Who needs anti-virus - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 03:24:17 am
content: According to the Inspector General’s report, EDA (Economic Development Agency) destroyed 2.7 million dollars worth of PC, mouse, keyboards, etc. After EDA hiring a contractor to investigate possible malware infection in December 2011, they wanted a guarantee from the contractor that its computer system was infection-free and that no malware could persist. The contractor cannot possibly guarantee that.“External incident responders were unable to provide the assuranceEDA’s CIOsought, because doing so involved proving that an infection could not exist rather than that one did not exist,” the report said.So they spend nearly a million building (renting?) temporary IT infrastructure and begin destroying the old potentially infected equipment.The destroyed equipment includes:- Desktop computers- Printers- TVs- Cameras- Mice- KeyboardsThey halted the destruction when they ran out of funding. In the end, only six infected components were identified and according to the report, all easily fixable. But instead of taking that route, the EDA decided to physically destroy its hardware system.Give you warm and fussies about your safety when our Homeland Security Dept (which runs EDA) has such smart guys working for them, doesn't it?

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 03:36:40 am
content: Quote from: Rick Law on July 11, 2013, 03:24:17 am

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 03:41:30 am
content: Got a source for this news story?

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 03:42:50 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 11, 2013, 03:41:30 amhttp://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/10/us-agency-destroys-computers/?test=latestnews

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 04:47:10 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 11, 2013, 03:41:30 amIt was all over the internet yesterday

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 06:01:45 am
content: All these fuss can be summarized in just simple one word : "corruption" , nothing to see here, move along.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 06:36:19 am
content: Quote from: IanB on July 11, 2013, 04:47:10 amI was busy for a day and look what happens... I missed such fun story!Quote from: BravoV on July 11, 2013, 06:01:45 amMore incompetent than corruption, I think. ThisCIOthinks he/she can get an assurance that his/her machines cannot get inflected. That is like asking the doctor to assure that you will not get a cold. To destroy a mouse? TV? My goodness. And this from theCIO! Geeze, who are they hiring. I expect a 6 year old kid to know better than that.If he/she paid off someone to get appointed, that would be corruption. Thus far, there is no evidence to that. We will see...

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 06:42:09 am
content: Quote from: Rick Law on July 11, 2013, 06:36:19 amQuoted from above foxnews link :"According to the report, the agency spent$1.06 millionon “building a temporary infrastructure, pending long-term IT solution;”$823,000on hiring the cybersecurity contractor;$688,000on “contractor assistance for a long-term recovery solution;" and$4,300to destroy $170,000 worth of tech equipment."Not only that 4300 bucks, somebody else also got paid for those above millions of dollars for the "temporary infrastructure" and "else" which I really doubt that is a clean without corruption on that particular budget spending, its easy to smell something fishy in there.C'mon, in these days ? No body is that stupid.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 08:16:46 am
content: I never cease to be amazed by the levels of incompetence and total stupidity of people like this, and that they don't get fired. Does nobody ever get pulled into the office and asked "What the fuck were you thinking".What I want to know is whether public office attracts such dull people with no imagination and little common sense, or the job makes them like that.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 08:19:50 am
content: it attracts them like a plague. same for council workers, some are good people but scum get in and drag the whole thing down,

author: KJDS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 09:00:29 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on July 11, 2013, 08:16:46 amIt's a combination of both. Whilst I've not worked directly in a public organisation, I've worked for companies that do space or military work that is largely funded by government and ESA. In those, anyone with ambition, nous, common sense and a sense of humour is hounded out the door and replaced with someone that will timewaste whilst following the outdated procedures. At one well known satellite company it took a draughtsman three weeks to produce a drawing that would have taken me 45 minutes to produce in autocad. I finally gave up working there after being ordered to design a test rig to test a non functioning space model. The only useful work I did in seven months there was to reformat two large MS Word documents.What really struck me were the barriers between departments, where each was determined that it would tell the world that it was perfect and never made mistakes by making it almost impossible to do anything unless every input to them had already been perfected.

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 09:34:19 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on July 11, 2013, 08:16:46 amnot only they are not fired, but they surely earn more than me for doing that job... what a waste !

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 12:02:29 pm
content: Burning tax money for BS should be a felony.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 12:48:10 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on July 11, 2013, 11:13:53 amafter watching a blockbuster movie, i know nothing is secure since alien's hardware can get infected too. i dont know how much muggle got sucked up by this fact. in the end i just move along, if something bad happen i just reinstall fresh from clean format.

author: dr.diesel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 12:50:23 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 11, 2013, 12:02:29 pmYeah, but it's the only thing the Government is good at?

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 01:04:07 pm
content: Quote from: dr.diesel on July 11, 2013, 12:50:23 pmThen we should change the job description

author: madworm
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 01:13:18 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 11, 2013, 12:02:29 pmYou my friend are a 'terrorist' :->I bet we will soon see the "Huntingdownsubversivepostsonaforum Act". Counter-measures will be covered by the "Canthavetheplebsknowwhatweredoing Act".

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 01:19:17 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 11, 2013, 12:48:10 pmCommon assumptions are that about 90% of all software written is crap. It's running somehow and prone to tons of programming mistakes, a lot of them creating security holes. The remaining 10% are ok-ish and only a few % of those 10% are written really well. How often had we to update the Flash plugin the last 12 months to mitigate (I deliberately don't write "fix") security issues?

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2013, 01:27:41 pm
content: Quote from: madworm on July 11, 2013, 01:13:18 pmYou just triggered NSA's keyword search engine and an agent has to investigate this now.QuoteNot so loud! Someone might get bad ideas

author: engineer_in_shorts
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 11:37:13 am
content: Staying on topic:here is my favorite anti-virus

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 12:16:01 pm
content: Quote from: engineer_in_shorts on June 23, 2015, 11:37:13 amIt's just an ad for snake oil software.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 23, 2015, 09:23:11 pm
content: Perhaps their IT department were denied funding for upgrades, so what better way of ensuring they get what they want? :-)

author: Delta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 08:40:08 am
content: Quote from: engineer_in_shorts on June 23, 2015, 11:37:13 amPlease please tell me that that is an Onionesque piss take? Please let it be so...

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 09:25:29 am
content: Most software is developed like a sandcastle.It's build, looks nice and stands up. But after a while it start to sink away in time and tide.Then the manufacturer patches some more sand against it, making larger and uglier.This continues for a few years. Soon there is no room anymore for more sand and it'll collapse on itself.Then the manufacturer decides its time to take learned knowledge and create a new sandcastle, they rarely decide to build a fortress or house because that takes too long.

author: Rmx77
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 10:54:02 am
content: with the flash updates usually adobe only fixes the broken thing from the previous version only to break something in the new version. i think there should be an in place alternative but html5 isnt in use everywhere yet and it should be. that will fix the flash issues

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2015, 12:49:15 pm
content: Quote from: Rmx77 on June 24, 2015, 10:54:02 amThe most common gateways for malware are adobereader, flashplayer and java. Get rid of those and you'll have much less attack surface.