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Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

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Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#31

Post by VeilEm »

ctstover wrote: post #19
acomjean wrote: post #3

Am I the only one thinking that we've lost total control over the machines and data we've created. It seems like nothing is safe and or verifiable anymore. Add to this the backdrop of governments wanting backdoors. People calling you in the US pretending to be from the "IRS" and yet nothing is/ can be done about it? Maybe its really high time for C and its buffer overflows to go... And SQL injection. We're tech savy…

You do realize that if "they" took C away from us, then all we would be allowed to use is closed source lock-in oriented ecosystems to the point we wouldn't even be able to trust the very language itself. That's always been the dream, trusted computing all the way from boot to .NET (or similar). You can not in the same breath call for secure computing and spread propaganda against C. (I know it's too much of a leap f…

How could anyone take C away from you anyway? You can build your own C. You can build your own hardware to run your own C compiler on.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#32

Post by beedogs »

imbellish wrote: post #15
nthitz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Axciom, Epsilon and similar companies track your credit card purchases and correlate them with a profile of who they think you are. If you work for a large corporation that is probably easier to identify than a small one. http://www.acxiom.com/ http://www.epsilon.com/

It's the isolating arm of capitalism drilling its elbow grease directly into your personal life.

We can't be too far off from a China-style 'citizen credit rating' kind of system.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#33

Post by rms_returns »

josteink wrote: post #26
Johnny555 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe its really high time for C and its buffer overflows to go... And SQL injection. Because no one ever wrote an insecure website in Java? And certainly PHP must also be completely safe since it has no buffer overflows to worry about. Are you sure the language is at fault?

Assuming an averagely careless programmer, a language made out of shotguns will produce more errors than a language with the occasional presence of shotguns. When simply trying to concatenate 2 strings can result in arbitrary code getting executed, memory leaks, actual data-loss or fatal program instability (or all of those), it's pretty obvious the C language itself is made out of shotguns. Making simple things simp…

> it's pretty obvious the language itself is made out of shotguns.

You are hitting the hammer where there is no nail! In this instance, the Dell WEBSITE was hacked which are (99% of the time) written in high-level programming languages like php, python or Java. No sane business uses C/C++ to develop a website. C/C++ is used for INTERNAL SYSTEM PROGRAMMING and those systems are already linux based and almost impossible to hack (Even in the rare instance that they DO get hacked, C/C++ has nothing to do with it).

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#34

Post by rms_returns »

beedogs wrote: post #32
imbellish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the isolating arm of capitalism drilling its elbow grease directly into your personal life.

We can't be too far off from a China-style 'citizen credit rating' kind of system.

It already happens unofficially. How do you think banks assess your lending/borrowing habits when you apply for a loan? There are detective agencies who track credit cards and other things (like a few examples someone gave in this very thread).

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#35

Post by ctstover »

VeilEm wrote: post #31
ctstover wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that if "they" took C away from us, then all we would be allowed to use is closed source lock-in oriented ecosystems to the point we wouldn't even be able to trust the very language itself. That's always been the dream, trusted computing all the way from boot to .NET (or similar). You can not in the same breath call for secure computing and spread propaganda against C. (I know it's too much of a leap f…

How could anyone take C away from you anyway? You can build your own C. You can build your own hardware to run your own C compiler on.

Fair. Although you could imagine a world where things like the original .Net trusted computing initiative succeeded in full force, and you could not purchase general purpose PC that let you execute any unmanaged code. Just look at the phone market, you can execute C code technically sure - but in unprivileged user space - with hardware you "own". (yes I know about rooting, but this is rhetoric about a hypothetical)

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#36

Post by DannoHung »

ctstover wrote: post #28
eru wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. What's wrong with using something like Haskell or Rust? The security there is in the type system at compile time, no Trusted Computing shenanigans, and you still avoid buffer overflows and SQL injections (if you use them properly). Even something as lowly as Python mostly protects you from buffer overflows.

Regardless of the language, if it had a closed source runtime interpreter and/or VM that you forbade you from performing various sequences of operations on hardware that you "own", actively fought against you seeing what it was doing, etc - then you would no more be able to "trust" it than back-doored cryptography. (I'm getting sleeping, so that may sound wrong. Though it's been a popular troll/advocacy touch point s…

That is not what either Rust or Haskell are. It would behoove you to have a passing familiarity with what someone says before responding to them combatively

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#37

Post by javajosh »

VeilEm wrote: post #31
ctstover wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that if "they" took C away from us, then all we would be allowed to use is closed source lock-in oriented ecosystems to the point we wouldn't even be able to trust the very language itself. That's always been the dream, trusted computing all the way from boot to .NET (or similar). You can not in the same breath call for secure computing and spread propaganda against C. (I know it's too much of a leap f…

How could anyone take C away from you anyway? You can build your own C. You can build your own hardware to run your own C compiler on.

Computers are great at brain augmentation devices - but if you spend all your time building the device, then you'll get a poor outcome and have wasted (most of) your life. That's the practical reason we want both mass produced hardware and transparent (and hence, controllable) hardware state. A world of augmented minds is much more problematic when a central authority can and does monitor everyone's mind, not the least of which because in such a state revolution would be trivial to eliminate even in it's earliest forms. And I believe all thinking humans have learned by now to distrust any system that can perpetuate itself so perfectly, and so indefinitely.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#38

Post by mootothemax »

reitanqild wrote: post #25
Natsu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer not to hang up right away. Instead, I try to waste a bit of their time. For automated calls, I just put down the phone and wait a while to hang up. But for people? I try other means of time wasting, so they can't call someone else to scam them. Last time they called, I told them that it was good that they called, because my computer had detected a virus on their computer and that I wanted them to download an…

I had a lot of fun with someone from "Microsoft IT Support" just before Christmas : ) Tried to do a reverse phish and connect to their TeamViewer[0] but I didn't have time. At least for an hour I bothered them by being the most clueless user I could get myself to be, "mistyping" urls so I ended up on tech websites instead. I also made notes to add to my previous guesswork on how they manage to fool users. [0]: Yep, t…

>these kinds of connections (India(?) to rural Western Europe) should stick out like a sore thumb in the data sets IK would guess?

I'd guess the opposite: there are enough legitimate outsourcing firms in India that traffic from fraudsters blends in pretty nicely.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#39

Post by ketralnis »

ommunist wrote: post #30

I'd rather bet that real Dell outsourced tech support to some company in India, where very often business ethics towards customer records is virtually non-existent. But what else can you expect? If you are not paying decent money, be prepared that your data woll be sold, unless you are ReallY able to enforce control over it. I seriously doubt that Dell tech support is ISO 27000 compliant.

What do I expect? I expect the people that I send sensitive data to to be able to protect it. Blaming their overseas offices and partners doesn't make it better or relieve them of responsibility.

And Dell isn't some too-cheap-to-be-true, fly-by-night operation. Saying that their customers were basically asking for it is bollocks as well.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#40

Post by tzs »

ommunist wrote: post #30

I'd rather bet that real Dell outsourced tech support to some company in India, where very often business ethics towards customer records is virtually non-existent. But what else can you expect? If you are not paying decent money, be prepared that your data woll be sold, unless you are ReallY able to enforce control over it. I seriously doubt that Dell tech support is ISO 27000 compliant.

> If you are not paying decent money, be prepared that your data woll be sold, unless you are ReallY able to enforce control over it

From what I can see from a bit of Googling, Dell does pay their tech support people decent money. If Glassdoor is to be believed [1] [2], Dell tech support people in India make about 340k rupees a year, or about 28k per month.

That appears to be a middle class income for an Indian city dweller [3] [4].

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Dell-Technical-Support-Asso...

[2] If the above link does not work without you being logged into a Glassdoor account, try Googling for "how much does dell pay tech support people in india" and clicking the Glassdoor result.

[3] http://qr.ae/RgYML2

[4] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/16/are-you-in-t...

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