Matrix, Hackers, Outlook, DFIR, Tor, OVH, FLoC

1. Matrix / Element allows identity to be trusted in single way only. So mutual authentication doesn't actually mean that. It means that A verifies B and B verifies A, but it's not mutual. A can verify B without any contact with B and vice versa. - Had long discussion with several people, and current status of Matrix is that it's very broken buggy and provides bad user experience for both users and administrators. But let's hope that will improve in future. Crashes, Lag, inconsistent and confusing processes, bad UI etc. Update: The updated emoji verification is mutual verification, the old trust this key model was single way.

2. North Korean Hackers (@ newyorker.com) Very very nice article by New Yorker even if most of the stuff in the article is of course well known to everyone following Internet security online.

3. Microsoft Outlook on Android dropped the essential option to select the default email from alias being used to send emails. Now the from email address is invalid and bounces to the original from field will fail. - Duh! kw: Microsoft, Outlook, email, fail

4. Local travel app / web-site is de-synced, actually it has been for years. Perfect example of crappy user experience. You can login to website (using the same credentials) and mobile app. But all data is completely de-synchronized except the user info. All the (same) data needs to be entered separately to each mobile app instance and to web-site. Yet only pro is that the web-site data is stored, so if you log out and login again, it's still there (yay!). But the data never gets updated to the mobile app. - Sigh, fail.

5. AS8003 and 11/8 network. This discussion on internet went to interesting questions. (@ kentik.com) Like who's fault it is if you abuse someones unused address space for your own purposes and then they start using it? Is it attack? Is it wrong? Who's doing wrong? And after all this meaningless discussion, the final question remains. Who even cares about IPv4 address space anymore. It has been time to start using IPv6 for a good while. Hilarious stuff.

6. When dealing with insiders, protecting the evidence is important. Once again case, where all the evidence was seriously tampered with (by the staff), before it was finally secured. Basically rendering it useless. - I've got no words for it. - Should we ask again, sabotage or infinite stupidity? - Maybe it was inside job, and their primary interest was to sabotage the evidence on purpose? - Sorry, no more details, ever. kw: dfir, digital forencics

7. Studied and tested & played with latest Tor configuration file torrc and check all the available options in the: Tor documentation (@ torproject.org). I especially liked new concepts like the HiddenServiceSingleHopMode which allows faster hosting on Tor and Client Authorization with v3 addresses using x25519 keys.

8. OVH Cloud "Quality" once again. Everything is a big mess up, they don't know what they're doing. They don't answer questions and systems might work or might not work. Everything with them is usually impossibly hard and often they don't know  what they're doing. Also their control panel is bleeping bleep. Sometimes I feel that there are just two options, either they're really st*pid or they're really good at being very professional a-h*les.

9. Google FLoC (@ web.dev). Afaik, it's better to track cohorts than individual users. Yet once again, often data can be refined to get the details out, even if initial grouping is performed. That has happened over and over again with past data sets. DuckDuckGo extension to block FLoC (@ SpreadPrivacy.com). Yes, nobody likes tracking. Ref: Federeated Learning of Cohorts (@ wicg.github.io) W3C Community Group Draft Report.

10. Something not so different? What We’re Learning About Ingenuity’s Flight Control and Aerodynamic Performance (@ mars.nasa.gov). A nice article by NASA. Well, literally unearthly stuff. To the Mars! Great reading for engineering type of guys.

2022-07-31