They don't call them duh-fault passwords for nothing

from here

I'm struck by how much the description of this 14 year old and his actions reminds me of virus writers from the 90's.

Somebody somewhere is going to be phishing for those credentials

found on Imgur

I could maybe see a vending machine, but an ATM? I hope they realize this will likely spawn new types of crime.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

from here

The second payout in a week and the total is already over $1,000,000. This might be an opportune time for people with backup solutions to start talking to cities in Florida - they're all probably being targeted now, and it would be better to pay a legitimate backup provider than to pay criminals.

What hacking looked like in 80's movies

Watch on YouTube

As good as some of those movies were, it's hard to take the hacking scenes seriously now. That said, even now there aren't many accurate depictions in the movies or even on TV. Maybe it will get better in the future, but damn, it's already been 30 years.

Maybe do it overnight

from here

I wonder what other misinterpretations a technologically impaired user could come up with for common security jargon.

Protect your privacy for everyone's benefit

found on Don't Panic

There are things you may not want other people to see or hear, and guess what? They don't want to see or hear them either. Don't just protect your privacy for yourself, but for everyone else too.

Fingered by a thumb drive

from here

You'd think members of Anonymous would have good enough OpSec sense to know that you leave your personal belongings at home when you're out committing crimes. Apparently not everyone got the memo.

A secret compartment for him

Product Page

Y'know, I've seen quite a few secret compartment gadgets, but more often than not they seem better suited to the ladies than to men. This UroClub is definitely for the guys, though, and as laughable and ill-conceived as it may be, it actually serves to provide a bit of privacy in a situation where privacy may be hard to come by.

That being said, I don't know why this device bothers to store the liquid (what a thing to smuggle?!) rather than having a channel that goes all the way down to the ground, and I don't know why guys who had the foresight to have one of these on hand wouldn't just use that foresight to wear an adult diaper (which can be used in a much wider variety of situations).

Apparently that's now how they work

from here

While the news article does explain the theory about how the technology is supposed to work, it sounds laughably like snake-oil to me. I wouldn't trust anything short of a metal cage to protect me from a shark, until such time other effective preventative measures become well known and common place.

The fighting sixty nine year olds

found on The Meta Picture

Y'know, if cranky old men want to fight, I say ... let them fight.

Open wide...

from here

The traditional wisdom might be that you should be grateful of a gift rather than inspect it too closely, but in this day and age, when the Internet puts countless victims at a crooks fingertips, it might be wiser to exercise and abundance of caution.

A bear-y effective deterrent

Watch on YouTube

Does a bear shit in the woods? Sure, but he'll shit on your front lawn too if that's where you happen to scare the crap out of him.

I can't fault the bear here. I would probably react the same way under the circumstances.

Because that wouldn't stand out at all

from here (source article)

It does seem a little weird to see camouflage embraced as a trend with zero regard for what it's actually meant for. It's one thing to apply a  security measure mindlessly, but it's something else to apply a security measure without even thinking about security.

I wonder what the bouquet would look like.

Who blocks the ad blockers?

found on Reddit

As ad blocking becomes more and more mainstream, sites that block ad blocking are going to see their relevance dwindle into nothingness. Even ignoring the security risks of lowering your guard, the content is virtually never worth the annoyance of being bombarded with ads.

Someone didn't learn the rules

from here

If you're going to invest in a company like NSO Group, you've got to expect some backlash - especially when your supposed values are in conflict with those of NSO and their customers.

I think it needs a DLL injection

found on I Can Has Cheezburger Animals

I wonder if anyone has ever set up shop installing/updating people's antivirus software - literally a clinic you take your computer to for it's shots.

Hopefully they can quarantine awful shows while they're at it

from here

Virus-scanning all the things is the price of "Smart" technology. All general purpose computers support viruses, and the people making smart devices are putting general purpose computers in them because it's cheaper to put a general purpose computer in a special purpose box than it is to create a special purpose computer. Samsung was just trying to accept the reality of the situation when they told people to scan their sets.

If you could only save one...

found on Imgur

If you could only save one, you might choose differently. It's all about what your values are.

The policy is a lie

from here

When the same department that likely wrote Facebook's privacy policy argues users have no reasonable expectation of privacy, it's hard not to imagine some kind of shenanigans are going on. Is it a self-own? Are they painting themselves into a corner by admitting (or at least implying) fraud? I sure hope the plaintiffs in the case capitalize on this, because I think it would be hilarious to catch Facebook's lawyers with their pants down.

When your security needs complete covfefe

found on Better Meme

As a general rule, firewalls do not stop viruses. They may block certain types of network worms, which are considered by some to be part of the viral set, but there's still plenty of viral malware outside the scope of what firewalls do.

It's a shitty thing to do either way

from here

It's quite the double standard. It's almost as if people feel like what happens online isn't real, even though the data gathered there can affect your reputation, your job, your credit, your bank account, etc.

The real world runs on information, and the online world is full of it.

Something's broken alright

found on Meme Generator

This can be a theoretical problem with an encryption algorithm, but in practice you should be using a well designed cryptosystem that takes this issue into account and includes a solution (such as message authentication codes).

Not knowing that is one of the reasons most people shouldn't be rolling their own crypto.

Advances in tin can telephones

from here

So it turns out that sometime in the past, Coca Cola got it in their heads to give out promotional surveillance cans. It seems some folks who like to maintain secrecy had some concerns about that.
[sarcasm]I can't imagine why.[/sarcasm]

If your handcuffs do this, you need better handcuffs

Watch on YouTube

You'd think that the authorities would actually be equipped to detain a murder suspect. It seems sometimes you'd be wrong.

The TSA took your granny away-ay

from here

Who does this to a granny, especially on Mother's Day? Not even getting your career from a pizza box explains this kind of behaviour.

They also get less spam and malware

found on Fail Blog

The best online safety is to not be online at all, but that's easier said than done.

Thoughts and prayers

from here

However bad things might be, don't put prayers in your passwords, especially if you're one of the cyber-security experts for an entire country - you're supposed to know better.

We Take Your Privacy T-Shirt

Product Page

I think the person who made this design just showed us the proper way to read those privacy platitudes we hear so often from organizations that want us to trust them with our data. All those statements telling us they take our privacy seriously? Yeah, just cross off the "seriously" part and it makes the statement much more true.

Maybe it stopped him from not chewing

from here (image source)

The trick to making an effective deterrent is to make the thing you want to deter against appear unpalatable. As a kid, the cuffs of my pants were treated with hot sauce to deter the dog from grabbing them and yanking on them. It was not effective. I think some dogs are too dumb to be deterred.

Windows Update, could you not?

found on Imgur

As important as security updates are, if they keep being applied in an obnoxious fashion people are eventually going to find a way to block them.

One of the reasons they're not called private washrooms

from here

It would be hard to justify calling them private washrooms when there's no privacy in them.

And yes, I have done it and can confirm that it is exceptionally awkward.

404 Fingerprint not found

found on Imgur

I know there are plenty of things that can happen to a finger that would cause fingerprint recognition to fail (either temporarily or permanently), but it never even occurred to me something as simple as having a wet finger (washroom hygiene?) could cause a problem. In retrospect it makes perfect sense, though.

Until the next 90 days

from here

Now that the idea that password expiry policies are bad is becoming more mainstream we can consider how ridiculous they were from the start. Like how much of our lives would be lost to password changes if we all regularly changed the passwords for the hundreds of accounts we have littered all over the Internet?

A computer's final moments

found on Reddit

Privacy overruled

from here

In case you were naive enough to believe Zuckerberg had actually changed his tune, apparently disregarding privacy is still how Facebook operates.

Social engineering at it's finest

found on Meme Base

Something tells me there are mobile apps that work off exactly the same principle.

(I feel like the original cartoonist must have a site out there somewhere, but the image doesn't appear to have any identifying info and Google image search returns a lot of matches)

Text me if you can

from here

China's surveillance machinations are getting weird, but I feel like they haven't quite thought this one all the way through. I mean, unless they're providing everyone with a state mandated phone, there's going to be a few people this system doesn't get - and it's going to create an incentive for people to ditch their cell phones if the fines aren't worth it.

That's one way to MITM an ATM

found on Meme Base

Always check your ATM for anything that might come loose. It may have been placed there by some crook to steal your account information.

Wanting the unwanted

from here

This story about someone bidding over a million dollars at auction for a malware infested laptop (and they knew about the malware) is bizarre. I mean, if there's really a demand for malware infested machines then it seems like there should be a cheaper way to go about getting them. If all else fails just reach out to the people trying to get rid of the ones they already have.

Expect a patrol man

found on Funny Junk

I don't know who wrote the above reaction tweet, but it is kind of fun to imagine the Harry Potter star fighting evil doers. Of course the actual article makes it clear he helped the victim after the perpetrators were already gone, so it's not quite as bad-ass as it sounds, but he's still a good samaritan for stopping to help.