Posts by Cynic_999 2855 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Aug 2013
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Is this really any different from the key set you get when you buy a non-Smart motor?
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Quite a bit different, yes. Once I have sold my car I usually have no idea where it is. A duplicate key cannot locate where the car is currently parked but this application can. I cannot do anything with my duplicate key unless I physically travel to the location where the car is parked. With the application I can start the engine or drain the battery from a different continent. Few people would want to physically steal a car and risk being caught in the real World, but many people wouldn't see a problem with a few "practical jokes" from the (supposed) anonymity of an Internet connection.
If I buy a car with this feature, what do I need to provide in order to set up an account on their server and so gain remote control capability? What checks are made to ensure that the person setting up an account really does have ownership of the car?
The article mentions that with BMW the previous owner is locked out of their account as soon as the new owner creates their own account. But how is it verified that the new account really is being created by a new owner rather than a thief wandering around car parks taking note of the reg. numbers and VIN of parked vehicles? Or spots a car parked in the driveway of a house, finds out who lives in that house (not too difficult to do) and registers using the real owner's name and address (assuming that the real owner has never bothered creating such an account).
I note that the promo vid helpfully showed a target fictional creature perched in front of a top floor window with a young girl holding a ball and eying it from below. So any parent with more than a couple of brain cells has been warned of the likely consequences of buying this for their sprog.
Seems a bit of overkill, and implies that each screen is fully refreshed individually whenever the slightest thing changes. If the displays had a tiny bit of intelligence so as to all use the same raw flight information which they format and scroll themselves, a 500Bd link (at the most) would be more than sufficient. I shouldn't think that all the information needed to be displayed on any screen would take more than 50 bytes per flight, so even at 10 bits per character (e.g. 8 data, 1 start, 1 stop), 500Bd would be able to handle 1 new flight per second, which is at least 2 orders of magnitude faster than aircraft arrive & depart, so historical information can easily be interleaved between new flight data for initialisation of freshly powered-up screens. Thus already powered screens would update within 2 seconds of new flight information becoming available, and a freshly powered-up screen would be fully populated with a list of flights in under 2 minutes.
Compared to the rest of the hardware costs, a simple CPU and a few KB of RAM would be an insignificant cost. Add a radio receiver and a 500Bd radio link could be implemented that needs no cabling to the screens other than plugging into the mains.
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They aren't taking your fingerprints, they are scanning one or two fingers and comparing them with their database to see if you are wanted.
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I was replying to a person who stated that it would enable police to verify that a driver is who he says he is. It wouldn't unless the driver's fingerprints are already on record.
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This will probably mostly be used to verify that drivers stopped while commiting offences are who they say they are, and not the person insured on the car. No verifiable ID, then please put a hand on this device Sir.
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And if neither you nor the insured party (if different) has ever been arrested, exactly how would it do that? If you are driving a car the police officer already has the right to see your driving licence, which has a photograph with which to identify you - and if you don't have your licence with you the police officer has the right to arrest you (though they will usually issue a "producer" unless there is significant doubt).
Best thing to do is refuse to submit to having your prints taken on the street. If the police officer has sufficient grounds to believe that you have committed a crime, they should arrest you so that you get a free lawyer and start the clock ticking. If they don't have sufficient grounds to believe that you have committed a crime they should be leaving you alone rather than carrying out speculative identity checks on people who happen to be in a particular area on the grounds that there are bound to be one or two illegals amongst the hundreds checked.
Or maybe wet your finger with a plastic solvent before pressing it against the officer's scanner.
Just because the building materials are common does not mean that its likely that they get put together in the particular (and as yet unknown) way necessary to form life. For all we know the exact events that must occur in order to cause them to come together to produce the "spark of life" may be almost impossibly unlikely to happen. There is only one Taj Mahal despite the fact that the building materials are not particularly uncommon!
The other thing we don't know is how long life is likely to exist on a planet, on average, since we don't have a single example of a complete cycle. If a complete life cycle is a tiny fraction of the total life of the galaxy, the probability of there existing two life-bearing planets *at the same time* diminishes.
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True, but @Mk4 didn't claim it was a hack job
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He did however state that it was written in a language that the company did not permit to be used on their system, so it was an unauthorised (and hence unapproved) modification. So I honestly cannot see that it would have been nicely documented in the appropriate place. Things like that end up being a mess that someone else will have to deal with at some time in the future. Perhaps it was needed to circumvent the consequences of someone else's unauthorised mods ... ?
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It would be interesting to think how this could work for, say, a machine running a web browser. You'd need (say) all the JS that you ever ran from anywhere to be signed, or you'd want formal proofs of non-maliciousness of the JS.
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No, you just have to ensure that the JS interpreter that the browser runs when it downloads js ensures that no js program can ever do anything naughty. Similar to running it in a sandbox. It should not be possible for any script or plugin etc. downloaded from a web site to be able to access anything on the PC except a harmless portion of the system. It's the *browser software* providing the security, not the hardware, so only the browser needs to be signed and trusted.
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Otherwise what exactly is the point?
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Which was exactly *my* point - there *is* no point in trying to gain such software security because it's like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling and you're not going to achieve it 100%. Anything significant that you *do* manage to achieve in the CPU itself will be at the expense of performance. If you cannot set up a VM to be as safe as the main OS, run it on a physically different machine.
In my opinion nobody should be expecting to rely on the hardware taking care of software security, and in many ways it's a great pity that it was ever attempted. If I understand correctly the original idea was only to protect against buggy software *accidentally* causing mayhem, not to protect against a deliberate attack.
Once any malicious software has managed to get itself running on a computer it will always be able to do damage by one means or another. Effective security means preventing anything malicious being executed by the CPU in the first place, just as you protect machinery from sabotage by physically shielding it (or the entire building its housed in) in some way, you do not design it with gears that can withstand a spanner being poked between them, you prevent the spanner from getting to the gears in the first place.
I develop embedded systems, and in critical systems, in order to protect against a malicious firmware update, all new code is signed with a private key that exists only on a secure machine within the company. All firmware contains the same public key used to check the signature before the code is flashed to memory or executed.
Of course a malicious actor with physical access could remove the Flash memory and substitute firmware that contains no checks, but that's not the threat that's being guarded against. A person with a hammer could also crash the unit!
It sounds interesting - especially the "lite" version that I will try out on a 15 year old Dell PC with limited memory that sometimes struggles just a little with Linux Mint. But they sure make it difficult to find the buttons needed to download the free versions - it doesn't bode well for the design of the user interfaces. (Hint, it's disguised as a "Buy Zorin Core Now" donation button defaulting to a 10 Euro charge, but you can change it to 0 Euro which gets you to the free download screen) Their default automatic download site brought up an error, but hitting the "download now" button eventually initiated a download from Sourceforge.
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Ummm lots of satellite Ariel (ariels, whatever) point towards earth ?
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Only the ones on satellites, which are too far away to present any safety concern wherever the aerial is pointed. Oh - and satellite systems are not usually connected to the Internet, and the control channel has very strong security.
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Or are you not counting GPS as satellite communications?
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Not within the parameters of the risks postulated by this article, no.
GPS is completely self contained. It does not have a control unit (the aerial is fixed), and is not connected to the Internet, so I really fail to see how it could be "hacked".
Oh - and the GPS is still only an auxiliary system for navigating a commercial airliner. The main navigation is done via inertial nav and/or ground stations (ADF, VOR, DME, ILS etc). Pilots are told not to rely on GPS position. In addition ground stations would soon pick up on an aircraft straying significantly off-track.
The location of steerable antennas on aircraft and the vast majority of ships (whether steered mechanically or electronically) means that the aerial cannot physically (or electronically) be lowered to a declination where it could irradiate people. There is never any need for a satellite aerial to point below the horizon so they are not designed to be able to point below the horizontal. Aircraft satellite aerials are situated on the top of the aircraft (for obvious reasons), so cannot ever point at anyone inside the fuselage. Almost all ship aerial systems are mounted a fair bit above the height of the top deck, so again cannot be aimed at anyone on board. Outside of the main beam angle the EIRP is too low to be any safety concern.
Satellite comms that use non-steerable antennas emit barely more energy than a mobile phone at max power, so are no concern.
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"[The company] assumes all responsibilities for analyzing engine data in real time* to manage customers’ engine maintenance and maximize aircraft availability.
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That's strictly one-way. Data is sent and possibly analysed in real time, but nothing is sent back to the aircraft to change the engine's settings. If the live data indicates a bogus problem then the most that would happen is an unnecessary delay at the next stop for an engineering inspection (which would quickly find that the live data was not the same as the data recorded on-board).
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Should we therefore "presume" that none of the control systems use SATCOM, not even as a redundant backup for reason a, b or c.....
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Yes, you may safely make that assumption. Satellite comms are not used for flight control, only for communications. You could possibly feed erroneous position information to ground operations (though that does not include ATC), but not to the flight crew or flight systems.
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...rather slow web browsing. Eventually had a look at the switch stats and found it's negotiating at 100Mb instead of 1000Mb
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You won't notice the difference between web browsing at 100Mbps and web browsing at 1000Mbps. The data is probably coming over an Internet link at below 100Mbps anyway. It's far more likely that the switch keeps re-negotiating the link speed due to long wires or Cat5 rather than Cat5e wiring being used - just configure the PC or router to fix the LAN at 100Mbps and it should be fine.
Decades ago when I had to read up on electrical regulations in order to re-wire my father's house which was supplied by 3-phase mains, there was a regulation that clearly stated that all the (single-phase) plug sockets in the same room had to be on the same phase.
So I assume that either that regulation has been rescinded, or there is now an exemption for server rooms?
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What if you can't find the copyright holder? Are you supposed to just not use an image in case there is a copyright?
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Let's say I want to use a bicycle. I see a bicycle parked outside a shop, but I have no idea who owns it in order to ask them whether I might borrow their bike. Am I supposed to just not use the bike in case there is an owner who doesn't want to let me borrow it?
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Given that cryptocurrency wallets are open to all to view - only the most idiotic physical attackers would not check the wallet's contents. <...> I would be very nervous if I held any significant amount of cryptocurrency in a nation with kidnapping for profit..."
Yes, you can easily find out how much cryptocurrency a wallet with a certain ID holds. But how do you find out who owns that wallet? And how do you find out the ID of a wallet a particular person has? If you were to buy something from me using BTC, I would create a new wallet and transfer the amount you want into that wallet before transferring it to you. You can trace both transactions, but for all you know the fat wallet belongs to a BTC vendor that I bought the BTC from to pay you.
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... you lose your imaginary money.
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It is no more imaginary than the bits of coloured paper or plastic in your wallet, or the magnetic ones and zeros on the HDDs of your bank's computer. Earlier this year I enjoyed a very nice holiday in a distant and exotic land paid for entirely by what you are calling "imaginary money"
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What next? "Incredible: You can die of poisoning if healthy food is mixed with poison" ?
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You can see that, yet you fail to see the stupidity of a food producer who sells loose items of food while claiming that their product cannot be poisoned. Planting malicious code that transmits passwords to a 3rd party is an extremely common method that hackers use to gain unauthorised access. If I can plant a backdoor in a device by gaining physical possession of it for a few minutes, then it cannot possibly be described as "unhackable." At the *very* least the case should be made such that it would be obvious if someone had opened it.
I've known employees who attempt to make themselves irreplaceable by deliberately obfuscating and hiding data. One guy had been responsible for carrying out most of the data wiring in the building when we moved the main server/telecom room. Each cable and outlet was clearly marked - with a completely different number at each end! Only he had a translation table, so if a network or phone line needed to be re-patched to a different location, he was the only guy who could do it. Until we needed something done while he was on vacation so I spent an entire long weekend tracing, swapping, re-lacing and re-labelling all the cables so they were in a logical order with the same reference number at both ends.
Wouldn't it be far more sensible to keep servers containing military information inside a military facility with strictly controlled access? I should think the average grunt employee of a commercial outfit might be tempted to clone a HDD or 10 if offered a large sum by someone in Iran, China or Russia.
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"Your windows PC needs updating.
please schedule a day and time within the next 7 days to download and update your PC
<open time and day manager window>
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The thing that's wrong with it is that I don't want MY computer to dictate what *I* must do. Perhaps I am doing something that must not be interrupted for even a second, and that unasked-for window that just popped up has caused me to wreck £1000's of remote controlled equipment. Would you be happy if all of *your* goods had a similar policy .... e.g. your 'fridge says you must order more yoghurt within the next 2 days or it will order 4 litres from the local supermarket immediately. Your CH boiler says you need to order new loft insulation within 7 days or it will switch off all heating until you do.
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Actually there are many ways that an attacker with a tiny foothold on the network could use that foothold to elevate their privileges and gain access to far more resources.
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You have "gained a foothold" onto this site by logging in to comment. Explain how that makes it easier for you to elevate your privileges.
I have a login to my company's private server, but there really isn't much damage that an attacker could do, because all that's on it is my daily calendar (when I bother to update it), current project status, leave applications and a few other things that allow damagement to get a basic picture of employee availability and what we are all currently working on. We are not a high-profile company doing secret stuff that leaked project statuses would be of benefit to anyone.
If there's nothing that really needs protecting, then anything that makes things a bit more difficult to log on is a disadvantage. Not many people fit steel doors with separate deadbolt locks on all 4 sides of the door to their house, because in most cases the risk is not high enough to warrant the expense and inconvenience of doing so. If however you were at significant risk of murderous attack, it might be worth doing.
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Given that I plan on getting from point A to point B in one piece, fuel loading and weight and balance is something that's calculated before every flight.
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Why? If you calculated the W&B once, why do you believe it is necessary to do so every time you fly with that same (or very similar) load? The answer won't change because it's a different date!
I would calculate W&B if I was taking an unusual or marginal load, but in most cases I would be quite confident that full tanks plus 3 passengers (say) would be well within W&B unless the passengers were grossly overweight. But if I was taking 5 passengers plus luggage, then sure, I'd do a full W&B calculation to determine how much fuel I could carry (and yes, I'd weigh the passengers).
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You do these calculations before you load the cargo into the plane. Having the plane measure it and then say "oops, that's outside the safe limits, you need to unpack and rearrange" is sort of not helpful...
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It very much IS helpful for the pilot to know that the ground crew has loaded some heavy freight in the wrong hold, or failed to load such freight because it was delayed. Because it is far better to know that the W&B is out of limits when the aircraft can be unloaded and re-arranged than to only realise after take-off when the pilot does not have enough forward elevator authority and the aircraft stalls into a housing estate from 500 feet.
Or to get at least some advance warning that all the passengers are walking to the back because the steps for the front door have not arrived, and the aircraft is just about to tip onto its tail (has happened more than once).
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Calculating its total weight is one thing, but calculating the distribution of the weight is a different matter.
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The aircraft sits on three legs. This is sufficient to be able to calculate the total weight and 2-axis C of G (which is all that is required). An electronic load cell is not expensive, and could be fitted to each landing strut (though would have to be done at the design stage, I doubt retro-fitting would be possible).
Alternatively the pressure of gas in the oleo would surely be proportional to the weight on that landing strut? A pressure sensor on each oleo could probably be retro-fitted.
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Just make sure you have the passenger numbers to start with. Its known as plan b
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Weight & balance could indeed all be calculated by the pilots or some simple software, but it's a bit more complex than that. The load sheet is used by the ground handlers to know what items to put where - which is determined by things other than just weight. Aircraft carry freight as well as passengers and baggage, and not only would the pilot need to have a list of all the freight & weight thereof (which he would not get if the computer is down), but will also need to know the volume and shape of that freight and any special requirements. Putting 5 items of freight weighing 2500kg into the forward hold may be great for the weight & balance, but the items might not all physically fit into that hold.
Then there's a multitude of restrictions that the aircraft captain does not necessarily know about. The MRI scanner mustn't be placed in the forward hold because its magnetic field could upset the navigation systems. Certain types of live animals must not be put in the same hold together (dogs and snakes for example). There are lots of chemical combinations that must not be transported in the same hold. Fruit & veg should not be placed in proximity to fresh fish. Plus 1001 other rules that the pilot would not be expected to know but the loadmaster must take into account when preparing the load sheet.
Yes, I've read the descriptions and the theoretical attack vectors of these CPU vulnerabilities. And am left wondering whether anyone would in practise be able to write an exploit that actually achieved anything useful for the exploiter except in a miniscule percentage of occasions.
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Am I really the only one that doesn't need a list when I go out, and instead just live with the consequences when I get home and the discoveries of The Forgotten© are made?
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My normal method is, "Shit, I'm out of shampoo!" Get out of shower, dry, dress, go to supermarket. Come home with 5 carrier bags of stuff. Put away. Get undressed, enter shower. "Shit! Forgot to buy shampoo!"
ISTM that the "fox in the henhouse" analogy in the article is just as true from both sides. From Russia's POV America is the fox and Russia's cyber-security is the henhouse. Your enemy's security measures tells you a lot about their probable attack strategies (because people tend to ensure that they have a defence against their own methods of attack).
I was staying a few weeks with a friend in Nepal. My arrival prompted him to get an Internet connection. He ordered it around 17:00 Sunday, and the router was installed and fully up & running in the house by 10:00 the next day (Monday). Bit of a bird's nest at the top of the pole and the fibre cable not routed all that elegantly around the walls of the house, but it was definitely fibre all the way, not an inch of copper. No deposit required, no line rental, no installation fee, pay the first year's subscription after trying for 7 days. He chose the 35Mbps unlimited data option at £120 per year (up to 125Mbps was available IIRC). In the past 6 months it has had one 4 hour outage (lorry crashed into the pole outside his house and brought it down, snapping the fibre cable). They also have 5G in many places in Nepal. And that is very much a 3rd World country. I get better quality video calls to him than to another mate in the U.S.
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that's not how science is done in *my* field.
Yes, models exist, but the *models* are adjusted to match the data, not vice versa.
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That's the difference between a scientist and an engineer. If asked what 2+2 equals, the scientist will reply "4" and the engineer would close the door and whisper, "What do you need it to equal?"
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