I don't profess to have any crystal ball into the future, or even deep understanding of the ever-evolving world of economics, but I do understand that people need jobs. Despite the increasing capabilities of today's machines, we're a long way of from sitting back and letting technology take care of our needs.
I believe in trying to help in little ways. For example, I don't use self-checkout machines at the supermarket, even if it means I have to stand in line. I don't want to help eliminate someone's job. I have similar feelings about self-serve gas pumps, bank machines, and cleaning up my own table when leaving a fast-food restaurant.
Are my efforts misguided and futile? Perhaps. Nevertheless, I believe that just because a thing CAN be done, that doesn't mean it SHOULD be done. I don't want to see wider replacement of human workers unless something else develops to mitigate further impoverishment of the working class.
Let's just pause for a moment and reflect that we even have the ability to measure the position of a building within a centimeter or so using satellites orbiting the Earth.
Now every man must come at times to the aid of the party through the general precept that ethical behavior demands support of the community. It is by reason of erroneous reasoning of this kind that we become unjust and in general evil, or worse, slytherins;
No, you are not a prostitute. You are an employee. To equate the two on a broad level is to completely belie the stigmatized, demeaning, and health-endangering servitude that prostitutes endure.
Don't try to suggest that your white-collar job is anywhere near as bad as having some fat, disgusting stranger put his unwashed dick in your mouth.
It is so tedious hearing people trot out this rationale. If a majority of people switched to "a variant on Unix", it would then BECOME the "largest virus attack vector".
And don't kid yourself that your OS of choice is intrinsically more secure simply because it's not Windows.
If you're doing NAT, sure, but some of the affected devices are the routers themselves. As for things being "non-existent", that's besides the point. I'm just pointing out that the situation is more nuanced than "nothing can be done".
Consider that the target of this attack was Dyn. That's Dyn as in "dynamic". A big chunk of their business involves mapping host names to dynamic IP addresses. Caching someone's dynamic IP address for a 30 days may or may not yield the desired result. The fact that you happen to have "zero issues" probably means only that you attempted to connect to exactly "zero" dynamic DNS clients.
There are possible technical solutions. In the case of the Mirai botnet attacks, the released source code identifies the affected devices. Device manufacturers can be mapped to MAC addresses. ISP's could filter traffic from known vulnerable hardware devices to known DDoS attack targets.
Is this an easy solution? No. Is this a comprehensive solution? No. Would ISP's want to take on this responsibility? No. But is it technically possible? Yes.
The problem is this:
Github.com:
Name Server: NS1.P16.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS2.P16.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS3.P16.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS4.P16.DYNECT.NET ...
There's nothing wrong with having all your DNS servers under the same subdomain. What matters is what IP addresses those names resolve to. I've seen primary and secondary DNS servers that aren't even on different IPV4 subnets, never mind geographically distant ones.
Why do people even download WinRAR? For the odd occasion I need to extract a WinRAR archive, the free and open source 7-zip works fine. It also handles a number of other formats, and is fast. (For example, it is MUCH faster at extracting ZIP archives than Windows Explorer).
I recall once reading a strategy for recording all of human knowledge by scribing a single scratch somewhere along the length of a long metal rod. First, represent the data as a long string of binary digits, like we already do in computers. Place a decimal point in front of the first digit. Scribe the scratch at a point in the rod corresponding to that fraction of its length.
Needless to say, this would require a VERY long rod, and a bit of engineering to sort out the the thermal complexities.;)
Wow, thanks for taking the time to reply to that! I've been wondering about that for years. I love the simplicity of your symmetrical strategy.
It puts me in mind of a simple strategy I used to play in the game of Nim. Creating two mirrored sets of piles worked well enough to get you to a place where some simple exceptions would apply. No need for any arithmetic, just simple symmetry and memorization of a few other winning patterns such as a three piles with 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
(This is for the misère version of Nim, where you want your opponent to pick last, but is easily turned around for regular Nim).
This strategy worked particularly well with large numbers if piles, where I could quickly establish a winning pattern against a novice player.
That's not to say it wouldn't be a major headache though. One problem I've found with ransomware viruses is that they can chew through such huge numbers of files it makes selective restoration very difficult.
No, a virus will not "immediately re-activate on restoration". For a virus to "activate", some form of execution is required. Restore your data files only, or don't run infected executables from your backup.
Yes, there have been viruses that infect data files, such as PDF documents, Word documents, or graphics files, but even so, these would not "immediately re-activate on restoration".
Having tried the preventive approach on computer security for years, I came to the reluctant conclusion that it's a losing game. In every business scenario I've dealt with, it is simply impossible to protect against every threat and every zero-day exploit that comes down the pipe. Software patching, firewalls, antivirus, specialized appliances, you name it - they all have their limitations. You can protect against any number of possible exploits, but if only one gets through, you lose. So businesses must weight the costs spending more and more on preventive security solutions versus the cost of a security breach.
Obviously the implications of a breach are more severe for some businesses than others, but in many cases I deal with it makes more sense to focus on a good recovery solution rather than focussing mainly on prevention.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't profess to have any crystal ball into the future, or even deep understanding of the ever-evolving world of economics, but I do understand that people need jobs. Despite the increasing capabilities of today's machines, we're a long way of from sitting back and letting technology take care of our needs.
I believe in trying to help in little ways. For example, I don't use self-checkout machines at the supermarket, even if it means I have to stand in line. I don't want to help eliminate someone's job. I have similar feelings about self-serve gas pumps, bank machines, and cleaning up my own table when leaving a fast-food restaurant.
Are my efforts misguided and futile? Perhaps. Nevertheless, I believe that just because a thing CAN be done, that doesn't mean it SHOULD be done. I don't want to see wider replacement of human workers unless something else develops to mitigate further impoverishment of the working class.
Let's just pause for a moment and reflect that we even have the ability to measure the position of a building within a centimeter or so using satellites orbiting the Earth.
I find it astonishing.
Now every man must come at times to the aid of the party through the general precept that ethical behavior demands support of the community. It is by reason of erroneous reasoning of this kind that we become unjust and in general evil, or worse, slytherins;
That's gold baby. GOLD!
or it didn't happen.
No, you are not a prostitute. You are an employee. To equate the two on a broad level is to completely belie the stigmatized, demeaning, and health-endangering servitude that prostitutes endure.
Don't try to suggest that your white-collar job is anywhere near as bad as having some fat, disgusting stranger put his unwashed dick in your mouth.
It is so tedious hearing people trot out this rationale. If a majority of people switched to "a variant on Unix", it would then BECOME the "largest virus attack vector".
And don't kid yourself that your OS of choice is intrinsically more secure simply because it's not Windows.
Alas, I don't think the Slashdot effect is what it used to be.
THERE IS NO ESCAPE!!!
If you're doing NAT, sure, but some of the affected devices are the routers themselves. As for things being "non-existent", that's besides the point. I'm just pointing out that the situation is more nuanced than "nothing can be done".
Consider that the target of this attack was Dyn. That's Dyn as in "dynamic". A big chunk of their business involves mapping host names to dynamic IP addresses. Caching someone's dynamic IP address for a 30 days may or may not yield the desired result. The fact that you happen to have "zero issues" probably means only that you attempted to connect to exactly "zero" dynamic DNS clients.
There are possible technical solutions. In the case of the Mirai botnet attacks, the released source code identifies the affected devices. Device manufacturers can be mapped to MAC addresses. ISP's could filter traffic from known vulnerable hardware devices to known DDoS attack targets.
Is this an easy solution? No. Is this a comprehensive solution? No. Would ISP's want to take on this responsibility? No. But is it technically possible? Yes.
Facebook is a product of America, where exposed breasts in media are considered indecent, but graphic depictions of murder are just fine.
The problem is this:
...
Github.com:
Name Server: NS1.P16.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS2.P16.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS3.P16.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS4.P16.DYNECT.NET
There's nothing wrong with having all your DNS servers under the same subdomain. What matters is what IP addresses those names resolve to. I've seen primary and secondary DNS servers that aren't even on different IPV4 subnets, never mind geographically distant ones.
Intransigent, closed and controlling
Sounds like every bank I've ever dealt with.
for Windows 10.
Why do people even download WinRAR? For the odd occasion I need to extract a WinRAR archive, the free and open source 7-zip works fine. It also handles a number of other formats, and is fast. (For example, it is MUCH faster at extracting ZIP archives than Windows Explorer).
Hmmm. Major Internet outage reported the day after source code for enormous DDoS attacks is released.
I recall once reading a strategy for recording all of human knowledge by scribing a single scratch somewhere along the length of a long metal rod. First, represent the data as a long string of binary digits, like we already do in computers. Place a decimal point in front of the first digit. Scribe the scratch at a point in the rod corresponding to that fraction of its length.
Needless to say, this would require a VERY long rod, and a bit of engineering to sort out the the thermal complexities. ;)
Wow, thanks for taking the time to reply to that! I've been wondering about that for years. I love the simplicity of your symmetrical strategy.
It puts me in mind of a simple strategy I used to play in the game of Nim. Creating two mirrored sets of piles worked well enough to get you to a place where some simple exceptions would apply. No need for any arithmetic, just simple symmetry and memorization of a few other winning patterns such as a three piles with 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
(This is for the misère version of Nim, where you want your opponent to pick last, but is easily turned around for regular Nim).
This strategy worked particularly well with large numbers if piles, where I could quickly establish a winning pattern against a novice player.
At some point these things could conceivably reach speeds comparable to RAM.
The "NVM" in "NVMe" stands for non-volatile memory. It's RAM that doesn't lose its data when powered off.
That's not to say it wouldn't be a major headache though. One problem I've found with ransomware viruses is that they can chew through such huge numbers of files it makes selective restoration very difficult.
No, a virus will not "immediately re-activate on restoration". For a virus to "activate", some form of execution is required. Restore your data files only, or don't run infected executables from your backup.
Yes, there have been viruses that infect data files, such as PDF documents, Word documents, or graphics files, but even so, these would not "immediately re-activate on restoration".
If I have a backup of my data taken before a virus "activates", how is that backup invalidated?
Having tried the preventive approach on computer security for years, I came to the reluctant conclusion that it's a losing game. In every business scenario I've dealt with, it is simply impossible to protect against every threat and every zero-day exploit that comes down the pipe. Software patching, firewalls, antivirus, specialized appliances, you name it - they all have their limitations. You can protect against any number of possible exploits, but if only one gets through, you lose. So businesses must weight the costs spending more and more on preventive security solutions versus the cost of a security breach.
Obviously the implications of a breach are more severe for some businesses than others, but in many cases I deal with it makes more sense to focus on a good recovery solution rather than focussing mainly on prevention.
#thefirstworldisreal.
Still not terrible.