Microsoft has been caught red-handed in an act proudly continuing an old tradition: introducing a trivially-exploitable privesc vulnerability into its Windows product line under the cover of a patch for the infamous Meltdown Intel misfeature.
Category Archives: Shitware
Cisco Products Hit With Vulnerability In Firm's "Security Markup Language"
A bug in Cisco's "Security Assertion Markup Language" has left a number of the firm's products vulnerable to access beyond the limits proposed by Cisco's marketing wank (archived).
Amazon Washington Post Sinks To New Lows Of Undisclosed Advertorial Content
A recent review of a new "feature" of the Amazon Alexa appears within the Amazon Washington Post's online magazine Slate without any disclaimer of it's advertorial nature (archived). The "feature" being hyped is named "Alexa Blueprints", and it allows users to substitute written notes for an African call and response system implemented on Amazon's surveillance device. Unlike with written notes the "voice computing" system relies on Amazon's cloud, a dependency Amazon is already abusing by censoring "hate speech" and vulgarity. You provide the system a question and an answer, then so long as they next time you try the trick pantsuit hasn't decided your question or answer is racist Amazon's altavoz negro will respond.
For the nominal price of some bezzel bucks and surrendering the sanctity of your home's audio privacy to Amazon; you too can have a creepier, lossier, and less adorable alternative to Teddy Ruxpin take the place of your notebook. This is a proposition the Jeff Bezos owned media outlet fraudulently misrepresents as
"Now [Amazon's] Alexa is fully at your command"
Provided your idea of command is someone other than you having command of the thing. If you wanted that, there are plenty of microcassette recorders around.
USG.MIL Pursues Single Provider "Cloud" Computing Contract
Substantial butthurt is coming out of the USG Department of bagholding as the US Department of Defense looks to award a 10 year single provider "cloud" computing contract (archived). The feedbeasts marketing commercial "cloud" computes are already crying foul that only one of them will get chosen for the priviledge of serving the most gullible customer in history.
21.co/Earn.com Saga Ends With Coinbase Acquisition
The story of 21.co/Earn.com, a widely hyped venture capital eating startup that never found a niche despite bouncing between pursuits as varied as selling tiny underpowered miners to spam as a service, has ended in an undisclosed but roughly 100 million USD acquisition by Coinbase. The paltry sum which still overvalues the firm is likely to leave many people taking a haircut. As part of the deal former 21.co/Earn.com CEO Balaji Srinivasan has won a sinecure "evangelizing" for Coinbase.
Intel Kills Internet Of Shit Remote Management App After Realizing Security Model Broken
Intel has killed its Android and iOS "Intel Remote Keyboard" app used to manage embeded computers in their line of Internet of Shit products (archived). The move was prompted by the discovery of three vulnerabilities allowing keystroke injection and arbitrary code execution. Rather than patch these vulnerabilties and the others likely to be found, Intel simply killed the app leaving their customers to find other remote management solutions.
Gun Free London's Murder Rate Passes New York And Reaches For Detroit
Stabbings in London have taken Airstrip One's capital past New York and on towards Detroit as murder rises the city (archived). The British response to the surge in violence has been to consider banning businesses from delivering knives to residencial addresses and charging a man who defended himself during a break in with murder because his assailant happened to have died after being repelled in a successful defense of the residence (archived). The murder charges are likely an effort to boost the murder conviction rate because that man defending his home was one of the few the police could identify as having stabbed another person.
Between increasing domestic challenges and pending fallout from inciting international aggression beyond their station, Britain continues to become more like Somalia than any historical Britain since the advent of sail.
Workplace Violence Hits Youtube: Disgruntled Content Creator Shoots Coworkers And Kills Self
Overnight a disgruntled Persian, vegan, and female Youtube content producer went to the firm's headquarters and shot three of her coworkers before taking her own life. A number of videos the disgruntled Youtube dependent left behind suggest she held substantial resentments against Youtube over their increasing devaluation of her content and her diminishing compensation for providing Youtube that content.
Boeing Production Hit By Ransomware Using USG.NSA Exploits
Reports are emerging that aerospace giant Boeing's production process has been crippled by malware utilizing exploits farmed by the United States NSA. According to local media reports the ransomware outbreak has crippled commercial airline production equipment and an effect on military products production is likely though unmentioned in the popular press (archived).
Europol Arrests Unnamed Man For Politely Persuading Eurobanks To Part With Cash
On Monday, March 26, armed thugs representing themselves as "Spanish National Police, with the support of Europol, the US FBI, the Romanian, Belarussian and Taiwanese authorities and private cyber security companies" arrested a yet-unnamed "mastermind" — who stands accused of causing "cumulative losses of over EUR 1 billion for the financial industry". And apparently this is not difficult:
"In all these attacks, a similar modus operandi was used. The criminals would send out to bank employees spear phishing emails with a malicious attachment impersonating legitimate companies. Once downloaded, the malicious software allowed the criminals to remotely control the victims’ infected machines, giving them access to the internal banking network and infecting the servers controlling the ATMs. This provided them with the knowledge they needed to cash out the money."
I.e. chair warmers were asked politely to install "Back Orifice" — and they (whether out of stupidity, or in exchange for a cut of the take — we are not told) obliged. As for MS-Windows, installed on bank infrastructure and in ATM boxes all over Europe: it, in turn, worked precisely as it was designed to work.
As of the time of this writing, the number of "bank employees" arrested in connection with their indispensable work in making this heist possible — stands at: zero. Likewise, the number of Microsoft executives held to answer for the very existence of "infectious attachments" as a concept — stands also at zero.1
The "mastermind" and his merry men also stand accused of Bernankeization without a license:
"Databases with account information were modified so bank accounts balance would be inflated, with money mules then being used to collect the money."
Magicking money into existence from thin air is, we learn, A-OK when carried out from a well-pedigreed bag of lard parked in an Aeron in New York — but not so much when it is done by non-bluebloods and on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
The accused, presently nameless — and held incommunicado — also stand to be punished for the unforgivable USG.crime of having "laundered via cryptocurrencies".
On the other hand, the EU bureaucracy informs us that the "perpetrator" of this "crime" supposedly was "vacationing in Spain" — rather suspiciously similar to the previous three major USG.kidnapping-under-the-colour-of-law victims; evidently crafting a replacement cover story for USG thugs' free hand in lifting people straight from the streets of Bucharest & elsewhere, would overrun the budget? ↩