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User: Shakrai

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  1. Re:Wouldn't it make more sense? on Spamhaus Calls for Fining Operators of Insecure Servers · · Score: 1

    But that wouldn't stop DNS amplification attacks

    It would drastically limit your choice of available targets. How do you hit 192.168.10.1 with an amplification attack if you use it as a source address? You could pwn a few machines on the same network, and send out the queries that way, but you're not going to be able to achieve the same volume of traffic as you could by using a botnet with hundreds of thousands of hosts that are able to send out queries "from" 192.168.10.1.....

  2. Blaming DNS for reflection attacks? on Spamhaus Calls for Fining Operators of Insecure Servers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That seems like misplaced blame to me. Any connectionless protocol that responds with larger packets than the inbound query can be used for a reflection attack, it's one of the items that comes up from time to time on the NTP Pool server admin's mailing list. We've seen a few attempts at using some of our servers in such attacks, there was a host that went around a few months ago that was sending about 60kbit/s worth of queries to several dozen servers in the pool, mine included. There are a few best practices you can use to mitigate this issue -- noquery with ntpd, firewall rate-limits for both NTP and DNS -- but you'll never actually solve the problem at the application level.

    The proper way to address reflection attacks is for network operators to set up rules that preclude forged packets from leaving their network. There's no reason the router solely responsible for 192.168.1.0/24 should be passing along outbound traffic with a source address of 172.25.1.15. A handful of progressive networks have made this change, but they're the exception, not the rule.

  3. Re:Let's see on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 1

    Signals intelligence is useless except against the little people.

    You're kidding, right?

  4. Re:zero sympathy for those who get caught.... on NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving · · Score: 1

    They don't give a fuck about seeing you "texting while driving"

    Who is "they"? Policy-makers? Individual State Troopers? Their Commanders? All of the above?

    LEOs are usually the first ones to arrive at the scene of a traffic accident, and there isn't a law enforcement officer in the United States who hasn't assisted with the extrication of a mangled body from a crushed automobile. It seems a bit outlandish to try and claim they don't "give a fuck".

  5. Re:How do they know I'm texting? on NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving · · Score: 2

    Also, does anyone else have a problem with cops peering into your private vehicle to see what you are doing?

    Plain view doctrine.

  6. Re:Texing Bans Increase Crashes on NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving · · Score: 1

    Did you even read the link, bro?

    I read it. It says, in a nutshell, "drivers know it's illegal, so they go out of their way to hide it, increasing the risks that are already inherent in texting while driving." What I'm unclear about is what you think should be done with this study from a public policy standpoint? Is distracted driving dangerous? If so, should we be proactively attempting to reduce it, through education and enforcement, or should we deal with the consequences after the fact?

    Frankly, I'd rather see a generalized law against distracted driving, rather than texting, because I'm just as dead if you kill me reaching for the Big Mac as I am if you kill me reaching for the phone. An A/C put it best in the last conversation we had about this, "95% of driving may require 10% of your attention span, but what about the other 5%?"

  7. Re:It is not kids on NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving · · Score: 2

    Why not pass a regulation on phones -- they have bluetooth, it's not like they couldn't make them disable when a certain device is present... that goes into the car. Failure to use the device would be easier to detect.

    Three problems with that:

    1) Why can't passengers text?
    2) What stops me from removing the enforcement code from my open-source smart phone?
    3) Prior restraint is generally frowned upon in the American legal system. We could probably cut down on DWIs by putting ignition interlocks in all automobiles, rather than just those owned by people with DWI convictions, but that wouldn't fly from a cost benefit or civil libertarian standpoint....

  8. Re:Texing Bans Increase Crashes on NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People who text while driving get punished by getting into accidents.

    What about the people who weren't texting that they hit?

  9. Re:I might see a flaw on NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving · · Score: 1

    I would assume the police officer looking down through your window is sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle

    Probably not. New York State Troopers almost always patrol alone, unless they're training someone, or being evaluated, both of which are comparatively rare events in the course of their careers.

  10. zero sympathy for those who get caught.... on NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving · · Score: 2, Interesting

    .... if you're so oblivious that you don't even notice the large SUV in the next lane, with driver staring intently at you, you deserve the bloody ticket. Police cruisers, even unmarked ones, have all manner of features that scream "COP", but of course you'd have to be paying attention to actually notice them....

    Maybe they'll shift enforcement resources to texting and leave us open-highway speeders alone. I'll take 80 with both hands on the wheel and eyes on the road over 45 with both hands on the phone, a knee doing the steering, and eyes glued to a cell phone....

  11. Re:Distracted driving on NY Police Get Tall SUVs To Combat Texting While Driving · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And how far does an SUV travel while the driver tries to see whether a person in another car is texting?

    About as far as an ambulance drives, while the driver radios ahead to the hospital, simultaneously remaining in communication with his partner, who is busy attending to the patient they picked up from the automobile accident caused by distracted driving.

  12. Re:Let's see on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 1

    I suppose the US Navy might really have shot down TWA Flight 800, managing not only to silence the entire crew of a SAM equipped warship (numbering in the hundreds), but also the dockside workers that would have noticed missing ordinance, the dozens of FBI and NTSB officials that investigated the disaster, and everybody in the chain-of-command from the guy who pushed the "weapons free" button to President Clinton.....

    Do you see how quickly tin-foil hat conspiracies break down when you stop to consider how many disparate people would have to remain silent to keep it all under wraps?

    If you don't trust AES there's always one time pads. They don't scale very well at all, key exchange is a bitch, but on the flip side they're completely unbreakable and you can implement one on pen and paper if you so choose....

  13. Re:Lovely on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 2

    or just plain stupid, for pissing on the 4th Amendment and monitoring every American

    I'll regret wading into these waters, but they aren't monitoring every American per-say. They aren't even doing anything that's all that new, at least with regards to the legal precedent, they're just doing it on a large scale in near real time. Metadata has had very limited legal protections for decades now, the argument being that you have no expectation of privacy when you share information (i.e., phone numbers) with a third party (i.e., the phone company). If someone managed to get metadata collection before SCOTUS with a 4th Amendment argument they'd likely be shot down with a 9-0 ruling. Stare decisis can be a bitch sometimes. Start your research with pen registers if you wish to explore this issue in further detail.

    Does this mean I'm happy about what they're doing? Not really. I can see how it could be effective, the would be Times Square bomber was allegedly caught because he was stupid enough to call a number connected to himself from the same prepaid burner phone he used to communicate with terrorists overseas. Of course, one could just as easily argue that law enforcement would have figured that out by subpoenaing Verizon rather than issuing a SELECT query to NSA's database, and that may have been what happened for all we know.

    No matter how you slice it, it's a complicated issue, and I don't think it can be boiled down to a simple 4th Amendment argument. The legal precedent doesn't support that argument, nor does the majority of public opinion. Frankly, there are things our Government does that concern me far more than the collection of telephone and internet metadata. To pick one off the top of my head, Google "civil asset forfeiture". That doesn't get talked about around here, because it's not a techie issue, but it's a real issue that is far more likely to do you harm than anything the NSA is doing.

  14. Re:Let's see on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 1

    That's true, particularly the first point. The second is also valid, though good sources of entropy aren't exactly a state secret.

    I've always found NSA's writings in areas other than cryptography to be most fascinating. Ever read about TEMPEST? If the answer is no, you're missing out on a lot, start with a Google search and go from there. There's a wealth of information that they make publicly available, free for the taking by any person seeking to up their security posture. They've also contributed security enhancements to the Linux kernel, provide free or at-cost security services to major American corporations, and secure the day-to-day communications of Federal and State Governments.

    None of this is to suggest that they always wear white hats, or that I'm not deeply concerned with the revelations about their domestic activities, but people should look at the whole picture before they condemn the agency. They might also think about pointing fingers at policy makers, rather than those who carry out policy..... (I'll smack the first person that takes this last point and Godwin's it with some false equivalency.....)

  15. Re:Lovely on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 1

    The idea that nobody entrusted him with the power to set American foreign policy is BS. We gave him physical access to the necessary files and that is physically equivalent to the power.

    That's an interesting argument. Care to take it to one possible conclusion, with technology far more mundane than WANs, and consequences much more severe than anything we've seen (yet) from Snowden's actions?

    The real takeaway here is that if you don't want to entrust someone with that sort of power, you need much much stronger safeguards than were in place.

    Can't argue with you there....

  16. Re:Lovely on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 0

    Do you have a justification for a system that's more about corporate espionage than stopping terrorism?

    Nation-state seeks advantage in the economic realm. Say it isn't so....

    But this is a bullshit talking point, always has been always will be. It ignores the depth and pervasiveness of the NSA programs, the disparity in capability, and the geographical isolation of the U.S. from the rest of the world.

    So your gripe is that we're better at it than most? I don't think many Americans are going to apologize for that. SIGINT has been a specialty of the United States and Great Britain for decades, why wouldn't we leverage it to our advantage? The Russians and Israels kick our ass with HUMINT, and I don't see near the same level of bile directed at them.

  17. Re:Lovely on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 0

    its time we stopped playing games (as a species) and 'grow up', so to speak.

    Let me know when the Vulcan ship makes first contact, because that's what it's going to take for humanity to "grow up" (so to speak), and even that might not be enough.....

    I believe in the *absolute* right to privacy. yes, even for criminals. it should be a human right. and that applies to countries, too.

    Spoken like someone who lives in a country without any enemies. I treasure my right to privacy, but I do not believe it to be absolute, nor am I foolish enough to believe I can exercise it if I'm dead.....

  18. Re:Lovely on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 0

    These were the policies of George H.W. Bush, and they have been made even more the policies of Barack Obama. You have absolutely no evidence that Romney would have changed these policies.

    Your false dichotomy rather misses the point. Nobody elected Edward Snowden. Nobody entrusted him with the power to set American foreign policy. One man's dislike of the results at the ballot box does not entitle him to shit on the millions of people that reached a different conclusion.

    If I wanted to play in your sandbox, I'd begin by pointing out that these policies go all the way back to Washington. I might also point out that spying predates the emergence of nation-states as we understand them today. The technology has changed, but the tactics and motivation remain the same. Please, tell me what the NSA has done that's different from the actions of GCHQ, FSB, Mossad, or Julius Caesar?

  19. Re:Piffle on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 2

    Will we ever see something truly golden, as we did in WWII, with Axis units bumbling around looking for Americans to surrender to?

    They weren't doing that because we were that awesome, they were doing it because the alternative was that bad. (*)

    Eisenhower declared German POWs to be "disarmed enemy forces" (a term unknown in international law), depriving them of their protections under the Geneva Conventions (love him or hate him, GWB really didn't have any original ideas....) and effectively turning them into slave labor, a condiction that we keep them in for several years after the end of hostilities. I could tell you a bunch of anecdotal stories I've heard from German servicemen (**) but why bother when the raw numbers tell the tale? Survival rate in American and British captivity for a German prisoner: 99% Survival rate in Soviet captivity: 40%

    (*) Some say the Japanese finally surrendered for the same reason, specifically that it was the Soviet declaration of war that finally convinced them all was lost, not the atomic bombs. Would you rather be occupied by the United States under Truman or the Soviet Union under Stalin?

    (**) I have to tell one anecdotal story. I had the privilege of meeting a Germany artillery officer at the WW2 museum in New Orleans. He talked of his service towards the end of the war, and being instructed to fire on Soviet lines, then receiving orders to fire on Allied lines, then receiving orders to fire on Soviet lines, and so on. This was repeated for a few weeks, and each time the distance they had to travel to reach their designated firing point decreased. Finally they were able to fire on both advancing armies from a static position. Eventually they lost contact with HQ, and he asked his men if they wished to surrender to the Russians, or chance a swim across the Elbe to surrender to the Allies. To a man they all jumped in the river and threw their lot in with the Brits and Americans, even those who hailed from communities behind Soviet lines.

  20. Re:Let's see on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the NSA can break AES, then anyone else might figure it out too.

    One of the NSA's mandates is to secure American communications. They have certified AES as being sufficient for Federal agencies to use to secure classified information, and even Top Secret classified information with large enough (192 or 256 bit) keys. This suggests one of two things:

    1. They're smart enough to break AES, but stupid enough to think nobody else can.
    2. The best cryptographers in the United States of America believe AES to be secure.

    Common sense says it's #2. Could the best American cryptographers have it completely wrong, and we'll find out when the next Pearl Harbor happens? Certainly. Is it a conspiracy where they know it's weak and are keeping it so in order to read your e-mail? Not bloody likely.

  21. Re:Lovely on Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have mixed feelings about Mr. Snowden..... his disclosures of NSA's domestic activities may have been legitimate, but I have yet to hear a good justification for his leaks about NSA's foreign operations. I know a lot of people are expressing shock about NSA's overseas SIGINT activities, but they aren't doing anything that every other country isn't trying to do to the United States, and none of their actions came as a surprise to any serious student of geopolitics. Every disclosure that he has made on this subject has inflicted serious blow-back to US foreign policy, and I don't recall him being one of the choices on 6 Nov 2012, when I had my say regarding the selection of the person that was to set American foreign policy for the next four years.

    I don't expect many non-Americans to understand this, and even many of my fellow countryman will rush to shout me down, but NSA's overseas activities are legitimate activities that every other nation-state on the blue marble engages in. Some may be poorly targeted (seriously, Germany?), some may be politically obtuse, but the bottom line is Edward Snowden was not in a position to make these sorts of far reaching decisions. Nobody voted for him, nobody sought him out, and nobody entrusted him with this sort of power.

    As for what should happen to him now, that's beyond my pay grade. I do think he will come to regret some of his decisions, particularly as he matures, and regardless of what his ultimate fate turns out to be. I wouldn't salute the flag to the point of loading the boxcars, but it would take a lot more than my country spying on other countries to convince me that the only remaining recourse was to betray confidences and seek refuge from quasi-hostile foreign powers.

  22. Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau on BBC: Amazon Workers Face "Increased Risk of Mental Illness" · · Score: 1

    avoid the modern slavery in electronics production.

    Good luck with that. :)

  23. Re:stupid coments, but.... on Sex Offender Gets New Hearing After Hearing Officer Rants Against Arial Font · · Score: 1

    Six of one, half a dozen of the other, said this poster who is a diagnosed dyslexic.....

    My (slight) preference for fixed space fonts stems from my geek background, growing up with ASCII art, and being a programmer by trade. That said, I don't write my printed correspondence in Courier New, but my e-mail does tend to go out without formatting (no HTML here....), and I have been known to cut and paste received documents into a text editor......

  24. Re:What about the UK? on Washington Post: Assange 'Unlikely To Be Prosecuted In US' · · Score: 1

    I'm not certain I follow your point here?

    My biggest complaint, as a heterosexual male, is the fact that the legal system gives me zero recourse after ejaculation. She lied about being on birth control? Tough luck buddy, pony up 15% of your post-tax salary for the next 21 years, and feel free to forfeit your passport/drivers license/gun permit/voting registration if you refuse to pay. Of course the inverse doesn't apply, because she can abort that fetus right up until the second trimester (and beyond in some states), or give it up for adoption anytime thereafter, while the man has zero say after his orgasm....

    Is that what you're trying to hint at? If so I feel your pain, though I think it's more of an indictment of the legal system and less of an excuse for the alleged behaviors of Julian Assange.

    As an aside, clearly Mr. Assange isn't an American, or he wouldn't be so quick to leap for sex without a condom. It'd be really ironic if this case was about child support instead of an accusation of rape.....

  25. Re:Good advertising? on Jury Finds Newegg Infringed Patent, Owes $2.3 Million · · Score: 1

    Not at all. I'm a person that is disgusted by anyone who tries the "This happened to me, so everyone else is wrong because of this one case". If you tried to publish a scientific paper with that kind of research/went to the cops with that kind of evidence, you'd be pointed and laughed at.

    This isn't a peer reviewed scientific paper, it's /. I was telling my story, I never claimed that people who like Newegg are "wrong", I simply shared my experience.

    Want more back story? The video card was for an 87 year old family member, who called me out of the blue, needing a card that could handle Flight Simulator X, and I failed to do full due diligence for a variety of largely inexcusable (I was busy) reasons. The mistake was mine, I was prepared to pay for it, until they made a commitment to me, one that later went unhonored.

    If you were in my shoes would you do business with them again? How would you have handled it?