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Comment Snail Mail (Score 1) 210

by muphin (#47901191) Attached to: Turning the Tables On "Phone Tech Support" Scammers
Has anyone actually social-engineered them to provide postal details.
e.g
me: you want me to install __?
them: yes plz sir, please download and install!
me: how about i just send you the money to come and fix it, i take it you're in india.... where should i send the $500 cheque?
them: please wait wile i talk with my supervisor
them: sorry we cannot do that, do you have a credit card....
me: sorry i only have a cheque, i'm a 70 year old retired investment banker... i have no need for a credit card, i can draw up a bank cheque if you like, isnt $500 enough... ok how much do you need, i never deal with my computer so i dont know how much these things cost... $1,500?
them: ok let me talk to my manager again please
them: ok, as your computer is majourly infected, it will be very expensive to repair, please send $5,000 to.........
me: ok, i'll send it tomorrow, thank you.
them: we will call you once we receive the money, hangs up.
me: calls interpol with the details.

Submission + - POLL: How useful are QR Codes?

Submitted by muphin
muphin writes: a) easy when mobile
b) never pay attention tot hem
c) sometimes useful
d) useless
e) use them all the time

Submission + - Scientists take picture of quantum cat (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: These images of a cardboard cutout of a cat were made with light that never touched the object. The technique works a bit like holography, in which a light beam that shines through an object overlaps and interferes with an identical one that passes by it, and that interference is used to encode a 3D image. Besides being really cool, the technique makes it possible to make an image of an object using a color of light that would normally pass through the thing.

Submission + - Hackers are having a "Field Day" with Software Vulnerabilities (heimdalsecurity.com)

Submitted by amvlad
amvlad writes: As you may already know, taking advantage of software vulnerabilities is one of the most commonly used attack vectors on computer systems and accounts for about 40-60% of attacks depending on data sources.

Unfortunately, software vulnerability patching is far too slow and leaves you at risk: https://heimdalsecurity.com/bl...

Submission + - Bioengineered Opiates Don't Require Poppy Plants

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Opiate drugs are on their way to being fully synthesized. Drug makers will no longer have to rely on a plant, the same basic organism that's delivered narcotics to humans since the Neolithic, for the most basic raw materials of opiate painkillers.
Fields of flowering poppies are out, and bioengineered microorganisms are in, at least according to a new paper published in Nature Chemical Biology, which describes a new method of producing opiates with help from a genetically tweaked version of regular baker's yeast.

Submission + - Top secret firm awarded contract by Russian government to expose Tor browser use (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Steve Patterson
Steve Patterson writes: Downloaded 150 million times in the last year, the surveillance-evading Tor browser alarms both Russia’s Federal Security Service and the NSA.

On Friday Russia’s Ministry of the Interior, the MVD awarded a contract for 3.9 million ($110 thousand) to an unnamed Russian contractor with top security clearance to uncloak Russian users of the surveillance evading Tor browser. This is the Russia’s Federal Security Service’s FSB response to the surge of Russian Tor users from 80 thousand to 200 thousand due to the restrictions by the Russian government on free use of the internet such as the new law that requires that all Russian bloggers register.

Submission + - Bitcoins are taxable in Australia (ato.gov.au)

Submitted by smee2
smee2 writes: The Australian Tax Office's view is that Bitcoin is neither money nor a foreign currency, and the supply of bitcoin is not a financial supply for goods and services tax (GST) purposes. Bitcoin is, however, an asset for capital gains tax (CGT) purposes.

Transacting with bitcoins is akin to a barter arrangement, with similar tax consequences.

Submission + - Surprise! TSA lied!

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Does this make you feel safer? The TSA has now admitted that it had allowed illegal immigrants to fly without valid identification, something it had strongly denied when news sources revealed it last month.

[A newly discovered TSA] letter confirms that illegal aliens are being allowed to board planes using a Notice to Appear form (also known as I-862), as [union border patrol official] Darby revealed in July. Hector Garza, a spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) told Darby that Notice to Appear forms can “easily be reproduced or manipulated on any home computer. The Notice to Appear form has no photo, anyone can make one and manipulate one. They do not have any security features, no watermark, nothing. They are simply printed on standard copy paper based on the information the illegal alien says is the truth.”

So, while the TSA routinely sexually abuses American citizens while demanding they provide photo id, the agency has had policies that would allow an illegal immigrant, with unknown background and who has come from outside the country, to board planes using a simple form that anyone can photocopy.

Does anyone but me see something significantly wrong with this picture? Didn’t Congress originally create the TSA to prevent foreign nationals from boarding planes to hijack them?

The TSA is a joke imposed on us by our elected officials and approved of by too many Americans because it allows them to make believe we are doing something about terrorism. Other elected officials and TSA managers and employees than use the agency as a weapon to obtain power and crush the freedom of Americans. In that context, these actions by the TSA, including lying about their policies, make complete sense.

Submission + - Heartbleed to blame for Community Health Systems breach (csoonline.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Heartbleed vulnerability is the cause of the data breach at Community Health Systems (CHS), which resulted in 4.5 million records (containing patient data) being compromised. According to a blog post from TrustedSec, the attackers targeted a vulnerable Juniper router and obtained credentials, which allowed them access to the network's VPN.

Comment Common Security Practise (Score 1) 387

by muphin (#47268255) Attached to: Code Spaces Hosting Shutting Down After Attacker Deletes All Data
I believe the owner of the EC2 had 1 single account (root account) when he should have setup 2 factor authentication for such an account and then created separate accounts, this would have prevented his issue using the security policies AWS has in place....
AWS is always targeted and being reliant on a single account for security is negligent.
So you people out there that use AWS, PLEASE don't use the default account, secure it with 2 factor and then create individual accounts for the services, using security policies to allow communication between each other. - from an AWS certified engineer :)

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