Law Enforcement takes down major ransomware site

This operation is pretty impressive:

Notorious ransomware gang LockBit's website has been taken over by law enforcement authorities, who claim they have disrupted the group's operations and will soon reveal the extent of an operation against the group.

...

But Europol has reportedly taken credit for shutting down LockBit, so perhaps Operation Cronos really has disrupted the gang’s operations.

If that's the case, this action will be welcome. LockBit is prolific and vicious: we've reported it attacking a children's hospital, Infosys, sandwich chain Subway, and many other attacks.

Reportedly there have been multiple arrests, data has been found that is expected to lead to more arrests, and multiple crypto currency accounts have been seized.  Eleven countries worked together on this which is also impressive.

We will see how much impact this has but Lockbit is one of the biggest ransomware schemes out there.  

And this isn't the only one of these takedowns in the last couple of months.  Well done.

 

Security is hard

This is bad.  Really bad: 

A single packet can exhaust the processing capacity of a vulnerable DNS server, effectively disabling the machine, by exploiting a 20-plus-year-old design flaw in the DNSSEC specification.

That would make it trivial to take down a DNSSEC-validating DNS resolver that has yet to be patched, upsetting all the clients relying on that service and make it seem as though websites and apps were offline.

The academics who found this flaw – associated with the German National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity (ATHENE) in Darmstadt – claimed DNS server software makers briefed about the vulnerability described it as "the worst attack on DNS ever discovered."

What's bad is that you don't get more mission critical than DNS - Domain Name Service, the service that translates names (like borepatch.blogspot.com) into Internet addresses (like 192.1.7.200).  No DNS, no Internet.

If you run a DNS or DNSSEC server look at this ASAP.

President's Day - Best and Worst Presidents

It's not a real President's birthday (Lincoln's was the 12th, Washington's is the 22nd), but everyone wants a day off, so sorry Abe and George, but we're taking it today.  But in the spirit intended for the holiday, let me offer up Borepatch's annual bestest and worstest lists for Presidents.

Top Five:

#5: Calvin Coolidge

Nothing To Report is a fine epitaph for a President, in this day of unbridled expansion of Leviathan.

#4. Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson is perhaps the last (and first) President who exercised extra-Constitutional power in a manner that was unambiguously beneficial for the Republic (the Louisiana Purchase).  He repealed Adam's noxious Alien and Sedition Acts and pardoned those convicted under them.

#3. Grover Cleveland. 

He didn't like the pomp and circumstance of the office, and he hated the payoffs so common then and now.  He continually vetoed pork spending (including for veterans of the War Between the States), so much so that he was defeated for re-election, but unusually won a second term later.  This quote is priceless (would that Latter Day Presidents rise so high), on vetoing a farm relief bill: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character."

#2. Ronald Reagan

He at least tried to slow down the growth of Leviathan, the first President to do so in over half a century (see entry #5, above).  He would have reduced it further, except that his opposition to the Soviet fascist state and determination to end it cost boatloads of cash.  It also caused outrage among the home grown fascists in the Media and Universities, but was wildly popular among the general population which was (and hopefully still remains) sane.

#1. George Washington

Could have been King.  Wasn't.  Q.E.D.

Bottom Five:

#5. John Adams.

There's no way to read the Alien and Sedition Acts as anything other than a blatant violation of the First Amendment.  It's a sad statement that the first violation of a Presidential Oath of Office was with President #2.

#4. Woodrow Wilson.

Not only did he revive the spirit of Adams' Sedition Acts, he caused a Presidential opponent to be imprisoned under the terms of his grotesque Sedition Act of 1918.  He was Progressivism incarnate: he lied us into war, he jailed the anti-war opposition, he instituted a draft, and he was entirely soft-headed when it came to foreign policy.  The fact that Progressives love him (and hate George W. Bush) says all you need to know about them.

#3 Lyndon Johnson.

An able legislator who was able to get bills passed without having any real idea what they would do once enacted, he is responsible for more Americans living in poverty and despair than any occupant of the White House, and that says a lot.

#2. Franklin Roosevelt.

America's Mussolini - ruling extra-Constitutionally fixing wages and prices, packing the Supreme Court, and transforming the country into a bunch of takers who would sell their votes for a trifle.  At least Mussolini met an honorable end.


#1. Abraham Lincoln.

There's no doubt that the Constitution never would have been ratified if the States hadn't thought they could leave if they needed to.  Lincoln saw to it that 10% of the military-age male population was killed or wounded preventing that in an extra-Constitutional debacle unequaled in the Republic's history.  Along the way, he suspended Habeas Corpus, instituted the first ever draft on these shores, and jailed political opponents as he saw fit.  Needless to say, Progressives adore him.

So happy President's Day.  Thankfully, the recent occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue haven't gotten this bad.  Yet.

Cumbersome

 Cumbersome and hilarious.

Rest In Peace, sniper

SGT Chuck Mawhinney - the greatest Marine Corps sniper ever - has reported to the final muster.  As always, Dwight has the writeup (highly recommended).

What struck me was what he did when he came back from Vietnam.  Seeing how other veterans were treated, he pretty much dropped the whole military thing - he got a job with the Forest Service, hunted and shot trap, married and had kids, and seems to have been one of the solid, quiet, dependable community guys.

Then his story came out in the 1990s when the country was ready to treat the 'Nam vets right.  He got some much deserved recognition then, but the years before strike me as nothing so much as a sniper knowing how not to be seen.

103 confirmed kills with another 216 probables.  Wow.

Rest in peace, Sargent.

Now get on over to Dwight's place and read the amazing story.

Help

Not for me, but for Big Country's lovely wife Gretchen.  She's been diagnosed with cancer and any change you can toss her way for medical bills would be greatly appreciated. 

I'm late to this and most of you read the other blogs like Divemedica and BC himself, but Gretchen is super nice and way too young to be going through this.

Can you call it a "dry stack stone wall" ...

... when it is under the ocean?

A prehistoric stone wall more than half a mile long has been discovered on the floor of the Baltic Sea in the Bay of Mecklenburg off the coast of Germany. Around 11,000 years old, it is the oldest human-made structure in the Baltic Sea and one of the documented human-made hunting structures in the world. More than a half mile long, it is also one the largest known Stone Age structure in Europe.

...

It was built by hunter-gatherers who inhabited the area and was likely a drive lane (a means to control the movement of animals to force them into a restricted space or, in this case, the lake itself) used to hunt migrating Eurasian reindeer. Prehistoric stone walls like these have been found elsewhere in the world (Jordan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Greenland, the United States) but are all but unknown in Europe. The closest comparable example was found at the bottom of Lake Huron in Michigan where a stone wall was used to hunt migrating caribou 9,000 years ago. It is much shorter a wall than the Mecklenburg megastructure — 98 feet versus 3186 feet. 

That took a lot of work to build.  Maybe it was built over the course of decades, little by little?

Stop using FaceID immediately

Assuming that you use it, of course.  It is a persistently bad idea:

Cybercriminals are targeting iOS users with malware that steals Face ID scans to break into and pilfer money from bank accounts – thought to be a world first.

A Chinese-speaking cybercrime group, dubbed GoldFactory by Group-IB's researchers, started distributing trojanized smartphone apps in June 2023, however, the latest GoldPickaxe version has been around since October.

...

Once the biometrics scans were captured, attackers then used these scans, along with deepfake software, to generate models of the victim's face.

Attackers would download the target banking app onto their own devices and use the deepfake models, along with the stolen identity documents and intercepted SMS messages, to remotely break into victims' banks.

You can change a compromised password, but you cannot change your face.

Dad Joke CCCVIII, special Valentine's Day edition

What did the guy with a broken leg say to his valentine?

"I have a crutch on you."

Lawrence of Arabia's watch found on Antiques Roadshow

Holy cow.

Yanow, Peter O'Toule was robbed of the Oscar that year.

The earliest born person ever photographed

This is just plain interesting.  The first photographs date to the 1820s and 1830s, but there were some very old people alive then, who lived through some really interesting events.  This video covers who some of these people were, and who was born the earliest.

Christopher Lee speaks in 5 languages

I've said for some time that Sir Christopher Lee was the real "Most Interesting Man In The World".  What I hadn't known was that he was also multi-lingual.

DEFCON moving from Caesar's Palace to Las Vegas Convention Center

Huh:

The world's largest hacking conference, held since 1993 and lately drawing in as many as 30,000 attendees, has been held in venues owned by the Caesars Entertainment for well over a decade. According to conference founder Jeff Moss, AKA Dark Tangent, the hotel and casino operator has unexpectedly canceled the con's booking for 2024 with no warning nor explanation. 

Weird.  But DEFCON will continue, at the Convention Center.

Dad Joke CCCVII

Tuna emails this trifecta of Dad Jokes.  Thanks, Tuna

A toothless termite walks into a bar. He says “Is the bar tender here?”

A dung beetle walks into a bar and asks “Is this stool taken?”

I just got a pet termite. I’m going to call him Clint, Clint Eatswood.

 

Toby Keith

The good die young.

How David Niven won the Iron Cross in Normandy

Cool story.

This seems like a wedge issue for Donald Trump to use

Via The Queen Of The World we see this:

Illegal immigrants in the Big Apple will soon start receiving pre-paid debit cards that they must pledge to use only to buy food, according to New York City records and media reports.

Records indicate that New York City has awarded a $53 million contract to a company called Mobility Capital Finance (MoCaFi), which will create and distribute the pre-paid cards, called immediate response cards.

The question is whether the traditional members of the Democratic Party's coalition will resent that illegal aliens get government largess that they think should go to them.

Another veteran reports for the final muster

The last survivor of the British Army surrender at Singapore. 

Ave atque vale.

CMP .30-06 ammo deal alert

$392. 400 rounds M2 Ball, 150 grain Full Metal Jacket, Lake City Army Ammunition Plant. Packed in 20 round boxes mid 60's to early 70's manufacture. Non corrosive. Limit 1 can per customer/year. **FREE SHIPPING DOES NOT APPLY TO SURPLUS AMMO. 

$1/round for .30-06 isn't bad.

A winter doldrums public service post

Over at Flares Into Darkness, there is a bunch of beach paintings.  Yeah, it looks exactly like that here right now.  Here's an example:

Go check them out.  This is a daily read for me.

Interesting Security News

Item the first: follow the money:

Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) held its first-ever automotive-focused Pwn2Own event in Tokyo last week, and awarded over $1.3 million to the discoverers of 49 vehicle-related zero day vulnerabilities.

Researchers from French security outfit Synacktiv took home $450,000 after demonstrating six successful exploits, one of which saw the company’s crew gain root access to a Tesla Modem. Another effort found a sandbox escape in the Musk-mobiles’ infotainment system.

Other popular targets at the three day event included after-market infotainment systems and, more troublingly, a whole host of successful hacks on EV chargers.

This is a good strategy - show me the hack, I'll show you the money.  More, please.  Plus, good on them picking automotive computing as the target.  Long time readers will recall that this is something I've been harping on for quite some time.

Item the second: SEC gets pwned (same link as above): 

We had our suspicions when Twitter/X blamed the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the account takeover that led to the premature release of news the regulator would allow Bitcoin exchange-traded funds– and those suspicions have been confirmed.

"The SEC determined that the unauthorized party obtained control of the SEC cell phone number associated with the account in an apparent 'SIM swap' attack," the Commission admitted last week.

For those unfamiliar with this form of attack, SIM swaps involve convincing a telecom carrier to transfer a phone number to a new SIM card (a shift for which there are a variety of legitimate reasons), giving an attacker control over communications going to and from that number – like a second authentication factor.

That didn't matter, of course, because the SEC also admitted it disabled multi-factor authentication with Twitter support in July last year "due to issues accessing the account," but no one bothered to turn it back on.

"It made security too hard and then we forgot all about it" is an excuse that I suspect that SEC investigators wouldn't accept.  Top. Men.

Notre Dame de Paris on track for complete restoration later this year

This video is somewhat light on details but it's impressive just how many people are involved in the project.

This video is more in depth on what has happened over the last 90 days or so.

The dangerous side of IT security

Security researcher fined for revealing insecure system:

After discovering and reporting a vulnerability in an e-commerce database that was putting customers and their personal information at risk, a security researcher in Germany was fined €3,000 for doing so.

In 2021, a contractor, known as Hendrik H., said he was troubleshooting software for Modern Solution GmbH when he realized that password access to the remote server was stored in plain text in MSConnext.exe. This easy access would make the password simple for many to find, and a threat actor could access data to everything stored on the database server, including customer information.

There is a lot of back and forth on this between the company and the researcher, with court appeals (and more planned).  But this seems odd to me.  If the researcher was working for the company (as stated) then why did he not have a "get out of jail free" card from company management for what he was doing?  This is basically a letter (typically from the Chief Information Security Officer) saying the researcher is authorized to poke around and that the company will hold him harmless.  It also will have non-disclosure and other restrictions so that the researcher won't up and publish embarrassing info.

 It doesn't seem that any of this was in place, so I'm wondering what sort of "research" this guy was up to.

Dad Joke CCCVI

Singing in the shower is great until you get shampoo in your mouth.  The it becomes a soap opera.

Constitutional Crisis

The bustard's a fortunate fowl
with almost no reason to growl.
Saved from what would be
illegitimacy
by the grace of a fortunate vowel

Via Aesop comes news that the Republic is now in a full fledged constitutional crisis.  The short version: Texas put up razor wire along the border, the Federales cut it down, Texas sued to stop the Fed interference, and the Supreme Court sided with the Feds.  Now Texas has told SCOTUS to pound sand and the Texas National Guard is putting up more razor wire.

It is unreported whether Texas Gov Abbot echoed Andy Jackson's famous words that the SCOTUS has issued its ruling, now let them enforce it.

This is an enormous blow to the prestige and legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and demonstrates just how fragile that sense of legitimacy is.  Good grief, what an unholy mess.

May God save this honorable Republic.

Dad Joke CCCV

It's been a month since my last Dad Joke, where I promised to do better (after a month long joke hiatus).  The Spirit is willing, but the Flesh is weak ...

But Tuna left a comment to that post with a new Dad Joke!  Reproduced here in full:

Good God, it's been a month since this month late dad joke!

Here's one: Do you want a brief explanation of an acorn?
In a nutshell, it's an Oak tree.

Thanks, Tuna!

R.I.P. Peter Schickele

"Professor"* Peter Schickele has passed away at the fine old age of 88.  Dwight has the obit.  I ran across his music back at State U, and have enjoyed its very clever music inside baseball ever since.

I hadn't known that he orchestrated Joan Baez's Noel album.  I also hadn't known that he won four Grammys.

Schickele, of course, created the P.D.Q. Bach character.  One of my favorites is here, "The Art Of The Ground Round".  I had this album, Back In The Day.

Rest in peace.

* It seems that he taught at Julliard, so the term isn't clearly wrong.

Big 2A gun decision

Lawrence has a good post up about the recent win (for the Good Guys) striking down firearms prohibitions in Post Offices.  This bit is they key:

The big difference here is that previous anti-gun laws overturned in the wake of Bruen have been state laws, but this one is a federal law. Perhaps one slipped by while I wasn’t looking, but I believe that this is the first federal law overturned in the wake of Bruen.

Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is slowly being restored to its proper place in American jurisprudence.

Sure looks that way.

 

Schadenfreude

 

 The cold weather in the midwest is stranding some Tesla drivers. This article is from Chicago, but reports are coming from other cities affected by the current cold snap. The issues include not having enough charge to properly preheat the battery so it will take a charge, not being able to charge at all, and getting only a partial charge that limits the available range. 

"Tesla owners in Chicago were left in dire straits as they were unable to charge their cars because of freezing weather temperatures.

Fox Chicago reported that charging stations have become "car graveyards" as temperatures drop into negative double digits. It comes as drivers also discovered the Tesla Cybertruck has less than 80% of its advertised range in cold weather.

Tyler Bears, who had tried to charge his Tesla at a charging station in Oak Brook, Illinois, was stuck for hours. He said: "Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent. And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday.""

 Tesla has some helpful information under their Cold Weather Best Practices. Among the tips is the suggestion to not use the cabin heater while driving to save battery power. 

10 War movie actors who served in combat

This is pretty cool:

Lots that's predictable, but a lot that's new.  Christopher Lee makes the list, but as we all know he was a badass.  I hadn't known that Clark Gable flew combat missions.  Oh, and Jimmy Stewart wasn't on the list but should have been.

But interesting.

Bavid Bowe - Space Oddity

(See what I did there?)

 

It's a little out of place to tag something Modern Monday when it was recorded over half a century ago, but this still sounds like nothing on the radio today*.

* Unless you listen to "Classic Rock" ...

Information Security is hiring

The World Economic Forum (I know, I know) released a report of the fastest growing and fastest declining job fields.  Information Security is their 4th fastest growing job field. 

And it's cheap to get into the field.

Introducing The Queen Of The World

Michael left a comment to last night's post where I was off to sack Rome and TQOTW was a mermaid:

Show us your ugly mug but keep the mermaid for yourself?

Sigh, so uncivilized. LOL

Touche, Michael.  So with her permission, here she is as the Queen of the World:

And here is the mermaid:

Man, this web site has made us waste a lot of time on a Sunday morning.

Excuse me, I'm off to sack Rome

OldAFSarge finds a fun site.  It clearly has an AI back end because there's no way I'm this good looking.

Oh, and how do we get to the bottom of who sacked Rome?  Better get a 1930s Gumshoe:

Yeah, I did The Queen Of The World as the Queen of the World.  And as a mermaid.  It's awesome.

Highly recommended.

Why, oh why?

People like to (as The Queen Of The World likes to say) complicate a cornflake.  Case in point: dimmer switches.  I've been swapping dimmer switches for simple on/off ones for literally (mumble mumble) decades.  It's dead simple.

Except now it's not.  Most new light bulbs are LED type, because Congressional Lobbyists for General Electric wanted all of us to pay $5/bulb instead of 50 cents.  Thanks ever so much, Congress.  But the Twilight Lone experience doesn't end just at sticker shock.  Consider the failure points:

1. Your LED bulbs must be "Dimable".  They won't dim if they're not, and you'll pay a premium for this.
2. Your dimmer switch must be for LED bulbs.  It won't work with normal incandescent ones (assuming you can even get these anymore).  You will (wait for it) pay a premium for this.
   
3. The new dimmer switches are bigger than the old ones.  This isn't a problem if you have only one switch in the electrical box; this is a big, big problem (see what I did there?) if you have multiple switches in the same box, covered with a multi switch face plate.

That last one means that there are lights that I simply cannot dim, because I can't swap out an existing on/off switch for  one of the new, high-falutin' (and expensive) LED dimmer switches because it simply won't fit. 

Gee, thanks for jacking everything up, Congress.  Nobody's life, liberty, property, or sanity are safe when you're in session.  Jerks.

New exploits being released same day as the patch

This isn't great:

Less than one percent of vulnerabilities contributed to the highest risk and were routinely exploited in the wild.

97 high-risk vulnerabilities, likely to be exploited, were not part of the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.

25 percent of these security vulnerabilities were immediately targeted for exploitation, with the exploit being published on the same day as the vulnerability itself was publicly disclosed.

Bold emphasis is mine.  This is really not great at all.

 

 

Nikalaus Wirth, R.I.P

Computer scientist Nikalaus Wirth passed away on New Year's Day.  Wirth is known for creating the Pascal computer language - full disclosure: I wrote a fair amount of code in Turbo Pascal way back in the day. 

Pascal passed out of fashion (if indeed it was ever fashionable) a long while back.  What I remember of Wirth was his wit.  Asked at a conference what the proper pronunciation of his name was.  He answered that you could call him by name, in which case it was pronounced "Weert".  Or you could call him by value in which case it was pronounced "Worth".  Funny, in a really geeky way.

So which stores use facial recognition technology to track you when you shop there?

Interesting.   There are a lot of surprises on this list, both stores I expected to use this tech who say they won't, and stores I expected not to who do.

(via)

More on the Herculaneum Scrolls

This is an excellent layman's introduction to what the big deal is about the Herculaneum Scrolls.  Short answer: it's a very big deal indeed.

This video gives background on why Herculaneum is such a unique site, and why the scrolls discovered there could only have been found there.  Highly, highly recommended.

The (Blog) year in review

Goodbye 2023, and good riddance.  Hello 2024 - may it be better than the last year.

2023 saw 1.5M page views which was pretty good.  Strangely, a lot of this was traffic spikes (mostly from Google) to more or less random old posts.  The steady-state traffic seems to be around 2500 page views a day.  Still pretty good especially considering how infrequently I post these days.

2023 saw all of you leave over 1600 comments, which is great.  I don't do a great job replying to comments but read (and appreciate) them all.

Top posts from 2023:

Picking a strong password
I am TJIC (from 2011)
Unplug your Ring cameras
For Sale, NASA Security Van
Breaking the Youtube ad/spy algorithm
New Jersey Supremes to cops: get a wiretap order
S.S. Minnow still going strong after 60 years
Finally some better medical device cyber security
Be careful with Ring doorbell video cameras
The Renaissance is being blogged (from 2010)

Unsurprisingly, these are all security related (well, the ones from 2023).  That makes sense.

Thanks to the top referring sites: Knuckeldraggin My Life Away, The Ferrel Irishman, Raconteur Report, Normal American, The Silicon Graybeard, Gun Blog Blacklist, Busted Knuckles, Captain Capitalism, and Old NFO.