Kaspersky's Threatpost reports that Oracle employee Zhiang Wang introduced a patch to the Open Source socat utility which broke its security by changing a hard coded Diffie-Hellman prime number to a 1024 bit number that is not prime (archived). While substantial discussion is occurring around whether the change was introduced to create backdoor, the change as a point of fact broke the security promised by socat.
Category Archives: Shitware
Last Actual Mozilla Feature Removed
Mozilla is removing fine grained control of cookies from their Firefox web browser in version 44 after declaring the feature and the ~100 lines of code supporting it a bug (archived). Mozilla persisted in having a userbase on its largely fictitious reputation of being a venture that supports the needs of its users while actually cultivating memory leaks, remote access vulnerabilities, and other abuses of their users. The removal of fine grained cookie control in Mozilla Firefox represents the end of any pretense that Mozilla has any concern about the desires of actual users. While all of the "major" browsers including Google's Chromium family, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Edge browsers, Apple's Safari, and Mozilla's Firefox are irredeemable turds some saner browsers1 do in fact exist. There's even a GUI web browser that doesn't look too bad.
But do exercise caution because they are unfortunately still web browsers ↩
Alan Reiner Quits Armory as Multi-Year Commercialization Effort Fails
Today Alan Reiner announced he is quitting Armory wallet development, and that efforts to commercialize the Armory Bitcoin wallet have failed. Armory started life as a promising wallet management tool that runs on top of a local Bitcoin daemon, but when a "phone home" feature became public knowledge any potential of trusting Reiner as a software developer or Armory as a software product was lost. Reiner with the help of serial fundraiser Trace Mayer raised funds in an attempt to make a business out of the Armory software. Reiner's announcement is presented in full below: Continue reading
Ebay Has No Plans To Stop Being A Vector For Malware Propagation
Numerous sources are reporting that Ebay has no intentions of remedying a severe vulnerability that allows people to use obfuscated javascript to order to phish and spread malware through postings on Ebay's platform. Ebay's web interface in its current form does not allow users to engage in commerce without consenting to allow javascript to run on their machines, breaking Ebay on browser configurations which mitigate this vulnerability.
Ether Huffing Reddit Spam Persists
Private message spam on the social engineering platform Reddit supporting the dreams and aspersations of Ether huffers continues without any sign of abatement. The continued spam promoting Buterin's waterfall suggests that either Reddit is incapable of controlling spam, or that they actually support this spam at a high level. The lack of more traditional spam promoting online pharmacies, LVMH merchandise, and other marginal commercial ventures seems to demonstrate that Reddit actually has the technical ability to prevent spam. This leaves the very real possibility that Reddit management materially supports this spam campaign as the increasingly probable explanation for the spam campaign's persistence.
Article On Swedish Murder Censored In Sweden
An article in the Daily Mail on the stabbing death of student social worker Alexandra Mezher (archived) has reportedly been censored in Sweden. Users in Sweden are being redirected to a url on the Daily Mail website named /unavailable/index.html which apologizes for being "unable to find" the article. Beyond the circumstances of the murder, the Daily Mail article describes an increase in violence affecting many Swedish population centers which makes Gothenburg increasingly resemble the United States hell hole known as James Lafond Presents Baltimore.
Russian Communists Seek To Emulate United States Socialists With Asset Forfeiture
Russia Today reports that two communist legislators are trying to bring United States style asset forfeiture back into the Russian legal system as a penalty for extralegal pharmaceutical entrepreneurs (archived). Asset forfeiture which came into popularity with United States "law enforcement" with the "War on Drugs" has of course expanded to become a default punishment for all kinds of behavior the United States Government has decided is undesirable. Assumptions about asset forfeiture have become so engrained into the United States legal system that surprise was in no short supply when New Zealand rejected assertions by United States Department of "Justice" that there is nothing wrong with using asset forfeiture to deny defendants access to resources necessary to their legal defense.
Gavin Andresen Proposes Same Hard Fork Again
United States Government saboteur and hard fork advocate Gavin Andresen has proposed the same hard fork yet another time. His latest proposal is exactly the same as the increase in "Bitcoin Classic" advocated by himself, Toomim, and serial scammer and morally bankrupt hamplanet Marshmallow Long1. As the exact same proposal has been roundly dismissed in the form of Bitcoin Classic, the chances of this gaining actual as opposed to astroturfed traction are likely the same.
Facebook Reaches New Highs As Money Laundry Spins
Although Facebook's desktop platform is no longer providing the revenue stream that some platform investors came to expect, and even though the whole shebang is a very thinly veiled 21st century Pravda, reports are in that speculators in the jewel of the USG's social media crown have driven the firm's stock price to new heights on the back of "mobile" advertising revenues. Continue reading
Obamacare Firm Loses Personal Information
Obamacare firm Centene is reportedly searching for six missing hard drives which contain personal financial and health information on up to a million Americans (archived). Because of the peculiar way the fiat financial system does business without strong cryptographic certainty, the kind of personal information contained on these drives is likely of supreme interest to all manner of thieves.