Security News: Education, DDoS, Linksys, SpamAssassin Release...
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-20 17:39:11 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-20 17:39:11 UTC
Summary: Some security-related news of interest
-
The same applies to TrueCrypt and GPG — the more people who use these tools “the safer we all are,” Judd said. The NSA, for example, may notice an encrypted email and try to decrypt it, but there’s a possibility it may just include lunch plans, he said.
-
An Ars reader by the name of Jerry got a nasty surprise as he was browsing the contents of his external hard drive over the weekend—a mysterious text file warning him that he had been hacked thanks to a critical vulnerability in the Asus router he used to access the drive from various locations on his local network.
[...]
Taken together, the attacks are a sign that routers and other Internet-connected devices are being subject to the same in-the-wild attacks that have plagued PCs—and in some cases Macs—for years. Readers are advised to lock down their routers by installing any available firmware updates, changing any default passwords, and ensuring that remote administration, Cloud, and FTP options are set to off if they're not needed.
-
If you really hate spam, and you run your own e-mail servers, you'll be glad to know that Apache has released a new version of its award-winning, open-source anti-spam program SpamAssassin.
-
GoDaddy has acknowledged that one of its employees fell victim to a social engineering attack allowing a hacker to take over a customer’s domain names and eventually extort a coveted Twitter user name from him. PayPal, which the victim claimed also played a role in the attack, denied the accusations.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- [Video] Richard Stallman's Talk in Sweden, Attended by Nearly 700 People, is Now Online
- The Web page is in Swedish, but the talk is in English
-
- Confirmed: Very Close Friend of Bill Gates and Microsoft's Biggest Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold Flew the Lolita Express (a Gateway to Pedophilia), According to Bill Gates-Sponsored Seattle Times
- There is no speculation or any "conspiracy theories" here;' those are verified facts
- Gemini Links 25/10/2025: "The Highest Leader of The Global Civil Society Community", SSL Certificates Causing Bitrot
- Links for the day
- Links 25/10/2025: Target Layoffs and "Shutdown Sparks 85% Increase in US Government Cyberattacks"
- Links for the day
- "Big Data" Was a Big Lie
- Remember "Big Data"? Remember "Data Scientists"...?
- statCounter Has Been Broken for a Long Time
- Considering the huge proportion of Web requests that come from LLM bots (more so this past year or two), statCounter may struggle to justify the operating costs
- Techrights Anniversary Party on November 7th
- Let us know if you need any accommodation-related arrangements
- Trends That Must Alarm Microsoft and Mozilla
- Expect Firefox to no longer be supported by various sites in the US
- Why Microsoft Became the Layoffs Leader
- The corporate media is projecting or signalling its own dishonesty when it tells us that Microsoft is a very "valuable" company while the data shows Microsoft is also a "market leader" in layoffs
- Speaking for Ourselves and Letting the Facts Speak for Themselves
- we've already published over 50,000 pages
- For Second Time in a Day The Register MS Takes Money From Private Companies to Sell a Ponzi Scheme
- Do not have empathy for those who have zero empathy towards you
- IBM is Misleading IBM Shareholders
- IBM is still all about vapourware and buzzwords
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 24, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, October 24, 2025
- The Serial Slopper Starts Up - or Restarts - His Plagiarism Machine (LLMs)
- Serial Sloppers like these don't belong in news sites. That's why he got sacked by BetaNews.
- Links 24/10/2025: Esperanto Music History, Anxiety, and New Portals
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com, Linux Journal, and Pet Slopfarms of Google News
- Why does Google News still advance these fake sites to the top of search results?
- Links 24/10/2025: Inequality Grows, Billion-Dollar Scam Center Industry
- Links for the day
- Links 24/10/2025: "Independent Media in Cambodia is Collapsing" and Serious F5 Breach
- Links for the day
- Coping With the Site Going More Mainstream
- Fame is no laughing matter
- They Never 'Put Down' Corporations
- There are "pests" that are traded in Wall Street
- 21 Pages in Less Than 7 Hours is No Joking Matter
- We've become a lot more effective and efficient
- Correct Information is a Valued Asset in the Age of Slopfarms and Public Relations (PR) or Spin
- Publishing suppressed facts is never easy
- The Register MS Continues to Bag Money to Promote a Ponzi Scheme, Even Money From China
- Today in the front page
- analytics.usa.gov: The Only Supported Version of Windows (This Past Week) is Only Used by About 13.9% of People in the US, the Home Base of Windows
- Even Vista 7 is still used more
- Rust is Very Secure
- If only Rust itself is secure
- Who Will be Held Accountable for Breaking Ubuntu by Imposing Rust on Otherwise-Functional Programs, in Effect Replacing GNU With Proprietary Microsoft (GitHub)?
- they're practical people who merely point out that a bunch of buffoons not only ruin Ubuntu but also every future distro based on Ubuntu
- Generation Chaff - Phase VIII: In Summary
- Like "Science" with a capital "S", what we see here commercial interests usurping everything
- Generation Chaff - Phase VII: Curtailing Alternative Media
- There was always an obligation - a collective duty of sorts - to uphold independent journalism
- Generation Chaff - Phase VI: Centralisation of Information (X, Cheetok/Fentanylware)
- Would you trust information when controlled by such people?
- Generation Chaff - Phase V: Censorship of Dissent (Painted as Harassment or Terrorism)
- Censorship is all around us now
- Generation Chaff - Phase IV: Apps Only Few Companies Decide On
- Tools are being collectively confiscated, under the premise or false prospect of "security"
- Generation Chaff - Phase III: Slop and Plagiarism
- A lot of the current so-called 'economy' is built upon false valuations
- Generation Chaff - Phase II: "Cloud", Blockchains and Other Hype
- For those of us who turned down those propositions there was a struggle; we needed to justify not having skinnerboxes or "social" accounts in some site run by a private company
- Generation Chaff - Phase I: Social Control Media
- IRC predates the Web
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 23, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, October 23, 2025
- More Clues Shed on Collapse of Microsoft XBox
- XBox is basically circling down the drain as Microsoft implements 2-3 waves of layoffs each month
- 'Vibe Coding' Doesn't Work
- In a lot of ways, so-called 'Vibe Coding' is already considered vapourware or a passing fad promoted in the media by managers who try to justify mass layoffs, especially ridding companies of "very expensive" software engineers
- Links 24/10/2025: Microsoft's Killing of XBox Connected to Revenue/Profit Problems, "How Elon Musk Ruined Twitter"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 24/10/2025: 86,400 Seconds and "Society's Task"
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: Google News and Slopfarms That Relay Nonsense From LLMs
- Google News, which once prioritised or used to care about provenance and quality, is feeding slopfarms
- Links 23/10/2025: More Health Concerns Over Dumb Chatbots (LLMs) and "Talking Cars" as Latest Buzz
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Daylight Savings Time and Duration Shorthand
- Links for the day
- Links 23/10/2025: LLM 'Hallucinations' (Defects) in Practical Code 'Generation', China Becomes More Economically and Technologically Independent
- Links for the day
- Why We Support Richard Stallman and You Probably Should Too
- It's not about being "Richard Stallman fan", it is about maintaining the right to hold positions (on technology) like his
- Linux Foundation Uses LLM Slop to Promote Microsoft in Linux.com (Again), Rendering It a Linux-Hostile Slopfarm
- Openwashing with slop by "Linux.com Editorial Staff", which basically seems to be a bot
- Some Large German Media Covers Richard Stallman's Talks in Germany Earlier This Week
- LLM-based chatbots are just "bullshit generators" (as he has long called them)
- Links 23/10/2025: Windows TCO Galore and "The Internet Is Going to Break Again"
- Links for the day
- Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
- Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
- Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
- The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
- Social engineering attack: Debian voted to trick you on binary blobs
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Techrights Will Always Stand for Women's Rights
- We even invest money - personal savings that it - in our principles
- Certified Lawyers Should Know Better (Than to Intimidate Us With Man Who Drives on Motorcycle Through a Really Bad Storm Between Distant Cities, Then Collects Photos of Our Home)
- Mentioning someone was in prison for bad things isn't a crime, it's a public service
- The "AI" (Slop) Bubble is Already Imploding
- "ChatGPT Usage Has Peaked and Is Now Declining, New Data Finds"
- The So-called "Sexy" Buckets (AI, Quantum) Cannot Save IBM From Reality, Shares Tank
- "No matter how much financial hocus-pocus they use to reclassify revenues to land in the "sexy" buckets (AI, Quantum), it still smells old and musty - just like this company."
- Paul Krugman is Wrong About the Scope of Mass Layoffs in the United States
- A few years ago society was accelerating its journey towards feudalism, boosted by COVID-19
- Links 23/10/2025: Proprietary Blunders and CISA's Latest Disclosure of Holes
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Fast Past (F1), 99.9% Uptime
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, October 22, 2025