* Posts by Robert Helpmann??

2583 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2011

Duqu 2.0: 'Terminator' malware that pwned Kaspersky could have come from Israel

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: What would you expect?

So what were the owners of this particular nasty after? Were they simply gathering intel on Kaspesky's products or were they interested in setting up for a future attack? An alternative to this being a state-sponsored attack is industrial espionage. Other companies might want to either steal company secrets or undermine confidence in Kaspersky.

In memoriam: Christopher Lee, Hammer's Count Dracula

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Death Comes for Death

I enjoyed Christopher Lee in so many roles, but giving voice to Death in productions of Terry Pratchett's works were among my favorites. The world is a richer place for having enjoyed the company of both.

Time to face the Apple Music: Spotify looks worried, and rightly so

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Not Just Apple

Perhaps Spotify has finally noticed Jay Z's efforts. There are other streaming services with similar price points and catalog size. It should come as no great surprise that more might enter the field or, as in the case of Apple, adjust their approach to it. Perhaps Spotify should retaliate by putting together a skinned Android phone that is optimized for sound quality.

Config file wipe blunder caused deadly Airbus A400M crash – claim

Robert Helpmann??

Re: Lack of imagination when thinking up things that can go wrong.

"Soulless, emotionless, remorseless, unfeeling, unthinking drones" maybe.

Now Trevor, even orcs have feelings.

Apple extends idiot-tax operation, makes devs pay to fix Safari snafus

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Probably not

I was hoping you would have named my fav - Camino!

*Ahem!* "After a decade-long run, Camino is no longer being developed, and we encourage all users to upgrade to a more modern browser. Camino is increasingly lagging behind the fast pace of changes on the web, and more importantly it is not receiving security updates, making it increasingly unsafe to use."

Shine a light on the rogue IT that hides in the company shadows

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

On the Other Hand

I have worked in a few enterprise environments in which there were actually multiple IT departments. Some of these were more like groups within existing cost centers (a fairly decentralized arrangement) while others were full-fledged IT departments, each with their own budget, services, and internal customers. I am sure that in at least some of these instances the separate IT groups started up with a few local employees trying to find a solution to a need no-one else had.

Also: Nobody can complain if you do this: you are simply protecting the security and integrity of the network. This is simply wrong. I have seen way too many cases of people arguing against basic safety rules, both IT and non-IT, for me to buy this.

MIT bods' digital economy babblings are tosh. C'mon guys, Economics 101

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: And yet...

If we're not working, then where are we going to get the money to "get" the things the robots are making?

Or to approach the issue in another way, if we reach the point where there is nothing that people have to do (all physical needs met for free), what will they find worthwhile to do? What will then have value?

Industrial Wi-Fi kit has hard-coded credentials

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Class Action Lawsuit

Can you hear the lawyers stampeding?

Don't be silly! They can't stampede because their natural form of locomotion is swimming, but you should be able to spot the fins heading toward the scent of blood.

Tech giants gang up on Obama over encryption key demands

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: This is the same Obama or a twin?

I can see two possible explanations. The first is that policy makers don't get the simple technical bit about HTTPS involving encryption and of course would never simultaneously advocate for mutually exclusive outcomes. The second is that both Barack and his evil twin Barry live at the White House, but are careful to never allow anyone to see both at the same time. My money is on the "Twin" hypothesis.

'Stolen' art found on nearby shelf. Police keep looking anyway

Robert Helpmann??
Coat

Define "Library"

The library has no central inventory list of what it owns, and there is no catalogue of each item.

So more unstructured data than stacks?

- Mine's the one without various lost works in the pocket.

Cisco: Nice things you got there. Shame if anything should happen to them

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Instead of building "security" into the carrier networks...

... which is technology wise the same as putting censorship into it, we could also simply use slightly better routers

That is rather the point, except "better routers" in this case is assumed to be those that can enforce a given set of security policies on the devices that route through it. If traffic for these devices is going to be peer-to-peer, and the manufacturers can't be bothered to bake some basic security into their products, then a third party solution would be in order. This can be done with an appliance or server, or implemented - as Cisco is suggesting - by the routers. This would seem to have some built-in advantages in that there is no single point of failure and if the devices are going to connect to anything, they will be forced to apply a defined set of policies. Of course, Cisco devices get compromised from time to time and there are challenges in maintaining a decentralized set of control systems.

Power your temperature sensor with this BONKERS router hack

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Energy Efficiency

what's the energy efficiency of this set-up?

It was noted in the article that power over WiFi is inherently inefficient. This study is a proof of concept, at best. Perhaps the next steps ought to be to find more efficient ways of implementing it and defining situations in which using it makes more sense than the alternatives (if these actually exist). I would think that it would be better to power devices from battery and charge the battery as power can be harvested from WiFi (or from other sources) rather than to power directly from WiFi.

Amazon game dev brain slurp bid revealed in industry back-page ad

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Double Helix?

What was Amazon thinking?

The first two things that come to mind are, "They have talent but could really use some direction," and, "Oh! There's a bargain price for that company."

Did you almost prang a 737 jet with a drone over Dallas? The FAA would like a word

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Inspirational

Must inspire confidence, taking off from an airport named for a chap who died in an aircraft crash

As opposed to an airport named after someone who fired the air traffic controllers?

Soon your car won't let you drink. But it won't care if you're on the phone

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Old, old news

This tech has been around since the 80s and is very reliable. There might be a few reasons it hasn't been installed in cars as a standard feature, though: to be useful, it should err on the side of caution, so those trying to operate vehicles with it installed should expect false positives. There might be some concerns over hygiene with the breathalyzer version for shared vehicles unless mouthpieces can be interchanged. The current approach is to have an enforced time-out period after a few failures which can leave drivers stranded if things aren't working quite right for whatever reason. Finally, with the current deplorable efforts by insurance companies to invade the last vestiges of our privacy how far behind will rate increases be for those who don't have their cars retrofitted with this tech if it becomes standard in new vehicles?

Microsoft makes Skype beach body ready with web browser beta release

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Not gonna work

How many hotels/cafes that don't have Skype preloaded are going to allow arbitrary plugins?

As already noted, it can be loaded in many cases without admin rights - not that any of the hotels I have been in care enough about security that it would be an issue regardless. If you can't bring your own device, you might consider bringing a thumb drive loaded with a portable browser, or the ability to boot to an OS loaded with your own setup.

What's broken in this week's build of Windows 10? Installing it, for one

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: The Windows10 (aka Windows 8.2) facade and DirectX12 lies...

Windows 10 is going to be the worst Windows release ever. Way worse than the atrocious Windows8 and 8.1.

I've got two letters for you: ME.

'Nuf said.

The weapons pact threatening IT security research

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: You could have seen this coming a long time ago.

...it was always a matter of time before certain software are deemed dangerous and must be "controlled" by governments.

A matter of time? More like "time and again!" Think back to when the US put export bans on encryption software. It not only failed in its stated result, it actually hurt sales for US companies as a side effect. Still, we have a habit of repeating our mistakes we'll get it right this time.

Hackers steal files on 4 million US govt workers

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Free Credit Monitoring and Identity Theft Protection

They don't seem to know when the breach happened, just that it was before April so the monitoring may be a lot too late.

The monitoring service being offered is pretty useless in this case. The shelf life of this info is not like for stolen credit cards where after a month or so the cards have been replaced. This is the kind of info that doesn't change over the lifetime of the individuals being targeted. My understanding is that it hasn't showed up for sale, either, which would indicate that the individuals hacking the OPM are in it for the long term, not some quick fix.

Trial halted as Kartoon defence attorney arrested after warrant discovery

Robert Helpmann??
Paris Hilton

Re: Kartoon

With a name like that, I would expect him to have to stand trial in Judge Doom's court. I bet the all the assistant DAs in the district are fighting to take this one to trial.

LightSail mission stalled by .CSV log file embiggenment SNAFU

Robert Helpmann??
Go

Making Lemonade from Lemons

At the very least, the Planetary Society will have lots of launch data...

They will also have to add another item on their checklist for future attempts. Here's hoping the ride won't be too wild, though.

Skype hauled into court after refusing to hand call records to cops

Robert Helpmann??
Trollface

Red Letter Day

I find myself cheering for Microsoft? My, how the world has changed!

Well, even a broken watch* is right two times a day.

* Analog, of course, not Apple.

First production car powered by Android Auto rolls out – and it's a Hyundai

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

My Car Is Not a Phone

"Android Auto aligns with Hyundai's core interior design principles of safety, intuitiveness and simplicity

This only works with Android 5.0 or better and is billed as a safety feature. It's more a marketing gimmick than anything else. A true safety feature would not be tied to a specific 3rd party vendor's product and would instead be interoperable with a reasonable range of them. Why not set it up as a Bluetooth or USB device that you could download an app for from either Google, Apple, or MS, or even RIM if they decided to invest the time and effort?

Setting it up where a driver's phone automatically goes into a vehicle-safe mode during operation of said vehicle is a wonderful idea, but tying its implementation to a particular phone system is like linking the ability to use seat belts to the owner's political affiliation, as tempting as that might be for some.

Do svidaniya Roscosmos. By the way, any idea where that 92 BEEELLION rubles went?

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

I can't see this ending well

I can't see it ending at all. The most important function of a position of power is maintaining that position.

Geofencing: The ultra-low power frontier for the Internet of Things

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Why does this stuff need to update ?

Also, would it be too much to ask for this IoT crap to be IPv6 compliant from day one? I want to be able to get on the Internet, for any purpose, without finding I've been NATed back to the stone age because all the IPv4 addresses are in use by lawnmowers!

I think it would be better to have IoT devices run a non-routable protocol. It would seem to make more sense to have them all report to a local control device or server than to have to open a port in your home firewall (as if consumers are going to grasp this concept) for every stereophonic light bulb and smart toilet in our personal chateaus. Yes, this may provide a single point of failure for at least a class of devices in our homes, perhaps assuming that devices involving security are controlled by separate systems than entertainment and similar, but also provides for a much smaller attack surface.

Boffins silently track train commuters without tripping Android checks

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Why not prompt for accelerometer?

Unless you killed the program once you're done with it, how do you know it isn't still grabbing your accelerometer data when you go to work tomorrow?

Even if you kill it, you don't, under the assumption that you are concerned with reducing the risk of it being malware. If there are examples in the wild of malware that keeps your phone running when you try to turn it off, then one that lets you think you have killed a process when you actually have not shouldn't be a surprise.

Unicode wonks are bringing home the BACON, as an emoji

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

In a Pickle

Cucumber, they note, “could also be used to represent a pickle”; El Reg will refrain from expanding on that suggestion to any greater degree.

No, but you went there, didn't you? Yes, you did.

8€

Maserati Ghibli S: Who cares what Joe Walsh thinks?

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: The Anti-Maserati

So, is there enough room in a Sienna for a young girl to hide from the family...?

Maybe. I think we misplaced one a while back and there have been noises coming from the rear of the van...

Robert Helpmann??
Facepalm

The Anti-Maserati

I don’t know what it says about my friends and their view of Italian society, but every one of them who looked into the 500-litre boot said “you could get a body in there”

I had to laugh at that as I had a similar experience, though decidedly not with a Maserati (alas). We got a Sienna (Toyota van). It has storage compartments everywhere - it has them where other cars don't even have places. Almost everyone who got in it made a comment to the effect that we would have plenty of places to hide guns.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Bog-standard boxty

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Boys and Girls

any boy* they are interested will be unsuitable.

A friend of mine pointed out that he had to worry about three boys (his own) while I had to worry about 3 million (I have three girls). Add to your to-do list finding a good place for the bodies and several reliable people who can attest to your whereabouts at any time without prompting.

Is your career lacking growth? Become a porn inspector! Hint: It sucks

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: HR Intensive

x 7, the outsourcing reference was a bit of a joke. However, my points about efficiency were not. I understand about labor being plentiful and cheap in China, but if the government's goal is to bring the overall economy up, creating a bunch of low-paying jobs won't get them there. Adding efficiencies frees people up to do more and make more for a company. The jobs under discussion are government jobs, though, so making money is not the point. I would think that these are likely to be as important to the Chinese government as many military positions as keeping their populace in line seems to be as important to them as competing with other countries.

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

HR Intensive

This sounds like a real waste of time. Sure, there are lots of people that the Chinese government can throw at any problem, but why would they want to set up a system in which there are nothing but a bunch of low paying jobs (I am assuming these are - I can only compare with the job market I am familiar with). Even if they pay reasonably well, it would still be much more efficient to develop machine recognition with human auditors. Better still would be to crowd source this out to a variety of Westerners. They would do it for free and be just as dedicated to verifying the material.

SAVE THE PLANKTON: So much more than whale food

Robert Helpmann??
Coat

Re: "a fabulous, three year voyage around the world in a schooner"

If you really want adventure, you might consider heading South. Here, you can borrow my coat. You'll need it.

Hacker launches ransomware rescue kit

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: New OS approach needed

And yes, you need to backup offsite to tapes, or you really don't care about your data *enough*...

Or at least off-site. Using tape for backups is more of a corporate approach, but many people being targeted by this malware are home users. There are plenty of free and commercial options available for regular folks, so it is still good advice.

WHOOPSIE! Vast US health insurer CareFirst plundered of 1.1 MEELLION records

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Once again.......

Here's an idea to end this : 1] Require, by law...

Here's an example of an unintended consequence: companies now have an incentive to put their competition out of business by hiring third parties to commit online attacks against them. For any such law to be worthwhile, it should target those companies that are guilty of neglect. If a company is hacked despite every reasonable attempt to secure data in its possession, it should not be penalized.

Having passed a law with this proviso, we would then have a situation in which either non-technical politicians, judges or jury members will have to decide things like what constitutes best practices for data security. While this is not the best of all worlds, it still might nudge things in a desirable direction from the point of view of consumers victims.

Huawei announces tiny 10 KB IoT kernel

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: 10KB for the OS?

Flash is cheap in embedded devices, RAM is the expensive thing. Your microcontroller may have anything from 256 bytes to 256 kilobytes and anything beyond will need external RAM which makes is so expensive you can just as well add 16 Megabytes with no additional cost and run Linux

As far as I can tell, this page gives memory requirements for LiteOS

http://wiki.oiotc.cc/index.php?title=Os%E5%86%85%E5%AD%98%E5%8D%A0%E7%94%A8%E6%83%85%E5%86%B5

Google Translate does not seem to be up to the task of rendering the appropriate table into a reasonable English format, or French for that matter. Would someone who can read Chinese care to take a stab at this? I am also not sure from looking through the Googlized web page whether the network stack is part of the kernel. I hope not as something like that could bring us the IoT PoD (though that does have a nice ring to it).

Driverless cars deal death to Detroit, says Barclays

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Yes/no

First, I would imagine the greatest cost for replacements will be for tires and batteries, assuming electric cars. Second, old cars will not be removed from the road due to compatibility issues for a very long time as the onus will be on the incoming models to conform to what is already in place. It will take the better part of a human lifetime before that happens.

As for ride sharing arrangements instead of ownership, some people will go for it, especially in densely populated urban areas, but I agree more with the author's 10% figure rather than Barclays' much larger guess at least - for the next several decades. I really want my personal chauffeured limo, but I am not so sure I want to share it with random people who may leave gifts for me to find on my commute home from work.

Hacker data dumps scrape to make huge grey marketing database

Robert Helpmann??
Big Brother

Re: Ethical or not?

I would imagine that it's legal and was probably accomplished with a simple script; it really would not be too hard. As far as the ethics of it all, we are talking about marketing so it's not a big deal. Yay! The last vestiges of our privacy have taken another hit! We weren't using it any way.

Icon, because marketing seems to have become government's little brother.

Milking cow shot dead by police 'while trying to escape'

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Where's My Cow?

The manager of the Rising Sun Farm, which witnesses thought was the source of the hoofed escapologists, contacted the Chronicle to say that the farm did not own any cows.

Does your cow bite?

No.

OK. HRUUUGH! OW!!! I thought you said your cow does not bite!

That's not my cow.

US Air Force reveals what's inside its top-secret space plane, this time

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Penguins In Space!

It'll be hacked already by the Russians and/or Chinese.

So predictable, you might imagine it might be a honeypot? Probably not. From NASA's description of the mission:

"A further payload being carried for the Naval Academy is the USS Langley, or Unix Space Server Langley. A three-unit CubeSat, Langley is indented to demonstrate the use of off-the-shelf components to operate a Linux-based web server in space. This will be connected to the internet via the satellite’s ground stations."

Russia will fork Sailfish OS to shut out pesky Western spooks

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: What about the toolchain?

> Do you rely on the MD5 checksum?

No, I rely on ths SHA256 checksum specifically because MD5 is subvertible.

> Do you recompile all of the libraries going into GCC/etc. from source?>

All of which arguably misses the point. If you have to go through this much trouble to mod a piece of consumer electronics before you are comfortable using it, the situation is FUBARed. You can perhaps make your stuff secure. You still have not addressed the communications channels you will have to use for your phone and you definitely have not addressed issues with the phones of everyone else you contact with yours (or for sites you visit online, for that matter). While I think more secure tech is worth pursuing for a number of reasons, there is no tech solution to this.

ALIBABA Vs AMAZON: Let the Global Tat Bazaar war begin

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: THERE !! Fixed that for you.

I think you've got it right, Mark 85. What any group considers "high-quality" is based on what they have had access to and will be subject to change once exposed to something better, whether home grown or imported. It will be interesting to see if Alibaba will be able to open the gates to the market in China or if they will be hampered by the current protectionist system.

Screech! Grand Theft Auto V malware mods warning

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Mods on steam

It's better to have a gaming setup separate from the computer you use for online banking and similar, which helps to mitigate both the issue of flaws within Steam and any malware that might come with whatever mods you download. Even if it is something as simple as a swappable HD rather than an entire dedicated machine, this would seem to be a reasonable step to take.

High-level, state-sponsored Naikon hackers exposed

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: an executable file with a double extension.

How much effort would it take to train people about this?

It isn't so much an issue of how much effort it takes to train people It's more accurately the amount of effort needed to get people to consistently follow the training. This seems to be the social equivalent to a physical object achieving the speed of light. You can put more and more energy into it and get closer and closer to the goal, but never get there.

Crude scammer targets Brit oil brokers

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Amish spearphish

...I would be grateful if you would send by return email the usernames and passwords...

And here's the thing: that works! As sad as it may sound, this is exactly how many phishing attacks work, just with more words.

Viagra makes it HARD for malaria, bug-boffins discover

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: The Law of Unintended Consequences....?

Drug companies are about drug R&D, the Gates foundation is not a drug company.

No, but they are obviously willing to do the research if it helps meet their stated goals. This sort of study is fairly common as it is much easier to get approval to test an existing drug to do something it was not original intended to do that to develop and whole new drug for a specific purpose. The up-front costs of R&D are already paid and it has been approved for use. In fact, the drug was originally intended for treatment of hypertension. All they have to do is find out how effective it is against the target disease. It also may have the pleasant result for the drug company of expanding their market. This is a smart way of getting the job done.

Californians get first chance to be run over by a Google robot

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: No need to worry

I'm assuming an autonomous car will be significantly cheaper to hire than a taxi because the autonomous car doesn't need to cover the cost of a human taxi-driver.

That is an assumption that I have seen used by a number of sources, and may perhaps be a reasonable one to make for a commuter vehicle, but I am not so sure it will be the case and, even if it is, will really drive down private ownership of vehicles. First, many areas that have significant numbers of taxi drivers are sensitive to job loss and may take a protectionist stance on the use of driverless cars as for-rent vehicles, especially in cases of individuals leasing them out during the day. Look for example at where Uber has had legal challenges.

Second, the time when someone is most likely to need a car for rent is going to be during peek driving hours which includes the owner who used it to drive in to work. There will be a smaller demand for these vehicles as rentals than there will be supply, which does tend to drive down prices, but...

Third, while the cost of renting one of these has a good chance of being cheaper than a regular cab, assuming there are no price controls, they will still be more expensive than ownership by necessity. No-one is going to rent at or below cost especially as there is going to be some serious liability issues - who is going to want to risk their personal ride home on making a quick $10 for an unsupervised and potentially un-trackable transaction - will you really want to know what sticky mess on the back seat is when you get your car back in the evening?

I did a quick lookup of the number of cabs in different areas. There are now over 20,000 licensed vehicles on London's roads while New York has over 13,237 cabs and more than 40,000 other for-hire vehicles. On the other hand, there are 2.6 million privately owned cars registered to London residents while around 48% of New Yorkers own cars which puts the number of cars there at over 4 million. Uber has more than 14,000 cars operating in New York and 7,000 in London (Uber claims this will grow to 42,000 by next year), so there is clearly demand, but I would guess that there will be strong pushback in areas where there are established taxi services, precisely where there will be a confluence of available cars for hire and people who might hire them.

I am sure some folks will try this, but that it will turn out to be more hassle than it is worth. My guess is that if you want to make money off self-driving vehicles, then your best bet is to sell the security devices that people will want to install in their cars before handing them over to a stranger site unseen.

Astroboffins perplexed by QUADRUPLE QUASAR CLUSTER find

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: "... but more research is needed"

They say, "more research." You say "more grants." I say "road trip." Properly conjugated.

I am not sure if you mean that the researchers should work for free or that basic science has no value, but I disagree with both statements.

Lightbulbs of the future will come with wireless extenders and speakers

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

The one problem...

...we can see with this bulb is that you may not have a lightsocket pointing in the right direction for what you want to achieve.

This would seem to be a problem with all their products as light fixtures and lamps aren't currently designed with these features in mind. I would not imagine these will have much take-up in private homes, but there could be interest in the commercial sector as they could offer relatively low cost drop-in upgrades to amenities. Too, hotels and convention centers are not concerned with the security of their networks. I didn't see any mention as to any sort of built-in security these will support (the bit about the missing APIs, at least in part), which makes them on par with the rest of the IoT. Who knows? Perhaps Sengled will become an innovator in IoT security and capture a big share of the market by doing so, but judging from their solution in search of a problem approach, I suspect not.

Adjustments will be needed to manage the Macs piling up in your business

Robert Helpmann??
Childcatcher

Re: Who pays for this support?

A lot of what "enterprise" should mean boils down to standardization. That's where businesses can save money through the economies of scale. I've worked in many mixed environments - the first sysadmin job I had was for an art college that ran Windows, Mac and Amiga desktops and Novel servers - and have helped support a few others. Sure, it is possible to maintain and support multiple machine types and images, but at a certain point, you end up multiplying the costs associated with doing so by the total number of images. Assuming you have the tools to get the job done, there is not much difference in maintaining 2K and 3K Windows workstations - the tools involved should scale fairly well. Likewise with Macs, though I am making an educated guess as I have not worked in a shop that had that many Macs. However, if you go from say 1K Windows boxes to adding on 1K Macs, you end up having to buy or write new tools and hire a whole new group of people to maintain them. While a lot of experience transfers between administering different OSes, there is enough overhead added that most enterprises have good reason to go one way or the other, but not both.