Horrific-Terrific - 👍 Kettle Botnet
If someone forwarded this email to you, consider subscribing! Also if you’re already subscribed… consider paying? Thanks! 👍 Kettle BotnetMudge testifies | Cyber resilience act to destroy your kettle | Facebook’s antitrust lawsuit acrobatics
Hiyerrrr. Just incase you are unaware of what British life is like right now, citizens are forming The Queue of the Century to go look at a dead old woman in a box with fancy drapes over it (can’t even prove that she’s actually in there!). Meanwhile, with every single voter either in the queue or looking at the queue, the prime minister no one asked for has unbanned fracking. It’s just great here. Anyway, enough of the real world. Let’s hop into the matrix instead. This week was good! Finally 👍. Because:
🧑⚖️ New act droppedIt’s time to learn about the cyber resilience act, because this week some new TOUGH rules were announced. This regulation is an attempt by the UK government to appear to be cracking down on cybercrime. 🧊 Cool facts:
This legislation caught my eye because, as you may know by now, I am all for anything that weakens the distribution of IoT devices into the world. This news prompted me to do a little digging — including consulting my good friend Clement Briens, who runs Misinfosec UK. Below is a mixture of stuff he told me and stuff I told myself, with my own brain. 🧠 Literally the last thing we need is more IoT devices, so I believe this legislation is probably Good Vibes™️. Makers of these devices generally don’t build them with security in mind; they are simply built to perform a function, and assume that the people handling the software side of things will also do the security stuff. It’s a lot of passing the buck, basically 🧠 We are entering the 5g age. IoT devices are always on, and probably always talking to each other. 5g is low-latency and high-bandwidth, which is exactly what connected devices need to function well — in other words: prepare yourself for the oncoming torrent of IoT devices. Nothing will be safe. Your toaster; your sofa cushions; bus stops; pumpkin spiced lattes; NOTHING. 🧠 Bad actors + an extremely hackable grid of connected devices = chaos. Maybe it will be the kind of chaos we like but… we really can’t predict that, can we? IoT devices can be — and have been — used to form botnets (a collection of machines that someone has hacked and is controlling all at once), which can perform DDoS attacks and even conduct misinformation campaigns. So what I’m saying is, don’t you DARE buy that smart kettle. If you do, you’re just part of the problem. 📢 Something something Twitter is brokenYou may remember that less than a month ago, the ex-security chief at Twitter did some whistleblowing, and As fascinating and non-racist as it is, let’s put ‘national security’ to one side for a sec and examine the more interesting stand-out points:
✨ Ultimate thing to take away from this: I literally have no idea. The world seems to be saturated in hearings full of senators asking the wrong questions, and whistleblowers with unconvincing arguments. It’s getting harder and harder to care — it’s what I call scandal fatigue. ⚖️ Facebook’s lawyers literally don’t give a FUCKIn 2020 the FTC turned around to Facebook and said: ‘you know what?? I’ve had it with you!’ and slapped them with a gigantic lawsuit, the main complaint being that Facebook are simply too big. That’s actually quite an unoriginal complaint. I’d rather stand out and complain about the fact that there are ‘left’ and ‘right’ shoes when they could just be designed to fit BOTH feet. Think about it. Anyway… a lot has happened since 2020. Let’s review:
As part of forming their defence, Facebook have, for some reason, subpoenaed 132 companies (such as Snap, TikTok, and Clubhouse) to get some vital information. Things like how they get users, how they make money, their marketing strategies, etc. So basically, everything they need to utterly destroy their competitors. They’re literally using this antitrust lawsuit to perform anticompetitve behaviour right out in the open — ironic! Thank you for reading. I dedicate this issue of Horrific/Terrific to my queen, Sallie, my girlfriend, who I love. 💌 Thank you for subscribing to Horrific/Terrific. If you need more reasons to distract yourself try looking at my website or maybe this ridiculous zine that I write or how about these silly games that I’ve made. Enjoy! |
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🤷 Kiwiharms
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Kiwifarms is over but the argument certainly is NOT. Everyone is right and everyone is also WRONG
🤷 Preventable Doxing
Friday, September 2, 2022
Cloudflare continue to provide services to far-right hate groups | Crypto.com and their accidental $10.5m | James Webb malware
👍 It's Mudge!
Friday, August 26, 2022
Ex-security chief finally drags Twitter through the mud | Adam Neumann is BACK (god help us)
😮 An exciting preview!
Friday, August 19, 2022
No newsletter this week — but something else cool for you to ingest
🤷🏻♀️ Robot Vacuums
Friday, August 12, 2022
Amazon buys Roomba | The US bans Tornado Cash | Alex Jones pays damages
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