Comment Hot tip? (Score 1) 215
Where is the "hot tip on how to know if your own machines have been owned"?
Chimpanzees are not human. They don't think like humans, they don't behave like humans, they aren't physically built like humans. Of all these things, probably the most important is that they don't think like humans.
The point is not whether chimps are human; it's whether they are persons.
Where I live (British Columbia), our provincial government has contracted a US multi-national to maintain our public health records. This caused considerable controversy at the time, including an unsuccessful court challenge.
It should come as no surprise to any Canadian that the US has access to their health records when we're paying a US company to maintain them.
$50 million in tax money could have paid for a whole lot of open source software development
I'm a staunch advocate of open source software, but for military applications? Would it be wise to share your military's tools with every other country on the planet? Would that not be assisting your enemies?
The title should read:
Researchers Prevent Humans From Cracking New GOTCHA Password Scheme
Look, I'm just pointing out a lesser-known resource that's available for people who might be interested. I'm not interested in partaking in yet another tedious bout of Windows bashing on Slashdot. Others have already mentioned that Windows is not the only operating system to be exploited by maliciously crafted data files.
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Using EMET provides additional layers of protection against this kind of thing.
So does not running Windows.
Ah, the predictable refrain of a MAC/Linux fan...
If Microsoft has additional layers of security for Windows, perhaps they should make them part of Windows.
I think in the case of EMET, it is not part of Windows by default because it uses techniques that may not be compatible with every Windows application. It also requires a bit more technical knowledge to deploy than, say, antivirus software.
How can it even be a crime to molest a "virtual" person?
If it is a crime, then shouldn't we be informing the police about all the virtual people being murdered everyday in video games?
Everything described in the article - BIOS-level rootkits, cross-platform malware, infection via USB, acoustic transmission of data - is entirely plausible, but for the one assertion that audio transmission was used as the primary means of infection in some cases. For the target machine to receive and act on data sent via high-frequency sound waves, there would have to be software already running on the target to listen for and decode the transmission. Unless one assumes that such software is already present in all the affected operating systems (i.e. they are all backdoored), this cannot be the initial method of infection.
Given that Dragos is known to be neither a fool or a hoaxer, I expect he was talking about audio communication between already-infected computers, and that Ars simply overstated this aspect in their article.
This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered french toast in the renaissance. - Steven Wright, comedian
