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You are here: April 2016

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vibraters and froad

Hi.
Ok, wow is all I can say to both the articles.
Your cvv is actually quite scary.
The only way I can see you get some safety is that you use something like paypal to handle everything.
Technically you should be secure.
You need 2 passwords, one for the store you are getting things from and your paypal password.
You are submitting your email address really only and paypal knows what its doing.
Ok well like spotify, paypal has been and is still a potential tempting target as is every popular service and product online.
Next, the vibrater thing.
I have no idea why we should be concerned.
Breeches happen every day yet we still shop online.
I am shopping online more and more than I shop off it even if off it can be cheaper.
Local delivery, post by mail, no looking at shops even if its costing more than I would pay off it.
Do I know I am playing with fire? fuck yeah!
But then I am playing with it if I do or don’t.
Our bank details are online, our medical and other personal info is stored by someone online.
Even if we don’t use it directly we are still going online or some part of ourselves is.
Do we know that things can be controled online sure.
Now we need to actually be sensible on things we put control on.
Heaters, etc.
I don’t know it could be usefull.
Then again where did the traditional timer go?
My grandpa has a heater with a timer, it goes on at night and off and at times his heatpump will do as it does.
2.
Ovens, well I don’t know I guess it could be usefull, but why would you leave food all day in an oven or turn it on to heat up anyway, they heat up quite fast anyway which gives me time to have a wash.
If I need to be out in a hurry I either have a meal out or use a slow cooker and that can be left on all day.
Granted I would like to have that turn on but well whats wrong with a timer.
Lights, same as above.
Tv, if its on and you are in front of it I see no issue if you want to securely stream it then ok fine.
Security camera, this is probably the only thing I would see advantage of using online.
My uncle has had his house robbed in the past and its good to see what everything and every one is up to down to his wife and others.
He can also use it to talk to people in the house and them back as well as remote with some of his kit as if he was in front of it.
The rest I don’t know.
The fridge etc, unless we want to be fat veges we should do it the old fashioned way.
Every week or a few days I keep track of stuff I need.
Sometimes it may be more but mostly its the basics, food, drink, cleaning products, sometimes cooking.
Its not that hard.
I fear we are getting to automated, some stuff like our ovens, and fridges should not even be online neither should our heaters and lights.
My family have used timers for all these things and its really the only reliable thing in existance to be honest.
I used timers before the net and they work.
The only thing I would want to have extra would be a way to turn the lights off when they see its actually not dark like if its sunny or if its daylight as people often leave the house and do not turn them off and if its light my perseption is not likely to detect if a light is active unless I look at it.
I can go through the day and if I am busy enough I can forget my blinds are closed, or the lights are on etc.
If you want something online you should have a secure connection to your house and control it all from one online source if you can.
Then you have one connection to secure.
I do think we are being stupid with putting online into everything including things that don’t need onlineness.
Heaters and thermostats, clocks, and things that need to be active at a certain time should not be online, timers do that.
We have motion censors for security lights etc.
There are ways round that.
Now I do think I would like a way for my printer to tell me if its out of paper or ink without me having a problem and having to check its ip.
That would be good.
I’d like something that spyed on every system I ever maintained and then report every big or small error to me so I could check it if it was big enough.
Maybe not everything but I’d like to be proactive especially when I handle systems I have not touched for a while.
I do have some remote units that while far away I don’t touch physically at all and only once a year if that.
And while they are reported to be problem free, earlier this year both units that were replaced were on the verge of death.
One of them actually had a large issue while I was getting ready to send all its data to another newer system.
As a result though both systems were intergrated into the network, the data was not sent.
I sent the first dieing system to dump its 8gb of data into the then good old second system.
It died even before I was able to get the data off of it.
And while most of the data was in the cloud and on another hard drive I lost a major mail database.
That system was to be taken to someone for salvage for bits to put to the other system
Its been taken for salvage and recovery.
But the client has no cash to pay for recovery and so its in a long cue.
The system had been causing greef but I was not able to schedual things till christmas last year.
If I had known, I would have immediately transfer everything off that system.
Though sadly shortly after that my own backup sollutions both died and I scrambled to get everything off of the drives.
I think the simple message is that everything online can be a hacked thing.
Our identities can be stolen, our lives wrecked, our children wraped or killed and our cash stolen.
There are people that click on things they shouldn’t etc.
At the end of the way we actually need to decide why we continue to use the net, go online, etc.
The reason we are getting our stuff targeted is that its popular.
There are several ways to avoid things.
1. always sign out when not using.
Sadly with all these cloud services and ms accounts its recommended we stay active even to get updates on our twitter accounts.
2. log off or better turn off our systems if we know we will not be using them for ages.
Sadly with fast shutdown ms doesn’t eally want you to turn off your computer.
Use linux.
To be honest windows is really full of security issues, linux is a thing a lot use, I have used windows for ages and like it but thats where you need to go.
Keeping things updated will help to.
Having up to date malware and antivirus protection may or may not help.
I can’t really condone so called malware protection that could stop malware but could also get it wrong.
I have heard some horror stories from friends and even had issues my self.
In all cases they spelt doom and reformat for everything under the sun.
On the other end of the spectrum, I know people that don’t update or security their systems because of the potential dammage said updates can cause.
And I can see why, one thing us humans need to get round our little brains is that the more complex it is the more failiers can happen.
Sure the more complex things are and automated things are, the cheaper they get, or in fact the more stable they get.
But if they break we will know next to nothing about them.
When dos broke I was able to fix it.
When windows breaks the only thing I know is that a reformat will fix it.
I don’t know in most cases what is broken, why it broke or why I would use the broken part in the first place.
Anything I can fix is a program error, or something but the more complex things get the more powerless the general human will be because only those that make things will be able to fix if they can do it at all.
So many things are the throw away type we won’t know what breaks or runs.
Another thing to note, is that the words privacy and security are changing.
Nothing is secure and nothing is private.
Everyone from governments to your best friend can or has access to some or all your information including passwords.
And information is sold and misused.
I think we will need to shift from who has access to what its used for.
If its for good things, fine.
If its for bad or those that have our info are themselves insecure then they need to fix their issue.
I think part of the current issue we have is if I a user register my id say with the government, they or another one with access is hacked, someone does what ever with my id, say murders someone, its suddenly my problem not the guy that was insecure or stupid in the first place.
If a car driving down the road stops and opens his door, and a cyclist is coming down the road, and that cyclist tries to avoid the open car door, and is hit and killed by a truck that is just going on his way that person is charged for killing the guy.
Fine but the person that started it should also get some punnishment to.
I do think that when something goes wrong with anything legal and there is a chain of events those that actually do whatever it is to start whatever never get punnished.
I think we are going over security and privacy all wrong.
With so many breeches, and with governments wanting access to our info to get past these things like terrorism its grinding to a hault.
Meanwhile for the rest of us the world stumbles on
No shop on or offline will be completely secure.
Online is emulating the real world with real world dangers.
The world outside never sleeps or at least some of it doesn’t and the net does not sleep either.
I think all laws applying to offline should apply to online to.
It won’t make us safer but it makes thing a lot easier to handle.
Another thing is that we we are relying on the net for to much.
There are a lot of things that shouldn’
‘t be there in the first place.
You can’t hack a clock, I suppose you could but why.
Why hack an oven unless you wanted to cause a fire I guess.
A heater, the same maybe kill someone if it got hot enough.
A light, if you wanted to rob someone maybe.
But why a vibrater bar scaring someone out of their witts unless you wanted to make and sell a porno movie from hell hmmm may have answered that but I don’t know the world is just to daft for me to even think about.
I read today in a twitter post that windows10 and its upgrades are getting to become a pain.
And that as things automate its harder and harder to test hardware and things without windows installing its own things.
Its a pitty windows does not have a test mode.
You almost need to leave your test systems off the net to test offline but everything is online.
A lot of my major pc diagnostics are onlin affairs.
And while a lot of my stuff is offline without online I wouldn’t be able to function properly.

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Penetration testing: Researchers successfully hack a vibrator

Two days ago, I read an article entitled: Penetration testing: Researchers successfully hack a vibrator and I found it facinating but scary at the same time. Now, a long time ago, I found articles dealing with sex and technology, but this is completely different. I can’t imagine a toy, that a woman would use, could get hacked and controled by someone. I can’t imagine something like this ever being on the Internet to begin with. I’m aware of what a vibrator is, but what to do with it, I have no idea. But that should be between the person using it, and itself. It should never be on the Internet. Here’s the clear message, taken from one of the paragraphs on this thing.


An explicitly clear message

During the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Trend Micro researchers placed “a large, neon-pink vibrator” on a desk facing the audience. Then, simply by typing a few lines of code into a laptop, one of the researchers was actually able to
remotely control the device . According to Reuters, the demonstration elicited giggles from those on hand. However, the fun quickly came to a sobering climax when those in attendance realized the implications of the farcical exhibition: Anything and everything that is connected to the Internet can be hacked.


I can understand thermostats, and other gadgets that might aid us in cooling off, or maybe an oven if you want to preheat it at a certain time to cook, or maybe a fridge if it is made to keep stock of your stuff and it lets you know when you’re running low, but a vibrator? This has gone too far, and I’m interested in your feedback. Thanks for reading!

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All About Fraud: How Crooks Get the CVV

On Tuesday, April 26, 2016: Krebs on Security posted this article entitled All About Fraud: How Crooks Get the CVV and I found it facinating. I’ve been always wondering how criminals get the CVV in these major breaches, and this opens our eyes. This goes to prove that keeping your PC as up to date as possible will help, as well as not installing every little thing. I really think people should give this article a read, and leave your comments.

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crashletter issue 7

Hi all.
Welcome to this weeks crashletter.
2 articles of note to go.
1. if you have dropbox, and you are on xp, you may want to concidder using an upgraded os, dropbox will be shelving client downloads in june, and ending desktop access for xp support at the end of august this year.
Straight away after it came out on the list I got it on a lot of hold outs using the insecure and unsupported rampaged at ms for pulling support in the first place to xp and other things.

  1. It had to happen eventually but I hoped not in my lifetime please.
    http://www.technobuffalo.com/2016/04/26/spotify-was-breached-change-your-passwords
    Spotify, one of the largest music online stores up with itunes etc is hacked according to its users, the company is denying its ever happened.
    over 100000 profiles stolen and posted online.
    Just about everyone this time is effected.
    I don’t use it but my brother uses it and others in my family.
    Even if you are not notified you should get those passwords changed asap.
    It appears the hackers are after user emails.

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Technology podcast 241

Tech podcast 241 is out. VAC, AAC, and more will be your topics. Freshbooks will make a return soon, with a review from the beginning now that VAC is installed. This should be interesting.

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a solution to cold calls

http://www.bexhillobserver.net/news/local/cold-call-companies-must-display-number-in-new-legislation-1-7347383
Look at that and see what you think.
I personally am devided by this.
With my caller display pyhone I know when something is private I may or may not answer and almost know immediately that it may be rubbish.
However bar the actual spam calls I get, 50% of what I get are actuall lagit companies, real estate and other things like charities calling and they usually answer for themselves.
The rest are poling and research and they also answer themselves.
The actual calls I get that may be nusance are not to many in that reguard, though the same company tends to call multiple times trying to see if we have changed our mind.
If any change needs to be made to the laws here in new zealand it should actually include not ringing at meal times like dinner.
As for companies displaying their number My only issue is that it could extend to people.
I know friends and such who want a private number, there are also legal reasons why you may want to be anonymous to.
The other way to handle it is to leave your phone off the hook which is quite acceptible with some friends and family though not my main ones but my grandpa and uncle both leave their phones off the hook during dinner and other times of the night.
I don’t get to many marketing calls as such, though not enough to be really dammaged by them.

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the crashletter issue6, fake product reviews and update lists

Hi all.
Welcome to another addition of the crashletter.
This week I bring a couple things to your attention.
The first article comes from bgr.com and is featured on @freakyfwoof on twitter as origional source.
It seems that a lot of reviews on sites like amazon are fake and that product companies pay for good reviews.
Sites like fakespot.com can give you an good indication what is lagit or not with a scal from a to f.
2. As of today microsoft released 2 optionals but no description links that work so I can’t give you any info.
The system description say they fix windows which is quite criptic.
What I can tell you is that klite mega codec 12.10 came out yesterday and java update 8.91 and 8.92 if you want to delve a bit are out.
I always delve the dev site and get the latest if there is above the recomended update if one exists.
If you want to delve.
1. instead of going to java.com, or the configure option and then update, go to www.oracle.com
click downloads, then java resources.
click java se
then download java runtime jre.
it may have one update in its list for updates but you are looking for the radio buttons of the licence hit r.
look above those and you will see the update you want or that the licence is for.
hit r till nvda says no more radio buttons or something, and this means you are on the bottem of the lists of every update.
hit space on the first button as its yes.
You get a thankyou message.
hit t for table then hit k till you get the windows 586 executable not iftwa as this is the one with toolbars and such in it but the one with 586 on it and hit enter.
save this, then hit the same for the 64 bit exe file.
Weather you install from control panel or updater, or the exe files you just downloaded is the same.
You load the file and wait for it to come up and it may take a bit of time doing.
hit alt i.
Eventually you may get a finnish or close hit alt f or c.
From time to time you will get an uninstall dialog for old versions, hit alt u, alt n, then alt n again.
Finally hit alt c when prompted or alt f.
In some cases you will get a varification page which you can close.
Skype also had an update of sorts.
From the skype blog angry birds characters are added into the expression list for those that want to use them.
And from playstation, its been reported that you can play your games on pc, and tablet and aparently its all online and the remote for your ps4 is on your device and its quite good though I haven’t got a device to fiddle with.
Finally coolblindtech brings up an article about private connections with private internet access.
A demo at coolblindtech.com shows how to use this cross platform vpn with ios.
For those on nvda quarterly updates of nvda are out for addons.
And in wordpress, 2 tests are active in the test team for 4.51 so stay frosty for that.

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comments on the casts and other things

Hi all.
Well welcome to another issue of something.
I have decided just because I can that I will comment on things as they come up.
Never fear your crashletter will come back but who knows.
Firstly it does seem that those on win7 and 8 seem to have issues with windows update taking ages to update.
I took about 5-6 hours waiting for it to handle itself with another hour to handle on all systems.
Others took 8 with no joy one user saying it basically took all processer power and sat.
I am not sure, some users claim ms is trying to get us users updating to windows 10 with these delays or something of that nature.
Especially with the upgrade cycle for free upgrades so close to its end that wouldn’t surprise me.
Especially with the fact that today I read online that pc sales have slumped by as much as 15% in the first quarter.
Aparently people are just not buying.
Everything from incompatible software to just liking what they have.
My big beef is that I really hate it when people say you need the best thing out to run the best things.
This is probably true if you are a gamer but I have clients that buy the lowest bit of junk you can find so they can run things as they want.
Sure they will have their powerhouses for something else but even so.
My other beef is software and hardware compatibility.
I know I will have to replace one of my screen readers and while I think I have managed to get upgraded or rid of all my personal software and hardware that doesn’t mean others havn’t.
I also have no need to upgrade as of yet.
I know full well that some businesses have only just now upgraded from xp to 7 so thats a problem.
The latest amd and intel cpus havn’t been doing so well either.
My other thing is that your hardware needs to work on something it is designed for.
Ie if it was designed for xp then xp is the best way to keep that going if vista then its vista or 7.
If its win 7 then 7 or 8 maybe.
If its 8 then 8 to 10 maybe.
My point is that you will need spaciffically designed systems for 10.
I have hit it off at both ends of the scale.
I have a powerhouse which probably could take 10 and a midrange which could probably take it.
I have a low range which may take it to.
I have however several systems that after going to 10 and even with several reformats are slow and really bad.
2 are not counted because they are old and dieing/dead but still.
I have however delt with a powerhouse modded beast with an ssd and hard drive, a full quad i7 a 2gb graphics and win10 up from 7.
This modded powerhouse works just great.
My other issue with windows is that I think microsoft under estimated the number of users that will hit its servers.
Its only on a major patch tuesday that updates spike and overload the servers.
Also I found an end of support life cycle to windows 10.
currently its april 2025.
So I doubt that this is the last version of windows period.
In fact ms will eventually have to do something about that thing.
I myself am contemplating the future of where I go vs security.
In the old days I had dos then windows 3.11
Jump to win 95 with its completed os and wow cool.
Jump to 98, more updated and better off.
Then jump to xp.
Ditch dos mostly but even so its ok.
Vista, pass but still could use it.
7 again if xp was not out of support would have passed but happy I have done so.
8 and 8.1, never liked the interface, sorry.
10.
I have major issues with 10.
Firstly I am not an app centric user, I mean I still use symbian and like it.
2. I don’t appreciate my account being converted from local to ms as soon as I sign into an ms online app like the store I’d really like it sepperate.
3. all these ribbons and crazy start screen.
4. they made the shut down sound go away.
5. online ms account things and universal apps.
Never used them, never needed them, so why upgrade to it for that.
I have been a keyboard user since dos, no way in hell you will make me go up.
And this time I have several users saying otherwise.
Next, will I ever buy another new computer?
I don’t know, I really just want to stay with windows7 even after its support ends.Its stable and works, I don’t have to muck round with it and its fine as it is.
Becides the privacy hype generated, I was never brought up in the app era and I see little reason to change now.
With my dad retiring and within a few years after that my mum, cash is a problem.
And also drive.
Without a propper job I have no idea if updating is on my list of things to do.
People say that you are digging a hole for yourself that you need to get your head out of the sand, and continue with the world.
Excuse me if I don’t laugh!
I am not moving!
If I was moving I’d have a job, and a reason to upgrade.
As I see it if it don’t break I am not upgrading and I may just buy another something that continues to do what I want.
There is a lot of old stuff out there.
I don’t know maybe I change maybe not.

Rant over.
The other thing That I listend to on the casts was about phone cyber crime.
I would recomend that users buy a uniden or philips cordless phone with tts and call features for accessability.
Every time someone calls me I get a loud voice telling me the number.
If its private, oversease or really long I either don’t answer it or if I do am wary of what I am dealing with.
Ofcause on the other hand I instantly know exactly who I am being called buy, so no supprise family or friend calls.
They are always surprised that I know them by number first and call them by name instead of just saying hello.
The uniden I have handles answering services and usb handsets though I have never fiddled with this.
This also has big buttons and is really cool.
Oh and its really lite.
One feature I like with uniden stuff hands free, cordless and corded that if you leave it off the hook it will eventually beep loudly enough that a user will notice so thats good.
I think I payed 50 bucks for mine.
However for about 100-200 bucks you can get the fully studio kit with 2 phones, a console with loads of features, the works which is not to bad.
Apart from a few batteries I have had little issues with them and they are stable and sound good.

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Podcasts released

Hi all,
I’ve neglected to release podcast announcements here, buit since the blog and things came back, we’ve released three podcasts. Here are the show notes of the ones we’ve not posted on since things came back online.


Podcast 238:


On this podcast, we have several articles of discussion, and we even have other topics covered too.

Its 2 and a half hours. Enjoy!


Podcast 239:


Hello everyone, on this podcast, we talk about Rosen Credit Card Breach May Affect Attendees of Recent NFB Conventions and Ubber. Hope you enjoy it.


Latest podcast 240:
Welcome to podcast 240 for the technology podcast. One new piece of software for me, talk on the iphone S.E. and also a game. Enjoy!


We hope you enjoy these podcasts on our RSS feed and we’ll be back on another edition of the cast real soon!

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well here goes a protocol rest in peace quicktime

Hi all.
Subject says it all.
I recieved a us cert update about 2 security floors for quicktime for windows.
Sadly apple has decided to kill quicktime for windows.
The web player plugins with the rise of html5 seem to not bee needed.
Luckily there are things like vlc and codecguide’s klite mega which will handle quicktime filters.
Sadly for those that make quicktime in windows quicktime is now unsafe.
Worse is the fact that until the security news came out, no one knew apple was killing quicktime which is a bit rough.
If you have quicktime installed you must uninstall it from add remove programs.
In addition you need to run apple software update, select quicktime, hit alt f for file and look for an option in the menu tree to ignore updates for it.
Sadly it means every time you check for quicktime you will be asked to unhide hidden updates.
If you need it quicktime can still be used but it is no longer supported.
If you the reader have read this blog and my personal blog and especially if you were lucky enough to read my now deleted compguru livejournal blog now dead, you will know I am and have been and will be to this day a retro geek.
Having grown up with dos then a straight jump to win95 98 xp then 7 I have watched things rise and fall.
Quicktime was one of the first streaming protocols and while it is now a bit depricated I am sorry to see it go.
Quicktimes predates itunes, ios, android, macos 10 may be as old as 7.
And even itunes and the cloud.
The first time I saw it was in windows 95 and it may have been on 3.11.
This has to be one of the protocols of real significance.
So rip quicktime, you will be missed.
Your codecs won’t be but the program and players that came with you will be.
The other codecs are things like the mvpw codecs in windows 3.1 and the h265 codecs that origionally came with quicktime.
Happily we have things like vlc by videolan and the codecguide codec pack the k lite mega and others.
And while I don’t usually plug any tech in my posts I can not recomend or rate highly enough both vlc for its internal plugins and non needed codecs for playback and the klite codec pack.
The codecs can run just about anything in any player even quicktime.
The pack came from humble beginnings, k stands for kazaa.
kazaa was a file sharing program pear to pear that existed before the cloud when the net was king and when the laws for such things did not exist.
Sadly before pear to pear bit torrents got it these clients like napster and others were sued.
Things like kazaa had spyware and other things.
As a limited stripped down version of the program was desired without addons someone made the lite version of kazaa.
The codec pack was for all versions and could play just about every file it came with.
It is every opensource and comercial codec, hacked or otherwise.
True it has some spyware offers to get out of, but its worth it.
Kazaa is dead now but the codec pack still exists.
Its what I use at defaults on all computers and if someone can’t play a file I recomend this immediately.
While it primarly is for audio, and video decoding, it supports some streaming codecs, mobile codecs, and mp3/ogg/ windows media/flac encode.
It also has tweaking and extra tools.
Having this and vlc as its companion is a good set of things.
The pack has been round at least since 2004 and has gotten bigger and bigger.

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crashletter issue 4 or is it 3?

Hi.
I really have forgotten what number of this I am on because the last one had so many additions to it due to news.
Then there was the little ransomware article I put out yesterday and I know I should have said more but I left it to late and forgot a lot of it.
As I sit and sit, waiting for windows update to complete checking updates I start to wander what this week will bring.
Ms has 2 update days, wednesday, for normals and friday for out of banned.
Or at least friday has been that way since last month.
Here are the updates.
Now is it me or is microsoft classifying just about every update as remote code execution, surely there can not be that many.
Dotnet, xml core, windows graphic fonts, ole, all the collective windows web brousers as well as flash and office have updates.
1 security feature bypass, if someone logs into a guest account.
Which shouldn’t be a problem if you have your guests off and watch for people though you would have to be prity low to invade your workmades unless you are an unhappy sod.
1. elevation issue through ole which is for once what I would term an actual security crash.
Another is a man in the middle through the https driver again another attack that is probably needing attention.
The rest of them are the same, to stop people that click unknown files or links.
Saying that I am starting to wander about microsoft’s catogrisation of this stuff as the update descriptions and catigrys are and have been the same for the last 2 years.
Surely there are not to many dumbasses out there, I guess there may be but even so, ms could be becoming lazy I think.
This weeks articles of note include.
1. from @freakyfwoof on twitter
facebook is developing images for the blind to make them fully accessible through ocr.
Microsoft and facebook is allowing dropbox in its various things which is a win for us cloud users not wanting to use ms own services.
On that note I am seriously thinking all home users should boycot onedrive after they decided to cut down from 15gb to 5 gb free storage.
That means the only guys doing this are google and if they cut back well I don’t know.
Dropbox while its starter cap is low, does not as yet bull shit round its user base even though a lot on their forums are not happy with their client, some bugs not addressed and the latest versions consistantly not having release notes, the last was the 1.6x series.
From local radionz.co.nz/news we have, that aparently 108 counts of cybercrime are happening in new zealand and rising which itself is not that good.
A lot of this week has been focusing in the tax haven debarkle.
And while I won’t touch on this to much since this is primarly a tech article we seem a bit light on news for today.
My honest to god opinion is that we will always have corrupters trying to go by the law we are greedy bastards us humans and thats the way it will be.
I’d actually be more concerned that the information was potentially hacked and while the whistleblower whoever he is may have just sprung a leak and actually done something to shake up the wold for a bit those involved will decide what they will do.
The corrupters will either get found out or get out as they have done for ages.
Those in the middle will be wandering and scratching their heads.
And the rest of us will be bolstering their security and wandering why the heck we didn’t know sooner.
However I caution this.
Suppose the information released was say the codes to all us military nukes or top secret information.
Now I am not bashing this hacker because they have served the world, but just remember people there is a fine line between a good shakeup and a terrorist attack.
I will continue this conversation on my personal blog as its going to get quite heavy and its not for here.
smeveriss.wordpress.com is that blog.
read on over there for the lowdown

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your money or your files!

Hi all.
This was posted 2 weeks ago by uscert but I had stuff to do and no time to write.
Ransomware is on the rise again.
Most of it is due to downloading non legal files or clicking links you shouldn’t click.
Vary little update wise has happened over the last few weeks bar windows10 upgrade tools on 7 and there are so many of those I won’t even note them now.
dropbox is up to 3.81 now and there is another build of skype but who knows what it is all about.
Ms updates on friday and wednesdays nz time, so tomorrow is another major update day.
laters for now more tomorrow

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Trump continues to win, hotels continue to be breached

Hey all,
On April 4, 2016, Brian Krebs reported that Sources: Trump Hotels Breached Again and on April 5, 20116 I got a KNX text message saying he won in Wisconsin. The problem I have about this is the article indicates that he has no idea about cybersecurity, yet he talks about the fact the United States is behind. Here is the final paragraphs from Kreb’s story.


“Like most other current presidential candidates, Mr. Trump has offered little in the way of a policy playbook on cybersecurity. But in statements last month, Trump bashed the United States as “obsolete” on cybersecurity, and suggested the country is being “toyed with” by adversaries from China, Russia and elsewhere.

“We’re so obsolete in cyber,” Trump told The New York Times. “We’re the ones that sort of were very much involved with the creation, but we’re so obsolete.” Trump was critical of the US military’s cyber prowess, charging the Defense Department and the military are “going backwards” in cyber while “other countries are moving forward at a much more rapid pace.”

“We are frankly not being led very well in terms of the protection of this country,” Trump said.”


Mr. Trump, here is something. Krebs writes: “Like most other current presidential candidates, Mr. Trump has offered little in the way of a policy playbook on cybersecurity. But in statements last month, Trump bashed the United States as “obsolete” on cybersecurity, and suggested the country is being “toyed with” by adversaries from China, Russia and elsewhere.” My question to you, is this: What do you plan to do as president when you can’t keep your hotels from being breached? You’re being reported to for the 2nd, or is it 3rd time, not sure, but for a president, this can’t be good.

Krebs also writes: ““We’re so obsolete in cyber,” Trump told The New York Times. “We’re the ones that sort of were very much involved with the creation, but we’re so obsolete.” Trump was critical of the US military’s cyber prowess, charging the Defense Department and the military are “going backwards” in cyber while “other countries are moving forward at a much more rapid pace.”” If you’re quoted in this paragraph, what as president are you planning to do to fix this so we as the United States can catch up to others since you say we’re behind? Finally, you are quoted: ““We are frankly not being led very well in terms of the protection of this country,” Trump said.” If this is the case, then how do you want to fix it?

You’ve won quite a lot. You’ve also bashed other candidates. You’ve got a lot of money, but you can’t keep your hotels as secure as humanly possible. If this is the third time, you’re really screwed. If this is the 2nd time, why haven’t you fixed your holes or told your security team to do so after they alerted you what was wrong?

Luckily, these breaches have not hit the front desk of any hotel chain, but I surmise they’re going to be next. Trump, you’ve got a lot of work to do. You really do.

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