Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[bpalone]

On the issue of security, it appears that the spooks have the attitude that everything is their playground and that we will do whatever we want. It seems that Linux is or was considered for back dooring.

NSA Backdoor
Torvalds was also asked if he had ever been approached by the U.S. government to insert a backdoor into Linux. Torvalds responded "no" while shaking his head "yes," as the audience broke into spontaneous laughter.

The above quote came from http://www.eweek.com/developer/linus-torvalds-talks-linux-development-at-linuxcon.html

Now for the fallout from all of this invasion of privacy, as was mentioned before in this thread. Brazil appears to be a little a miff at the United States, as they look to break from a U.S. centric internet. Here is a quote from the article:

President Dilma Rousseff ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company’s network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google.

The entire article is at http://world.time.com/2013/09/18/brazil-looks-to-break-from-u-s-centric-internet/

Interesting times, that we live in.

bpalone

[Formfiller]

OTOH, in a corner of my mind I have to wonder how much FUD there is out there, designed to discourage us from even trying to keep those prying eyes off our backs. Since we've been speculating about devious scenarios in the last couple of days, suppose that Edward Snowden was actually commissioned by the NSA to make all these disclosures in order to create an impression of irresistible omniscience, far beyond their real capabilities...

Yeah, I had such thoughts myself. There's also the possibility that they do have access to the data, but don't have the means to effectively process it - maybe the XKeyScore queries give out very incomplete data sets. Sort of how Google shows 1000000 hits for a term, but you can actually access only ten.

Well, the truth is only known to high up spooks, so it's all speculation.

[JorgeA]

Yes, the concern is that, for fear of being spied on while trying to hinder the spying, people would scare themselves into doing nothing about the spying.

--JorgeA

[ROTS]

@jaclaz

The internet was created to share information. This information could be seen as an deterrent, or a pacifier. Think of the internet as being one big distraction, or human bug zapper, or even a cellphone phone where the indivisual is nullified in their actions. However they go on their daily routine, like a person who drinks coffee, that being said the internet could be considered a virtual-drug.........and now they want to take that away from you.

Truth be told in areas, where violence, brith-rates, and even substance abuse, have gone down dramatically thanks to the internet.

That is until people got immune to the internet.

Then their is self-control. We see things on television, and hear about events. We have self-control and thus we do not do things, like break the law.

Now imagine if somebody, just decided to make laws, that invades people privacy, which can lead to home invasions. Which they have been doing for, sometime. They invade your privacy, then invade your home, even might rob you blind, hold your belongings for ransom, and in some instances put you inside a room of real violators. Not to mention give a big red online blip, to all the other people who have commited a real sexual offense.

Next thing you know, your job might want to find a reason to let you go. Like some kind of retarded rule. You might have no choice but to take a check from Sam I Am, and play baby sitter in one of the local public systems. Then they take that professional and have them shoveling trash for a living, and working in hazardous enviorments. Just for clicking a button.

At the end of the day, your way of thinking should not be damaged by a law that invades your personal space, because you sat on your arse, turned on a machine and click a button. A person that is accessing data, is not equal to a person, purchasing, or making an verbal agreement, of exhange of goods. It is not a person making open threats. This is not justice, this is an easy way to destroy peoples lives and turn them into inhuman, insane, and demonized indivisuals.

Edited September 19, 2013 by ROTS

[jaclaz]

A person that is accessing data, is not equal to a person, purchasing, or making an verbal agreement, of exhange of goods. It is not a person making open threats. This is not justice, this is an easy way to destroy peoples lives and turn them into inhuman, insane, and demonized indivisuals.

Are you somehow trying to say that Child Pornography should be covered by the 1st Amendment or similar provision?

There are better places to discuss this kind of topics, be aware of Rule #2.b

Back to topic.

I am pretty sure some of our Apple firends won't like what will be said on Octoper 17th:

http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2013kul/agenda-conference-day-2-17th-october-2013/

http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2013kul/cyril-gg-quarkslab/

PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:

Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy is available online since the brand appeared in the PRISM affair. At least, one sentence is very questionable: “For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data.”

Is it true? No. Can Apple read your iMessages? YES. Do they do it? Unfortunately, we can not answer.

Quarkslab team studied iMessage protocol for quite some time. We will explain the protocol layers, with Push then iMessage itself. With this understanding, we will be able to try to build a MITM attack toward iMessage. We will explain the mandatory conditions for the MITM to succeed. We will take you deep into the crypto used for encryption, authentication and key management. All pieces put together will prove that Apple can technically read your iMessages whenever they want.

Last but not least, we will release a tool for jailbroken devices preventing such MITM attacks.

jaclaz

Edited September 20, 2013 by jaclaz

[Formfiller]

Paul Thurrott is a whore.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-phone/praise-nokia-lumia-520

While lemming-like consumers are engorging themselves on yet another me-too iPhone release this week, I'd like to remind the more sophisticated in the audience about a better gadget buy: Nokia's amazing Lumia 520. This inexpensive new device can be anything you want it to be: A first or second smart phone, a digital media player, a GPS, whatever. And it only costs $99, not $550 like an iPhone 5C or $300 or more for an iPod touch.

The Lumia 520 is perhaps the most versatile smart phone I've ever seen. Thanks to its low-ball, no-contract pricing, you can pick one up for any reason.

Windows Phone 8 is superior to Apple's iOS 7 or Google's Android 4.whatever they're on this week. With the Lumia 520, you can enjoy the superior user experience, numerous high-quality music, video and other digital media services, and of course an amazing selection of mobile games, including numerous exclusive Xbox Live titles. And you can also enjoy a completely Apple-less experience, which is good for your soul, and a nearly-completely Google-free experience, which is good for your heart.

As I write this, people are actually waiting in line to buy one of the new iPhones, which are either identical internally to the previous model but use a cheaper plastic design (iPhone 5C) or are identical externally to the previous model (iPhone 5S). This makes me sad. But you don't have to be a statistic and hand your wallet and your soul to the corporate overlords at Apple for their next surprisingly expensive and yet unchanged i-devices. Instead, you can do the smart thing. The right thing. The pragmatic thing.

Free yourself from corporate overlords by going Windows Phone? I didn't know that Microsoft was a charity.

PT is getting desperate. That's the problem when you're only whoring-out to one customer only. You can only offer your services at the train station when your former sugar daddy gets his brain fried because of syphilis.

I can already imagine his Windows 9 gig: "You're either going to use it, or Google and Apple will suck your soul out!"

Edited September 20, 2013 by Formfiller

[jaclaz]

The US$ 99 vs. US$ 550 sounds like the only good argument (though I don't see all these people giving away lumia 520's unlocked for US$ 99) , more like US$180-200, which still may have some merits.

jaclaz

[Formfiller]

The US$ 99 vs. US$ 550 sounds like the only good argument (though I don't see all these people giving away lumia 520's unlocked for US$ 99) , more like US$180-200, which still may have some merits.

jaclaz

You were not convinced that Apple eats your soul and Google is bad for your heart?

[JorgeA]

A person that is accessing data, is not equal to a person, purchasing, or making an verbal agreement, of exhange of goods. It is not a person making open threats. This is not justice, this is an easy way to destroy peoples lives and turn them into inhuman, insane, and demonized indivisuals.

Are you somehow trying to say that Child Pornography should be covered by the 1st Amendment or similar provision?

There are better places to discuss this kind of topics, be aware of Rule #2.b

Agreed. Independently of the merits of ROTS's argument, I've suspected for a while that there are certain forum gods who would shut down this thread in a minute if they got the slightest excuse to do so. The last time, we were saved by the grace of other forum gods (you know who you are, and Thank You). Please please please, let's stay off that particular topic!

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Interesting times, that we live in.

Isn't that supposed to be a Chinese curse -- "May you live in interesting times"?

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Agreed. Independently of the merits of ROTS's argument, I've suspected for a while that there are certain forum gods who would shut down this thread in a minute if they got the slightest excuse to do so. The last time, we were saved by the grace of other forum gods (you know who you are, and Thank You). Please please please, let's stay off that particular topic!

Another good reason (IMHO) for closing a thread would be that of having in there people repeatedly and insistently whining about the way the board is managed.

You may well get over it (still IMHO).

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

No complaints here.

Just to be clear, I am very happy with the way the issue ultimately got resolved and with the way the board is managed.

--JorgeA

Edited September 21, 2013 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

This article is a bit on the technical side, but it provides some insight as to how backdoors creep into security software:

Stop using NSA-influenced code in our products, RSA tells customers

Just one "teaser" excerpt:

From the beginning, Dual EC_DRBG—short for Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator—struck some cryptographers as an odd choice for one of NIST's officially sanctioned RNGs. It was literally hundreds of times slower than typical RNGs, and its basis in "discrete logarithm" mathematics was highly unusual in production environments.

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

What's wrong with the Epic folks basing their project on Chromium (not Chrome)?

Oh, they can do what they want, it's just that Chrome is a huge letdown IMHO. See below

What's wrong with the Epic folks basing their project on Chromium (not Chrome)?

Chromium is the actual "engine" on which also Chrome is based.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoogleChrome

OK, thanks. But what's the issue with basing this Epic browser on Chromium?

OK, thanks. But what's the issue with basing this Epic browser on Chromium?

I think it's just Charlotte having some form of allergy to it.

Yeah, pretty much.

I noticed them going South around 10, 15 versions back ( not sure what version they have now ). They started Tarding down the available options and then even the GUI to near Metro dumbness.

I also have seen the installer place Chrome's user profile, a deep nesting of subfolders underneath Windows\System32\Config, a folder structure formerly reserved for the registry and supposedly sacred. On Vista/7 the same version went to an even deeper cobweb under \Users.

I haven't installed it myself in a while but I am getting PC's with malware from owners who only used Chrome and were likely tricked by Google's over-eager propensity to blur the lines between ads and content. I have nothing concrete yet, too busy, no screenshots etc, I'm just cleaning the things and giving them back and telling them to use Opera or Firefox at the moment. I just see a bit of a conflict of interest for Google having a web browser and also curating ads. It's almost as bad as Microsoft in this arena really.

My disdain for them only grew when Opera turned traitor and adopted it's codebase, so you can mark me down as ambivalent, to be kind.

It's entirely possible though that some of these other Chromium browsers might do it right. I just doubt that I will ever use one.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft: $40 billion stock buyback, dividend increase ( NeoWin 2013-09-17 )

I remember suggesting this as one possibility, and it may be perhaps their smartest move now. I doubt they can afford to go private again, what with all the countless company takeovers. After the Nokia purchase and whatever other companies they pick up during Ballmer's final spending spree this buyback will reduce their bank account to about 1/3 or 1/4 or even less of that $70 billion they once had ( and once again, just imagine if fathead had managed to close that Yahoo deal for $45 billion, they would be in serious jeopardy today ). Anyhoo, MSFT is finally looking like a buy recommendation because they might possibly climb out of the high 20's to low 30's and into $50 and above, maybe even triple digits eventually. At this writing they are still hovering around $32 though. Seems like something is really holding them back. I wonder what that might be

Stephen Elop to get $25.5 million from Nokia when Microsoft deal closes ( NeoWin 2013-09-19 )

And now they announce this! It will probably unravel the goodwill of the buyback announcement because people are getting tired of these sweetheart golden parachutes. And just how do you explain this one exactly? He's parachuting into the company that buys him? Elop has to be one of the luckiest schmucks out there. He was at Microsoft for 5 minutes and then goes to Nokia for 7 minutes and now back to Redmond. That somehow qualifies him as the front-runner for CEO at Microsoft according to the fanboys who believe it mirrors Steve Jobs somehow. It's crazy time. Well at least some of the commenters at NeoWin aren't fooled.

Microsoft rushes out security patch for Internet Explorer ( NeoWin 2013-09-17 )

Microsoft Fast Tracks Urgent Internet Explorer Update to Fix Zero Day Vulnerability ( Maximum PC 2013-09-18 )

Zero-Day Browser Exploit Prompts Urgent Microsoft Fix-It ( Tom's Hardware 2013-09-18 )

In a post on its security response blog, Microsoft says the issue would allow a hacker to launch a remote code execution if a person surfs to a website using IE that contains malicious code. The blog adds, "There are only reports of a limited number of targeted attacks specifically directed at Internet Explorer 8 and 9, although the issue could potentially affect all supported versions"

Say it ain't so! Another MSIE exploit with potential drive-by exposure! Meanwhile our friendly neighborhood NeoTards keep insisting that MSIE is the best thing since sliced bread. Security 101 for well over a decade now has been very simple ... stop using MSIE ... and also change the default to something else .... psssst, and don't change it to Chrome.

Microsoft reveals pricing and packaging for Windows 8.1 ( NeoWin 2013-09-17 )

Windows 8.1 Prices Revealed: Upgrades are Full Versions ( Tom's Hardware 2013-09-17 )

Windows 8.1 retail pricing & packaging revealed, full versions return ( TechSpot 2013-09-18 )

Microsoft to Offer Windows 8.1 in Full Version Form Starting at $120 ( Maximum PC 2013-09-18 )

"While pricing varies by market, in the U.S., Windows 8.1 will be available for $119.99 ERP (U.S.) and Windows 8.1 Pro will be available for $199.99 ERP (U.S.)," Microsoft stated in a blog post. "The pricing and editions for Windows 8.1 are similar to what we have today for Windows 8."

Well I'll say this for them, they are insistent on holding that course. Kinda like the Titanic captain plowing ahead at full-speed through the cold North-Atlantic at night. What could possibly go wrong.

It's so obvious now that this Windows 8.1 Blew thing is nothing more than a re-release party one year later! A second bite at the Apple ( pardon the pun ). A do-over. A mulligan. Microsoft Tiles Mojave project. Don't be fooled again.