Bonum Certa Men Certa

Insecurity Through Obscurity

Locked girl



Summary: Windows renders E-mail chaotic and the U.S. electrical grid gets cracked

Nothing beats a brand-new explanation from Microsoft itself about the impact of its poor security skills, which continue to this date.

More than 97% of all e-mails sent over the net are unwanted, according to a Microsoft security report.


This report from Microsoft probably neglects to mention that the vast majority of SPAM is spewed from Microsoft Windows botnets. And speaking of poor security (inherent in secret code), here is another new report, among many similar ones.

Chinese and Russian cyberspies have hacked into the U.S. electrical grid and have left behind software that could be used to interfere with the system, a report said Wednesday.


The original report comes from the Wall Street Journal (thus requiring subscription), but the message is clear. This facility runs a legacy proprietary system that experts have warned about for quite some time.

Here ends another daily lesson about security and obscurity. They have a reverse relationship. There is evidence that shows GNU/Linux to be more secure.

"Two security researchers have developed a new technique that essentially bypasses all of the memory protection safeguards in the Windows Vista operating system..."

--Dennis Fisher



"It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into computing networks."

--Jim Allchin, Microsoft

Recent Techrights' Posts

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We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
 
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some remaining links for today
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SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
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They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
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Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
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the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
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To me it seems like GNOME is moving backward, not forward, mostly removing features and functionality rather than adding any
HowTos Are Moving to Tux Machines
HowTos (or howtos) are very important in their own right, but they can easily distract from the news and howtos are usually quite timeless or time-insensitive
Proprietary Panda: Don't Be Misled by the Innocent Looks of Ubuntu (and Microsoft Canonical)
Given the number of disgruntled employees who leave Canonical and given Ubuntu's trend of just copying whatever IBM does in Fedora, is there still a good reason to choose Ubuntu?
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Will companies that exploited unpaid volunteers ever be held accountable for loss of life, caused by burnout, excessive work, or poverty?
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Links for the day
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Links for the day
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by FSF
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IBM Neglecting Users of GNU/Linux on Laptops and Desktops
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Personal Identification on the 'Modern' Net
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
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Rust is a whole bunch of hype.
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History matters
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Git is working, IPFS is working, IRC is working, Gemini is working
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Scope-wise, many stories fit neatly into both sites, but posting the same twice makes no sense logistically
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