Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one
Joined Aug 2019
The key thing to remember is that luck plays a role in not being discovered, in a way that it does not with proper security measures. In my example, the hunters could have gotten lucky if they just happened to think to open the right door nearby and look at the servers there.
Given that physical access to computers is a lot harder to defend against than internet access, my one hour of time vs the time they spent was quite a good payoff.
I learned this lesson by operating a hidden server on a university network in a room next to a lab funded by #US three letter agencies, it was actually a feeder program, the grad students mostly went to work for those agencies. They had seen that my non-university domain name was mapped to a university IP address. They emailed me while I was on vacation, saying they were hunting for it. Two weeks later, I got back, and they still hadn't found it. They never did. That setup took me an hour.
I totally agree that #Security Through Obscurity does not work, I think the key word that often gets lost is "through". Make systems as secure as you can, don't rely on them being hidden. Obscurity can actually add quite a bit. Compare a build server reachable on a public domain name to one only reachable on a tor onion service. Finding the tor onion service could take the determined attacker quite a lot of time. The key measure is time to attack vs time spent setting up defenses. 1/
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Reading the section in the #PaloAlto book about #decolonialization makes me think how so much digital media is a form of #colonialism of our personal relationships, education, and even thought processes. It is driven by companies with the mentality of extracting profit from mining resources, in this case, the resources our human relationships and education.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
NPR leaves Twitter (for now): https://www.engadget.com/npr-is-ditching-twitter-over-government-funded-media-label-on-its-main-account-155556726.html (good on ya)
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Learn how @guardianproject and @torproject are working together to bring Arti, the Rust-based next-gen Tor, to mobile devices https://guardianproject.info/2023/03/04/arti-next-gen-tor-on-mobile/ #orbot #rust #privacy #circumvention #torproject
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
#WireGuard becomes the first VPN app on #FDroid to be built reproducibly! This means that WireGuard on F-Droid is now guaranteed to be 100% (bit-by-bit) equal to the WireGuard the developer builds.
If you're using WireGuard from F-Droid, please export your tunnels and re-install to switch to the developer's signature and continue receiving updates.
More details in the official WireGuard announcement: https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2023-April/008045.html
New to reproducible builds? Check out https://f-droid.org/en/2023/01/15/towards-a-reproducible-fdroid.html
I wonder if #ChatGPT and its kindred #AI #LLM projects will just kind of slowly consume themselves via a downward spiral of driving down the level of public, online content via computer generated spam and #disinfo. They are trained on these public datasets, for example. For example, https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5qy8/reddit-moderators-brace-for-a-chatgpt-spam-apocalypse
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Side note: I am wondering how best to highlight this as a clear example of anti-competitive behavior on part of Google.
Our Yunohost hosts e-mail, #Nextcloud, other services that can be seen as "competing" (not in scale, but in function) with some Google services.
Google flagging @Yunohost login pages as "deceptive" makes it considerably harder to self-host.
And it doesn't matter if it is on purpose or accidental. Google has the resources to not make such "mistakes".
So many #software projects get caught in this trap of adding ever more #complexity as users request more features. When starting out, new software needs to directly solve a problem better than others, then people adopt it. As more people adopt it, they demand more features. Incrementally adding more features works for the existing user base, but makes it harder and harder for newcomers to jump in. Then new software does a key thing better, and the complex old one collapses under its own weight.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Survey to gather feedback on the native Debian package of GitLab https://lists.debian.org/debian-ruby/2023/04/msg00013.html
#ArsTechnica's article on exploiting #Zimbra is a nice example to work through to understand how an advanced #cyber #targeted #attack works
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/pro-russian-hackers-target-elected-us-officials-supporting-ukraine/2/
Does anyone have any examples of advanced #cybersecurity #attacks that were not targeted? I guess the #GreatCannon and maybe #QUANTUMINSERT #FOXACID are examples. I'd love to see a story about a recent exploit like this (those two examples don't really work when HTTPS is used).
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Report on devastating working conditions at dpd Austria. Up to 17-hour days and 350 deliveries per day, €6 hourly wage, no breaks, and subcontractors, of course. And while dpd tracks every move via its 'Predict' system, it claims to have no idea [German]:
https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000145213953/verheerende-arbeitsbedingungen-beim-paketversand-dpd-in-kalsdorf-bei-graz
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
In 2020, the Austrian police raided the Amazon fulfillment center near Vienna and found that almost all of Amazon's delivery subcontractors violated employment/tax laws. But nothing happened to Amazon itself, and I'm afraid nothing has changed.
---
RT @WolfieChristl
In early 2020, the Austrian financial police raided Amazon's distribution center near Vienna.
Turns out they found 130 out of 133 subcontracting delivery companies, most…
https://twitter.com/WolfieChristl/status/1352399079763038210
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
« Honestly, it's probably the phones [The most plausible explanation for teenage unhappiness.] » https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/honestly-its-probably-the-phones
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Looking for an easy read for kids and adults this holiday season? 📚
☑️Check out 'Ada & E. Zangemann, a story about software, skateboards and raspberry ice cream'. And dive into the wonderful world of inventors, tinkering and freedom.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
The website of Reykjavík #Hackerspace, Hakkavélin, just got flagged by #Google Safe Browsing as "deceptive", and anyone who visits this site gets a huge, red, scary warning. Check it out:
https://hakkavelin.is/
Thing is, I happen to manage this site. It's literally a single static HTML file.
This is what we get for allowing shitty journalists to farm clicks by abusing the words "hacker" and "hack" to mean "cybercriminal" and "attack".
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
🚲 Pedalling our way towards a greener future!
The summer of 2023 will be a milestone for cycling. We will propose a European Declaration on #Cycling, inviting the European Parliament and the EU Council to sign up for it.
We want to make sure that all our European initiatives, wherever possible, include a cycling dimension; supporting sustainable urban #mobility plans, doubling the number of safe cycling infrastructures, or creating more bicycle parking facilities.
Joined Aug 2019
