Friday, August 30, 2019

I forced a bot to read thousands of press releases ...

from here

It really is hard to believe the things they say in response to controversy have been written by an actual human.

You stole the wrong identity, buddy

found on Reddit

I don't know who originally wrote this, but congrats on finding identity theft kryptonite.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Pull my other leg, Google

from here

Imagine being so tone deaf about tracking that you argue against what others are doing and what users are asking for, all the while apparently oblivious to your own perverse incentives. Of course Google believes tracking is good and necessary - they're paid to believe that.

CCTV Camera Cupcake Toppers

Product Page

Thankfully they aren't real cameras (though there certainly are some that small and even smaller). I guess they're only meant to remind you that someone might be watching so you better not pig out and eat them all.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

You're holding it wrong

from here (source article)

You really got to wonder how Apple decided that a credit card you shouldn't put in your wallet or your jeans was ready to go to market. How out of touch can you get?

Now there's a job that could use some downsizing

found on The Art Of Trolling

Am I trolling by using a meme from The Art Of Trolling to suggest that being a troll is bad? It's certainly a bit meta, but I think there's a big difference between trolling and being a troll. It's a difference in commitment level. Anyone can perform a bit trolling now and again when there's either a justifiable reason for that kind of inflammatory behaviour or when it's genuinely harmless, but to it takes dedication to be a troll all the time. Being a professional troll (?) takes even that to the next level.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Scotty, we need more power!

from here (image source)

I suppose with the ever increasing power requirements of the cryptocurrency mining networks it was only a matter of time before someone got the bright idea of going directly to the source of electricity.

Puppy prison break


Watch on YouTube

One of the ways you can underestimate an adversary is failing to account for accomplices. Just because someone can't do a particular thing on their own doesn't mean they don't know someone who can help them.

Monday, August 26, 2019

The pigs can't be far behind

from here

To be perfectly honest, I think calling this hacking is a bit of a stretch (she was just using a password she previously had authorization to use), but I guess that's why I'm not in journalism.

Never gonna give up my privacy

found on Imgur

This is a pretty good example of a decoy. Imagine going that deep and finding nothing but Rick Astley - would you keep looking? I mean, sure, someone could do a search instead of just clicking on folders, but for those not smart enough to do that (like maybe your little brother/sister)  this may actually deter them from finding anything really private.

Friday, August 23, 2019

Pay no attention to those people behind the curtain

from here (image source one and two)

There are so many things listening to us these days, and apparently your kids' Xbox is one of them. That means you have to ask yourself, whether or not you're OK with devices sending your own conversations to unseen people for human review, are you really OK with that happening to your kids? And are you OK with it being done by a company so cavalier about that privacy violation that they don't even bother to adjust their practices to avoid bad PR?

Sir Fluffy, knight of the Coffee Table

found on Reddit

I'm sure it's not real. As good as cats may be at attacking, no one is going to rely on one to do battle.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

We're bound to get screwed

from here
Basically ALL Bluetooth devices could be tricked into using a 1 byte encryption key because the protocol designers were trying to comply with "international encryption regulations". 

This is probably what most encryption backdoors would wind up looking like if it became official policy. Most won't be coordinated with any government agency, they'll just some quick and dirty thing that gets jammed in with the hope that no one notices. If/when the Feds come knocking, the developers can just point to it and say there, use that.

Barriers can protect you from all sorts of things

found on Meme Base

Y'know what they say. If it looks stupid but it works, it's not stupid. Maybe I should try something like this the next time I'm cooking bacon.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Ransomware run amok

from here

After so many local governments have been hit, and especially 23 in one shot, the rest of them better start making backups or they're just being negligent. The trend seems pretty unmistakable. Local governments are targets. They need to prepare.

Thousands of people can in fact be wrong

found on Fredo & Pid'jin webcomic

The more people who use a particular password, the more likely some attacker will be able to get into their accounts by 'guessing' it. Popularity is not a good property for a password to have.

Be sure to check out Fredo & Pid'jin for more comics.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

When the government (or your spouse) wants to know what's on your phone

from here and here (image source one, two, three, and four)

I remember when Face ID first came out everyone was in awe of it. Now it appears that it has an attack scenario not entirely dissimilar to this
found on Imgur


How to open a lock with a nut wrench


Watch on YouTube

You might have thought you needed special tools like bolt cutters to open a padlock without the key. Turns out, not so much.

Monday, August 19, 2019

Bobby Tables he ain't

from here

It was a clever trick, and I might have tried it myself if I'd thought of it, but thankfully having an example of what can go wrong when you register NULL as your vanity plate has disabused me of any notions that it might end well.

Seems to be going dark down there

found on Memedroid

Could incognito mode thwart the Feds? Maybe. There's certainly some question about whether they're willing to go deeper rather than just scratching the surface.

Friday, August 16, 2019

Good morning, campers

from here (image source)

Frankly, I find the idea of a face recognition infused summer camp to be horrifying, but not all that surprising. Our society affords even fewer rights and freedoms than it does adults.

No protection is perfect

found on Reddit

This sign outside The Little Shop Of Pleasures is technically correct (which is the best kind of correct), but on the other hand if a condom could protect you from a bus it probably wouldn't be much fun for what it's intended for.

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Ransomware makes me wannacry

Product Page
Product Page

I think I would have gone with a little less colour consistency (it looks more like a ransom note font than something someone actually cut&pasted together from magazine clippings), but it's definitely a clever turn of phrase. Also, you can get the design on a bunch of other things besides various articles of clothing.

The Suprema example of how not to do security

from here

When your job is protecting things but you don't bother protecting your customer's information it's pretty much always going to wind up being a fail.

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

There are no planes, just computers with wings

from here

I would feel very uneasy about getting into a flying metal tube that has such terrible application security as this. Many vehicles are computerized these days, which means they all can be hacked, but I'll tell you what, if I have to ride in a hackable vehicle, I'd prefer one that's closer to the ground.

We should call them "Paws-words"

found on Meme Base

If you've ever had a cat then you know they're furry little agents of chaos, so I have no doubt they'd provide passwords with lots of entropy in them.

(Wish I could have found the original comic, but I guess times change and websites do too)

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Inconceivable!

from here

Apparently simply claiming the machines weren't connected to the Internet wasn't enough to make it so.

The Great Corgi Escape


Watch on YouTube

Whether it's a prison escape, a sandbox escape, a crib escape, or a puppy gate escape, escape is always possible. It's just a matter of how long it takes to find and exploit the inevitable weakness. Usually you hope it'll be more than a couple minutes (unless you're the one trying to escape).

Monday, August 12, 2019

Peter Piper picked a peck of cryptominers

from here

I've seen a few stories about Smominru now and I just cannot stop stumbling over that word. I think my brain needs input validation.

Under cover fail

found on Bad Chix

They could have easily covered their faces with those signs so that their wives wouldn't have known it was them. Alternatively, if they didn't have signs at all then there would have been a very real chance that the cameras never would have been focused on them in the first place.

No, I think when you fail this bad it's because you want to get caught.

Friday, August 9, 2019

Dynamic non-factor based quantum AI encryption is sure to cure what ails ya

from here (source article)

Thanks to Dan Guido for his spectacular effort raising awareness of these particular snake oil peddlers (and getting thrown out of the presentation as a consequence).

Unfortunately, based on the responses this meme has seen at Imagur and the fact that Time AI has managed to not go belly up yet in spite of the comically nonsensical description of what they do, it seems that techno-jibberish is still quite effective at fooling people into thinking you know what you're talking about.

Are you feeling lucky?

found on The Art Of Trolling

I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to play guard dog roulette.

Thursday, August 8, 2019

How not to improve your reputation

from here

It seems to me there should be a way to authenticate court orders so that things like this can't happen.

The great escape of one very smart baby


Watch on YouTube

You should never underestimate your adversary, but sometimes it's hard to know who is an adversary, even when you're putting them behind bars.

Clearly efforts were made to contain this baby, to work against what the baby wanted. That makes the baby an adversary, and obviously they were underestimated.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

No sympathy here

from here

Literally, despite being a software developer myself, I have no sympathy for malware writers whose business is being hurt by pirates. I say good for the pirates. Even though they're using the malware, if they hurt the sales enough then the writers will give up and stop making new versions, and it's those new versions that give anti-malware the most problems.

You know you're in a bad neighborhood when...

found on Izismile

If the caption is correct, I wonder if that cop is about to lose important evidence.

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Who peeps on the watchers?

from here

Apparently having a fetish can override your good sense and cause you to take frankly ridiculous risks like trying to perv on people inside FBI headquarters. How anyone thinks they won't get caught doing that is beyond me.

GDPR Monster

found on Imgur

I like web comics as much as the next person, and Ice Cream Sandwich has some good ones, but I really wish people who share them would do a better job of linking back to the original. It took me longer than I want to admit to find it.

Monday, August 5, 2019

How to post your credit card on the Internet

from here

The precautions I took are as follows:

  1. Carefully line up the card so that only the side edge can be seen and take a picture
  2. Turn it around and repeat step 1 for the other side
  3. Then put the card that wasn't even a credit card in the first place back where it belongs
In other words, just don't do it.

Low profile fail

found on Ebaum's World

If you're going to commit a crime, you usually don't want to draw attention to yourself, especially for shoplifting

Friday, August 2, 2019

If you thought the amount was disappointing before...

from here

Getting a measly $125 as compensation for a data breach that affected nearly half of the US may seem bad enough, but when you figure in that they only earmarked about $31 million for that payout (for 145 million people) then you start to realize that the math doesn't work out. Apparently people have started to realize that problem and now it seems that $125 is a pipe dream. Some have even suggested that the whole thing was a bait-and-switch scam.

Market cap, like age, is only a number

found on Medium

I want to say that crypto means cryptography, but I think I'll make an exception just this once.

Thursday, August 1, 2019

The Middlemen

from here

I finding myself wondering how stuff like this is legal. I'm not sure how to express it except that it feels like they inserted themselves into an existing criminal business model. 

In Zucc we trust

found on Reddit

It's not that Facebook's privacy violations are any less egregious (far from it), but rather I think people are resigned to the idea that getting upset about it is a waste of energy because nothing's going to change.