Encrypted at rest but not in transit

from here (image source)

In this day and age vampires must feel very threatened, so they stay safe and secure in their crypts most of the year. Except today of course. Today is the day they decrypt.

Surveillance Camera vs. Halloween Mask

found on Me.me

Surveillance cameras can be useful most of the time, but on a day when people are all wearing disguises? Not so much.

Gait recognition might give them away

from here (image source)

Bloody Cleaver Purse

Product Page

This might make the purse snatchers keep their distance this Halloween.

Tales from the Crypto Keeper

from here

Maybe we should rename Bitcoin to Satoshi's Monster.

Lock Picking Lawyer : Pumpkin Saw Converted into Electric Pick Gun

Watch on YouTube

It was meant to open a pumpkin but now it can open your locked door.

Click Here to Fix Now

from here

At least, there are no treats for you. The crooks behind scareware, on the other hand, get plenty of goodies from the people they trick.

Trojan Goodies

found on Memebase

And now you know why home-made treats aren't welcome anymore.

If only I could train an army of them

from here (image source)

You know that whole "bird brain" slur that was supposed to imply someone was dumb? You know we vastly underestimated birds in the process? Never underestimate your adversary.

What would you do for a password?

found on Reddit

There was an exercise carried out some years ago where people signed away their first born child in order to get WiFi so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if people also yelled "penis" in a crowded terminal.

Hello ransomware vector

from here and here (image source)

Bonjour is a part of iTunes and iCloud for Windows. You might think that you have nothing to worry about with regards to this vulnerability that's being used to spread ransomware because you don't have either of those installed, but surprisingly you may have Bonjour if you've EVER installed iTunes or iCloud because it doesn't get removed when you uninstall, so make sure to double check your installed programs.

My Password Is The Last 8 Digits Of Pi hat

Product Page

Ironically, if your password is 8 numeric digits (any 8 numeric digits, doesn't matter which ones) then it is profoundly unsafe. It wouldn't take very long to brute force such a password. Don't choose your password that way.

Credentials that strain credulity

from here

No, I'm not fucking with you, they actually used those credentials for a web portal for managing credit disputes. These people are too stupid to be allowed to hoard the nation's credit information.

They finally got serious about The Hamburglar

found on Evil Milk

I wonder if the additional isolation makes the food prep area any more sanitary.

Guess they won't be playing cops and robbers in Kansas

from here (image source one and two)

It's hard to take authorities seriously when they arrest little girls for a hand gesture we've all made (probably on multiple occasions).

Anthony van der Meer: Find my Phone

Watch on YouTube

Phone thieves better be careful they don't rip off someone who can track them down like this. Had the owner been more inclined to include the police in his plan the crook might have been arrested.

You can learn more about this on Reddit, where the owner/director did an AMA.

More secure than a piggy bank

from here (image source)

I don't think I need to explain the anti-theft features. Anyone who has ever pet a cat more than the randomly determined number of times the cat will allow can almost certainly guess what they are.

Best of luck

found on Imgur

At least it still stops butt-dialing

from here (image source)

Being able to unlock a phone with a finger instead of a fingerprint is certainly more convenient, but sometimes convenience isn't worth the cost.

Graham Cluley has an interesting theory about how this problem works (that enrolling with the screen protector on means you enroll a fingerprint without ridge details), but doesn't see how a software update can fix it - and in the strictest sense he's right that a software update isn't going to make the ridge details magically appear, but the software update would be able to detect the absence of those ridge details. In essence it could detect when poor biometric data has been used for enrollment and protect users from the consequences of this failure by alerting them to it and/or refusing to use poor quality biometric data.

It seems so life-like

found on Imgur

As long as you don't look at the feet you might be fooled by this, and by extension you might be fooled into being on your best behaviour and not doing any crimes in that store.

The enemy will never find him

from here (image source)

Of course the enemy is unlikely to search his mom's couch, so that might have something to do with it.

Treat Your Passwords Like Your Underwear coffee mug

Product Page

Changing passwords regularly is no longer best practice (it just causes people to select weaker passwords that they can easily change using an algorithm), but the other advice is still good.

Almost childlike in it's simplicity

from here and here (image source and article)

Everything is not awesome for those people. It seems the Toronto police have some master builders on the force.

It's clearly effective, but also nothing like anything I would have thought of, and I suspect most other adults wouldn't have thought of it either.

Watch out for these "potentially unwanted pilferers"

found on Dump A Day

Be careful they don't socially engineer you with their evolved eyebrows.

Really puts the wonder in Canada's Wonderland

from here

It's not that I WANT to go through a metal detector and have my belongings rifled through when I attend SecTor, rather it's just such a weird juxtaposition going to 2 different events where one has security in it's name while the other has security in it's actions.

Low-tech cat burglars can't be far behind

Watch on YouTube

On the one hand this seems like an ingenious effort by a Vietnamese tactical team, but then on the other hand I realize in horror that there is literally nothing stopping anyone else from doing exactly the same thing.

Well, nothing except the fact that you've got to transport a suspiciously long pole.

Keyless entry into the secured area

from here (image source)

I mean, if they'll confiscate a belt buckle shaped like a ray gun, or a coin-sized toy gun off of a sock monkey, they'll confiscate just about anything gun shaped. Better not make finger guns in their general vicinity.

As if they could catch a real bomb

found on Imgur

With their 95% failure rate, I suspect confiscating water bottles at TSA checkpoints does more to drive the sale of bottled water in the shops beyond the checkpoints than it does to stop terrorism. I wonder if anyone has looked for a money trail there.

Sharks are for wusses

from here (image source)

Clearly Dr. Evil didn't give enough thought to the idea of sharks with frickin' laser beam attached to their heads when he came up with it. This walrus was a badass.

Life Pro Tip

found on Imgur

Apparently this comes originally Reddit but the poster on Imgur didn't include links. I didn't know there was a LifeProTips subreddit. If I had more free time I might check it out (watch there be a pro tip about increasing your free time)

Should have just used Google

from here (source article)

You'd think an employee of one of the web's earliest search portals would know better ways to find stuff than rifling through users' email accounts.

A cartoonish disguise

found on Huge LOL

This is what happens when you learn your trade-craft from Saturday morning cartoons. Everyone has seen this on TV so no one is going to fall for it. Also, it doesn't seem to look nearly as good in real life.

Maybe we should ask Alexa

from here

The number of things they're sticking Alexa into is getting a bit creepy, if you ask me.

I guess other people must find it creepy too, since there's now a proposal to label everything that has mics or cameras in them.

Know your enemy

found on Izismile

This is a very particular kind of deterrent. Can you guess what group it's aimed at?



























Did you guess Jehovah's Witnesses? Because if you did, I'm pretty sure you got it right.

CafePress was breached and all I got was this lousy t-shirt redux

Product Page

Product Page

When I originally made this design on the CafePress site itself, I kind of expected it wouldn't last and it didn't and that was OK. It wasn't my expectation to sell the shirts, it was more like performance art getting CafePress to host products discussing their own failings. A little like I was pranking them.

It has been suggested, however, that I may have underestimated the appeal of the shirts and so in order to allow people to get them I've made use of a backup shirt vendor (always have a backup). I hope CafePress appreciates this shirt being available on Zazzle and not their own platform.

Also, just in case there's also a problem at Zazzle or if you know an even better shirt vendor, here's the 2 image files I made so you can go get it printed where ever you like.

Now that's what you call a long con

found on Reddit

While this tale may not be true, it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility either. Pretending to be from an official organization is certainly a real thing, and some crooks will even get authentic looking uniforms to help pull off the ruse.

The hardest part of the story to believe is never missing a day of work for 25 years. If there was a con-man who pulled that off, I tempted to say he deserves the money because that is more work and dedication than most legitimate employees display.

I know what my vote would be

from here (image source)

Urgent flaws that that are more than a decade old are still present in the voting machines being used. I'm tempted to say that governments shouldn't be buying voting machines unless they come with lifetime support/upgrades from the vendor. Democracy is too important to be a cheapskate about it.

There ought to be a greeting card

found on Funny Junk

I see this as being something like the "Get Well Soon" cards you can get, or maybe the condolences cards. I don't know if parents would buy these for their kids (they might be too close to the situation), but I could see aunts, uncles, or grandparents doing it.

Cafepress was breached and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

Product Page

Product Page

Lots of sites get breached, and this time it was CafePress' turn. But I wonder how they feel about hosting products that remind them of the fact. We shall see how long this lasts.

[EDIT 2019-10-07: Apparently how they feel is that mentioning the CafePress data breach violates their content usage policy, based on the notification I received. I wonder if censoring mentions of it will have the desired effect.]

Unlockable content

found on Meme Center

Well, that's certainly one way to make sure your kid does his homework before playing games.

Easier said than done

from here (image source)

Every time a vendor issues a shoddy update it undermines what would otherwise be good security advice. For all effort Google seems to put into security research, their inadequate quality control harmed it by giving people yet another reason to avoid applying updates. Vulnerabilities and threat actors may be sexy security topics, but people are still failing at the basics like applying updates. Maybe Google should focus more on helping them with those basics.

Finally a good use for surveillance

found on Imgur

I always thought cats weren't interested in what was on the TV because it went over their heads, but it turns out that TV is just boring to cats. Show them a CCTV feed of mice running around and they'll get the hint apparently.

Guard that hen house well, Mr. Fox

from here and here (image source)

There couldn't possibly be a conflict of interest in Amazon writing the very rules governing the use (and therefore potential sales) of their products. Surely they would never behave so unethically.

Strongest Door Ever?

Watch on YouTube

That's the kind of door you want protecting you. Honestly, I think it might have been faster if they'd gone through the wall. These police definitely lost the element of surprise and I bet the people inside had ample time to destroy evidence.