All's Fair in Love and Nuclear Weapons

No one saw this coming: there's a flaw in the Google smart speaker that will allow it to be hacked. Also SQLite and Chromium-based browsers. 

While we're mentioning a few of my favorites, a Faceyspaces photo API bug exposed photos of 6.8 million users. Developers could have gotten access to the pictures you didn't post (yet), including the ones with the donkey. I lost count of how many FB f-ups there were in the last week.  By all means, keep posting. Enjoy!

Reminder to make backups of all your important information. It's great policy, plus if you get nailed with malware or ransomware, you can restore from your backups. Unlike most of the companies who got hit with it thus far.



This year's Worst Password list is out. 

1. 123456  (2nd year in a row!)
2. password
3. 123456789
4. 12345678
5. 12345
6. 111111
7. 1234567
8. sunshine  (wtf?)
9. qwerty
10. iloveyou
11. princess
12. admin
13. welcome
14. 666666
15. abc123
16. football
17. 123123
18. monkey
19. 654321
20. !@#$%^&*
21. charlie
22. aa123456
23. Donald
24. password1
25. I'm not typing all 50

When you're done picking out one of them, make sure you write it down on a yellow sticky and put it on your monitor, or under your keyboard. This is what we call sarcasm, based upon being in desktop services way too long. Not anymore!

misFortune 500

The largest companies in the world have an average of 500 servers and devices accessible from the Internet - and many leave thousands of systems open to attack. 

It's only a matter of time until the Fortune 500 and government have to buy their own docs on the dark web.

• A Playboy model has been thrown in jail after posing naked at the Vatican. I think this is Fake News. No one would notice a grown woman at the Vatican.

California Uber Faultus

You'd never believe this, but scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are developing a tool to identify "hate speech" on social media.

In other news, social media scientists are developing a tool to identify "hate speech" detectors.

Speaking of Berkeley, a delivery robot burst into flames at UC Berkeley. It was after hearing about the tool to identify "hate speech".  As if I could make up anything better, students held a candlelight vigil for it. Apparently there was nothing to be outraged about for those few minutes.

Don't go to Berkeley: it's way too silly.

• Man was not meant to write with a mouse. If you don't believe me, open any paint/graphics program and try to produce text with your mouse. No cheating, by which I mean no drinking.

Cruel and Unusual:

A poacher's sentence includes repeated viewings of Bambi.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit said it regrets that a priest at a teen's funeral questioned whether he would get to heaven after killing himself. 

Where do they get these people? At least they admitted it.

By the time Ash Wednesday rolls around, Catholics will have a permanent red spot from hitting themselves in the head when this stuff happens. Much like America, you guys need better people up top.

Dear lefty

• Undercover Officer Fudge Reinhold asks if I'm circumcised.
• How were Phoebe Cates' boobs up close?

THAT explains a lot:

Frequent sex associated with greater enjoyment of life for men.

Oh yeah... but not women.

For women, frequent kissing, petting, fondling, and feeling emotionally close to their partner was associated with higher enjoyment of life.

If you think about it, what women enjoy can lead to what men enjoy: Win-Win!

• I'm no linguist, but the phrase you don't want to hear when you're driving your Tunnel Boring Machine underneath the streets of Dusseldorf, is "Das is not goot."

It's almost a race to see what's going to do us in.
The Department of Defense Inspector General found multiple flaws in missile defense system cybersecurity. There weren't enough 8" floppies to keep them in operation.

I suggest they ask the aliens (the ones in the ships, not the ones trying to enter the country illegally). Ok, maybe not the aliens... whatever flew the ships on 2 different occasions over missile bases and caused all sorts of havoc. Maybe they have something for us on the defensive side.




If I understand this correctly, the Russians messed with social media to elect Trump, specifically targeting African Americans. African Americans are rightfully pissed, and have organized a Log Out of Facebook day. I have requested a meeting with the head of African Americans, Hillary Clinton, to discuss logging out of Facebook permanently.  This would be the second group, after liberal educated whites, who think black people are stupid. I think anybody who votes based upon social media is stupid.

• Bohemian Rhapsody is the number one movie and song in the country.
• Queen continues to tour, with Adam Lambert singing. Somewhere in heaven, Freddie's looking down, seeing Adam, and saying, "Nah - too gay."

A Twitter bug let unauthorized apps get access to DMs (Direct Messages).

These are the private messages exchanged between two or more people. Twitter, like Faceyspaces, is stupid on top of cesspool.

Dear lefty

• Joe Officeworker, of Anybusiness, USA, asks what's wrong with 123456 as a password
• Dear Dummy: Go back to your desk and click on some random links.

Total Computer Destruction: The Meltdown of Spectre - URGENT

By now you have heard about the earthquake just south of Berkeley, California. This blog post has nothing to do with it, other than to wish residents well.

Just discovered are two majorly serious bugs with Intel CPUs. Since Intel isn't going to issue replacement CPUs (the main computer chip), fixes must be made in software(s). I'd be pissed too.

Warning: This is Major Shit

I'm not going into what exactly happened, whose fault it was (rhymes with Schwintel), and who discovered them. You don't care. I don't understand it. The important part is that it's being fixed, hopefully rapidly.

WINDOWS

You're in luck. Microsoft has issued a patch.
Whether or not you received the patch depends on your update settings. I believe the default is to download and apply patches automatically, so if you haven't changed that setting, you should be ok. If you have changed that setting, initiate "Looking for Patch" sequence (force it to update).

You may take a performance hit with this update. Tough luck.

WINDOWS SERVER

Microsoft patch is  out but your AV vendor has to set a special key.

Here's a powershell tool to check whether the system has been patched. If you don't know what powershell is, you never read this and I was never here.

Symantec Endpoint customers: if you install the MS patches you may experience BSODs currently. Do not manually push patch or make registry key for it, Engine update tomorrow to fix.

LINUX 

Check for the patch.

MAC

There is a patch. I can't tell you much more than that. Check on Duckduckgo.com (instead of Google, which tracks you).

CHROME

Read this article for information on Chrome and Chromium browsers, as well as browsers built on Chrome.

====================================

Just for fun, here's the rest of today's exciting IT news...


There is simply no excuse not to be using a password manager. Do NOT have your browser remember your login and password. Do not write them on a sticky and put it under your keyboard, on in a little spiral notebook, or on a piece of paper push pinned to the noteboard in your kitchen.

Symantec has discovered Android malware that steals Uber credentials and covers it up with the use of deep links.

Fake android security tool on Google Play bombard users with ads and track location.

Hundreds of GPS location tracking services leave user data open to hackers. Trackmageddon (I did not make that up). Stop using location tracking.

247,000 DHS employees are affected by a data breach. These are the people and this is the infrastructure keeping us 'safe'.


In more social news....

Artificial intelligence pilot program will listen to social media for suicidal or self-harm thoughts. This comes from Canada, and is both interesting and frightening. This same technology will be used to monitor all sorts of information once it gets out. Marketers will love this to death.

Over in England, where things are getting weird(er), a person who named and shamed two rape victims was charged with two counts of publishing names of sexual assault victims and two counts of harassment. She was jailed and is now out on bail. Publishing names has been illegal since 2003 and is illegal in other countries too.

At times like these, I truly appreciate being an American, because we have a First Amendment. People in England are being penalized for saying words online. If you call someone a name, or heaven forbid, disparage their race or country of origin, that's also illegal. You simply may not offend anybody. It's creepy. This is also the country with one public spy camera per sixteen citizens. Although the US has a Fourth Amendment, cameras are starting to proliferate. Bad Things<tm> tend to get tested and established in Australia and England before they infect the rest of the world.

Offline, as if there is such a thing, finds police arresting people for public disturbance. Public Disturbance seems to encompass anything the policeman doesn't like at the moment, particularly cursing. We can all be glad that this is one of their most serious crimes. Also covered is being drunk, yelling, and calling the police names.

This is abhorrent to US citizens (but only if they find out because the Kardashians mention it or football players protest it).

We might not like what you say, but support your right to say it.

You're No Fun Anymore

The US Navy and Marines are cracking down on nude photo sharing. Yes, this can no longer go on without permission of the person photographed nude. Apparently this regulation makes it more illegal to post nudes, as it was already illegal under "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." Kinda like hate speech.

Which brings me to my next thought: do the armed forces only hire gentlemen? What about ladies? Do we want an armed forces that only hires gentlemen - or would it be like Britain, where they apologize for bombing countries? "Oh, terribly sorry... our planes seemed to have dropped bombs on your factories."

No, I don't want gentlemen - I want rude, crude, lewd, and bright fighters.

• When the lovely folks from AntiFa peacefully attacked Trump supporters with violence and bike locks, the Reddit Detective Squad went into action to identify the culprits.  What did they turn up?  Diablo Valley College and SFSU professor Eric Clanton.  From the site: His work in political philosophy also centers on mass incarceration and the prison system. Yes, a college professor assaulted 'the enemy' with heavy metal. I don't remember these classes in college....
• Rioting 101: how to dress. Will this face mask make me look fat? What is the correct shade of black for my skin? Dreads: are they right for me?
• Rioting 201: weapons. Bicycle locks, Hyundais, and small anvils. Demonstration by the Acme Weapons Company.
• Rioting 302: when caught, how to blame Trump for your actions, the weather, and how your free speech has been eroded by being prosecuted for assault. Releasing a statement to the press about how the whole thing has been caused by the White Male Patriarchy.
• Remember, California: all of this would not be possible without your tax dollars!

A 19 year old pair of McDonalds dipping sauces sold for more than 11,500 pounds on Ebay. My calculations put that figure at $47.533 grams but the article specifies $14,700. Believe whichever you choose. Say what you want about the economy, but someone has too much money.

• Berkeley campus on lockdown after loose pages from Wall Street Journal found on park bench.  Ok, this is from The Onion, but it's not far from reality.

In today's Internet of Things news, there is an internet-connected juicer. No, really. It has a brand new feature, in that it doesn't work when the internet is down.

• The local Fox morning show, a favorite target of ThermionicEmissions, features a local kid playing hackeysack. The show is never short of useful information.

In Marshall news, he's headed to the surgeon for his (hopefully) last post-op visit. He gets his Cone of Shame removed, which should make things easier on him and his parents. It didn't take him long to get used to it, by which I mean walking around, smashing into things and knocking other things over, then circling back to do it again.

Now we have this thing I call The Doggie Dance, largely because I can't think of any other names at this moment.  Whenever he wants something, he whines. Unfortunately the same whine can mean "I want to go outside," "I'm hungry", or "I'm thirsty" and you have to try each of them to figure out what he wants.

Dog whines. I walk to door and ask if he wants to go outside. He stares at me and doesn't move. I sit down.

Dog whines. I walk to door and ask if he wants to go outside. Again, he stares at me. Again I sit down.

Dog whines impatiently.  Oh, it must be food. Fill bowl. Dog eats food. I sit down.

Dog whines and walks to door. Apparently he has to do things in a certain order. Doggie OCD? Don't ask me. And I'm not asking the vet, as we've already bought her a Mercedes and sent her entire family on a cruise to the Bahamas.

As I sit back down, Dog Barks and whines like he's being tortured. This means "I'm ready to come back inside."

By the time I'm temporarily sitting again, he's satisfied that he's caused the maximum amount of carnage and grief possible at the hour, he goes upstairs, bashes through the bedroom door, and has a nap on the bed. Who runs this house anyway?

• If you use LinkedIn and updated your iDevice app, you got a little surprise popup that asked you if you wanted to make your data available to nearby Bluetooth users, even when you're not using the app. This was a problem for anyone who watches what pops up, especially as this update was just a fix. LinkedIn, owned by a small firm called Microsoft, apologized immediately and is working on a fix. Because I want my phone to ping random strangers near me so I can talk to their owners of the joys of LinkedIn.

you are welcome to save this but do NOT tell anyone where it came from

Happy Monday is an Oxymoron

Why is our president and some of his staff still using a private email server? Or are they? Trump and some of his staff still have accounts on a RNC server that may or may not have been hacked, depending on what day of the week this is. Oddly enough, this is the same server used by the Bush administration to communicate during the Iraq war (let us pray... that it has been upgraded since then). Professional liar and former and present CIA head James Comey claims there was limited access to a non-used server.

Security experts are also worried about the president's use of an Android phone. The reason given is that he could be a target on insecure wifi. Yes, any of us can be a target - that's why no one should use any old wifi at any old coffee shop or at the airport. Use a VPN if you absolutely must access these services. Trump's own staff would like him to turn in the phone, especially as concerns Twitter.

Speaking as an alleged Security Dude, these people have a point. Virtually no one bothers to secure their phone, including alleged Security Professionals. Even the previous president had a custom-secured cell phone. Is the device encrypted so no one can get into it? Is there a password or PIN code that automatically locks the device? Is it accessing a secure system? Is there any actual secure information on the phone in the first place?  I'd prefer, as you would expect, the device be locked down to hell and back.. you know.... like mine. Even if there's nothing interesting there, less to attack is always better.

• Over in Iraq, the Islamic State's chief executioner, who has beheaded more than 100 people, has been knifed to death. I believe this is what they call irony. Or just desserts.

Google found and quarantined some brand new malware on a customer's android phone. Yay, they caught the malware!  Now stop for a second and think about this.... Google remotely accessed the phone to quarantine the malware. While this capability isn't news to some of us, it should be news to everybody. iDevice users, don't get all smug - your phone can be remote-accessed by Apple too. In fact at one point, programs 'disappeared'. E-books have also gone bye-bye. It's a PITA, but possible to disconnect from Google (it's beyond the scope of this paragraph). The other message here is to be very careful what you download from Google Play. Since there's very little to tell you whether the program is clean, avoid programs with few reviews, few downloads, non-English or broken English text or reviews, and authors you don't know. Stick with the majors. Also stay away from cleaners/memory boosters/speed boosters; they're not needed on android anymore.

• Ransomware knocked seventy percent of the Washington, DC, spy surveillance cameras ahead of the inauguration. Some cameras had more than one piece of malware. The ransomware was introduced via a spam email that some high-functioning, security-minded government worker opened. This affected a server with all sorts of documents. The fix to ransomware is to have good, frequent backups, of which it appears there are none. Perhaps we will be spared some aspects of the Security State by its own incompetence.

Cocker Spaniels are notorious for separation anxiety, or at least the three rescue cockers we adopted have been. Marshall prefers his people around the house at all times. I had to go somewhere today and he saw me put on my coat. He sat down and gave me this look. They have big, expressive eyes to begin with, and when they're upset, you know it. Marshall was upset. Small wonder I don't like to leave the house... poor little guy. When I got home, he was anchored to me.

Speaking of Marshall, the little darling continued his weekly visit with the vet for his ear infection, which has been going on forever. Healthy all his life, he has had problems since his cat died (grief-related illnesses?). Cockers are prone to ear problems due to their flaps and closed ear canals. The current diagnosis is antibiotic-resistant bacteria. They referred us to a Doggie Dermatologist. This little diversion cost $200, plus the new consultation. Even his parents have never seen a dermatologist.

guess who...

• How do you know when the driver in front of you is going to make a turn? His turn signal is not on.

Pasta: Yes, there's an app for that! I can't make the pasta until I charge my phone!

• Netgear routers have yet another flaw that would allow hackers to get into it remotely. Check to see if yours is listed. Disable remote administration regardless.

A popular new joke is that the Statue of Liberty is going to be deported. I suggest whoever gets it has to take the UN too.

• Yesterday we had sun, gloom, snow, and sun in the span of about an hour. This is not normal, even for here.

John Wetton, bassist and vocalist for King Crimson and Asia, lost his battle with cancer. He was 67.

• As if you didn't think I was totally tin foil hat, this should do it for you. You can be ultrasonically tracked while using cell phones, to build up a profile of you across devices. There is an android and a Chrome patch to disable it. My feeling is that if people can't hear the sound, the speaker in the phone can't put that high a frequency out. Apparently my feeling is incorrect. Further, I believe one can avoid this via turning off javascript, but time will tell.

Hey, I think I need some Magnums.

Magnum ice cream bars or Magnum large condoms?

I'm buying both to make it an extra special weekend.

• The People's Republic of Berkeley had to cancel a talk by a gay Jew who likes black guys the other night, due to rioting on campus. Yes, the tolerant students for free speech (only when it agrees with them), demanded the event be canceled. One of the ringleaders was ok with the violence and said it was 'self-defense'. So the people calling the speaker a nazi are themselves behaving like nazis. Students need to be protected from words. Remember when students protested war? Non-violently?
• Make no mistake, the students had every right to protest. Violence, however, is illegal and not the way to make one's point.
• The Associated Press and USA Today's coverage consisted of peaceful people marching with signs. There were fires, assaults with pipes, two groups protesting, an ATM smashing, cars damaged, and a live band.
• These Students of Public Relations who are essentially protesting Trump are doing a wonderful job of keeping him in office.
• The Berkeley Police ordered the students to disperse several times. They were extremely helpful in keeping order. Other police departments move in to restore order and stop further crimes. Why didn't this department?

A recent small study has revealed that black humor a sign of high intelligence. Finally-vindication!