Issue 1501 - Thursday 25th November, 2021

In Today's Issue

The News

WA Auditor-General finds LGA cybersecurity practices weak as piss

The West Australian Auditor-General did a report into the cybersecurity capabilities of WA's local governments and sadly unsurprisingly found it a total shitshow. They found the councils doing stuff like "disclosure of technical information, out-of-date software, flawed or weak encryption, insecure software configuration, and passwords sent in cleartext over the internet". The report also details that most councils didn't take into considering stuff like re-use of credentials, theft of IT devices and malware/ransomware. I'm sure WA isn't the only state with councils acting so recklessly with their IT setups.

Roblox suing serial troll for being a constant and massive pain in the arse

I've been banned from a few websites and forums in my time, but Roblox's hate for Benjamin Robert Simon takes it to a new level. Not only is the dude banned from using Roblox, they're suing him for US$1.65m for being "leader of a 'cybermob' that with malice, fraud, and oppression, commits and encourages unlawful acts designed to injure Roblox and its users". Old mate was a massive pain in the arse troll, but took it too far when got his 780,000 YouTube subscribers to call in fake active shooter threats, claimed to have spiked drinks and told police there's an Islamic terrorist at Roblox's 2021 Developer Conference. Yeah maybe a lawsuit isn't out of question here.

Remnant news because it's a slow news day

  • Non-Fungible Token (aka NFT) is dictionary-maker Collins' word of the year for 2021. Cool, what a time to be alive.
  • A group of "roughly 70 Japanese firms, including the country's three mega-banks" is making "a yen-based digital currency" that "will be backed by bank deposits". I don't know enough about economics to comment further.
  • Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are all pissed off with Activision Blizzard's CEO for refusing to resign over allegations he covered up harassment for years. Talk is cheap, let's see if any of them boycott Activision Blizzard over this.
  • Apparently Qualcomm has an exclusivity deal with Microsoft that means the only ARM SoCs Windows can work with are Qualcomm ones. Could be a reason why there's no native version of Windows for Apple Silicon Macs.
  • GoDaddy revealed that "unknown attacker had gained unauthorized access to the system used to provision the company's Managed WordPress sites" via a "compromised password" (aka it was stored in plain text) - 1.2m customers are impacted.
  • Something I Saw On The Internet

    Samsung remotely disabling looted South African TVs when hooked up to internet

    There was a little bit of cheeky looting going on in South Africa earlier this year and in all the fun a couple thousand Samsung TVs got liberated. Samsung South Africa has outsmarted the looters, implementing "a Television Block Function" on units "looted from our Cato Ridge distribution centre in KZN since the 11th of July 2021", that "detects if Samsung TV units have been unlawfully activated, and ensures that the television sets can only be used by the rightful owners with a valid proof of purchase". Even less of a reason to ever connect a Samsung TV to the internet! I loot my TVs fair and square.

    Bargains

    The End

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