Monthly Archives: October 2016

October Reality Hits: Obamacare Premiums Spiking 25-116% In Last Annual Increase Before Election

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With the mainstream media TRUMPeting the seeming inevitability of Hillary "Clitler" Rodham-Clinton's coronation insurers released their premium increases Obamacare coverage next year. Insurance on Obamacare exchanges is set to increase in cost from twenty-five to one hundred and sixteen percent in a development that nobody could have forseen. The extent to which an individual's Obamacare premium is set to increase is entirely dependent on their location. Further the number of jurisdictions1 in which "marketplace" health insurance coverage is only available from a single provider continues to increase. Enjoy your marketplace of one.

  1. Meaning in this case not which on of the fifty states, but which one of the numerous counties in a particular state.  ↩

Chicom "Internet Of Things" Confirms No One Gives A Fuck About Securing "Internet Of Things"

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Chinese electronics manufacturer Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology has admitted that weak security in its line of webcams and DVRs were the likely culprit for the DDoS attack that left a portion of the internet without service on Friday. The Mirai malware used in the attack likely took advantage of the fact that customers purchasing these products would fail to change their login details from the default settings, and as a result upwards of a half-million devices could be infected. A botnet powered by the same malware is suspected in the 665 Gbps attack that took down Brian Krebs website last month.

Peace On Earth: AdultFriendFinder Data Liberated Again

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Just in time for the coming holiday season, security news site sophos reports that Peace may still be amongst us despite reports an aspect of the notorious quiet and tranquility may have been arrested at the behest of the US government. In an interview with Motherboard last week Peace stated he was responsible for the latest AdultFriendFinder breach, and had given “everything, all [FriendFinder Network],” to other hackers. AFF confirmed this stating:

We are aware of reports of a security incident, and we are currently investigating to determine the validity of the reports. If we confirm that a security incident did occur, we will work to address any issues and notify any customers that may be affected.

Peace further stated to Motherboard that the current breach was accomplished by opening "a backdoor that had been publicized on the hacking forum Hell" The Russian language forum was the site where the data from the previous hack was listed for sale at a price of 70 BTC. Information to corroborate the veracity of his claims was sent to Motherboard, and was verified by an independent security researcher Dan Tentler (WoT:nonperson). Tentler said the files contained employee names, their home IP addresses, and SSH keys used for remote access to AdultFriendFinder's servers.

Him In Our Time.

Not Quite News Roundup Xtend 11 (TM)(R)

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Welcome to the eleventh edition of the Qntra Not Quite News Roundup Xtend (TM)(R). The below events are alleged to have happened, but they are decidedly innocent of newsworthiness.

  • The United States Department of State has rejected offers for international elections observers to oversee the Untied States Presidential election on November 8th. The Department of State was headed by candidate Hillary Rodham-Clinton until she stepped down to focus on her campaign. Traditionally the US Department of State has been a huge fan of sending international observers to oversee other countries elections.
  • A free trade deal between the European Union and Canada is being blocked by the brave Parliament of Wallonia. This French speaking region of Belgium is sticking it to the socialist Merkel led European government in Brussels by executing veto power over the treaty which would end 98% of the current tariffs between Merkel's 4th Reich and Canada. For their bravery the Walloons are being slandered in the mainstream press as "The Detroit" of Europe.
  • Thousands of former members of the United States armed forces who served in the past decades' misadventures in Southwest Asia are being compelled to repay their enlistment bonuses. These financial incentives were used to lure the affected veterans to fight in these wars in the first place as enthusiasm to fight in the desert was low when these bonuses were offered. Apparently all these years later the Department of "Defense" has decided it didn't really need these people fighting after all. This desperate financial move by the Department of "Defense" is not bullish for their ability to attract future volunteers during times where manpower is needed.
  • Donald Trump-Clinton was booed by New York elites at a fundraising dinner for Catholic charities after brining up anti papist positions espoused by Hillary Rodham-Clinton and her advisers in wikileaked communications.
  • ViaBTC continues to both exhibit unwarranted self importance and draw an excess of media attention. The Marshall Long affiliated mining operation bills itself as the "most professional" mining pool.
  • Blockstream is setting a target for this November to activate Jim Crow for transaction signatures.
  • Russia Today had their British bank accounts closed.
  • Accidental gay spat / pussy grabbing at random starlet's home.
  • Hillary Rodham-Clinton's fundraisers were further revealed to despair of ever receiving support from Bitcoin due to the fact the other team takes Bitcoin and the inherently conservative nature of Bitcoin.
  • Ecuador cut off internet access for their guest Julian Assange.
  • In a headline this week CoinTelegraph asked:

    What Stands in the Way of Bitcoin Mass Adoption in Africa?

    The answer continues to be the impossibility of mass adoption. Also Africa.

  • R3, the fiat effort that Mike Hearn quit pretending to be a part of Bitcoin to join admitted it has substantial budget difficulties. For details refer to the third bullet point of this Roundup Xtend (TM)(R).
  • The University of Missouri football team lost their homecoming game against unranked non-conference opponent Middle Tennessee. Last year the University's Board of Curators surrendered to demands placed by members of the football team in order to resolve a strike. The University has been rewarded so far this year with a two win five loss record with no wins in conference play. The 51 points allowed by Missouri were the most against a non-conference opponent at home since 1944.

Sorry for your loss.

Buggered Bitfinex Begs Burgler For Bitcoins Back

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Bitfinex has made a desperate attempt to reach out to the hacker that buggered their bum and liberated almost 120k Bitcoins from their platform in August with a post on their blog detailing the channels opened for dialogue. One of the methods even goes as far to suggest blockchain spam as a viable communication protocol.

From the announcement:

We believe that a combination of Tor and an anonymous email service should suffice to protect your identity and location. Encrypting your message with our PGP key further guarantees privacy from prying
eyes, but to prove your authenticity to us, we ask that you provide the public key associated with 1QDBWKgfftwuraEasMGSUvj9PPrswZv19q and sign your message with the corresponding private key.

Instead of using e-mail, you can send the authenticating information via Bitmessage and Tor. Our Bitmessage address is BM-2cW79647sMFe3fJKKGKAwXWwTSS293meq8.

Alternatively, you can send us a message on the Blockchain using OP_RETURN. You can encrypt a message (containing your pub key) with our PGP key, split up the message into 80-byte chunks, and send
transactions to 19eT7KGKo1gFjgBhEF4957wVNugkc2cakK from any one of the 2072 addresses currently holding the bitcoins in question.

Despite not being registered in the WoT, Bitfinex also somehow managed to make a gpg key and post it as well. The post closed by stating that they were "very anxious to hear" from the attacker, and asked if there is perhaps a different way that they would prefer to communicate, as absconding with $75 million in Bitcoin evidently did not send a clear enough message. (archived)

Nitrocellulose Recategorized As High Explosive In US Through Quiet Physics Defying Ruling

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The United States government quietly reclassified nitrocellulose, a humble plastic with deflagrating1 explosive properties under certain conditions, as a high explosive (archived). For one hundred and fifty-four years nitrocellulose plastic has safely been used in the production of common household objects including guitar picks and table tennis balls.

The safe, deflagrating failure mode of nitrocellulose also makes it the ideal propellant for ammunition and uniquely useful as flash paper in the magician's trade. As a deflagrating "low explosive" the explosive failure moves as a flame front through nitrocellulose at a speed far below that of sound. By contrast in actual "high explosive" material instead of a slow moving flame front explosive failure occurs with detonation and a shock wave that moves faster than the speed of sound.

Due to the greater hazard and handling requirements associated this reclassification effectively amount to a ban on small arms ammunition though US government Blackshirts insist they will not be enforcing this ban at the present. Coverage of this, even in specialist media, is complicated by noise produced by ongoing masturbatory lobbying over the implications of this change for wetted, non-explosive nitrocellulose rendered safe for bulk transport. Before being used in viable ammunition wetted nitrocellulose must first be dried rendering the masturbatory noise moot for end users.

Him in our time.

  1. Commonly referred to as "low explosive"  ↩

Dyn DNS Suffers Packet Inflation, Many Other "Services" Affected

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Dyn DNS is reporting a large-scale DDoS attack on it's servers this morning, which has caused sporadic interruptions of service for users, mainly on the East Coast of the US. Github, Twitter, and Reddit all use the service as their upstream DNS provider and have reported many outages and total downtime lasting hours. DynDNS president released a statement saying:

This morning, October 21, Dyn received a global DDoS attack on our Managed DNS infrastructure in the east coast of the United States. DNS traffic resolved from east coast name server locations are experiencing a service degradation or intermittent interruption during this time. Updates will be posted as information becomes available.

Upon recognition, active mitigation protocols were initiated and have been working to resolve the issues.

Customers with questions or concerns are encouraged to check our status page for updates and reach out to our Technical Support Team.

No information was available as to whom might be behind the attack, leading to speculation that it may have been launched to protest the recent arrest of an aspect of Peace on Earth earlier this week.