“In a Twitter discussion last week on ransomware attacks, KrebsOnSecurity noted that virtually all ransomware strains have a built-in failsafe designed to cover the backsides of the malware purveyors: They simply will not install on a Microsoft Windows computer that already has one of many types of virtual keyboards installed — such as Russian or Ukrainian…
Nixon said because of Russia’s unique legal culture, criminal hackers in that country employ these checks to ensure they are only attacking victims outside of the country.
“This is for their legal protection,” Nixon said. “Installing a Cyrillic keyboard, or changing a specific registry entry to say ‘RU’, and so forth, might be enough to convince malware that you are Russian and off limits. This can technically be used as a ‘vaccine’ against Russian malware.”
—Brian Krebs, “Try This One Weird Trick Russian Hackers Hate.” krebsonsecurity.com. May 17, 2021.
Tag: computers
The Bit Player: Claude Shannon
“The film tells the story of an overlooked genius: Claude Shannon. In a blockbuster paper in 1948, Claude Shannon introduced the notion of a ‘bit’ and laid the foundation for the information age. His ideas ripple through nearly every aspect of modern life, influencing such diverse fields as communication, computing, cryptography, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, cosmology, linguistics, and genetics. But when interviewed in the 1980s, Shannon was more interested in showing off the gadgets he’d constructed — juggling robots, a Rubik’s Cube solving machine, a wearable computer to win at roulette, a unicycle without pedals, a flame-throwing trumpet — than rehashing the past.
Mixing contemporary interviews, archival film, animation and dialogue drawn from interviews conducted with Shannon himself, The Bit Player tells the story of an overlooked genius who revolutionized the world, but never lost his childlike curiosity.
–The Bit Player on Documentary Mania
How to Become a Hacker
“Learning something new that’s complicated often feels difficult at first – if it feels easy it may be something you already know or you may not really be testing your knowledge (it’s a lot easier to read about how to solve a physics problem and think ‘this makes sense’ than it is to solve a problem yourself with the tools you just read about). The struggle can be a good sign – it means you’re really learning and by focusing on doing similar types of things it’ll become easier as you get better…
…Learning something complicated for the first time should feel a little painful – you should get used to that feeling since it’s a good thing and means you’re growing. Don’t let it scare you away because you don’t think you’re smart enough. Since there’s so much to learn and a lot of different avenues to go down (just in computers there are things like computer graphics, security, machine learning, algorithms, mobile, web, infrastructure, etc.), having a mindset where you allow yourself to grow and get out of your comfort zone to learn new things is critical.”
–Zach Alberico, “How to Become a Hacker.” zalberico.com. April 19, 2020.
The modern reality is that there are two computing revolutions going on. In one, computers are being made accessible to everyone, where everyone from small children to the elderly can navigate app icons and do useful things with a program designed by someone else. In the other, you are given a sophisticated tool and have to learn to use it to accomplish useful things you design yourself.
Everyone involved in the second revolution is a “hacker” in some sense of the word. They might not be writing code, but perhaps they are using git for version control, Photoshop to manipulate images, machine learning to look for patterns in data sets, designing objects to be printed in a 3D printer using Autocad, et cetera. There are many facets of this kind of computing that require no coding at all. However, you are using a generalized tool to accomplish a task, one that was previously impossible to perform.
So, we might need a newer, more expansive term for the people involved in this second revolution. One that include the plain text social scientist, computer artists, 3D designers and others.
How to Properly Clean Your Laptop
“Cleaning a laptop is arguably more tedious than cleaning a desktop. You have to clean the keyboard, the internals, the screen, and the case itself. Still, you can easily give your laptop a makeover in under one hour, provided you have canned air, some 90%-100% isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs, and a microfiber cloth.”
-Andrew Heinzman, “How to Properly Clean Your Gross Laptop.” HowToGeek.com. July 2, 2019.
Work Hard Play Hard — War and Peas
Hard to tell the difference.
Why I Use Old Hardware
“My 11-year-old laptop can compile the Linux kernel from scratch in 20 minutes, and it can play 1080p video in real-time. That’s all I need! Many users cannot afford high-end computer hardware, and most have better things to spend their money on. And you know, I work hard for my money, too – if I can get a computer which can do nearly 5 billion operations per second for $60, that should be sufficient to solve nearly any problem. No doubt, there are faster laptops out there, many of them with similarly impressive levels of compatibility with my ideals. But why bother?”
—Drew Devault. ” Why I Use Old Hardware. drewdevault.com. January 23, 2019.
One of the advantages of using free software is that support for old hardware tends to get better. The more free you go, say to the level of wanting a free bootloader such as libreboot and all free software drivers, the more likely you are either using old hardware or you are spending a lot of money for a free machine from companies like Purism.
My main computer is a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 with libreboot. You can buy one for <$150 on eBay.
20 Out of Bounds Mysteries in Fallout 3 Answered
How to Boost Your Data Privacy With a Virtual Private Network
“Data privacy matters, and we all deserve respect and consideration from those we visit on the internet. As shown by the numerous data breaches that have affected companies and individual users around the world, individuals and governments, however, we must also look out for our own personal data and privacy. Using a VPN to obfuscate your location and encrypt data is a powerful way to prevent the tracking, stalking and theft of personal and private data.”
—Eric Jeffrey, “How to Boost Your Data Privacy With a Virtual Private Network.” Security Intelligence. November 2, 2018.
A layman’s explanation of VPNs and why you should be using them. I’ve mentioned VPNs before. If interested in using one, check this website for a comparison of different services.
Click Here to Kill Everybody – Bruce Schneider
“There is simply no way to secure US networks while at the same time leaving foreign networks open to eavesdropping and attack. There’s no way to secure our phones and computers from criminals and terrorists without also securing the phones and computers of those criminals and terrorists. On the generalized worldwide network that is the Internet, anything we do to secure its hardware and software secures it everywhere in the world. And everything we do to keep it insecure similarly affects the entire world.
This leaves us with a choice: either we secure our stuff, and as a side effect also secure their stuff; or we keep their stuff vulnerable, and as a side effect keep our own stuff vulnerable. It’s actually not a hard choice. An analogy might bring this point home. Imagine that every house could be opened with a master key, and this was known to the criminals. Fixing those locks would also mean that criminals’ safe houses would be more secure, but it’s pretty clear that this downside would be worth the tradeoff of protecting everyone’s house. With the Internet+ increasing the risks from insecurity dramatically, the choice is even more obvious. We must secure the information systems used by our elected officials, our critical infrastructure providers, and our businesses.
Yes, increasing our security will make it harder for us to eavesdrop, and attack, our enemies in cyberspace. (It won’t make it impossible for law enforcement to solve crimes; I’ll get to that later in this chapter.) Regardless, it’s worth it. If we are ever going to secure the Internet+, we need to prioritize defense over offense in all of its aspects. We’ve got more to lose through our Internet+ vulnerabilities than our adversaries do, and more to gain through Internet+ security. We need to recognize that the security benefits of a secure Internet+ greatly outweigh the security benefits of a vulnerable one.”
—Bruce Schneider. “Five-Eyes Intelligence Services Choose Surveillance Over Security.” Schneider.com. September 8, 2018.
History Rhymes
“Sometime this November, he estimates, half the world’s population—close to 4 billion people—will be connected online, sharing everything from résumés to political views to DNA information. As billions more come online, they will feed trillions of additional bits of information into the Web, making it more powerful, more valuable, and potentially more dangerous than ever….
…The power of the Web wasn’t taken or stolen. We, collectively, by the billions, gave it away with every signed user agreement and intimate moment shared with technology. Facebook, Google, and Amazon now monopolize almost everything that happens online, from what we buy to the news we read to who we like. Along with a handful of powerful government agencies, they are able to monitor, manipulate, and spy in once unimaginable ways…
The idea is simple: re-decentralize the Web. Working with a small team of developers, he spends most of his time now on Solid, a platform designed to give individuals, rather than corporations, control of their own data.”
—Katrina Brooker. “‘I Was Devastated’: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets.” Vanity Fair. July 1, 2018.
Even if a successful decentralized platform is developed, won’t the increasing value of the web combined with people’s willingness to exchange their information for useful tools and convenience offered by a few multinational corporations simply lead to a similar outcome? Or to pose the central question of the article:
“…we are at a societal inflection point: Are we headed toward an Orwellian future where a handful of corporations monitor and control our lives? Or are we on the verge of creating a better version of society online, one where the free flow of ideas and information helps cure disease, expose corruption, reverse injustices?”
Likely both, with much more of the former than the latter.
cafebedouin.org 