Interesting Links for 18-08-2015

[andrewducker]

• Evolution 101: No, an Octopus is not an Alien
  • (tags: octopus aliens science evolution OhForFucksSake viaCipherGoth )
• Linux "suspend" functionality seems to be remarkably broken
  • (tags: linux technology computers power usb )
• Now we can read burned books, by examining the ashes.
  • (tags: books fire history xrays viaTheWeaselKing )
• What's your least

Comments

[cartesiandaemon]

I remember thinking, "wow, I wonder how they gained access to the machines". It literally didn't occur to me it would have had wifi.

Presumably, at some point, there was a maximally insecure system. It's not a Commodore 64, since it didn't have wifi by default and interfacing to it at all is quite obscure. It's not windows 10, since that has at least some security.

Is it Windows XP? Unpatched? With WiFi enabled? And username "Admin" And WEP with encryption key "abcde"? And the voting results stored in MS Access. If someone came to me and asked "what's the most insecure system you can imagine" that might well be my answer. It combines all the weaknesses of being insecure, with a tiny veneer of superficial security that someone completely untrained might not notice the problem, with being widely available so it's easy to guess.

Even if someone had never used a computer, and you asked them "Should we use microsoft? Or something else?" and "Should you be able to access the computer from across the street? Or only by physically being present at it?" they might be able to guess the answers...

And if they came to may and said "what's the most insecure system you can think of we can try to sell to election officials" I would never have dreamed of trying to sell an off-the-shelf operating system with wifi, I would have assumed that was MUCH too obvious. I'd have thought it was quite likely that was a federal crime...

It's like, you build a road bridge out of tissue paper. Is it the wrong brand? Maybe. Are there two many arches? Maybe. But you have bigger problems. There's no way to fix it. You need to build the bridge out of something that can support cars. And find the original vendor and arrest them for something.

[andrewducker]

I agree with all of this :-)

[theweaselking]

Not XP. ME, or 98. You don't want to go back to 95 because it didn't default networking-on, but 98 and ME were way easier.