The Jesus Ransomware

No, seriously... someone's working on it. The file extension is .jc

While the article said this much, it didn't mention what it did after it infected the computer.

Let me guess... it puts ten rules onscreen....

1. Thou shalt have no other processors before me
2. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's RAM
3. Thou shalt not not lay with Macs
4. In order to decripteth, thou shalt require 17 bitcoins and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
5. Thou shalt not overclock, unlessith thou cooleth properly
6. Thou shalt not take the name of Linus Torvalds in vain
7. Remember Black Friday sales, and keep them holy
8. Thou shalt not steal CPU cycles for pictures of kitties
9. Honor thy processors that came before
10. If thou art bored, thou can get in some coveting of thy neighbor's wife's ass

Infection vector: clicking on a link in an email from A. Priest.

Damage: adds .jc extension to all the new little files, marks files Saved.

Repair: when repair is threatened, ransomware moves the infection to a different computer, in a different country; pretends nothing happened.

Oopsie - Faceyspaces did it again.
A bug in the app accesses the iPhone's camera while the user scrolls through News Feed.

Reached for comment, Faceyspaces confirmed the bug was "inadvertently introduced" and promised a fix was in the works.

"Inadvertently introduced" - the same way impeachment was inadvertently introduced.

• An oopherectomy is getting rid of ovaries. An uberectomy is getting rid of a car service that will either rape or kill you.

Bad Intel drivers give hackers a backdoor to the Windows kernel.
Patch yer damn computers.


As if it weren't enough that Google is after every possible piece of information it can get, it just went into healthcare. As if healthcare wasn't enough, it's now in banking, via checking accounts. Early next year, it will start monitoring air and change its name to Cyberdyne Systems. In response to the rapid growth, Google has decided to drop its privacy policy, beacause.. you know... Google.




How about a video on a DDOS attack?
Warning: don't click the link if you aren't interested.



I just get done mentioning the PinePhone, and here's an article, with it running KDE's OS.  This is Big News<tm>. No Google. No Apple. Open source hardware and the linux phone platform you choose. I'm going to wait for the next generation, which will hopefully have more horsepower. Or maybe I won't....



McAfee Antivirus lets hackers execute arbitrary code and escalate system privilege.  It was patched, but make sure your system is ok and that it was patched.


Newer Intel CPUs vulnerable to variant 2 of ZombieLoad attack.
Just in case your CPU wasn't vulnerable to the first version, here's your attack.
Here's further info on MDS, the hardware vulnerability.
These guys found the initial processor loophole.
These guys find themselves too busy singing to deal with vulnerabilities.



And because you just haven't had enough of today's shit show of vulnerabilities, your Trusted Platform Module may leak your VPN server's private key.




Aside from that, it was a pretty good day.

Blue Keeps Your Data

Fortunately, BlueKeep is difficult to implement, even though it's in the wild.
Patch yer damn machines already!


Encrypted emails on macOS found stored unencrypted.
Fortunately, Apple is going to fix the (Siri) bug.
in the meantime, there's a command to type in the terminal window.


The Texas Health Agency made names, addresses, Social Security numbers and treatment information of 6,617 people public. After the $1.6 million fine, they're Very Sorry (they got caught) and take your privacy seriously (because they got caught) and will do whatever is necessary to secure all data (so they won't get caught again).

In totally unrelated news, the taxpayers of Texas are on the hook for $1.6 million for the incompetence of Health and Human Services Commission.



Linux Corner

Using diff command to compare 2 files at the command line.

The ever-popular find command. Because there are so many bloody options, there will be a quiz at the end of the article.

Advanced PDF tricks. Sit, watermarks, and don't do that on my carpet.

The former mayor of Munich goes over how much Microsoft hates linux, especially after linux was adopted there. All the love for linux lately is total BS.

Basic troubleshooting with telnet and netcat

Pinebooks are comin'

I've written before about the Pinebook, the $199 laptop.

There are many pros and cons, if you read the reviews, but for $199, you get a functional laptop. The second batch went out to customers and they are naturally posting unboxing videos, because if you don't post video of you physically opening a box, you never got the box or what was supposed to be inside it.

At the price, it's almost a throwaway. I'm tempted, especially because you can't get a tablet for that little. I urge you to read the reviews, forum, and all of the specs before you say or do anything.  Understand that this is a 64 bit ARM processor.  There's also a linux-only open source hardware phone, to be available for pre-order. It's compatible with all major linux phone project software. In other words, buy the phone, install your favorite OS. I'm watching this project carefully.



So do you, for some strange reason, have an iDevice and run MS Office?
Be careful because it turns out that when you disable the macros, they aren't disabled. Aside from that, I'm sure Office is every bit as lovely as it is on Windows systems.



Popular period tracking apps share your sexual health data with Faceyspaces. Read about how this came to be and what, if anything, is being done about it.

Told you so.



The CEO of Foursquare has called on Congress to regulate the location data industry.  Next week, oil companies are going to call on Congress to regulate them too.  My question is whether the gentleman has already made the adjustments he asks for to his own company (the article doesn't say).

My suggestion: run your company the way you ask and encourage other companies to also. Because you don't need tech-illiterate, overreaching blowhards to legislate things for you. In fact, it's in your best interests to self-regulate, because you have no idea what will happen when the tech-illiterates 'help' you with regulation. Unless they're already in your pocket.




Happy weekend.

SSH......ssssshhhhhh

How to configure custom SSH connections to simply remote access.
Just a bit of ssh help.


Sometimes it's good to get your info on your own time, from a different source, and in longer form. Here are some great cybersec podcasts (clearancejobs.com)



Hey, are you missing a text, perhaps from Valentine's Day?
A boatload of people got them this morning.
It was across all carriers and allegedly involved 'a third party'.
About those people who lost someone between this morning and V-day.....



So those genetic databases you use to find out your ancestor was Trotsky?
Don't look now, but police just got a warrant to search the database.

Everybody repeat after me:  I told you so.

I took so much crap over this from so many, including other security people, plus the indignant who showed me the terms of the signup.  This is a smaller database - just wait for the bigger ones, if it hasn't already started.



A breach at an eye clinic exposes the information of 20,000 patients.
Can't these people see what they're doing?



You're gonna love this: specially crafted ZIP files used to bypass secure email gateways.  The ZIP file was larger than the uncompressed file.



How bout that Ring video doorbell?
Attackers can now steal your wifi password. Can you say "unprotected wireless access point?"  I knew you could. This is an absolutely idiotic flaw. Do drunk monkeys design these things?

Remember: stealing passwords is almost as bad as putting up insecure IoT goodies. And when I say insecure, I mean all of them.

Firewalling Your Phone and Other Things

One android-related item: I've said it before, but you never realize how bad things are until you put a firewall on your phone. This might sound difficult, but hear me out...

Let's take our normal android phone.. you install a cool internet radio app like TuneIn radio. You fire the program up and listen to whatever stations you like. It became my #1 player.

Since my phone met its maker, I had to transfer everything to a new one (whatever you pay for insurance is worth it). LG, in addition to great phones, has a great transfer app. I found this out after I did everything manually on the new phone, because I only know how to do complicated things - I get nervous with anything easy. My original firewall was No Root Firewall, named because you don't have to root your phone to use it. I decided to give Netguard firewall a try.

With a firewall, when you fire up TuneIn Radio, you will get ill seeing where it goes. The firewall shows you every destination. You will see the obvious packets to the radio's domain. Then you'll see a shitload(technical term) of packets going all over the place. Spend any time looking them up and you'll see they're all advertising. So for each call for radio, there are 5 or more ad calls. One of the things about android that pisses me off is the apps are allowed to 'come alive' when they're not being used. TuneIn runs constantly, contacting ad domains. It has absolutely dominated my logs, moreso than goog calls. 

Btw, you don't need goog. You don't need to put in a goog account. You don't have to allow goog outside the phone. Since all apps phone home, the firewall stops them. Many apps don't need any net access at all, yet demand it. If you install a puzzle app, there's no reason it needs access to your phone, camera, storage, and internet access. So stop it with a firewall. You also won't see ads on everything... it's a less automatic ad-blocker.





If you fail to update Win XP(!) and Win 7, you missed the first service pack for XP in forever. This is due to the Bluekeep vulnerability. If you haven't patched yet, stop being a willing idiot.  And if you keep port 3389 (RDP) open to the internet, you're asking for it. And if you use an ancient, non-supported OS, you're asking for it.

Your system is next.




Check out fwbackup. It's a new, open source backup that's simple. I just ran my first backup and it went well. You can select the compression for speed or efficiency.



What happens when you're successfully spearphished?
Your bank account becomes $742k lighter, like the city of Ocala, Florida.

Uptux - privilege escalation checks for linux


2 unpatched critical RCE flaws disclosed in rConfig



If you use Chrome browser on any OS, update it now.



The first Bluekeep attacks are here!
Not as nasty as reported, but you shoulda patched your systems a long time ago.



The Pentagon published AI ethical guidelines.
This is today's best, loudest, and longest laugh.



MS 365 helps improve orgs' security and compliance posture.
MS 365 now helps find and review insider security threats.

MS 365 babysits the IT department when the boss is out.
MS 365 makes pancakes.



How the FBI abused NSA mass surveillance data.
We're so much safer since 9-11.

Telco Malware?

Mandiant has discovered malware that siphoned texts out of the telco's network.
Infects servers that route SMS messages.
Tracks back to... get ready..... a Chinese Government sponsored hacking group.

The only question that remains is who gets it first: the NSA or the Chinese?




Speaking of Chinese food, I don't eat it because it all tastes the same, regardless of where it's from. Bland. No spice.

Speaking of Chinese spying, the US Department of the Interior has grounded its 800 drone fleet over concerns of Chinese spying.

Here's the good part - you're gonna love it: DHS alerted about data security issues, specifically on Chinese drones.  Who woulda thought? Didn't we (temporarily and partially) ban Huawei networking products for this reason?

Would all the heads of government agencies who understand tech please stand in line. All of you. Any at all? Not even one? No, Sir, you're the janitor.. I'm sure you know more than the heads of agencies, but you're not the head of this agency.




The Pirate Bay was down for a week due to a DDoS attack.
Gee, I wonder where that came from....



As of Firefox 73, you can no longer sideload extensions.
The comments are priceless.

I like to sit alone on weekends and sideload, so this will affect me.



Happy Friday, everyone.
Sleep tight, and pray the large numbers of little brown bedbugs don't bite.