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Comment Flaw or feature? (Score 2) 1

by Z00L00K (#65274489) Attached to: Microsoft uses AI to find flaws in GRUB2, U-Boot, Barebox filesystems

Is your data of the type that you need a fully protected unrecoverable storage or can you actually accept that your data can be accessed when there's physical access to the media?

The ability to recover data is actually something that's quite important, last week I did a recovery of data off a laptop that wasn't encrypted with bitlocker. That was the only way since the previous owner had passed away due to old age and passwords weren't available and there was no way to recover the password through M$ login since the phone number used for recovery wasn't active anymore or even in the hands of a completely unknown unrelated person since it had been reused.

But Microsoft of course promotes their accounts and Bitlocker "for your safety". But not for your inheritors, especially in this electronic age where most documents are purely electronic and never printed. So some important documents might be unrecoverable.

Comment Re:It could, but it won't yet (Score 3, Insightful) 119

Bitcoins are likely dead whenever the world goes sour. No or spotty electricity as well as spotty internet can cause it to split in value on different continents as well as countries banning them due to money laundering and criminal activities.

The US dollar is a risky currency right now. Cash isn't king anymore. Metal and oil is preserving value better even if it can swing up and down it won't become a black hole.

Submission + - Microsoft uses AI to find flaws in GRUB2, U-Boot, Barebox filesystems (bleepingcomputer.com) 1

Submitted by zlives
zlives writes: seems to need physical access with perhaps the exception of GRUB.
from the MS source https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...
"Using Security Copilot, we initially explored which functionalities in a bootloader have the most potential for vulnerabilities, with Copilot identifying network, filesystems, and cryptographic signatures as key areas of interest. Given our ongoing analysis of network vulnerabilities and the fact that cryptography is largely handled by UEFI, we decided to focus on filesystems."
it seems they ignored network and encryption so possible there are additional things to be discovered.

Submission + - UK's GCHQ intern transferred top secret files to his phone (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'A former GCHQ intern has admitted risking national security by taking top secret data home with him on his mobile phone.

'Arshad, from Rochdale in Greater Manchester, is said to have transferred sensitive data from a secure computer to his phone, which he had taken into a top secret area of GCHQ on 24 August 2022.

'The court heard that Arshad took his work mobile into a top secret GCHQ area and connected it to work station.

'He then transferred sensitive data from a secure, top secret computer to the phone before taking it home, it was claimed.

'Arshad then transferred the data from the phone to a hard drive connected to his personal home computer.'

Seriously? What on earth was the UK's equivalent of the NSA doing allowing its hardware to carry out such a transfer?

Submission + - Copilot Can't Duplicate 2013 TouchDevelop and Windows Phone Code Generation Demo

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "The devil is in the details," Ross Perot famously said of President Clinton's economic plan back in 1993. Such, too, is the case with code generation, now personified by the much-hyped coding capabilities of Copilot and other GenAI LLMs.

But ask Copilot to "write a program that can be run on an iPhone 16 to select 15 random photos from the phone, tint them to random colors, and display the photos on the phone" in 2025 like TouchDevelop did for the long-discontinued Windows Phone in a 2013 Microsoft Research 'SmartSynth' natural language code generation demo (ACM paper, demo video), and you'll get lots of code and caveats from Copilot, but nothing that you can execute as is (compare to functioning 10 lines of code TouchDevelop program). It's a good reminder that just because GenAI can generate code, it doesn't necessarily mean it will generate the least amount of code, the most understandable or appropriate code for the requestor, or code that runs unchanged and produces the desired results.

TouchDevelop — a programming environment and language that enabled schoolchildren and expert programmers alike to write applications directly on mobile devices and in the browser — was (like BASIC) abandoned by Microsoft, who explained: "We determined we needed to replace Touch Develop with MakeCode in order to provide a more holistic, hands-on computing education platform that will bring computer science to life through physical computing devices like the micro:bit and immersive experiences like [Microsoft-owned] Minecraft." It marked an abrupt change in direction from the "Don't just play on your phone, program it" learn-to-code messaging for K-12 students that was promoted for years by the tech giants and even President Obama.

Interestingly, a Microsoft Research video from CS Education Week 2011 shows enthusiastic Washington high school students participating in an hour-long TouchDevelop coding lesson and demonstrating the apps they created that tapped into music, photos, the Internet, and yes, even their phone's functionality, showing us how lacking iPhone and Android still are today as far as easy programmability-for-the-masses goes (when asked, Copilot replied that Apple's Shortcuts app wasn't up to the task). Two years later during CSEdWeek 2013, the new Hour of Code (TM) was launched by tech-backed nonprofit Code.org with a decidedly dumbed-down approach to introducing kids to coding, with Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg teaching 30+ million schoolkids how to drag-and-drop puzzle pieces to advance an Angry Bird character up, down, left, and right, the same concepts a 5-year-old might learn by playing Pop-O-Matic Trouble.

Submission + - SPAM: CCC demands digital infrastructures that are resilient against fascismâ(TM)

Submitted by Z00L00K
Z00L00K writes: We need a digital firewall against fascism. We are addressing twelve demands to the CDU/CSU and SPD, which they must implement swiftly to stop the foreseeable consequences of the shift to the right and the endeavors of Trump and Co. The surveillance era must end.

The start of a new government in Germany is accompanied by a turnaround in transatlantic relations and an unprecedented anti-democratic takeover of power by tech broligarchs in the United States. Therefore, mass surveillance by tech companies is even more of a political issue than before, which a new government cannot ignore.
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