Marcus Hutchins :verified:

Marcus Hutchins :verified:'s avatar
Marcus Hutchins :verified:
🛡️ malwaretech@infosec-exchange.mostr.pub
npub1t5y3...38yv
Cybersecurity
The political theory of "everyone is twelve now" really is undefeated. None of this propaganda makes any sense until you realize the target audience never intellectually or emotionally developed past middle school. Just picture a bunch of giddy kids clapping along like "haha the turtle has an RPG, and they've photoshop Santa hats onto the secret police". That's their voters.
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Ever since Amazon ruined 30,000 people's holidays be laying them off in the name of "efficiency", they've massively improved their next day delivery system. It used to be that I'd only get one next day delivery per package, but now I get 5 for the price of one. Every day they tell me it's arriving the next. Incredible value for money!
Is it me or are major internet platform outages getting more frequent? I used to instinctively reboot my router, now I just assume it's the platform. GitHub broke for me this morning, now LinkedIn is offline. Reddit and Twitter feel like they go down twice a week. Meanwhile all these companies are bragging about layoffs because they've "become more efficient with AI". Like, dawg, you can't even keep your website online.
Here's an easy way to understand the US "hacking back" / Offensive cyber operations proposal: You lose the keys to your house down the back of the couch. It would be very time consuming to try and dig them out, but buying new locks would cost money. The least expensive option is to simply remove the entire front door, which your family approves of. This would leave more money to gamble in the slot machine (some guy who says he is 100% definitely not the owner of the slot machine has told you that if you put in enough money, you will receive a return on your investment). After voting to remove the front door, someone walks into your house and steals your TV. Having to buy a new door, new locks, and new TV would cut into the slot machine fund. Which is unacceptable. You decide the most cost efficient option is to track down every thief in the world and punch them in the face. The family agrees that punching every thief in the face would certainly deter any further theft, and have absolutely no possible negative consequences at all. The not slot machine guy has also offered to buy all your house's windows for $30, to help you recuperate some of the losses from your TV being stolen. You agree that this is indeed a good deal, and proceed to remove every window. One day you come come to find a 600 pound grizzly bear rooting around in your pantry eating all your food. Your are completely perplexed. Despite your best efforts to secure your home against theft, people have still been walking in and taking whatever they want. However, a grizzly bear is new. You consult with the not slot machine guy, who has recently used all his not slot machine money to buy up every local hospital. You are concerned that the punching everyone in the face policy does not appear to have affected theft rates. Also, this policy was designed for humans, not bears. The not slot machine guy reassures you that this is the best way. He tells you that you just aren't punching people hard enough. He also says that there is no reason why the same policy couldn't also be applied to bears. He sells you some punching classes for $5 trillion dollars and send you on your way. With your new found punching skills, you are now ready to fight the bear. You return home to find out that all of the local bears have learned that your pantry is a great place to get food. There in now an entire group of them. That is ok though, you've been training for this.
It always makes me chuckle how occasionally you'll run into beginners who say stuff like "real hackers use Linux". Real hackers aren't constrained by operating system choice. In fact, half the fun is running into that weird edge case where you end up having to code your own OS for some hyper-specific task.