So what it could be a million things from the linux core to the fedora maintainers to your laptops manufacters. You could also installed windows and I'm sure you'd have sound working. Linux awesomeness. Just pick up a debugger and find out the bug or sharap.
Why everybody on slashdot think they are an expert in security? If the user doesn't have write access to any part of the disk then the mail program will obviously not work (duh). And in most cases you don't need write access to the disk to run code when making an exploit (this was not), so this comment is double-dumb.
When I was very young I lived on a house with a cockroaches problem (the memory of the sound when you step over a crock without shoes is never going to go away). I could without a doubt tell if a drawer had a dead crock in it. The odor was very strong and repugnant to me. I don't remember smelling the same odor ever as an adult so the capacity to detect it may go away as you age.
Ok I read only the halve of your blog and I'm convinced that you have an extremist position. I don't think that's what most people or ever the founding fathers had in mind. But I respect your vision.
How about if by installing a GPS device they catch a serial killer the month before he was going to rape and murder your wife/girlfriend? Isn't that enough repay? Or it's never enough?
The Goverment is running the largest deficit in history. Now a technological innovation allows to do the same as before with less money... and that's the problem. Right...
But this probes nothing... this is why science is difficult, it's not only making tests and rushing conclusions.
The key problem here is that this was made with ordinary people. What I think happens in this experiment is that people in general don't like new flavors the first time you taste them. And ordinary people drink ordinary wine (by definition), which is less expensive.
Only people that have a certain knowledge of wine and have tasted many different ones can make a adequate judgment of which ones are better. But I think this is seen as elitism or snobbery, so you can mod me down now.
A better analogy: is a ferrari F430 better than a Civic? No need to answer that.
If you don't understand the difference between a complex machine and a piece of conductor metal then you are an idiot.
I'm calling BS on this. If this were true then you could put two gps in a missile, each one with different limitations, and thus avoid the regulation. I don't think the US regulators are that stupid.
The question itself it's not dumb but making it in slashdot is given the audience. I haven't read a serious answer in all this comments. You should encrypt your sensitive data and use it in a machine outside control of your IT staff. You should trust them to maintain secure backups of your encrypted data.
One option to hide well the existence of encription software and data could be to put them among game files.
It's common for games to have large data files, for example precompiled texture caches. You could change the program extension from.exe to.whatever and put it between those files. For extra stealth use a rare used packer (to avoiding signature matching) and also erase the first 2 bytes of the executable 'MZ', and use a good editor to put it back in place before executing it. The data it's encrypted and I don't think the NSA have parser for any arbitrary file in existence (game files in this case) so they won't suspect a think. Make sure that the date of change of those files don't draw attention to them.
That may be relevant when discussing IE but when the comparison is Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc there's really no irresponsible option and it comes down to preference.
LOL @ Safari and no irresponsible option in the same phrase. Damn apple is good at marketing.
I think you are overestimating how difficult is implementing this... I think that what he did is about the same difficult of what you'd expect in a BS level Operating System homework... and he would get an F for not understanding what are the limits of what encryption provides. And he talks like a pompous ass-hat.
As someone that was lurking in Slashdot since around the time you registered I'm going to say it's sad how the quality of the comments had gone down the toilet. Sometimes there are good ones but they are almost never modded up.
This comment is bullshit and may be part of the hidden anti-global-warming-efforts campaign that we see so often here on Slashdot.
The combined data of hundreds of thousands of measurements data points across the glove and for many years is the proof of global warming, not what happens for a week after 9/11 (statistically irrelevant).
If you are so paranoid that you worry about what would your happen to YOUR computer after your BANK was hacked, you should sell your computers and go live to a cabin in the woods.
You don't get it, what they used is the logged in connection to the servers remotely. This is not a TCP/IP level attack, is more like an application attack because they must have used the IE object for the already logged in HTTP or HTTPS connection to the server. This is no rocket science but I think its a notch above script kiddie level.
I thought that slashdot was over modding up troll posts only because they are anti-microsoft.
...
On the other hand, I know plenty of people running active commercial anti-virus software that's been plagued with virii.
The reason?
1. No Awareness.
2. No Patching.
3. No Prudence.
4. Running Windows
There. Fixed that for you.
No. Antivirus are trying to solve an impossible problem, you *cant* tell the difference of good from bad software in a generic way. See the halting problem for insight of way. And virus target windows because they are running in more of they target machines (users) that all the other operating systems. Look up the security advisories of common software included in OSS systems and you'll see there are enough entry points if they really tried.
ClamWin, ClamAV are fine for remedial action. The best remedy, as in all things, is prevention and that can be accomplished by moving to systems that are resistant to malware. Here even the consumer unions fall flat on their faces and fail to mention the Linux distros. Most mainstream distros are years ahead of Windows as far as ease of use, maintenance and speed. The main weakness of real systems (non-M$) is that Web 2.0 script crap.
Here you sound like a troll. There are no sources for any of your claims and they are false.
If someone wanted to make a really hardened desktop or netbook appliance, the following steps can be taken:
Split up the file system hierarchy and partitions W^X
What? W^X doesn't have anything to do with partitions. And W^X is a software way of doing what is done in windows now with NX bit in hardware. It's not 2006 anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
So what it could be a million things from the linux core to the fedora maintainers to your laptops manufacters. You could also installed windows and I'm sure you'd have sound working. Linux awesomeness. Just pick up a debugger and find out the bug or sharap.
Why everybody on slashdot think they are an expert in security? If the user doesn't have write access to any part of the disk then the mail program will obviously not work (duh). And in most cases you don't need write access to the disk to run code when making an exploit (this was not), so this comment is double-dumb.
When I was very young I lived on a house with a cockroaches problem (the memory of the sound when you step over a crock without shoes is never going to go away). I could without a doubt tell if a drawer had a dead crock in it. The odor was very strong and repugnant to me. I don't remember smelling the same odor ever as an adult so the capacity to detect it may go away as you age.
Ok I read only the halve of your blog and I'm convinced that you have an extremist position. I don't think that's what most people or ever the founding fathers had in mind. But I respect your vision.
How about if by installing a GPS device they catch a serial killer the month before he was going to rape and murder your wife/girlfriend? Isn't that enough repay? Or it's never enough?
So let me see if I understand you correctly...
The Goverment is running the largest deficit in history. Now a technological innovation allows to do the same as before with less money... and that's the problem. Right...
But this probes nothing... this is why science is difficult, it's not only making tests and rushing conclusions.
The key problem here is that this was made with ordinary people. What I think happens in this experiment is that people in general don't like new flavors the first time you taste them. And ordinary people drink ordinary wine (by definition), which is less expensive.
Only people that have a certain knowledge of wine and have tasted many different ones can make a adequate judgment of which ones are better. But I think this is seen as elitism or snobbery, so you can mod me down now.
A better analogy: is a ferrari F430 better than a Civic? No need to answer that. If you don't understand the difference between a complex machine and a piece of conductor metal then you are an idiot.
I'm calling BS on this. If this were true then you could put two gps in a missile, each one with different limitations, and thus avoid the regulation. I don't think the US regulators are that stupid.
This is from slashdot-nuclear-loby-department
The question itself it's not dumb but making it in slashdot is given the audience. I haven't read a serious answer in all this comments. You should encrypt your sensitive data and use it in a machine outside control of your IT staff. You should trust them to maintain secure backups of your encrypted data.
One option to hide well the existence of encription software and data could be to put them among game files.
It's common for games to have large data files, for example precompiled texture caches. You could change the program extension from .exe to .whatever and put it between those files. For extra stealth use a rare used packer (to avoiding signature matching) and also erase the first 2 bytes of the executable 'MZ', and use a good editor to put it back in place before executing it. The data it's encrypted and I don't think the NSA have parser for any arbitrary file in existence (game files in this case) so they won't suspect a think. Make sure that the date of change of those files don't draw attention to them.
That may be relevant when discussing IE but when the comparison is Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc there's really no irresponsible option and it comes down to preference.
LOL @ Safari and no irresponsible option in the same phrase. Damn apple is good at marketing.
And witch is this responsible browser you're talking about? I hope you're not talking about firefox, just look at the secunia main page to see why.
No, I'm assuming he doesn't have 600k lying around. If he doesn't have it and nobody will give him the money then he won't be able to pay.
This is like cheating... if you secure your usb but not your laptop you deserve to be hacked. But yes it'd work.
I think you are overestimating how difficult is implementing this... I think that what he did is about the same difficult of what you'd expect in a BS level Operating System homework... and he would get an F for not understanding what are the limits of what encryption provides. And he talks like a pompous ass-hat.
The money is going directly to the RIAA pockets. Be a man, declare bankruptcy and fuck the RIAA.
As someone that was lurking in Slashdot since around the time you registered I'm going to say it's sad how the quality of the comments had gone down the toilet. Sometimes there are good ones but they are almost never modded up.
And yes this comment sucks too now mod me down.
This comment is bullshit and may be part of the hidden anti-global-warming-efforts campaign that we see so often here on Slashdot.
The combined data of hundreds of thousands of measurements data points across the glove and for many years is the proof of global warming, not what happens for a week after 9/11 (statistically irrelevant).
You are an idiot. Is fun to be able to say that to someone and be sure one is right. Idiot.
If you are so paranoid that you worry about what would your happen to YOUR computer after your BANK was hacked, you should sell your computers and go live to a cabin in the woods.
You don't get it, what they used is the logged in connection to the servers remotely. This is not a TCP/IP level attack, is more like an application attack because they must have used the IE object for the already logged in HTTP or HTTPS connection to the server. This is no rocket science but I think its a notch above script kiddie level.
So? It's not part of W^X. By the way this is the last time I post seriously to slashdot as I see the moderators don't have a clue.
...
On the other hand, I know plenty of people running active commercial anti-virus software that's been plagued with virii.
The reason? 1. No Awareness. 2. No Patching. 3. No Prudence. 4. Running Windows
There. Fixed that for you.
No. Antivirus are trying to solve an impossible problem, you *cant* tell the difference of good from bad software in a generic way. See the halting problem for insight of way. And virus target windows because they are running in more of they target machines (users) that all the other operating systems. Look up the security advisories of common software included in OSS systems and you'll see there are enough entry points if they really tried.
ClamWin, ClamAV are fine for remedial action. The best remedy, as in all things, is prevention and that can be accomplished by moving to systems that are resistant to malware. Here even the consumer unions fall flat on their faces and fail to mention the Linux distros. Most mainstream distros are years ahead of Windows as far as ease of use, maintenance and speed. The main weakness of real systems (non-M$) is that Web 2.0 script crap.
Here you sound like a troll. There are no sources for any of your claims and they are false.
If someone wanted to make a really hardened desktop or netbook appliance, the following steps can be taken:
What? W^X doesn't have anything to do with partitions. And W^X is a software way of doing what is done in windows now with NX bit in hardware. It's not 2006 anymore.