Likely this was just some guy that wrote a query as "Select * from accounts" instead of "Select ID, Phone, address from accounts" like he should of.
Sorry, what? If your outside vendors have the ability to do a raw select on your database... you're doing it wrong.
These people should be coming in from an interface which only allows them to access what they're required to access, and absolutely NOTHING else.
And your SSN should NOT be included in that.
Hell, as a matter of security when someone asks us for read only access to our database the answer is pretty much always "hell no". If you need something, we'll create you a view, but complete raw access?? Not on your life.
"We recently learned that three employees of one of our vendors accessed some AT&T customer accounts without proper authorization," the company said in a statement.
"This is completely counter to the way we require our vendors to conduct business."
So, if this is completely counter to how you require it, and they didn't have authorization... why the hell is it set up so they can access it without proper authorization???
If the access is set up to say "do you promise to not log in when you're not supposed to?" then the system is pretty much useless.
You may not know this... but you can side-load AdblockPlus onto Android simply by turning on the feature to enable installation from other sources.
You need to set it as your proxy on each individual wi-fi connection, and it doesn't catch everything, sadly.
But my Nexus 7 has AdBlock on it. My iPod touch, not so much. But, in fairness, I don't watch YouTube videos, so I have no idea of the specifics for that.
Since rooting your device requires a complete wipe of all data, most people aren't willing to do it just to get around advertising.
And, quite frankly, because it's the kind of thing that isn't easy to do. I've looked at the instructions several times, and I must say I've always found myself thinking "I'm not sure I follow all of that".
What I see quite commonly these days are "stalking" ads. I watch some products and when I navigate to other sites, advertisements for those products haunt me absolutely everywhere.
So the solution to that, sadly, is to run several different browsers for various purposes.
My Facebook account is a made up name, and only accessed in a browser which only ever visits Facebook. AdBlock and Ghostery block the unwanted crap (they couldn't show me an ad if they wanted).
All my other browsers basically reject traffic from Facebook, only selectively allow scripts, and never overlap with Facebook. Facebook has no way of tying my web searches to my Facebook account.
Crap like Google Analytics is blocked at the firewall.
I don't see ads, and as much as possible I deny the information from them in the first place.
I'm sure it's not a perfect solution by a long shot, but it helps.
That scenario would require that there be some sort of keylogger already present and running on the compromised machine. If that's the case, then why bother with all this cloak and dagger shit?
Well, given the prevalence of things like spear phishing and the like, maybe it's not all that tough.
And the point of the cloak and dagger is, if they don't know you're listening, and you're using a channel they're not scanning for... you can keep doing it with impunity.
So, say I worked for an agency which relied on secrecy... call them the Notional Security Assholes for sake of argument... wouldn't it be in my interest to want to gather as much data as possible without you knowing I'm doing it?
If the value of what you're spying on is high value enough, and you want to conceal your ways and means, it doesn't seem like there's an upper bound on how much trouble something is worth.
Because you extract the passwords one way, and exploit them via another, and it's impossible to identify how you got the password, and maybe you can conceal that it was ever used at all.
Sure, it's right out of Tom Clancy or Hollywood, but some of the cold war stuff was pretty wacky by today's standards. Think "Remote Sensing" and some of the other stuff that we more or less consider pretty loony.
When it comes to the cops, ignorance of the law is
The norm.
How many police departments have had to remind their officers that they do not have the legal authority to delete images off your cell phone, or that filming them isn't illegal?
Increasingly, police believe the law is whatever they say it means. And they will abuse the law to make sure that's the case.
Because, when you tell them they aren't allowed to delete the images off your phone and you protest, they will slap you with resisting arrest -- despite the fact that you weren't being arrested, nor were you breaking the law, they were.
Well the blog post is really all they need now. he is the CEO of the company, which means what he writes there is what it is.
No, the problem happens if someone comes in and buys Tesla out from under him.
The ownership of those patents is now the people who own Tesla. They may see things differently.
So, Musk can say all this all he wants, and it amounts to "while I'm CEO". But unless there is something which is legally binding, someone else could change their mind.
This sounds like a nice promise, and a well intentioned one, but in reality, I'm not sure it's legally binding against Tesla, or anybody in the future who comes to own these patents.
So would you base your business on using patents which you have been told, in a non-binding way, you may use? Or would you have to realize that things could change if he's ousted from the board, dies, or the company is sold?
I should think somewhere there are lawyers going "I don't think that really covers us enough".
Well, for Egypt, the question is rather to choose between an autocratic military regime on one side, and an autocratic theocracy on the other side.
This particular blogger was advocating the 3rd option... a democratically elected, representative government which didn't impose one religion or another on the populace, treat that one as the law of the land, and the oppress the minorities.
He wasn't in favor of Islamic rule. He was against the oppressive regime. Toppling that led to a newly formed brand new oppressive regime, not of his making or support. The Muslim Brotherhood was subsequently elected.
So let's make damned sure we're not accusing him of something he didn't do.
ALAA ABD EL FATTAH: Yes. That was on the 9th of October. There was a big march planned by several movements that were born out of the Coptic Christian community, basically protesting, you know, sectarian strife, violence against churches or, you knowâ"and also laws that restrict building or renovating churches. So, and it was a peaceful march, and it was quite big. I mean, I think it was like the biggest march to focus on the Coptic issues, you know, maybe 20,000 or 30,000. They marched from a popular neighborhood called Shubra, and the plan was to get just right here, behind me, to surround the Maspero building, which is where the state broadcast, radio and TV, broadcasts from. I think the symbolism around Maspero is that state media have always been, you know, downplaying the role of Christians and any other minorities in Egypt, but also have been downplaying the reality of sectarian strife in the country.
It was a peaceful march. They were supposed to just spend one hour in front of the building and then leave. But before they reached the building, they were attacked by the military. Three armed personnel carriers drove through the crowds, killing 17 people, and then live bullets were used against the protesters. Most of the protesters fled the scene. Many were injured. Around 28 people died. Then they started resisting. They started breaking the pavement and resisting the military with rocks and clubs or, you know, anything that they could get their hands on.
During that time, the media crackdown operationâ"there was a media crackdown operation by the military. Also they actually invaded a couple of buildings where independent TV channels were trying to cover the events live. The state broadcaster was showing a completely different picture. They started from the reaction. They started from the resistance, showing Christian protesters attacking the military. And then they started making false claims that tens of officers have been killed, and so on, in what appeared toâ"in what appears to have been a plan to incite sectarian strife. They were basically practically asking Muslims to come down and protect the army and attack any Christians that they find in the streets.
And yet you seem to be insinuating he was some kind of militant Islamist... when nothing could be further from the truth.
Protesting an unjust regime and ending up with another isn't his damned fault.
Seriously, check your damned facts and at least know WTF you're talking about. Otherwise you just sound like some random idiot spouting random things -- which in this case are completely false.
But, hey, maybe you're an American and therefore in favor of bombing civilians if they're dumb enough to be near the people they actually want to kill. At which point, why should your citizens be exempt from such crap?
Perhaps you missed the story yesterday where Google was making the app security on Android even less secure, and in such a way as to prevent users from disabling components which would block ads.
Sure, you can install apps from other locations... but there are some apps you can't install unless you root the phone.
Google is no saint in this regard either. They have some illusions of open-ness, but they also ensure their advertising services and the like can't be selectively disabled.
Hell, the very act of turning on the GPS in my Nexus 7 causes Google to prompt me to say yes to their own location services.
Android stuff are almost as directly linked to that particular mothership as Apple or Microsoft.
The illegal evidence still isn't used. They use the legal evidence obtained afterwards.
Which they only gathered initially after using the stuff without probable cause or legal means.
Parellel construction is the fruit of the poisonous tree, because the starting point of the investigation begins with "we have this, we're not legally allowed to have it, but what can we dig up to make it look like we got this legally?".
As far as I'm concerned, it's essentially a legal strategy to allow perjury.
If they had legally obtained information based on probable cause, there would be no issue. What they end up with is something else.
No they can't. Google fruit of the poisonous tree.
And then google "parallel construction", which is designed to side step the whole poisonous tree and pretend like it never happened.
In other words, it's a strategy of law enforcement to lie about the origins of a case so they can use illegal or flimsy evidence to prosecute you anyway.
Well, it means they'll need to do more "parallel" construction to hide the actual source of this, and further undermine the concept of the justice system where you get to see the evidence against you.
They will just have to be more creative in how they go about these things, so that nobody knows they're doing the illegal stuff.
I really, really want to be against net neutrality, because free market and such
Well, then let me disabuse you of that notion.
There is no 'free' market, and there never has been. The 'free' market is predicated on the belief that all players will act honestly, and make informed choices based on available information. This is a completely false assumption, and has been proven so time after time.
It completely ignores human nature whereby someone will always lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their own ends -- this is what we see here.
Industry players will always form cartels and collude in anti-consumer behavior -- price fixing being the prime example.
Without someone to keep corporations in line, the market would steadily skew to all of the power being in the hands of a few.
There is no such thing as a 'free' market, and there simply never has been. It's a utopian myth which can never be true.
People who go around spouting about the 'free' market are either naive, self deluded, or actively lying.
What proponents want is a situation in which corporations are free to do as they choose, under the premise that, in the long run, consumers will have perfect information and be able to make informed choices.
A 'free' market is incapable of addressing things like pollution, product safety, and ethical behavior. In fact, it's almost designed to encourage it.
When Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations", he wasn't writing a rule book, he was making a series of observations. The problem is things have become so skewed, that what we see is an ever-increasing trend where corporations hold all the cards.
Governments who actively support de-regulation have been putting more and more power into the hands of corporations. By allowing industries to 'police' themselves (which isn't what actually happens) they can do as they see fit, for their gain, and to our detriment.
Economics isn't a science, and it isn't based in fact. It is an ideology of how things should work assuming impossible conditions and premises. And, like all ideologies, it is inherently blind to its own flaws, and taken as a matter of dogma to be true.
Taking steps towards a 'free' market has the net effect of removing restrictions on corporations -- which are typically there because we've already seen examples of grossly bad behavior.
The US has been steadily creating (and forcing other countries to adopt) a global oligarchy whereby the corporations call all of the shots. For instance, the TTIP:
The consultation has been called largely to assuage growing pressure from civil society groups concerned about the rights being granted to corporations under the guise of âinvestor protectionsâ(TM), and the system of private tribunals - the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism - that allows corporations to sue governments when they feel that these rights have been breached by a government policy or court decision.
Basically, governments are no longer free to set evidence based policy if it would impact the bottom line of corporations which are the ones causing harm in the first place. They can be over-ridden by these private tribunals which exist to protect the interests of investors and corporations, to the detriment of the rest of us.
This is an oligarchy, and definitely NOT a free market. You could not transition from an oligarchy to a 'free' market by simply removing the laws and regulations governing corporations -- this would not magically create a free market, it simply removes their obligations to society, and frees them to do as they please.
The free market is a complete and utter myth. It has never existed. And the reason society has had to develop laws and regulations around their behavio
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Unless there's a law requiring it. In this case, there was.
Me, I think corporations should be required to tell people about such breaches.
Because then maybe they'd learn to stop the breaches instead of pretending they never happened.
Most of us have no sympathy whatsoever for the people who have initiated widespread surveillance of us.
That being said, hacking into anything related to a former president is pretty much epic on the Really Stupid Things To Do scale.
That they're that incompetent at designing a secure system? Yeah.
I'm pretty sure I live in a different country than you, and we have much stricter banking laws.
Sorry, what? If your outside vendors have the ability to do a raw select on your database ... you're doing it wrong.
These people should be coming in from an interface which only allows them to access what they're required to access, and absolutely NOTHING else.
And your SSN should NOT be included in that.
Hell, as a matter of security when someone asks us for read only access to our database the answer is pretty much always "hell no". If you need something, we'll create you a view, but complete raw access?? Not on your life.
So, if this is completely counter to how you require it, and they didn't have authorization ... why the hell is it set up so they can access it without proper authorization???
If the access is set up to say "do you promise to not log in when you're not supposed to?" then the system is pretty much useless.
You may not know this ... but you can side-load AdblockPlus onto Android simply by turning on the feature to enable installation from other sources.
You need to set it as your proxy on each individual wi-fi connection, and it doesn't catch everything, sadly.
But my Nexus 7 has AdBlock on it. My iPod touch, not so much. But, in fairness, I don't watch YouTube videos, so I have no idea of the specifics for that.
And, quite frankly, because it's the kind of thing that isn't easy to do. I've looked at the instructions several times, and I must say I've always found myself thinking "I'm not sure I follow all of that".
So the solution to that, sadly, is to run several different browsers for various purposes.
My Facebook account is a made up name, and only accessed in a browser which only ever visits Facebook. AdBlock and Ghostery block the unwanted crap (they couldn't show me an ad if they wanted).
All my other browsers basically reject traffic from Facebook, only selectively allow scripts, and never overlap with Facebook. Facebook has no way of tying my web searches to my Facebook account.
Crap like Google Analytics is blocked at the firewall.
I don't see ads, and as much as possible I deny the information from them in the first place.
I'm sure it's not a perfect solution by a long shot, but it helps.
Well, given the prevalence of things like spear phishing and the like, maybe it's not all that tough.
And the point of the cloak and dagger is, if they don't know you're listening, and you're using a channel they're not scanning for ... you can keep doing it with impunity.
So, say I worked for an agency which relied on secrecy ... call them the Notional Security Assholes for sake of argument ... wouldn't it be in my interest to want to gather as much data as possible without you knowing I'm doing it?
If the value of what you're spying on is high value enough, and you want to conceal your ways and means, it doesn't seem like there's an upper bound on how much trouble something is worth.
Because you extract the passwords one way, and exploit them via another, and it's impossible to identify how you got the password, and maybe you can conceal that it was ever used at all.
Sure, it's right out of Tom Clancy or Hollywood, but some of the cold war stuff was pretty wacky by today's standards. Think "Remote Sensing" and some of the other stuff that we more or less consider pretty loony.
But then they will be able to directly read my thoughts from my eyes, man, and their retinal scanners will be able to track my movements.
Don't you know anything? ;-)
The norm.
How many police departments have had to remind their officers that they do not have the legal authority to delete images off your cell phone, or that filming them isn't illegal?
Increasingly, police believe the law is whatever they say it means. And they will abuse the law to make sure that's the case.
Because, when you tell them they aren't allowed to delete the images off your phone and you protest, they will slap you with resisting arrest -- despite the fact that you weren't being arrested, nor were you breaking the law, they were.
I certainly hope so, but the tinfoil hat certainly skews my perceptions a little. ;-)
No, the problem happens if someone comes in and buys Tesla out from under him.
The ownership of those patents is now the people who own Tesla. They may see things differently.
So, Musk can say all this all he wants, and it amounts to "while I'm CEO". But unless there is something which is legally binding, someone else could change their mind.
This sounds like a nice promise, and a well intentioned one, but in reality, I'm not sure it's legally binding against Tesla, or anybody in the future who comes to own these patents.
So would you base your business on using patents which you have been told, in a non-binding way, you may use? Or would you have to realize that things could change if he's ousted from the board, dies, or the company is sold?
I should think somewhere there are lawyers going "I don't think that really covers us enough".
Crap, my apologies to the grandparent post ... Slashdot is having some issues today and I replied to the wrong post.
This particular blogger was advocating the 3rd option ... a democratically elected, representative government which didn't impose one religion or another on the populace, treat that one as the law of the land, and the oppress the minorities.
Many many Egyptians are pushing for that.
Indeed, let's not do that.
He wasn't in favor of Islamic rule. He was against the oppressive regime. Toppling that led to a newly formed brand new oppressive regime, not of his making or support. The Muslim Brotherhood was subsequently elected.
So let's make damned sure we're not accusing him of something he didn't do.
In his own words:
And yet you seem to be insinuating he was some kind of militant Islamist ... when nothing could be further from the truth.
Protesting an unjust regime and ending up with another isn't his damned fault.
Seriously, check your damned facts and at least know WTF you're talking about. Otherwise you just sound like some random idiot spouting random things -- which in this case are completely false.
But, hey, maybe you're an American and therefore in favor of bombing civilians if they're dumb enough to be near the people they actually want to kill. At which point, why should your citizens be exempt from such crap?
If it's a SIM based phone, and you destroy the phone and your SIM ... are you any better off?
Perhaps you missed the story yesterday where Google was making the app security on Android even less secure, and in such a way as to prevent users from disabling components which would block ads.
Sure, you can install apps from other locations ... but there are some apps you can't install unless you root the phone.
Google is no saint in this regard either. They have some illusions of open-ness, but they also ensure their advertising services and the like can't be selectively disabled.
Hell, the very act of turning on the GPS in my Nexus 7 causes Google to prompt me to say yes to their own location services.
Android stuff are almost as directly linked to that particular mothership as Apple or Microsoft.
Depends on the data, doesn't it?
If I've installed something which is designed to capture passwords, your 20 bits/sec means I can transmit your password in just a few seconds.
So if all it does it say "got it, user X has this password" ... that can be pretty valuable and is likely do-able in under 30 seconds.
This may not be an attack, but it is an attack vector.
Which they only gathered initially after using the stuff without probable cause or legal means.
Parellel construction is the fruit of the poisonous tree, because the starting point of the investigation begins with "we have this, we're not legally allowed to have it, but what can we dig up to make it look like we got this legally?".
As far as I'm concerned, it's essentially a legal strategy to allow perjury.
If they had legally obtained information based on probable cause, there would be no issue. What they end up with is something else.
I am less optimistic about the outcome of that than you are.
Because these ten corporations are huge.
And, let's face it, when the head of the FCC is a former lobbyist for them, the deck is already stacked in their favor.
And then google "parallel construction", which is designed to side step the whole poisonous tree and pretend like it never happened.
In other words, it's a strategy of law enforcement to lie about the origins of a case so they can use illegal or flimsy evidence to prosecute you anyway.
Well, it means they'll need to do more "parallel" construction to hide the actual source of this, and further undermine the concept of the justice system where you get to see the evidence against you.
They will just have to be more creative in how they go about these things, so that nobody knows they're doing the illegal stuff.
Well, then let me disabuse you of that notion.
There is no 'free' market, and there never has been. The 'free' market is predicated on the belief that all players will act honestly, and make informed choices based on available information. This is a completely false assumption, and has been proven so time after time.
It completely ignores human nature whereby someone will always lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their own ends -- this is what we see here.
Industry players will always form cartels and collude in anti-consumer behavior -- price fixing being the prime example.
Without someone to keep corporations in line, the market would steadily skew to all of the power being in the hands of a few.
There is no such thing as a 'free' market, and there simply never has been. It's a utopian myth which can never be true.
People who go around spouting about the 'free' market are either naive, self deluded, or actively lying.
What proponents want is a situation in which corporations are free to do as they choose, under the premise that, in the long run, consumers will have perfect information and be able to make informed choices.
A 'free' market is incapable of addressing things like pollution, product safety, and ethical behavior. In fact, it's almost designed to encourage it.
When Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations", he wasn't writing a rule book, he was making a series of observations. The problem is things have become so skewed, that what we see is an ever-increasing trend where corporations hold all the cards.
Governments who actively support de-regulation have been putting more and more power into the hands of corporations. By allowing industries to 'police' themselves (which isn't what actually happens) they can do as they see fit, for their gain, and to our detriment.
Economics isn't a science, and it isn't based in fact. It is an ideology of how things should work assuming impossible conditions and premises. And, like all ideologies, it is inherently blind to its own flaws, and taken as a matter of dogma to be true.
Taking steps towards a 'free' market has the net effect of removing restrictions on corporations -- which are typically there because we've already seen examples of grossly bad behavior.
The US has been steadily creating (and forcing other countries to adopt) a global oligarchy whereby the corporations call all of the shots. For instance, the TTIP:
Basically, governments are no longer free to set evidence based policy if it would impact the bottom line of corporations which are the ones causing harm in the first place. They can be over-ridden by these private tribunals which exist to protect the interests of investors and corporations, to the detriment of the rest of us.
This is an oligarchy, and definitely NOT a free market. You could not transition from an oligarchy to a 'free' market by simply removing the laws and regulations governing corporations -- this would not magically create a free market, it simply removes their obligations to society, and frees them to do as they please.
The free market is a complete and utter myth. It has never existed. And the reason society has had to develop laws and regulations around their behavio
Or at least some consumer protection law which prevents companies from engaging in blatantly deceptive marketing campaigns.
However, fake 'grassroots' foundations seems to have become the norm.
Oh, right, of course ... corporations are people with free speech, and entitled to actively lie to us.
Right, that totally makes sense.