Posts by Hit Snooze

"Time for the EU to have a polite word with MS? The more I hear about Windows 10 the more glad I am that I'll be waiting to install it."

This is what is wrong with so many people in IT nowadays - believing everything they read on the internet about technology without ever trying it! Sure, you have to rely on reviews for big purchases, but believing a competitor's comments or a journalist's review for something in Windows 10?

A review is like one side of a breakup, it is not the actual truth, and requires a large intake of salt while reading it. The author will leave out facts and use opinions to spin their story on whatever features or concerns they come up with.

As many people pointed out above, if you use the custom installation then you can keep all default settings. Not a big issue.

Note: I am not a fanboi of any OS, browser, hardware/software, etc, I use use what works best for the situation.

Re: Did the insurance company require an audit of the insured network?

"Does a household insurance company require me to have my locks and alarms audited every year?"

Does that mean all I need for network security is a firewall? It might be improperly configured but hey, I meet the security specification! Locks and alarms are physical items which are easy to tell if they are configured correctly.

Digital security is a bit harder to know if things are secure and require regular audits of not only network security but also server security. As every vulnerability has taught us, what we thought was secure yesterday is not secure today.

Personally I hate audits but, if done by a true expert, they can point out some weaknesses/vulnerabilities that you might not have known were there and best practices going forward.

Re: @HitSnooze

BB - You are comparing a data sharing request with a hit request? You're talking apples and oranges here.

I think a better comparison is if you made a data request to get all the data files on your neighbors and a few business leaders throughout the city from the local police department and they just gave it to you. Is it illegal to make the request? No. Is the police wrong for doing it? I think they are.

"And that's without even knowing if any pressure was put on BND to do it."

It could have been a simple request and no pressure added. Besides, who knows what the BDN requests from the NSA.

Re: WTF?

You forgot the fourth hand, the secret agencies can access Apple, and Google devices but want people to think they can't. Reverse psychology works, just ask any parent.

@ Trevor

If you had the choice of losing your job or being raped what would you choose?

Rape and losing your job are in two very different categories that cannot be compared to each other.

Re: @rizb

So your argument is because I wasn't there at the time, as an expert in SIGINT, I cannot possibly know if it was better or worse? I like that argument and I cannot wait to use it!

@142

Yeah, that's a fair statement. So who was it - assuming it's a hack? Patriot Hackers? Seems like a slightly odd target.

It could be:

*State sponsored hacking (pick your nation of choice)

*Criminal sponsored hacking

*A lone hacker

*A dev received a secret court order and is doing what (s)he can to announce it, as someone below suggested

*A dev found a security hole being exploited and yanked that version off the site

*Dev infighting causing one dev to get his/her revenge

*Ballmer and Gates playing a prank on the OS community

Without more information it is hard to say who did what and the reasons behind it but I'm sure Occam's razor is involved somewhere.

Re: US Law Rules the World (Not)

> There is no case for the US pretending it can extradite in this matter.

The US doesn't think it can extradite those responsible. Every time the US would point the finger at the Chinese for hacking US companies the Chinese government would say "prove it". So the US publicly provided the facts to see what the Chinese leadership would do, as well as tying juicy steaks (to attract blood thirsty journalists) around the necks of five, now famous, people. Its all just a small move in the big game of politics.

Re: Oderint dum metuant

@Mike Smith

The Russians haven't done anything to directly provoke Europe or threaten the sovereignty of any NATO or EU country.

Same goes for Bosnia. Same goes for Libya. And Syria. And Nigeria. Britain gave Nigeria its independence over half a century ago. It's no longer our problem.

There are a few more references to isolationism in your post but you identified one major difference between the US and Europe. Europe sees injustices and all you do is shrug your shoulders and look the other way. What would happen if the US did that in any war; starting in WW1 - today? Hitler (and now Putin) is a great example of what "It's not my problem" attitude gets you.

The US gets a bad rap because, for one, it is the world police and sticks its nose into other peoples business but it only does that because we saw what doing nothing leads to.

Re: Best excuse ever

Knight is the nuclear Navy man, while Krueger is the bored sysadmin. Two different people.

Re: If the UK is really that worried about backdoors...

Don't be silly, the GCHQ helped install those backdoors so why wouldn't they want you to use them?

Re: Abridged version

To be fair, Cisco stuff is pretty bloody good at what it does.

I agree, it is very good, flexible, reliable, and there are tons of documentation/forums for Cisco equipment (major advantage), but it is expensive which really sucks.

Re: "From the country that gave you"...

> So should:

The USA, UK, Rusia, China, France...

Your point?

USA, UK, Russia, China, France are not signing this agreement, that is the point. It is a nice gesture, one that I wish could be enforced, but it is akin to signing a policy that politicians will not lie and bankers will not steal.

Re: @ Voland

All of these have viable and valid claims to it. Ukraine is not on the list. A birthday present by a dictator is not really a valid claim to ownership.

Only recent history has any meaning and that recent history is that Russia gave Crimea to Ukraine. End of story. It doesn't matter who conquered Crimea hundreds of years ago, or who had control of it up to it was gifted. It was LEGALLY gifted away by the then current "owners".

Crimeans have every right to separate from Ukraine and join whomever they want, but you cannot do it by use of force like the Russians did without consequences.

Re: I'm going to repeat my comment from elsewhere..

2 - segregate data from the US (and other questionable jurisdictions) in non-US data centres.

That way, a US subsidiary can only provide what it has access to and cannot be used as a backdoor. If you have your HQ in the US, it means your decision power resides there which can give rise to abuse.

Every government will, if they are not already, tap into the data lines going through it's borders so it all boils down to which government you don't mind sharing your data\phone calls with.

Re: No mention of Linux

Maybe because it is a sponsored event that was for bugs in browsers. So if no one is going to pay for a bug, why submit it?

Re: @Daniel 1

However, from a functional point of view, the only difference is that I no longer get emails about my inbox being over its size limit, and I no longer have to go back through my email history and work out what I can safely delete (and then delete it from 'Deleted items', of course, and then delete it from 'Recover Deleted Items', and so on... until I finally get some inbox space back).

You should have sent your Exchange admin to training.

I am lucky to have worked with good admins that setup policies to automatically delete emails in your deleted items folder and ordered beefy enough servers to handle many years worth of emails per inbox. Granted I don't receive, or send for that matter, any mass joke/picture emails and thanks to the tireless user education efforts of all IT staff, this company does not use email as a file store.

Software is only as good as the admin in charge of it.

Re: @Chemist

Do you suggest that intelligent programmers maybe using software tools are incapable of finding a backdoor. ?

I do not suggest such a thing but are they looking for a backdoor? Can the few experts searching for bugs keep up with every update that is released? Just because a person is an intelligent programmer doesn't mean they can spot every bug/backdoor. They might want to smack the original coder around a bit for poor coding but even the best programmer doesn't know everything. Besides, people come up with new ways to hack into things everyday that the experts haven't even thought about.

That forensic malware experts are incapable of detecting untoward traffic ?

Malware experts can detect untoward traffic coming or going from any OS.

Sure, it's possible, but between closed-source binary and open-source I know what I'd take and in fact I do take

Since they have never looked at any of the code, to 99.9999% of Linux users out there, open source is the same as closed source - Unknown.

I do not care about one OS over another, each has it's pros and cons. What gets me is that people claim there is a backdoor in Windows due to it being closed source but they have never found one and they refuse to believe there is a backdoor in Linux because it is open source and "could" be reviewed by experts.

Re: If there was any doubt

And people wonder why evil masterminds in American 007 type films are always British