Martin Seeger

Working at front lines of the IT and having fun there. Been around the Internet since 1992 and still in awe what has become of that little baby.

Personal interests:

- Books (mostly F&SF)
- IT Security
- Computer Games & RPG
- Cooking
- Movies
- Everything that blinks, has buttons to press and looks remotely gadgetoid

Everything i write, post, tweet, blog or blurp is just my personal opinion and is not the opinion or policy of my employer, my cat or my goldfish.

I post in English and German. Will try to mark each post correctly, but errors happen. Sorry for that.

I appologize if I am not following you back. This happens as my stream is already getting more posts than I can read.

Signal: https://signal.me/#eu/UCIZRNn72tPSdaqYa4KBK3UBwwJD0jYCP0A5FCTw8NO2nRujm6JJsKWa0hAIlM2Q
Threema: https://threema.id/RR6MJMU5
BLOG: https://blog.literarily-starved.com/
LC_LANG: en_EN, de_DE
Diaspora (inactive): https://societas.online/people/f521bd70affb013958c242010a9c0002

Public Key

npub1m7vxz9lyfxgp4sdc987pwcly0r8yq2vymxarwswdfd9339t3j87sqazdpz

NIP-05 Address

masek_at_infosec.exchange@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdlxrpzljynyq6cxuznlqhv0j83njq9xzdnw3hg8x5kjccj4cerlgprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqyvhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddakk7um5wgh8q6twdvhs5ydl4r

Publishing to

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relay.noswhere.com

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npub1m7vxz9lyfxgp4sdc987pwcly0r8yq2vymxarwswdfd9339t3j87sqazdpz

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Published at

2024-11-08T16:42:27Z

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Last Notes

2024-11-14 05:46:49

I am just incapable of ridiculing this decision. It’s flatly impossible.
In 1974 John Brunner wrote a dystopian science fiction novel (The Shockwave Rider) in which the organized crime has taken over the presidency. He predicted correctly that it only managed to do so on its second attempt.
From: @npub1qqm…v4e4
https://mastodon.social/@randahl/113478247043809670

2024-11-11 08:58:20

I built memes for the #infosec presentation of a friend. I really like this one:
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/463/456/962/699/317/original/574471fc809646f6.png

2024-11-11 05:15:30

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Hardware is cheap compared to people. One use case requiring that amount per year will pay that RAM easily (even if you have to pay Apple prices 😏).

2024-11-09 15:45:59

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There is an easy strategy for that:<li>One card for Apple Pay</li><li>One card for Amazon</li><li>One card for Paypal</li>
Only buy through your three partners. You can add , remove or exchange partners.
But every card is given only to exactly one party.
There are disadvantages with this approach, but locating a breach will be easy. If a card is used elsewhere, that partner had a breach. If the card is abused through the partner, the breach is most likely on your end.

2024-11-08 16:08:21

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Meaning: it will also disappear from the mobile network as the SIM PIN will not be entered after reboot.

2024-11-07 19:05:27

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Why does power draw need to be so high? Our wallbox could do 22KW, but we limited it to 3.7KW. This is enough to charge the battery from 20% to 100% over night. And it even makes the battery live longer.
This is a compact car, but by going to still very reasonable 11KW you could do the same with the biggest SUV.

2024-11-06 17:38:46

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Die Peinlichkeit das zu sagen, werde ich mir nicht leisten.
Mit 15 studierten wir in der Schule einen Mord der Nazis in Kiel: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schumm_(Jurist)
Wir holten die sensations-triefenden Zeitungsausgaben von damals aus dem Archiv. In diesen wurde das korrekt als Lynchmord erkannt, dann aber gefeiert und gerechtfertigt.
So „bewaffnet“ befragten wir dann Zeitzeugen und bekamen so viel Bullshit zu hören wie nie zuvor in unserem Leben. Und dank der Vorbereitung erkannten wir das.
Falls es nachfolgende Generationen gibt, haben die viel mehr Dokumentation als wir. Ich habe daher vor, gnadenlos alles inklusive meiner eigenen Schwächen offenzulegen.

2024-11-06 16:56:46

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I don’t know how it will end, but I am sure the results will be worse for centuries to come.

2024-11-06 16:54:08

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The result for Biden would most likely have been worse. It would have been better if he hadn’t run for second term at all and there would have been a proper primary.

2024-11-06 15:56:49

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Remark for comparison:
In Germany providers have to have a special VPN appliance to transfer data. Transfers are only allowed to destinations behind that VPN.
VPN is secured by chipcard, so any attacker has difficulty providing a valid target for a data request. As the police is organized on a state level, the organization is usually better.
The level of bureaucracy involved is also an unintended defense layer.
Due to the low level of IT integration into police work, attack surface is currently relatively small compared to PDs in the U.S.
Negative: the rampant technological cluelessness creates its own attack vectors.

2024-11-06 11:41:46

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Unsere Generation fragte ihre Großeltern: was hast Du getan unter Hitler?
Nun kommt unser eigner Lackmus-Test.

2024-10-25 06:28:55

**The fall of the Roman US Empire**
When we touched the subject of the Fall of Rome in school, I always wondered why it really happened.
The explanation with the migration and the barbarians always "felt wrong". When I looked at the number of the people in those tribes, they didn't fit. When you look at the challenges Rome bested just a few centuries earlier, the Vandals, the Franks or the Goths seemed minuscule.
Also when I read Gibbons "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" it didn't get better and even all the explanations e.g. in modern articles never really explained it in a way that made me understand.
But now, thanks to the help of Trump, I believe I deep down understand.
Compared to electing Trump as president, the choice of Caligula to make his favorite horse Incitatus a Consul seems pretty reasonable. The the end, how much damage can a horse do? I am pretty sure that Trump will do more.
He should not stand the chance of snowflake in hell to achieve that position. Already the threat of him being elected shows there is something terribly wrong.
So my conclusion today is: effectively the Roman Empire committed suicide.
It stopped solving problems. The political leadership became increasingly dysfunctional. The society split apart, with few becoming unimaginably rich while the economy tanked and the majority remained poor.
The people with wealth to lose made sure, nobody with the will to change things became emperor (or lived very long if he did). They did that, even though they eradicated the foundation of their own wealth.
I hope historians and sociologists take good notes this time, so it easier to explain to future generations how that happened.

2024-10-24 16:43:50

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Sollte man das nicht Oktoberfestwelle nennen? Da treffen sich die Varianten aus aller Welt.

2024-10-24 12:28:40

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In WW2 there was the German phrase "Wenn das der Führer wüsste" (If Hitler knew this) implying this would be impossible if he knew.
As the leader must not be criticized (by anyone with any instinct for self-preservation) they have to attribute any obvious error to him not being aware.
Leader states will show similar characteristics.

2024-10-21 07:11:31

###
About MoldovaAs the country is currently in the news, I want to say some things about #moldova .
My wife and I had the idea in the 2010's to visit all capitals of European countries. In total we visited 48. Of all those cities, the Moldovan capital Chisinau was the strangest one.
I mean "strange" not in the sense of "weird" but that we really felt like total strangers in that country, even more than in Moscow or Minsk.
The language barrier was really serious. Nearly noone spoke English. I knew about that problem, so I booked a business hotel to avoid at least problems there. That was nearly in vain. Whenever we wanted something, they went and fetched the director of the hotel. Nobody else from the staff could communicate with us.
I ordered meals in restaurants with Google translate. Back in 2016 this didn't work really well and I am pretty sure some restaurant staff still tells stories about that weird tourist couple.
Usually the problem with "no english" in eastern europe is restricted to older people, in Moldova it affected all ages similarly.
But even when there was no common language, people tried to communicate anyway. This is different from a lot of other countries, when people shy away from contact if they have no language in common.
Back in 2016 the economy seemed in shambles. A lot of work being done gave off the wiff of occupational therapy. It was done in order to keep people doing something, even if it make no sense and didn't achieved anything.
One part of the economy that is recovering is the wine industry. The region in which Moldova lies was historically called Bessarabia and it was famous for its wines. In fact Bessarabian wines were rated before the french ones in the time before the first world war.
The wine economy suffered heavily in the communist area, but it is making a rebound. If you ever have the chance to taste Moldavian wines, try them. You will not regret it. They are hard to come by. We try it regularly, but they are very expensive here. Bottles costs 4-5 times the price we paid in the local winery.
Ironically the winery was the only place where we were addressed in German. The local employee has lived in Germany and his complete plan for the future was to return there.
The country was fought over in wars for several centuries. At first between the Ottoman Empire and the local principalities. Than it became a point of contention between the Russian Empire and the Ottomans. After that Romania and the USSR fought about it.
The resulting split can still be felt today and heavily influences the current elections. When we were there, you could see slogans for the unification with Romania, others strongly favored Russia. A part of the country is in open rebellion against the countries government (Transnistria) and has "russian peacekeepers" station in it.
As a result, two languages dominate the country: the Moldovan and the Russian language. This partially explains the lack of English as most people have two languages they need to be fluent with.
The Moldovan language is very similar to the Romanian one. When we used Google translate in 2016, the Moldovan language was not supported and we selected Romanian as output. That worked sufficently.
Though strange, I really liked Moldova. I have seen only a small part of it, but I hope it will find integration into Europe.
The Ukraine conflict is overshadowing everything. If the Ukraine falls, everyone expect the Russian forcibly trying to integrate Moldova as well.
That is at the core of the current election and may explain why Moscow is reportedly spending 100s of millions dollars to influence those.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/344/161/406/492/715/original/0ad1a3f5dfc0f5d3.png

2024-10-19 15:19:25

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100% agreement of it being a predictable mess.
It was trying to integrate two different cultures and that is a painful job even if you pay everyone involved that.
Unrecoverable: not my impression. Technically it would have been feasible to separate those. It was terribly difficult only due to the power structures at Google.
By now I met several people that worked with Google at that time and some of their stories make the Ewing family from the Dallas TV series look rather healthy in comparison 🤪.

2024-10-19 15:10:31

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It is easy to cut your losses if a significant part of the bill is paid by others: in this case the users that also invested into that service.
On the high level the move may make sense from the Google perspective, especially from the balance sheet PoV.
But I doubt that even for Google the true costs will ever be really visible. I know at leats a dozend decision makers that were really p*ssed by the move. It is hard to assess those costs.
Also Google has lost that way a lot of voices that were speaking well about them. That will hurt them a lot in the upcoming discourse about breaking up Google.
Today, the people speaking most loudly and visiblly well about Google are paid lobbyists and that shows in the perception.
You probably also wanted to say that social media is a cesspit that imports a lot of problems into a company. That is most likely true, but Google has generally become a huge importer of problems in a lot of areas anyway.
So in total one can probably argue both ways. I can only give a final summary for myself and I deeply distrust Google since then.

2024-10-19 05:12:21

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Still mourning the community we had. Migrated everything away from Google due to that.

2024-10-15 16:57:56

Do we have people in UK able to raise a stink?
A friend ( @npub1smj…ykau ) stumbled over a bucket with hundred of thousands surveillance photos from London lying around openly.
Main purpose of the bucket seems to be OCRing the car plates. You could build nice profiles with that data.
You can even do some live surveillance since they add a photo every 12 seconds.
Locations include places like Tillermans Court in Greenford.
Anyone?
@npub1lcc…lcye or someone from #infosec perhaps?
AWS is playing coy and tells him, they don't want to act upon his report.

2024-10-13 15:17:57

**Apple-Fernbedienung zu verschenken**
Beim Aufräumen gefunden, seit Jahren nicht genutzt
#flohmarkt #verschenken #martinverschenkt [@fedigive_de](https://a.gup.pe/u/fedigive_de )
Was steckt dahinter: https://infosec.exchange/@masek/111646915668554849
P.S. Weitere Artikel, die ich verschenke, sind unter dem Hashtag #martinverschenkt
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/300/770/237/373/426/original/e498a585f8032864.jpeg

2024-10-13 10:52:26

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In the late 70s we had a joke:
*An American visiting a museum in Moscow.*
*His guide explains: "Here you see the radio that was invented by comrade Popov"*
*The American raises an eyebrow, but he doesn't want to be impolited, so he says nothing.*
*And on and on it goes: "Here is the TV also invented by Popov. Here is a diagram of the submarine invented by Popov."*
*At the end of the mueseum they pass a bust and the American asks "Who is that?"*
*"Oh," the guide says, "this is the comrade Sokolov."*
*"And what did he invent?" the American inquires.*
*"The comrade Popov, of course"*
When I was in Moscow in 2017, I visited the cementery beside the Kremlin, where the VIPs are buried.
And the joke suddenly happened. Our guide explained that "Here you have the grave of the doctor X who made the first heart transplant" and "Here you have the grave of the engineer Y who invented the radio".
At that time (2017) I laughed about it. In 2022 I had to recognize that I had the chance to learn something about Russia back then and only did so five years later: **Our guide was dead serious.**

2024-10-09 19:01:59

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An educative mistake in both senses, I guess 😁

2024-10-03 04:19:18

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May there be a kind of poetic justice after all?

2024-10-02 16:53:33

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Unifi Switch, Unifi Gateway

2024-10-01 06:43:13

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I am sorry to hear that. I don't have any other method to make an international money transfer easily. Keeping my fingers crossed for you.
Do you have someone close by who has paypal and give you cash if I send that person money?

2024-10-01 06:38:24

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Send me a paypal address and I send you some.

2024-10-01 06:35:46

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Do you still look for people to chip in?

2024-09-30 08:16:51

Die Überschrift wäre besser so:
**Wachsende Kluft: Fachleute sehen Meta als Datenschutz-Hemnis in der EU**
https://www.golem.de/news/wachsende-kluft-meta-sieht-eu-datenschutz-als-innovationshemmnis-fuer-ki-2409-189383.html

2024-09-27 04:56:15

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Yes, but Erdoghan is significantly more intelligent than Trump and a more crafty operator. He is playing Trump like a fiddle.

2024-09-17 16:01:31

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I think access to the communication would have been more valuable than the explosion of all devices.

2024-09-13 08:38:20

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Chances are slim. Do you know who posted it?

2024-09-13 08:20:21

OH: „The safety and security of our customers is our highest priority“ is Thoughts-and-Prayers of the IT industry.

2024-09-05 09:51:01

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Fahrrad?

2024-09-01 08:14:42

In the context of SkyNet awareness day, I have seen several posts ridiculing the current AI and that it is too stupid to pose a danger to us.
I say: it is not intelligence that makes AI dangerous.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (shortly before the Nazis murdered him) wrote an interesting piece on stupidity and it’s dangers: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8616320-stupidity-is-a-more-dangerous-enemy-of-the-good-than
The danger of AI arises also from the amount of power we delegate to it. If we were to hand over control to nuke cities to the AI, it wouldn’t need any real intelligence to doom us all.
A stupid AI with authority is more dangerous than a hyperintelligent one without.
That is what worries me. We already delegate power over life and death to a stochastic parrot. Already it is e.g. allowed to deny medical care without human supervision. There it doesn’t need much brain to kill.

2024-08-22 09:18:28

OH: **Why do they call it Netherlands and not Deep State?**

2024-03-31 08:41:34

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Worst case outcome: Yes and not few.
It depends a lot on attacker intentions. If he had left the backdoor there for a sufficient time and then used it for a self-replicating wiper, the death toll would have been devasting.