As far as I remember, emulation is not covered by the patents anyways, as an instruction-set is basically an API. Does anybody know whether this is accurate?
Alternatively, there are also spark-type detonators and ones that basically pump so much energy into a wire it basically blows up. But unless you need a very precise detonation time, a slow thermal detonator will work reliably and these can be made for any voltage by any halfway competent tinkerer. Somebody that is willing to blow themselves up could also use a classical fuse-and-match setup.
There really is no way to prevent this. Fortunately, the suicidal/homicidal maniacs that do things like this are rare. The problem with what the TSA does here is that it gives further validation to these idiots, by further creating a David&Goliath-like situation. Hence these supposed "countermeasures" may well make terrorist attacks more likely.
A 9V battery does not deliver more power than an AA cell. It delivers less. (AA alkaline cell: 1.5V@0.38A =.57W, AAA alkaline cell: 1.5V @0.3A = 0.5W, 9V alkaline cell: 9V@0.05A = 0.45W, all taken from Varta datasheets for fast discharge currents.) A 9V battery delivers more voltage, which in times of cheap, low-input voltage capable and super efficient (90% efficienty) step-up converters means exactly nothing. Also, depending on detonator-type, you can detonate with 1.5V directly.
The TSA has stepped from merely ridiculously incompetent to fully incompetent.
Well, the base assumption is that threatening people enough and punishing them makes them into good people. This is a fundamentalist religious idea. It does not work at all in actual reality, but fundamentalists are incapable of understanding cause-effect relationships or that their ideas and methods may not work.
That _is_ a possibility. But covering up a false-flag operation like this is difficult. I would say it was naivety on her side. At 25, most people do not have a good grasp of what is important and what is not.
That is not reliable. You still need to clean them, ideally by typing them in manually. But that way you at least do not have to print them for the purpose of leaking as making photos from LCDs works pretty well with high-resolution cameras.
Discussing the tacking dost has merit, as it is something anybody interested in IT security should know. But I agree, her primary mistakes were a) printing it without a credible cover-story for that and b) emailing the Intercept from her _work_ computer. Each one of these would have been enough to catch her fast.
Bad security will bite you, sometimes badly. That is what happened here. Of course, her primary purpose is achieved and laudable, but she will have to pay an unreasonably high price for doing the right thing.
She should have made a manual screenshot with a camera. (I have done that for "locked down" customer systems when I needed to document things. With authorization, of course.) Then this should have been copied by manually typing it in again. I guess people are just too stuck in their regular ideas about "workflow".
A shame, but at least this way future leakers will be more careful.
The mistake is not hers. The mistake is on the side of the Intercept. Sources usually do not know and cannot reasonably be expected to know how to protect themselves.
Indeed. But these are all low-cost, low security approaches, as more sophisticated watermarks exist. What you want to do is manually copy the text by typing it in again if you want to be really sure. Even OCRing it has risks as some watermarks can survive that.
The really bad thing is that the yellow dots are a really old and well-known security measure introduced with digital color copiers to allow the tracing of counterfeit paper money to the machine it was printed on.
I agree that it will not stop. As long as decent people are around, information that the government would keep secret to hide its dirty laundry will get leaked. Fortunately, no government in history has ever managed to get rid of decent people, despite most of them having tried.
The worst thing is not only that the Intercept was exceptionally careless, the worst thing is that this specific attack technique has been known for decades. It is used in color-printers to detect what machine paper-money (e.g.) was copied or printed on. My guess is this use here was just a side-effect.
Lets hope the Intercept fixes their act and goes back to manual copying (i.e. typing it in) for things where their sources really need to be protected.
Now, if they had removed the telemetry entirely and let me truly turn off shit like Cortana, the Windows Store, the forced updates, etc., AND respect that decision and (and not default it back to on after each update I do choose to install), then I'd care.
Same here. As it is Win10 must still be regarded as malware, and this edition does not change that.
Isn't MS that company that tried to replace NTFS for something like 20 years now and has constantly failed because they do not have what it takes to design and implement a reliable and well-performing filesystem? Might be a good idea to stay far away from anything they do in the filesystem-space.
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The fascinating thing is that apparently "terrorism" originally means a government that keeps its population in fear. I guess May wants back to that.
As far as I remember, emulation is not covered by the patents anyways, as an instruction-set is basically an API. Does anybody know whether this is accurate?
Alternatively, there are also spark-type detonators and ones that basically pump so much energy into a wire it basically blows up. But unless you need a very precise detonation time, a slow thermal detonator will work reliably and these can be made for any voltage by any halfway competent tinkerer. Somebody that is willing to blow themselves up could also use a classical fuse-and-match setup.
There really is no way to prevent this. Fortunately, the suicidal/homicidal maniacs that do things like this are rare. The problem with what the TSA does here is that it gives further validation to these idiots, by further creating a David&Goliath-like situation. Hence these supposed "countermeasures" may well make terrorist attacks more likely.
Or if you want voltage, there are also 12V batteries that are a lot smaller than 9V batteries and they are 8 button-style cells in there.
Indeed. These people are completely messed up and do not know it. Probably the only way to exceed "deeply stupid" is "deeply religious".
A 9V battery does not deliver more power than an AA cell. It delivers less. (AA alkaline cell: 1.5V@0.38A = .57W, AAA alkaline cell: 1.5V @0.3A = 0.5W, 9V alkaline cell: 9V@0.05A = 0.45W, all taken from Varta datasheets for fast discharge currents.) A 9V battery delivers more voltage, which in times of cheap, low-input voltage capable and super efficient (90% efficienty) step-up converters means exactly nothing. Also, depending on detonator-type, you can detonate with 1.5V directly.
The TSA has stepped from merely ridiculously incompetent to fully incompetent.
Well, the base assumption is that threatening people enough and punishing them makes them into good people. This is a fundamentalist religious idea. It does not work at all in actual reality, but fundamentalists are incapable of understanding cause-effect relationships or that their ideas and methods may not work.
No, our justice system is more about revenge than anything else.
Indeed. That is also why it has no positive effect in crime.
I don't think so. Unless they are massively stupid, Wall Street traders and politicians do not get sent to prison.
You are confused. "The Law" is not a description of "right" and "wrong".
Oh, this one was clearly naive both about what she leaked and how to do it. That does not negate the motivation.
That _is_ a possibility. But covering up a false-flag operation like this is difficult. I would say it was naivety on her side. At 25, most people do not have a good grasp of what is important and what is not.
That is not reliable. You still need to clean them, ideally by typing them in manually. But that way you at least do not have to print them for the purpose of leaking as making photos from LCDs works pretty well with high-resolution cameras.
Discussing the tacking dost has merit, as it is something anybody interested in IT security should know. But I agree, her primary mistakes were a) printing it without a credible cover-story for that and b) emailing the Intercept from her _work_ computer. Each one of these would have been enough to catch her fast.
Bad security will bite you, sometimes badly. That is what happened here. Of course, her primary purpose is achieved and laudable, but she will have to pay an unreasonably high price for doing the right thing.
She should have made a manual screenshot with a camera. (I have done that for "locked down" customer systems when I needed to document things. With authorization, of course.) Then this should have been copied by manually typing it in again. I guess people are just too stuck in their regular ideas about "workflow".
A shame, but at least this way future leakers will be more careful.
Moral: Never publish an analog copy made by an untrusted device. There is just too much unused bandwidth that can be used to embed something.
The mistake is not hers. The mistake is on the side of the Intercept. Sources usually do not know and cannot reasonably be expected to know how to protect themselves.
Indeed. But these are all low-cost, low security approaches, as more sophisticated watermarks exist. What you want to do is manually copy the text by typing it in again if you want to be really sure. Even OCRing it has risks as some watermarks can survive that.
The really bad thing is that the yellow dots are a really old and well-known security measure introduced with digital color copiers to allow the tracing of counterfeit paper money to the machine it was printed on.
I agree that it will not stop. As long as decent people are around, information that the government would keep secret to hide its dirty laundry will get leaked. Fortunately, no government in history has ever managed to get rid of decent people, despite most of them having tried.
The worst thing is not only that the Intercept was exceptionally careless, the worst thing is that this specific attack technique has been known for decades. It is used in color-printers to detect what machine paper-money (e.g.) was copied or printed on. My guess is this use here was just a side-effect.
Lets hope the Intercept fixes their act and goes back to manual copying (i.e. typing it in) for things where their sources really need to be protected.
Oops, answered to the wrong posting. Sorry.
You seem to have missed that a lot more than this was stolen.
Now, if they had removed the telemetry entirely and let me truly turn off shit like Cortana, the Windows Store, the forced updates, etc., AND respect that decision and (and not default it back to on after each update I do choose to install), then I'd care.
Same here. As it is Win10 must still be regarded as malware, and this edition does not change that.
Isn't MS that company that tried to replace NTFS for something like 20 years now and has constantly failed because they do not have what it takes to design and implement a reliable and well-performing filesystem? Might be a good idea to stay far away from anything they do in the filesystem-space.
Yes. But sockets are meaningless these days. Just like MS to use a historic metric here.