41–50 of 59 posts
This is not a good way to generate "secure" random numbers, and the "visits every possible state" is not a good metric. Computing the cryptographic hash of a 1536-bit counter will have better properties (and less handwaving) than this function.
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I don't know if there's anything wrong with Sheildsup (other than my recollection of it being a pretty run of the mill tool for reporting open ports), but the guy who makes Shieldsup is, in my opinion, basically a charlatan. He writes loads and loads of technical-sounding blather on his website that is very transparently designed to make him look like an expert on security to people who don't know any better. He's ma…
FWIW, he’s been at it for about 20 years.
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I don't know if there's anything wrong with Sheildsup (other than my recollection of it being a pretty run of the mill tool for reporting open ports), but the guy who makes Shieldsup is, in my opinion, basically a charlatan. He writes loads and loads of technical-sounding blather on his website that is very transparently designed to make him look like an expert on security to people who don't know any better. He's ma…
I feel like what you're describing is just marketing, in the sense of exaggerating the necessity of a product that works but which you really can do without. Or do you mean Gibson's products don't really work?
If the maker of ShieldsUp! claims anything, I am deeply, deeply, unconvinced.
Forget "ShieldsUp!" This is the guy who still sells SpinRite for $90 when it hasn't seen an update since 2004. It's old enough to vote at this point and Steve Gibson is always spouting off blatant lies about how it's great for recovering SSDs. He's claimed that it can magically read uncorrectable sectors on modern drives (SATA, not SAS, no SCSI READ LONG here and no ancient IDE drives that still supported READ LONG f…
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I don't know if there's anything wrong with Sheildsup (other than my recollection of it being a pretty run of the mill tool for reporting open ports), but the guy who makes Shieldsup is, in my opinion, basically a charlatan. He writes loads and loads of technical-sounding blather on his website that is very transparently designed to make him look like an expert on security to people who don't know any better. He's ma…
Thats over 20 years old. Its not worth mentioning in this discussion. He only sells one product, Spin-Rite which actually works pretty well for its purpose, tho it’s becoming less important as we move more towards SSD. It sounds like you’re spreading misinformation just for the hell of it.
Most of it is just self-aggrandizing technobabble trying to appear authoritative and "educate" people on security issues with hilariously dumb content like the page that recommends checking Facebook's cert hash on his site before trusting it. His number one goal appears to be to convince people he is an "influential voice" in the security community (he uses that phrase to describe himself repeatedly). I just find it sad when I encounter people who buy it. Luckily, it mostly seems to appeal to a certain kind of misinformed enthusiast that I rarely encounter these days.
Note that this isn't to say all his info is bad. I particularly like stuff like his explanation of how NAT works. That's great content. If it wasn't mixed in with the chicken little snake oil stuff, I'd actually refer people to it.
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FWIW, he’s been at it for about 20 years.
One of his most infamous crusades was how he yelled about Windows XP raw sockets -- a fake problem that he hyped up as if the sky was falling -- well after Windows XP was EOL'd.
He brought it up in 2001, the year XP was released[1]. Microsoft fixed it three years later in SP2. XP was EOL'ed in 2009[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_program...
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One of his most infamous crusades was how he yelled about Windows XP raw sockets -- a fake problem that he hyped up as if the sky was falling -- well after Windows XP was EOL'd.
What is your source for this "information"? He brought it up in 2001, the year XP was released[1]. Microsoft fixed it three years later in SP2. XP was EOL'ed in 2009[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_program... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP
Do keep in mind, however, that his entire reason for continuing to publicize this was because it allowed him to continue making foolish claims like "Microsoft Does Not Understand Security," and to pretend that the eventual restrictions (not removal) of raw sockets in XP were proof that he was right. They were not.
In fact, the entire issue was over his own misunderstanding of security. You can't secure a network by asking client operating systems to restrict their own behavior on some kind of honor system (guess what: the bad guys' computers will not have these restrictions). The use of raw sockets did not disappear and the internet still exists. The claim that this was "a tremendous threat to the global Internet" basically amounted to "the sky is falling and only I can see it because none of the other security experts 'get it' like I do." Which is entirely bogus.
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Pure software can't actually generate mathematically-provable random numbers unless given purely random data to start with. So pseudo removes total dependency on physical events. Why you don't want to be dependent on physical events: - You never know if physical events are truly random unless you test them. Your physical RNG source may be broken or compromised. - A good strategy is to use multiple physical sources of…
Wasn't there a company that used lava lamps to generate supposedly truly random numbers at one point?
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Thats over 20 years old. Its not worth mentioning in this discussion. He only sells one product, Spin-Rite which actually works pretty well for its purpose, tho it’s becoming less important as we move more towards SSD. It sounds like you’re spreading misinformation just for the hell of it.
I agree. Not sure why all the hate. I’ve used SpinRite to recover some bad drives of mine and friends/family over the years and it’s worked quite well. Had one Windows box that was failing to boot before the login screen, ran SpinRite and it found / fixed some issues. Rebooted and the machine was fine. At least fine enough to copy everything to a new drive and ditch the old one. Haven’t tried it on an SSD though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats over 20 years old. Its not worth mentioning in this discussion. He only sells one product, Spin-Rite which actually works pretty well for its purpose, tho it’s becoming less important as we move more towards SSD. It sounds like you’re spreading misinformation just for the hell of it.
I've always been curious why people so fervently dislike Gibson. I think the most genuine criticism is that Spin-Rite is not a backup solution and people may rely on it as such. Ideally, no one should need it since all data should be replicated and backed up. Any drive can fail at any time for any reason and it may be totally unrecoverable. [Side Note: He also once claimed in a "testimonial" that a special ops team r…