Category: Tech

Decline of Makerbot

~ crazypigeon ~ Leave a comment

I have to say before reading this article I was one “…tech enthusiasts suffering from low information, that sees MakerBot as the Kleenex and Asprin of 3D printing.”

Though, honestly that didn’t mean much because I’ve had such a poor experience of 3D printers in general. Still, an interesting read, and sad to see a company backtrack so far from the open commitments they started with.

They deserve their reputation.

MakerBot is not dead, but it is connected to life support waiting for a merciful soul to pull the plug. This week, MakerBot announced it would lay off its entire manufacturing force, outsourcing the manufacturing of all MakerBot printers to China. A few weeks ago, Stratasys, MakerBot’s parent company, released their 2015 financial reports, noting MakerBot sales revenues have fallen precipitously. The MakerBot brand is now worth far less than the $400 Million Stratasys spent to acquire it. MakerBot is a dead company walking, and it is very doubtful MakerBot will ever be held in the same regard as the …read more

via The MakerBot Obituary — Hackaday

CCleaner malware outbreak is much worse than it first appeared

~ crazypigeon ~ Leave a comment

“The recent CCleaner malware outbreak is much worse than it initially appeared, according to newly unearthed evidence. That evidence shows that the CCleaner malware infected at least 20 computers from a carefully selected list of high-profile technology companies with a mysterious payload. (credit: Talos ) Previously, researchers found no evidence that any of the computers infected by the booby-trapped version of the widely used CCleaner utility had received a second-stage payload the backdoor was capable of delivering.”

Source: CCleaner malware outbreak is much worse than it first appeared

 

Yikes!

 

Source papers for people who actually want to read about it:

  1. http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2017/09/avast-distributes-malware.html
  2. http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2017/09/ccleaner-c2-concern.html

[$] Antipatterns in IoT security

~ crazypigeon ~ Leave a comment

Lots of interesting talk about the fundamentals of a secure system and it’s applications to computers.

Quote I liked (empahasis mine):

The most basic security antipattern is to “do nothing”. That means accepting any and all risk, though. Another is to “do it yourself”; that leads to thinking the system is secure because of custom elements, such as non-peer-reviewed cryptography algorithms or implementations and security through obscurity. “Hand-rolled” security systems have not fared well over the years—developers have learned that implementing stream ciphers, for example, should not be tackled in-house. But there is still a fair amount of security by obscurity, such as “super unguessable URLs”. If a product becomes successful, which is what you want, the unguessable will become all-too-guessable.

Source: [$] Antipatterns in IoT security