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Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

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191–200 of 218 posts

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not really true, though. Look at Japan. Sweatshops and de facto slavery isn’t everywhere, but you’re kinda right, countries which were colonies before – mostly in Africa, Asia and South America – tend to have less wealth and prosperity.

> ...countries which were colonies before – mostly in Africa, Asia and South America – tend to have less wealth and prosperity The US, Canada, and Australia are rather prominent counterexamples.

They also are countries where there were enough immigrants that the native population was mostly displaced – it’s unfair to put them in the same category as colonies where only a tiny immigrant population ruled over the native population.

And even in some of these countries the wealth and prosperity for the native population has been an issue even in the past decades.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#192
post #130
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best track record of protecting have Social Market countries. Social Capitalism, also called "Social Democracy", "Nordic Model", "Democratic Socialism", etc is generally the best model. In a pure capitalist model it is okay if Facebook shares all your data with advertisers – if you don’t like Facebook, just vote with your money and go to Google+.

Sure but no country on earth, not even the USA, has anything close to a pure capitalist system in that sense. Furthermore Nordic Model countries vary, but are very much capitalist. From wikipedia: "Sweden's industry is overwhelmingly in private control; unlike some other industrialized Western countries, such as Austria, Italy or Finland, state owned enterprises were always of minor importance." In fact I think I can…

Yes. Every country is in some way "social", but social market economies focus strongly on keeping a balance.

Especially in the US the balance has been skewed since forever towards capitalism.

Historically, Social Market Economies evolved in countries where the population was supportive of socialist and communist uprisings, but the ruling class tried to keep the economy, and implemented the same benefits as in a socialist system in the existing market economy (See Bismarck’s Social Welfare model in Germany and the history of Bismarck vs. the Social Democrats on this).

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But none of those legitimate ones try to connect to me (IT tech, TeamViewer should know), my brothers and in-laws across the country etc etc all in the same day.

Off the top of my head typical TeamViewer usage should be more like some new, some recurring I think.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not really true, though. Look at Japan. Sweatshops and de facto slavery isn’t everywhere, but you’re kinda right, countries which were colonies before – mostly in Africa, Asia and South America – tend to have less wealth and prosperity.

> ...countries which were colonies before – mostly in Africa, Asia and South America – tend to have less wealth and prosperity The US, Canada, and Australia are rather prominent counterexamples.

All three of which have systematically exterminated their native populations, to make room for settlers.

The ones that survived have gotten, and are still getting a pretty poor deal, too.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've accepted that we live in an age where no one can secure data that is coveted by determined attackers. Even companies with the best infosec are often taken down by the simplest social engineering or clumsy spear-phisihng attempts that work well enough. I hope this changes as we migrate away from passwords and passphrases to mandatory two factor login with physical keyfob tokens, from C to Rust, and from putting t…

Because retailers figured out a while ago that having a personal relationship with their customers (knowing everything about them) is EXTREMELY valuable. Think of the merchant wars with MC/Visa/ApplePay...etc as well as how much they sink into loyalty programs. Knowing your customer pays off in spades (until you have a security breach and get sued into oblivion). Would be nice to be able to opt-in to a "forget everyt…

I have to warn you that you just triggered a liars paradox.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#196
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SS7, which carries telephony routing and ID info, doesn't have anything like message signing or SSL certs. It was designed with the assumption that telcos trusted each other. Then came VoIP, and with it, signal transfer points which forward call ID info. There's firewall-type filtering at signal transfer points, but it doesn't help much with validating the original source of a call.

I know that too well unfortunately - worked in a voip telco which allowed users to set any callid as long as they signed a paper promising to be good. (standard procedure) The funny thing is that SIP does allow signing signaling via TLS, it's just not used that way. But that doesn't mean there's no solution for tracing calls. It needs just one extra law for telcos to solve most of this issue: "Either you can prove/po…

There's quite a few fields in SS7 not accessible via SIP, one of which should indicate whether or not the call was originated internationally or not.

Whether or not a call with domestic looking CPN from an international location will be accepted is up to the switches handling it, but they're designed to successfully complete a call in almost any possible circumstance. It's possible that the international gateway might rewrite the CPN field with something else, but I doubt they'd go as far as refusing to let it through.

The screen parameter within SS7 details whether or not the CPN field has been defined by the end user. Most SIP users won't have access to this either, but the vast majority of calls from them (but not from other sources) will look like the number is user provided. For that reason, some voicemail systems that've historically let you log in automatically just by setting your CPN to the subscriber number have started to only let you do that when the screen parameter is set to network provided.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#197
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime you access a website a server is serving you files. Apache (and most web servers) keep logs of this. With Apache defaults you get IP address, the route accessed, and the User-Agent of the user. This is rudimentary information, but if you have these logs from multiple sites, it's pretty easy to roughly track someone. Tracking images in emails use this same principle, a unique link to krick.png is put in an e…

Have you even read my message? Or the thread you are answering to for that matter? The question is not how website owner knows I visited his website, that much is pretty obvious, but if it is the case that server-side tracking somehow allows to use GoogleAnalytics as well (that is, to notify Google from server side who has visited their website) and if this is the case — how does it exactly work. Because that's what…

Sure that's possible, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9503329/is-there-any-way-...

Ofcourse people can(and do) sell their server logs to 3. parties anyway...

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#198

I posted about this about 7 months ago on HN, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9881674 , I also tweeted it out. Dell responded to my tweet saying there has been no breach and our data was secure. Obviously I didn't and don't believe them, and their main response was report it to the FTC. That is crap, admit it, fix it and deal with the issue. What totally pissed me off is that it was my sons laptop they called on…

I've accepted that we live in an age where no one can secure data that is coveted by determined attackers. Even companies with the best infosec are often taken down by the simplest social engineering or clumsy spear-phisihng attempts that work well enough. I hope this changes as we migrate away from passwords and passphrases to mandatory two factor login with physical keyfob tokens, from C to Rust, and from putting t…

It does feel like Internet security depends on the software equivalent of Shōji doors, windows and dividers. We need some stronger construction. No offense to traditional Japanese architecture intended. It's just descriptive.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#199
post #130
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best track record of protecting have Social Market countries. Social Capitalism, also called "Social Democracy", "Nordic Model", "Democratic Socialism", etc is generally the best model. In a pure capitalist model it is okay if Facebook shares all your data with advertisers – if you don’t like Facebook, just vote with your money and go to Google+.

Sure but no country on earth, not even the USA, has anything close to a pure capitalist system in that sense. Furthermore Nordic Model countries vary, but are very much capitalist. From wikipedia: "Sweden's industry is overwhelmingly in private control; unlike some other industrialized Western countries, such as Austria, Italy or Finland, state owned enterprises were always of minor importance." In fact I think I can…

[deleted]

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#200
Something doesn't make sense: How can it be worthwhile for the attackers to invest that much time in gaining access to one computer?

Given wrong numbers and that many people won't answer the phone, be near the computer, have time at that moment, or be willing to cooperate, and then add the time it takes to talk an end user through such a process, will they gain access to even one computer every 2 hours? How can that pay off?

There are many, many more efficient attacks. How about good old-fashioned spam?

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