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Comment Re:Great observational skills (Score 1) 99

Guess what, humans are essentially the only ones who can't tell when bad weather is coming.

Conversely: humans are the only ones who can tell that not only is bad weather coming, but the probability of how much it will precipitate on a given area, and how long it will last and how high the winds will be, etc., etc., etc.

We just don't do it with some built in internal sensor ... yet.

Submission + - Hackers Used Nasty "SMB Worm" Attack Toolkit Against Sony

wiredmikey writes: Just hours after the FBI and President Obama called out North Korea as being responsible for the destructive cyber attack against Sony Pictures, US-CERT issued an alert describing the primary malware used by the attackers, along with indicators of compromise.

While not mentioning Sony by name in its advisory, instead referring to the victim as a “major entertainment company,” US-CERT said that the attackers used a Server Message Block (SMB) Worm Tool to conduct the attacks.

According to the advisory, the SMB Worm Tool is equipped with five components, including a Listening Implant, Lightweight Backdoor, Proxy Tool, Destructive Hard Drive Tool, and Destructive Target Cleaning Tool.

US-CERT also provided a list of the Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), which include C2 IP addresses, Snort signatures for the various components, host based Indicators, potential YARA signatures to detect malware binaries on host machines, and recommended security practices and tactical mitigations.

Submission + - FBI Says North Korea Behind Sony Hack (securityweek.com)

wiredmikey writes: North Korea was responsible for a "destructive" cyber attack on Sony Pictures, the FBI said Friday, warning it would hunt down the perpetrators and make them pay. "Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior," the FBI said in a statement, adding it would "identify, pursue, and impose costs and consequences on individuals, groups, or nation states who use cyber means to threaten the United States or US interests.

The FBI said the attack involves the use of malware and rendered thousands of Sony Pictures computers "inoperable," forcing the company to take its entire network offline. "The FBI now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions," it said.

As Jeffrey Carr points out in a recent blog, you should always demand proof before believing the U.S. Government on North Korea and Sony: "Demand to see the evidence, not scrubbed "indicators of compromise" that can't be validated," Carr said. "Be aware that the FBI, Secret Service, NSA, CIA, and DHS rarely agree with each other, that commercial cyber security companies are in the business of competing with each other, and that "cyber intelligence" is frequently the world's biggest oxymoron."

Comment Are You Joking? (Score 3, Interesting) 182

> It is not known how the US government has determined that North Korea is the culprit

Of course it's known. The same way they established that Iraq had chemical weapons. The method is known as "because we say so".

Are you joking? I thought it was well established that there were chemical weapons in Iraq we just only found weapons designed by us, built by Europeans in factories in Iraq. And therefore the US didn't trumpet their achievements. In the case of Iraqi chemical weapons, the US established that Iraq had chemical weapons not because they said so but because Western countries had all the receipts.

Comment Re:Fire all the officers? (Score 2) 515

We love to rag on cops, but they do a dangerous job...

I keep hearing this over and over, but you know what jobs are more dangerous?

  1. 1. Logging workers
  2. 2. Fishers and related fishing workers
  3. 3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers
  4. 4. Roofers
  5. 5. Structural iron and steel workers
  6. 6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors
  7. 7. Electrical power-line installers and repairers
  8. 8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers
  9. 9. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
  10. 10. Construction laborers

There may be more, that's just the top 10 in the US.

Source

Comment Is Bloomberg the New Buzzfeed? (Score 5, Informative) 461

What the hell is up with the title of this article? Nowhere did I find any indication of anyone being "scared" or "frightened." On the contrary the article presents contradicting information:

Still, the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group representing America’s investor-owned utilities, recently announced that its members will help to encourage electric vehicle use by spending $50 million annually to buy plug-in service trucks and invest in car-charging technology. “Advancing plug-in electric vehicles and technologies is an industry priority,” said EEI President Thomas Kuhn.

Uh, "advancing as a priority" is actually the opposite of fear.

Southern California Edison is planning to spend about $9.2 billion through 2017 to allow the two-way flow of electricity on its system, said Edison International CEO Ted Craver. “We are certainly big supporters of electric transportation,” Craver said. He added: “That electric car isn’t just going to stay at home. It’s going to go other places. It’s going to need to get charged in other places. And I think our ability to provide that glue for all those things that are going to plug into that network is really how we see our core business.”

Again, sounds positive. Actually the only negative thing in the article is that electric cars might cause a load our infrastructure isn't ready for -- to the contrary a solar charging station in the home would mitigate this. Is the new journalism format to title your articles with a thesis directly contrary to all the actual evidence you're about to present?

Comment Re: Sad? Saddest? (Score 3, Interesting) 528

No fuck that. Fuck the higher ups and every step of the ladder that supports them. They are all responsible.

That's the kind of thinking that causes people to turn into terrorists with all of the associated be-headings of completely innocent people and other moronic actions. It's fucking stupid. Stop it.

You don't have perfect knowledge and you never will, so quit acting like you do.

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