WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week we start with a couple of cautionary tales - cloud backup systems, and devices which phone home to keep going. After that we move on to human genome engineering, the Panama Papers (of course), Fortean London, and some new exhibits at Bletchley Park. URLs point you in the direction of Google's free photo editing software, a JavaScript near disaster, the electric 18-rotor Volocopter, the FBI's 10 most wanted cyber criminals, a security bug, a smartphone range-finder, and Microsoft and reputational damage.
It may not look like a lot, but there's plenty of meat in there!
Shorts:
So, you know your data is safe, because it's all backed up into the cloud. Yes? Well let me point you at a cautionary tale from one person in UK who thought her data was safe because it was automatically backed up to the cloud. Amy W was hit by ransomware, which encrypted all her data and demanded money to reveal the key that would unencrypt it. No problem she thought, it's all backed up on the 'KnowHow' cloud backup service. She got the virus removed and cleaned up the computer.
Then she logged on to KnowHow to get back her data, only to find out to her horror that the service had backed up the encrypted version, and always overwrote the previous backup. Furthermore, it didn't keep backups of previous versions. Years of work down the drain. So, the moral of this story is very clear - make sure you know exactly how your cloud provider is backing up your data. If you are not sure how to check it out, ask a techie friend to help you.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/22/pc_world_knowhow_shortcomings/
Talking of bad experiences with technology, pity the poor owners of Nest's Revolv home hub for controlling internet connected devices in the home. Support for the device has now been withdrawn, and the thing has completely ceased to function. Incidentally, Nest's parent company is Alphabet, better known to the world at large as the holding company of Google.
What seems to have happened is that the hub device talks to a server belonging to Revolv, the company that originally made it, which was later bought by Nest. Presumably the server is now switched off, or will be switched off in the near future (it's not clear whether it's already happened or will happen in the near future), and when the device can't access the server, it won't work.
This isn't actually a new problem. Similar problems have happened in computer games when publishers put in 'protection' that requires the game to access a server before it will run - even if it isn't an online game. When the publisher, for some reason, stops supporting the game and turns off the server, only illegal hacked versions of the game work. Quite an incentive to only use hacked versions of such games, I'd say...
One answer to these problems would be to make it a legal requirement that all software that has been paid for, one-off or subscription, must be supported as long as there are owners who want to use the software, or on termination of the server, a version of the software, or hardware, should be made available free of charge to users that doesn't require access to a server.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/05/nest_bricks_revolv_home_automation_hubs/
http://uk.businessinsider.com/googles-nest-closing-smart-home-company-revolv-bricking-devices-2016-4?r=US&IR=T
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/06/nests_bricking_of_revolv_a_wakeup_call/
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11374358/nest-revolv-smart-home-hub-disable-user-compensation
Homework:
I'd like to draw your attention to a piece about human genome engineering on Baen Books’ web site. Baen are better known for their Sci-Fi, and the fact that all their e-books are unprotected, so you can make copies of them. The author of the piece, Dan Koboldt is a Sci-Fi writer, but he is also a researcher with papers published in magazines like Nature. The paper explains for laypeople what the current state of research is, and, to its credit it doesn't skip over the ethical issues raised.
I'd really urge readers to take a look at this, whether you agree with it or not it's going to have an enormous effect on our future, and that of yet unborn children.
http://www.baen.com/genome
Geek Stuff:
I'd guess that just about everyone has heard of the alliteratively dubbed 'Panama Papers' by now. Everyone here in the UK is watching our Prime Minister, David Cameron, wriggling around in an attempt to claim he knew nothing about his father's off-shore business. At first people were fairly sympathetic, it was generally considered that the matter was private to his father, though there was an undercurrent that he ought to have checked before taking high office. Since then it has transpired that he did indeed have shares in the business...
But I digress. What I, as something of a geek, found more interesting was information that's now coming out about how the hackers got to the data - 11.5 million documents, totalling 2.6 terabytes of data. There's also the question of how come Mossack Fonseca didn't notice that amount of data passing out of their firewall (always assuming they did have a firewall!).
Well, it looks like it was a case of unpatched software. In this case unpatched versions of Drupal and/or WordPress used by its web site, and by a customer portal. Both of these were running outdated versions of the software - versions which were known to contain serious security flaws. Once the hackers were in, and had gained access to the system admin password, the rest was easy.
I have to say that the word has been out for months about the dangers of leaving WordPress and Drupal unpatched, and I very much doubt that Mossack Fonseca are the only places that (probably) overworked or half trained admins have put off upgrading the software. In the meantime, the rest of us are finding it quite interesting to get a view of how the other half lives!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-35918844#%22
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/07/panama_papers_unpatched_wordpress_drupal/
London:
A couple of things to do if you are in London. First I'd suggest that you might like to have a look at the London Fortean Society's web site. They put on lectures most weekends. Some of them are pretty far out - 'John Dee's Life With The Angels', for instance - but others are very contemporary and interesting. Sadly, you've missed the one entitled 'Subterranea: Myths, Mysteries and Magic of the Underground World'. Just maintain a healthy scepticism, and prepare to be entertained!
http://forteanlondon.blogspot.co.uk/
The other things are not actually in London, they're just outside the city at Bletchley Park, of Enigma code cracking fame. Actually, they're at The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), which is also at Bletchley Park. The first new item there is a prototype of the UK's first mass produced computer - 63 years after it first made a public appearance. It was the Hollerith Electronic Computer (HEC-1), which eventually became the ICT1200 series. A nice slice of history.
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/82/9599.html
The second new exhibit is a very rare item indeed, one of the few surviving World War II Lorenz cipher machines. Lorenz was used by Hitler to communicate with his senior generals. It was way more complex than Enigma, and way more difficult to break. You're not likely to see one of these machines anywhere else, so if you're nearby, it's well worth taking a look.
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/82/9599.html
Scanner:
Google makes its $149 photo editing software now completely free to download
http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/google-makes-its-149-photo-editing-software-now-completely-free-to-download.html
How one yanked JavaScript package wreaked havoc
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3047177/javascript/how-one-yanked-javascript-package-wreaked-havoc.html
Electric 18-rotor Volocopter makes first manned flight
http://www.gizmag.com/volocopter-manned-flight/42704/
The FBI's 10 most wanted cyber criminals
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3050692/security/the-fbis-top-10-most-wanted-cybercriminals.html
'Devastating' bug pops secure doors at airports, hospitals
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/04/devastating_bug_pops_secure_doors_at_airports_hospitals/
Smartphone and laser attachment form cheap range-finder
http://www.gizmag.com/laser-rangefinder-cheap-laser/42507/
Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/25/reputational_damage_and_windows_10/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
10 April 2016
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
