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chicken nugget updates to 4.2

As I was resting, Chicken Nugget presented itself a dialogue to update to 4.2. Auto updating is always good to fix bugs and get improvements. They added support to vine, fixed youtube links, and added settings. The dialogue will tell you whats new and present an option to update.

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apple vis resumes community podcasts

Hi guys,

Back in January, we posted that Apple Vis had discontinued podcasts from the public community of their site. On the 24th, they post this blog post saying they will once again resume podcast submissions from the general community of the site. I talked to Herbie and others, and we said that we thought it was a mistake, but we didn’t make a big deal about it. Each site is going to run on their own, and I’m personally not in competition with anyone. If you wish tro submit content, do let me know. Glad to see they are going to re-submit the idea of allowing the community to submit content to them.

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IOS 9.3.5

Apple Vis posted news about IOS 9.3.5 being released today. It has security fixes for three zero-day vulnerabilities. Steve Gibson also posted a tweet.

Here are two tweets.

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Steve Gibson: Apple recently pushed an “emergency” update for all iOS devices. It has been used against “targeted victims”, but could see wider use now. 3 hours ago from TweetDeck
Steve Gibson: Anyone seeking background info about the Apple 0-day patches before next week’s Security Now! podcast, please see: http://bit.ly/2bsgUTC 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

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Stay safe.

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SSA: Ixnay on txt msg reqmnt 4 e-acct, sry

On August 16, Brian posted an update SSA: Ixnay on txt msg reqmnt 4 e-acct, sry which I skipped but realized later what it was. The social Security Administration has now reversed the requirement of everyone to have two factor enabled, but encourages it. You should check out the article, as it is good, and has some good stuff in it for people to digest.

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Snapchat for iOS has VoiceOver improvements

I’m happy that snapchat has made their app more accessible according to this applevis posting and we should make strides for apps to be accessible for those who would like to use them. I personally am not going to use the app, but maybe some people will. My understanding of snapchat is simple. Take a picture or video to share, similar to facebook. Its available for a certain period of time before it is deleted. Some people might find that cool, others may not. Check out the blog post for more information and comments from applevis.

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Articles I’ve read on Friday

Here are some of the articles I’ve read on Friday.

• Windows 10 Anniversary Update reinstalls bundled apps you’ve previously removed Beta News This is quite disturbing and Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves, or should they not? I had a hard time with this article but read quite a bit of it.
• So You’ve Been Infected with Ransomware… Phishlabs and a great read at that.
• Massive Email Bombs Target .Gov Addresses Krebs on Security This one scares me a little bit. Most E-mail lists default to confirming addresses, the ones I’ve been on anyway, and all of the ones i host are either confirm and approve or confirm, and the only way to add is through the interface to add people manually. Very sad. Brian also indicates he was targeted, and he has no idea why.
• Malware Infected All Eddie Bauer Stores in U.S., Canada Krebs on Security I also saw this in a newsletter I’m subscribed to. If I were infected, I’d know it as the computer would be doing things and it wouldn’t feel right. Guess POS things work differently. Twitter for iPhone

Have fun.

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another nail in the win10 coffin

Hi all.
Well this just came in as of now.
After dealing with a nasty virus, called the microsoft security virus, which aparently decides at random to reset user account control, then removing programs you have used for years without any trouble, making you have to reinstall said programs, run them to make sure and exclude more of your system from scanning, I found an article from another list.
Basically if you have a laptop with 10 on it and or use a usb webcam you may want to put off updates for anniversary at least to september.
Here is the base situation.
1. the anniversary update allows more situations where multiple apps can use the same webcam at once.
This is fine, it means you can share things and its generally good.
2. problem is it can create a new code stream which in turn can slow things down.
3. ms has addressed this with 2 new codecs yuy and prn.
4. to have users use this and to not have the issues, h264 and jpeg codecs are removed.
That is the base situation.
Sadly most cameras, use h264 and jpeg.
As a result, anyone with a webcam will have it crash as soon as it starts.
In some cases it means your laptop could become inaccessible, in one case the manufacturer recomended the user drop back to win7 and or xp to get round the issue because they were not prepaired to fix it.
Ms has after complaints from its users on a forum has said these will be fixed.
Jpeg will be fixed in september, h264 will be fixed later on but will take longer to fix.
For those of you saying what about my media files codecguide.com is good for you.
The klite codec packs are always updated with the latest old and new codecs.
Some games old ones like silent steel are a bit choppy now but oh well.
Ms has got a lot of bad press on itself.
People complaining their systems are reduced to paperweights.
In one case a user had to buy a new computer to get their business working and successfully sued microsoft over that.
It seems that microsoft is although trying to be right continously blundering with its own software.
One thing’s for sure, if they keep doing this I can see a lot of users going away from windows or pirating it.
The only reason I am in windows still is that I actually have all my programs on it.
To exit windows now would have me unable to game, and more importantly having lost a lot of cash on access tech, screen readers and other software.
The cost is to great to switch to a mac or linux but I am quite annoyed over this latest blunder.
I guess the only thing you can do now is keep your camera firmware and drivers updated.

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New Pokemon Go Ransomware Creates Windows Backdoor Account – Security News – Trend Micro USA

It was only a matter of time until cybercriminals would find a way to abuse the popular game, Pokemon Go and create a Pokemon Go-themed ransomware.

Source: New Pokemon Go Ransomware Creates Windows Backdoor Account – Security News – Trend Micro USA

Now, this is why I was really not wanting to see this game accessible? If it were, the blind community would possibly get hit with this and we don’t have the money to pay for such things. Wow.

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Digitizing the World’s Largest Braille Music Collection

Digitizing the World’s Largest Braille Music Collection came across my desk, and I thought people should see it. This is definitely interesting. Thoughts are welcome.

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Lots of articles I’ve read the past week or so

Hi folks,

I’ve read quite a lot of articles, I’m not going to post the full lot, but only some of what I think you should see.

• > What’s the deal with two-factor authentication? Trend Micro This article talks more about the 2 factor issues with text messaging and the reasons on why it is important to have it while its around, but soon it won’t be an option. Should at least take a look at this.
• New Locky Ransomware Spotted in the Brazilian Underground Market, Uses Windows Script Files Trend Micro This article kind of scared me. It talks about a new type of ransomware which is quite different than the usual.
• Hacking the grid: How cyber criminals can gain access to critical infrastructure Trend Micro This article goes in to detail on how this type of thing works and talks about the various breaches including target, and others.
• F2P can cost parents thousands of Euros – read this to avoid it F-secure’s safe and savvy blog This article talks about children and their usage on phones with the parent giving permission either because it is required, or they just put credit cards on the child’s account. Talks about reasons why this isn’t a good idea.
• Phishing Attacks Come in a Wide Variety of Flavors…Make Sure Your Employees Get a Taste of … Phish labs This article talks about training, and the fact that there are many types of attacks. This was very interesting.
• Visa Alert and Update on the Oracle Breach Krebs on Security If you read nothing else, this is a must. This talks about the original oracle breach, and this is definitely not good. This may be bigger than anything thinks, and I’m definitely not liking this one. If nothing else, thoughts on this one are we,lcome.
• It takes a planet: Why international cyber security cooperation is more important than ever Trend Micro This article talks about why it is important for everyone to do their part.

There were a few more one of which I am not sure if I got the right thing, but these are the big ones. I’ve been busy, so haven’t had time to post. We’ve apparently had some more issues over here, which reminds me, I need to try and figure out what is going on around here. Thanks for reading, leave those comments.

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more twinary

Hi.
I promise this will be the last twine post.
Played the hitchhiker ring last night.
A good game sadly it didn’t go as far as I wanted but still a good hitchhiker universe piece.

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more twinery

Hi all.
Well one game I missed out on playing but got to last night was single dad in space.
Sadly I never completed it as such because I never got some stuff to run.
I believe you can save your ship maybe.
Anyway, you are on a passenger liner.
It hits an asteroid, and gets dammaged.
The reactor is spewing radiation, the air is leaking and there is a hole in the hull.
Your son is stuck under a crate in the cargo bay.
You have 2 minutes before you die.
You can ofcause run.
The moment you save your son you are dead.
You need to get the reactor fixed, you get radiated.
You have to fix the hull.
You have to fix life support which didn’t work for me.
You need to get your son out of there.
You need to run.
You do that and you die.
It is interesting at least.
In other news dropbox has another updated version.
Not much more but sonnis has just released the gdc 2016 development library now.
go to forum.audiogames.net and you will find the link to get that under the development forum in its own thread.
Thats all for now.
I will be committing an update to my personal diary soon.
laters

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twining away

Hi all.
I was going to put this on the personal blog, but since its all tech related its going here.
Firstly, I have fiddled round with all the articles, everything seems to be going up and down.
2 things of note came up while I was reading the net news.
Firstly, aparently, the fbi just shouldn’t be trusted because they can lose keys.
To put it simply, microsoft has on preasure of fbi and others created a backdoor into windows secure boot as well as other systems so the government can spy on users supposedly for national security.
As it goes thats a contentious issue but its fine.
Right, now that is not the problem.
The problem as reported in a uk news site is the keys have gone missing.
So yeah, nice to be secure but you lose your keys?
This is just really weird.
My question is simply this, you want to spy on us to be secure apple didn’t want to give you a key maybe they knew.
Microsoft did.
You lost it.
The article says that microsoft by mistake released the keys into the wild creating a security hole to patch.
Due to the nature of this it may never be able to be propperly closed.
This is not that bad, what is worse is that all those that are supposed to protect us and ms and others that give them backdoor access are having a bad time of it.
I am not going to shove it down and say we need our privacy, this is a totally dumb and fucking irrisponsable way to go.
Look at the state of the world and just look.
Excluding trump getting in power maybe, we really can’t stay behind our privacy shield and hope all the bad guys fuck off, because it won’t happen.
We share most of our private lives online, most of our private info is stored online.
There is then no problem just busting what is allready online online.
If we are not doing anything bad we have nothing to fear from those that protect us.
We may have to fear every office clerk in existance that just happens to lose things however.
I mean I’d hate to see the end of our existance due to someone losing the keys to our largest nuke because they suddenly needed to look for pokemon or have a coffee break or something, that would suck.
The scarey thing is that actually could happen.
I had a boss in early 2001 that was managing our student flat lifeskills course and he got all of us well most of us on the round the bays course.
He however has a really bad addiction.
If you can imagine a chain smoker, double that with a pot smoker and a drunk, well that was what he was with coffee.
He couldn’t survive without it.
I have heard him tell me once that he drank over 27 cups one day.
Anyway, in the middle of the run, he needed a coffee break.
He missed the rest of the course and lost the entire group.
They had to take a taxi, and then well they were not happy.
So yeah with all the stress in the world its only a matter of time before something like this happens because someone needs a drink.

The other thing that has come up I will get to in a minute but first the list of updates.
2 updates for win7 one critical, one optional, unknown and undocumented what they are.
updates for office excell, and outlook junkmail.
klite mega 12.35 updates a codec but also adds latest win10 enhancements, overrides the need for getting beta software 12.31.
winten essentials 16.08.1 has more improvements.
Nvda 2016.3, translation freeze, updating in 2 weeks rc is next week.
teamtalk 5.1.7 released.
ccleaner 5.21 out, installer accessibility has got a lot less but the program seems ok still.
for those updating to aniversery update when running adobe reader dc, for the first time you may see a windows install come up for a second.
Unsure if this is a repair or downloading of an update but it must automatically do it.
A note to those still updating to aniversery update of windows10.
Some laptops from dell and fujitsu will not upgrade or be totally unstable due to a camera driver that is not working.
These will happen on some older laptops, please check manufacturers to see if its still supported.

And now onto some more pleasent things.
Over the last week I have taken a break from the internet to play games from ifarchive in a language called twine.
Twine is a text language completely in html with the option to make games in purely menu driven story mode, or with java script, html5 etc.
Can accept youtube, soundcloud and other links for audio.
The following games are worth it.
the entire pile is under ifarchive.org in games/twine and the directory is about 300mb in size.
While most games work, some do not.
Out of these are a few that I really enjoyed.
1.
a curias tale by.
SJ Griffin
The game is set in a apocoliptic world, everything has gone nuts, its the standard story.
You play the role of a delivery guy on the job.
You are getting little cash though and switch to another company.
Its the biggestone in existance and you should be ok.
Trouble is you don’t get anything because your boss seems an entire fuckwad and just doesn’t want to give you jobs.
Suddenly a person gives you one.
Take it, and well.
This is like the matrix in many ways.
In this you will have various things going on.
Getting away from bad gangs, handling a few bad guys.
Handling the corrupt police, handling corrupt government, other companies wanting you and well a few other situations like the streets.
You get the opertunity to join some major organisation fighting for freedom.
This is linked to a free book on smashwords
you should be directed there at the end of the game but if you don’t get there or you don’t want the game, put SJ Griffin into smashwords.com search and get the books.
The vanguard trilogy tells the story from where the game left off.
there are 3 books in the vanguard series, the first is free.
the other 2 cost 1.50 bucks each, so 3 bucks just for playing a game and I have 3 books to read.
I may even read them now I have played the game.
I would recomend you play the game first, then download the first book.
I got the books so yeah get those to.
2. beutiful dreamer.
You live in a village which happens to be on top of an ancient shrine buried under the earth for thousands of years and well its coming up in the middle of the city.
Soon everyone will have to find somewhere else to go but for now things are interesting.
I am assuming that this world is an an alternitive reality, demention or timeline to us.
There are imortal gods, the god of dreams is one and the god of wind.
You wake up, and well you need to find your way through a dream sequence with a few adventures.
There is a eaten book, you need to read to the end to page 65 to get the password to enter a special ariea to get things.
This book combines fantasy and technology probably a bit more advanced than our current state.
It does appear that the gods and humans seem to live with eachother and find it fine.
The gods are gods the humans are mostly normal humans.
The game is a bit abstract but heck I like it.
3. sleep.
You and your friends one of them at least could be gay as well as you maybe.
The game is basically centered round a guy called nathan that is testing a drug for unknown reasons.
You dream but your dreams are almost real, more real than dreams.
This has fantasy and some weird microworld in it.
Your computer, has most of the back story in it.
You also have our standard technology.
4. the entropy cage.
Imagine a future when robots rule the world.
Imagine if they also have emotions of a sort and feel.
Imagine if they have religian.
One group seeking to become master of it all, one wanting to see what there is to see.
Its all in the about page of the game.
You are basically a computer doctor, and you need to stop the war between the 2 groups as it has stopped them from doing their duties right.
Because of this many people are being killed and other things are going wrong.
There are many endings, most of them bad, either you inslaved by robots, or you failing badly or things going to hell really fast.
If you like things to continue, there is a way to, well fix it where you do continue with everything more or less stable but with a closer realitionship with the machine.
incompleted projects.
These are projects I just couldn’t complete either because they are demos or incomplete or just bad.
1. cripto adventure.
You need to decrypt things and solve puzzles to solve a crime.
That sounds good but yeah I don’t care much for that but it looked good.
2. umbra station.
Unfinnished demo.
You wake up on a spacestation and exit your stasus pod about to complete the final day of your shift before you are transfered to a hopefully better post.
You have been assleep for at least 6 months while your station cruises towards another to dock and exchange supplies.
You have about 23 hours left before you link.
Something is wrong, either some experiment or alien invasion has taken place.
The station is overrun with mutants, birth sacks and the rest.
The crew put up a vallient battle, but all are hosts now.
You have to get off.
Another game just like it is spacepoop where you are a sanatation enginier on a stating linking up with well the other station.
You have issues with various systems, trouble is something has happened, and you wake up after a night of partying, your stuff all over the place, drunk and hungry.
You have a terrible headake and hangover.
This game didn’t allow me much to get things sorted out.
Subvagis.
subvagis is an rpg, your daughter is dieing of cancer, you may be able to fix it, but its 300000 bucks and you don’t have it.
You are offered and take a job basically being a underground gladiator fighting demons and criminals to get your cash.
Sadly unless there is a way out, I managed to win but spent all my cash on tomany things.

This and the olimpics has taken up all my working week.
As well as that I have been a bit sick but continue to soldier on.
That is about it for this week.
stay safe people.
Trouble is

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Articles I’ve read on Thursday

Here are articles I read on Thursday. If you have any comments, you may leave them. A barage of things from E-mail, to attack stuff, better late than never.

• The Smart Way to Create Passwords Lastpass
• Recent Phishing Campaign Uses Jabber to Exfiltrate Compromised Information Phishlabs
• Road Warriors: Beware of ‘Video Jacking’ Krebs on Security
• F-secure Safe and Savvy blog
• Godless malware able to exploit nearly everything Trend Micro

Feel free to read what interests you and comment on those.

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Technology podcast 249 for August 13, 2016

Hi folks,
I’m here with another podcast. The RSS feed doesn’t have the show notes for some reason, I did link to several different things including some links that enspired the 2nd segment. Hope you enjoy the podcast, and thanks for listening!

show notes

On this podcast, 986 the mix’s Herbie Allen and others discuss Station Playlist and its studio program. We also have Lastpass and their authenticator. Contact information is available including my Roger and text and imessaging options as well at the end.

Articles of interest:

• The only authenticator app you need Lastpass
• Two-Factor Authentication and SMS Messages: Don’t Let The Perfect Be The Enemy Of The Good Trend Micro

We hope you enjoy the podcast, and thanks for listening!

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Things I’ve read today

Hi folks,

There is quite a number of articles I’ve read today that might be worth this blog’s attention. You are welcome to discuss any of these articles in the comments or on my podcast.

• Outsourcing crime: How Ransomware-as-a-Service works Trend Micro
• How to Defend Against Ransomware: The Three Stages Phish Labs and it links to the other posts in the series, and I think its a must read
• Why ransomware continues to be successful Trend Micro
• Step aside, James Bond: Cyber espionage on the rise Trend Micro
• Can Internet of Things be the New Frontier for Cyber Extortion? Trend Micro

This is quite a bit of news, all with a theme. While the recent events of the past while show, small networks can be targeted and my targeted attack was small compared to what really can go on. I don’t exactly know how to talk about this on the cast of yet, but I think it does. No matter the attack, web sites are our future. There is no way getting around it. I’m not sure if we can really solve it, except to be as careful as we possibly can. This bothers me, and i think posting these articles I’ve read today may shed some comments on whats up. Wishing i can blog and get my thoughts about all these articles while i read and i’m out, but maybe i can write files which can be synced, and I can post about each one, and look back on twitter to get the link. I’d take a look at all of these articles, and I’d see if you can agree that all of these have some sort of pattern. Your thoughts are welcome.

I’m going to try and post something every day similar to this when I read tech things, so we can open the blog up for comments and discussion. Who knows, it could turn in to a podcast. What are your thoughts? Please read the articles before you comment, so we can have a lively discussion.

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Patch Tuesday

Shaun did a good job on posting about Patch Tuesday, but there are two articles that I saw in regards to the subject. Got Microsoft? Time to Patch Your Windows is the first, and Brian gives some basics. The second, August Patch Tuesday: Nine Bulletins, Five Rated Critical from Trend Micro. Both bhave good points, and both should be read. Your thoughts are welcome.

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Password changes for the sake of it

I just read this article entitled Password changes for the sake of it don’t improve security, says FTC technologist They might even be counterproductive and make security worse! While I’m behind on twitter, I know that articles like this one are important to read. I honestly have never liked the changing of passwords every so often unless I need to. I recently changed one for one of my accounts because I felt it necessary. I had to also send an E-mail to someone else explaining why I changed the password in so many words, but I needed to give it to them securely. I told them I would discuss my reasoning to changing the password over the phone. I didn’t want to do this, but after the recent events of the past while I didn’t really feel that the password could stand time anymore. This is something I weighed over since those events, and last night, I decided it would be in my best interest to change it, so I did do so with a 20 character password, if not 20, at least 12, and it is definitely random. Your thoughts on the article and this subject are welcome.

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another patch tuesday

Hi all.
Welcome to another patch tuesday.
Firstly, oracle, hacked again.
Really am not surprised though java is everywhere, the last update is only just done last week.
As for trump, I doubt he’d care that much he has done that so far its not like he could care less.
Windows updates are all we have.
everything from windows pdf, to graphics, kernal, edge and ie, secure boot, authentication and other things are updated including the kernal.
They are updated for the same issues as last time and the time before that.
1 bypass and the rest remote code execution nothing special.
In win10 there is a history page at least little bugs are fixed as it goes.
No flash update, no other software updated today.

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Data Breach At Oracle’s MICROS Point-of-Sale Division

Today’s breach from Krebs on security is Data Breach At Oracle’s MICROS Point-of-Sale Division which definitely can’t look good for Oracle who has had trouble with java and its problems, right? If oracle is authorizing all of these people to use their payment terminal, they should be taking steps to make sure they are secure as possible. The fact they’re looking in to this after being contacted makes them good for acknowledging it. Has Trump yet said anything about his company being hacked twice? I’ve not heard anything about it. This is going to be interesting.

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