Outdated OSes, Unpatched Browsers Expose Companies to Risk

Found on eWEEK on Monday, 05 June 2017
Browse Software

Users around the world continue to run older operating systems and unpatched software applications. That was one of the findings of Duo Security's 2017 Trusted Access Report, released on June 5.

Adobe's Flash is also a problem, with 53 percent of endpoints analyzed by Duo Security running out-of-date and vulnerable versions.

Laziness is only a smaller part of the story; when Microsoft started its aggressive upgrade approach, many users who did not want to get a new OS shoved down their throats simply opted out of upgrades. A move which turned out to not as bad as it sounded at first, seeing how updates in Windows 10 can interrupt your daily work and lead to unexpected reboots. Plus, it looks like updates are less tested: when an update breaks the software you are relying on, the only option is to not install them. Make updates reliable and user-friendly again, and you slowly win back your userbase.

Theresa May: Internet must be regulated to prevent terrorism

Found on CNN News on Sunday, 04 June 2017
Browse Censorship

"We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed," May said. "Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide."

"The biggest and richest social media companies are shamefully far from taking sufficient action to tackle illegal and dangerous content," the report said. "Given their immense size, resources and global reach, it is completely irresponsible of them to fail to abide by the law."

After every attack, more control is demanded, as if that alone could prevent terrorism; but you need to stop it way before it goes online: in the heads of people.

Drones that deliver doughnuts? Yes please!

Found on CNet News on Saturday, 03 June 2017
Browse Various

On Wednesday, as proof of concept, the company delivered boxes of donuts from LaMar's to a police station, two fire departments and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, reported the Associated Press.

Mayor Hancock was pleased, telling the AP: "This is exciting stuff and I think as we get ready for not only drones in the air, and get ready for autonomous vehicles, this is our future, this is how we're going to become a more efficient 21st century nation, society quite frankly."

For customers it would be more healthy to walk to get the sugar-coated baked goods.

JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years

Found on BBC News on Friday, 02 June 2017
Browse Various

The story is about the fate of lovers Beren and Lúthien, a mortal man and an immortal elf who together try to steal from the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor.

For the new book Christopher Tolkien, now aged 92, has kept his father's story in the original form in which it was written and has also shown how the narrative changed to become part of The Silmarillion.

Hopefully it won't be as exhausting to read as The Silmarillion was.

Hillary Clinton says email scandal was just one reason she lost

Found on CNet News on Thursday, 01 June 2017
Browse Politics

The Democratic presidential nominee's hourlong chat dissecting tech and politics seemed more like a therapy session as Clinton is back in the public eye discussing what she's been doing since her defeat. Meanwhile, issues Clinton said she struggled with during the campaign -- fake news and Russian hacking -- continue to make headlines.

"That really influenced the information that people were relying on," she said. "I believe that what was happening to me was unprecedented."

Clinton was also asked why she delivered paid speeches for Goldman Sachs, which were eventually leaked by WikiLeaks. Clinton took offense, saying she gave many speeches to a wide range of groups from health care executives to camp counselors.

She did everything right, but everybody else is to blame for her loss. Of course.

German court says 'Nein' on Facebook profile access request

Found on The Register on Wednesday, 31 May 2017
Browse Legal-Issues

According to press reports, the parents have been trying to find out whether the child, who was struck by an underground train, intended to commit suicide.

The social network says it had worried that a court ruling could set precedent to erode the privacy rights of other account holders after their deaths.

"We are committed to trying to find a solution that helps the family, while protecting the privacy of others who might be affected."

Facebook and privacy? Zucky happily will sell all your information to advertisers, so pulling the privacy card is ridiculous.

Wikipedia’s Switch to HTTPS Has Successfully Fought Government Censorship

Found on Motherboard on Tuesday, 30 May 2017
Browse Censorship

HTTPS prevents governments and others from seeing the specific page users are visiting. For example, a government could tell that a user is browsing Wikipedia, but couldn't tell that the user is specifically reading the page about Tiananmen Square.

Although countries like China, Thailand and Uzbekistan were still censoring part or all of Wikipedia by the time the researchers wrapped up their study, they remained optimistic: "this initial data suggests the decision to shift to HTTPS has been a good one in terms of ensuring accessibility to knowledge."

Knowledge always wants to be free, and while it occasionally might be blocked for some time, in the end it will get to the people.

BA's 'global IT system failure' was due to 'power surge'

Found on The Register on Monday, 29 May 2017
Browse Hardware

The "power supply" issue was a power surge that occurred at a BA data centre on Saturday at 9.30am, Cruz has said. "We will make an in-depth investigation to make sure we get to the bottom of exactly why this happened and we will react absolutely, this will not happen again at British Airways."

If a company as big as British Airways relies on a single datacenter for their global operations, they are doing something wrong. This works for smaller sites, but if you completely depend on the systems, you want to avoid the DC as a single point of failure.

A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

Found on Ars Technica on Sunday, 28 May 2017
Browse Various

Researchers from Bochum, Germany, and San Diego, California, say they’ve found the precise mechanisms that allowed diesel Volkswagens and Audis to engage or disengage emissions controls depending on whether the cars were being driven in a lab or driven under real-world conditions.

Once the researchers were able to study the code running on the faulty diesels, they discovered that Volkswagen’s defeat devices were far more nuanced than anything found previously. Levchenko told Eurekalert that the “Volkswagen defeat device is arguably the most complex in automotive history.”

There's a pretty simple solution: test-drive the cars under real conditions. Require every manufacturer to hand over a given number of cars to everyday drivers and load the trunk with all the sensor technology. After they drove the cars for a few weeks, harvest the results.

FileZilla FTP Client Adds Support for Master Password That Encrypts Your Logins

Found on Bleeping Computer on Saturday, 27 May 2017
Browse Software

In November 2016, a user frustrated with Koose's stance forked the FileZilla FTP client and added support for a master password via a spin-off app called FileZilla Secure.

The author of FileZilla Secure took this action after his computer was infected with malware, and the malware stole the FileZilla password trove, a file named sitemanager.xml.

So it only took more than a decade to implement a security setting that should have existed since the beginning. Every single security how-to tells you not to store passwords in plaintext, but FileZilla knew better. Nothing happened for 10 years, but suddenly this essential security featre is implemented (but not activated by default) after someone else forked the software and fixed this bug, siphoning from the original FileZilla userbase. With all that said, the software has secured a position on the "never install" list after FileZilla supported adware.