't normally, they e-mailed me a few times and sent me a letter explaining exactly what was happening and to contact them if I had any of x,y,z things to worry about.

From what I remember all the text was pretty clear about what to do and what the consequences would be if I didn't take action if I needed to.

Also got a voucher for a converter for extensions or hefty discount off a new cordless phone from the BT Shop.

I just plugged my existing one into the back of the SmartHub though and all was fine.

If you've tried to sign up for new broadband recently, it if includes phone, you are usually being asked do you have an emergency alarm, house alarm etc. etc. as a check.

Zuckerberg hunkers down in Hawaii to wait out apocalypse

gryphon

Re: Psychologically...

It's interesting that Bill Gates for all his many faults shows the way they should be acting here.

Microsoft floats bringing a text editor back to the CLI

gryphon

Re: What like Powershell's tab autocomplete?

That's more or less the way Azure cloud shell works since it's actually a Linux VM with PowerShell sitting on top.

It's ok'ish for certain things. Poor for others.

And has an editor built in.

Enterprising techie took the bumpy road to replacing vintage hardware

gryphon

Re: Bizarre printer failure

Was a very regular occurrence.

Either non-laser labels or non-laser overhear projector slides.

Very occasionally you could slice through the slide without damaging the coated roller underneath and not have to replace the fuser but was usually more luck than judgement.

Which way it went often depended if they had a service contract covering accidental damage or not of course.

It's ba-ack... UK watchdog publishes age verification proposals

gryphon

Re: Re:Photo ID - DVLA

Surely both.

Tesla sues Swedish government after worker rebellion cripples car biz

gryphon

I find it interesting that when New Labour came to power they didn't get rid of any 'anti' union legislation that Margaret Thatcher had put in place after the miners strike. .e.g Flying pickets, sympathy strikes and so on.

Italy seizes from Airbnb $836M in alleged unpaid taxes

gryphon

I was told many years ago by people in our Italian office that a visit from the Guardia di Finanzia would be more scary than a visit from the mafia.

The worst the mafia could do was kill you.

Mid-contract telco price hikes must end, Ofcom told

gryphon

Problem is that 12 month contracts for anything telecoms related are getting few and far between.

18 months is usually the minimum.

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

gryphon

Excel Errors

I was always told that as a rule of thumb there would be 1 error for every 100 rows in an Excel spreadsheet.

Guess what finance people love to use and stuff with macros etc. as many others have noted above.

Then they feed it into the real financial systems.

Very much GIGO.

Yes, Singapore immigration plans to scan your face instead of your passport

gryphon

Changi

Agree on Changi.

Went through both ways when going to Australia in 2019.

Scrupulously clean, and large, toilets every 100 metres or so.

Water fountain in departure area.

Free massage chairs every few hundred metres.

Very pleasant staff.

I might be misrembering but cleaners on big vacuums tracking back and forth every few minutes to get the last speck of dust.

Shops charging usual non-airport prices for things instead of the usual 100-200% mark-up, and pricing very clear.

Although in saying that they could have been marked up a lot from Singapore street prices.

We were very late at night coming back so couldn't look at everything but did like the indoor waterfall etc. that you pass on the inter-terminal shuttle.

Attackers accessed UK military data through high-security fencing firm's Windows 7 rig

gryphon

Re: "We do not believe that any classified documents were stored ... "

Correct, even for something as simple as e-mail addresses.

One e-mail address = Official

100 e-mail addresses = Likely to be Official-Sensitive

10 e-mail addresses = Maybes O, maybes O-S - ask security guys

gryphon

Re: From the other side

Yup.

Been there, done that.

BT call management server on Windows 2003, provided and 'maintained' entirely by them but had to be on our AD domain for some reason.

Never patched, no A/V, we weren't allowed to touch it by contract.

Always flagged up on every security report but there was nothing we could do about it. :-(

Want to live dangerously? Try running Windows XP in 2023

gryphon

Re: Windows XP Pro

I've got one of those sitting in a box in the loft.

Probably need to get it 're-capped' before turning it on by all accounts.

Douglas Adams was right: Telephone sanitizers are terrible human beings

gryphon

Re: Agree but...

Paging Father Dougal, paging Father Dougal

Indian telecoms leaps from 2G, to 4G, to 6G – on a single day

gryphon

Re: I wonder

Got an eSim for iphone when I went to US on holiday thinking it would also give me a temporary US phone number. It didn’t. :-(

Probably just chose wrong network but none of the other companies i looked at later offered them either.

For normal data use in US a 3 payg sim with some data isn’t a bad option but obviously issue with U.s phone number still applies.

Australia fines tech companies for exploiting foreign tech workers

gryphon

Re: "the plethora of deadly creatures found in the one-time prison colony"

Did the great Terry Pratchett not make reference to certain non-dangerous creatures in the great continent of XXXX.

To quote Wikipedia

"XXXX is also called the Terror Incognita. Almost all animals and plants in XXXX are dangerous; when Death requested a book about the dangerous creatures of XXXX from his library, he was subsequently hit by a large pile of books consisting of the various volumes of "Dangerous Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Jellyfish, Insects, Spiders, Crustaceans, Grasses, Trees, Mosses and Lichens of Terror Incognita", the total books going up to Volume 29C Part 3, while a request for information about the harmless creatures merely produced a note saying "Some of the sheep". The land is inhospitable because the flora and fauna all hate you"

Even in suburban Sydney my sister finds dangerous spiders all the time.

BOFH: Get me a new data file or your manager finds out exactly what you think of him

gryphon

Re: Oh the pain!

Had similar with Quest many years ago.

Had MessageStats for Exchange at a previous employer and wanted to show it to current one so they would quit bugging me about reports and be able to do it themselves.

Obviously have to call Quest to get a trial time limited download.

Quest - It's very nice that you want to look at our product, do you have a firm order for it or a PO raised?

Me - No of course not, I'm wanting to do a demo to management within our environment to see if they like the idea and then we'd go from there, obviously I'm investing some time with it to spin up VM's databases etc. but nothing firm.

Quest - Oh, don't think we can really help you then I'm afraid. Bye.

Pardon?

Cheapest, oldest, slowest part fixed very modern Mac

gryphon

Re: Bridge technologies

I learned that one as Complex rather than Computer

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

gryphon

Re: Embarrassed in to having a clear out...

Like the contents of my garage with loads of bits and bobs, DIY tools and so on.

Esteemed spouse - Why don't you throw all that rubbish out, you've never used it in 10 years

Me - You never know today what you might need tomorrow

I've not got too much in the way of old computer stuff that I don't use really.

AMD Athlon something with Windows Vista in a clear perspex case

2009 Mac Pro with single Xeon and 16GB RAM

2010 or 2011 Mac Pro with Dual Xeons and 64GB RAM

2x Libretto 100CT with docks

Oh, and 2 HP MicroServers, 1 of which is BNIB

And a Celeron something or other

And several spare 24" monitors that I got from Asda for £50 each brand new because I might need them at some point

And several boxes of cables and bits and bobs

i.e. Nothing at all

Oh, and a Mac Classic that I bought about 20 years ago and has sat in cardboard box in the loft thereafter. Have no idea what I thought I was going to do with it and is probably suffering from capacitor rot by now.

I don't have a problem letting go of things, not really.

Microsoft tackles SaaSy URL sprawl, dumping its dotcom in favor of cloud.microsoft

gryphon

And all the authentication URL's.

Try and log into anything in 365 and it's bouncing around all over the place in the background with many different public certs as well.

Central UK govt awards £12M+ contract to leave Google Workspace for Microsoft 365

gryphon
FAIL

Re: Checking the tarot cards for likely outcomes

Let's look at the probabilities.

1. 100%

2. 100%

3. 100%

4. 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% - possibly a bit overgenerous but I'm try to be even handed.

But as others have said.

Approx. £1000 per user seems VERY excessive even if they are charging out all their consultants at the usual £1000 per day.

Oh, wait a sec, forgot the 50 project managers at £1500 a day, 30 programme managers at £2000 per day, 20 senior senior technical architects at £2500 a day.

Damn, forgot the uplift since they'll all have to be SC or above so that adds another 30% per day.

Actual staff doing the work - 6 grads and probably an embittered BOFH who will all spend 5 hours a day in project planning meetings with all of the above when things keep slipping to the right for reasons they can't fathom. Therefore...

Actual time dedicated to doing real work = 2.5 hours per day per tech

If a few REAL techs assigned to it and left to get on with it without any distractions and some goodwill on the part of the customer, couple of months excluding accreditation.

Anyone think I'm incorrect?

Pager hack faxed things up properly, again, and again, and again

gryphon

Re: Ahhh Pagers

Think the RNLI still use them.

Psst! Infosec bigwigs: Wanna be head of security at HM Treasury for £50k?

gryphon

Re: Reg readers might expect the vacancy would come with a salary that reflects its criticality

Yeah, it's very weird.

Mid-senior would be an infastructure team lead at Foreign Office for same band.

gryphon

That's already happening to an extent.

There was an article on the radio about it a few days ago, medical agencies have seen their profits skyrocket.

Think they said that the staff they hire out are often more interested in the flexibility compared to the actual money although of course they aren't turning down the bump.

I can well believe it, when daughter was born only reason wife was able to go back to nursing full time, 12 hour night shifts on a rota, was because the nursery was able to be flexible.

Our nursery were quite happy to work with her rota as long as they got a note of shifts at least 2 weeks ahead.

All the other ones were "you can have complete flexibility, you can have whatever days you want as long as they are the same days every week" so we'd have ended up having to put her in 5 days a week.

I can understand why the others weren't able to do be so flexible but it makes life very hard for parents on rotas.

Rebel without a clause: ISP promises broadband with no contract

gryphon

Rubbish.

Apart from 1 isp that seems to get a very bad rep on HUKD the only 1 I can find doing a rolling 1 month contract is Now broadband, and that is with a £60 signup fee.

There are a few doing 12 month contracts, vast majority are 18 or 24 months with cpi/rpi +3.9% every March.

As I understand it for fttc at least openreach contract with the isp on a monthly basis, not sure about fttp.

Can we interest you in a $10 pocket calculator powered by Android 9?

gryphon

Revolut banking app comes to mind there.

It's just about to breach 500MB in the iOS version.

WTF

Microsoft: For better security, scan more Exchange server objects

gryphon

Re: Why not remove the root cause?

it really depends what you are wanting from an on-prem mail server.

If it's simple mail relay then yes there are lots of other options, problem being that relatively speaking there will probably be far more people know Exchange than the various flavours of Sendmail, QMail etc. and can keep it running. Message appliances like Broadcom gateways or Ironports are a better option there.

And Exchange these days is a massive resource hog if you go with MS recommended levels of RAM etc.

If you want all the collaboration bells and whistles that Exchange gives then there aren't really any other enterprise level options.

Notes is still kicking around of course. Have they improved the email client any recently.

It's simply the case that there are still some environments where it is simply not possible to use the cloud for mail, collaboration etc. and that's where the MS stack of Exchange, Skype and SharePoint still has value.

Sensitive DoD emails exposed by unsecured Azure server

gryphon

Re: I may be under a misaprehension

Nothing to say it was Windows that I could see.

I thought Azure actually ran more Linux stuff than Windows?

Legacy comms outfit Avaya returns to Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

gryphon

Re: Bye-Bye Redundancy

Teams Phone System included in license with E5.

Ok I suppose but certainly not cheap

What do you mean there are no inclusive minutes and I have to buy an extra calling plan on top of that :-(

McDonald's pulls plug on Wi-Fi, starts playing classical music to soothe yobs

gryphon

Re: print car number plates on takeaway bags to discourage customers from littering

I think they'd have been better introducing an if you've got a public general waste bin you need to have a recycling one as well.

And if you have a recycling one then have a general too.

Reason for the latter is it would reduce the "I've got a food wrapper, where's a bin, there's one, oh, it's recycling only, where's another bin, 20 metres away, sod that, in it goes'.

And thus all the recycling stuff gets contaminated.

My local Sainsbury's have a big recycling machine in their car park which pays something like 5p per item as a voucher, think it does glass and plastic. Between Christmas and now it's been open maybe 2 days.

They also have smaller machines in store which only take plastic bottles, cans etc. Also not working most of the time AND refuses to take their own brand squash bottles.

So what's the point.

gryphon

Re: print car number plates on takeaway bags to discourage customers from littering

Many of them have that already for the parking leeches.

Sorry, the valued companies making up the parking management community.

Apple emits emergency patch for older iPhones after snoops pounce on WebKit hole

gryphon

Re: Say what you want about Apple

Indeed. Just upgraded an old 6+ which must be getting on for at least 8 years old.

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