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I think i read somewhere that the cia said they dont install bugs anymore because now ppl do that themselfs.
It’s also a lot easier to do it in software, since you don’t need to splice wires and leave physical traces like you would have had to do in the day.
A well-configured charger or Flash drive can do that job for you, and can spread itself.
USB charger ?
Yes, since most modern chargers and cables have internal chips to communicate capabilities with for things like fast-charging. It is not difficult to have the chip identify itself as something else, and execute a payload.
A common attack method is to have it show up as a keyboard, and execute a series of key-sequences when connected to a computer (like opening and executing things through a command prompt).
It is also why you should try and avoid plugging random USB cables/chargers into your phone/computer when out and about, since you don’t exactly know if the other end is what it appears to be.
The problem you are describing is not malware or viruses. They’re just the tools.
The problem is capitalism, which turns everything free into something on which a profit can be made
No… It’s malware. It’s not a virus, it’s malicious. It’s malware.
Thorsquint.jpg
I spent 12 hours once downloading a limp bizkit song on dial up and it wasn’t even a limp bizkit song. I feel nostalgic for that kind of deception. It feels so quaint.
My fellow americans, I would once again like to say I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
Whoa. I hope it was my fake Limp Bizkit song because a couple friends and I actually did this around 2000.
What was it really?
A shitty spoof we made about hot pockets. We listed it on Napster or Limewire as a bootleg.
Is this an Android issue I am too iOS faithful to understand?
Never seen a calculator ask my location. Most apps will ask nothing besides notification privileges, and will generally explain themselves fairly well before even attempt to ask for anything else. Walled gardens DO have some advantages, it seems.
That’s why Foss will always be better, and we need to support these developers. They also need to protect their software better from capitalist ghouls that will profit from it for free
Protecting FOSS is impossible, there will always be a company that uses your codebase, credits you and includes advertisements to your program.
We need to make using FOSS projects the default and using the corporate options as the backup option.
What I mean is better licenses that make sure you get paid if companies profit from it, and harsher penalties for those that get caught infringing the license
Such a license wouldn’t fit the free software or the open source definitions, but I find it interesting that there has been a small, yet apparently growing, group of people unsatisfied with our current open licensing, for different reasons, and proposing new ideas and concepts that wouldn’t fit these definitions.
shit like this is why im going to eventually create my own little internet island.
Dw, i’m going to rule over it like a dictator, no democracy here :)
Do it. It’s so nice.
Use Wireguard to access it remotely.
I have a theory that this is the next iteration of Internet. A private internet linked by vpn over the public Internet. Probably already exists in some form over Tor or in dusty Pirate communities. All we need is a no-commercial-entities clause and a Yahoo clone and we could rock like it’s 1994!
If there’s anyone here that cares about their privacy and doesn’t know this already:
If you have a choice between accessing the website through a browser and installing an app, use the browser. Browsers (typically) at least try to protect the types of information that gets sent, whereas there are much fewer restrictions (again, typically) for apps.
Everyone wants you to install apps because apps (typically) get access to much more data.
The worst is many of these apps are just websites repackaged as apps. They just want the elevated access being an app gives them.
Yeah, when I was setting up my first smartphone there was a very weird moment where I had to go against a lifetime of training on laptops and desktop PCs and just immediately invite every single app to fuck me up the arse if I wanted it to function as anything more than an expensive telephone with a fancy screen. But invite them up my arse I did.
In what fucking universe is this even remotely true? I don’t know about you guys, but around those places, in early 2000’s, internet access was extremely fucking expensive, so most software was peer-to-peer shared, not even by torrent, but on CD’s or floppys, or local neighborhood ad-hoc and internal ISP networks. And the way it got there was mostly from shady CD stores around the corner, where owners paid fortune to download shit and made it back selling it, or PC journals with CDs where they were just filled it up to a brim with whatever garbage they had to boost value.
And there was no access control whatsoever. A literal spyware with full access to your system, that only puts a purple fucking gorilla on your screen, that runs around and does absolutely fucking nothing? Sign me the fuck in. If your virus did something even something remotely useful, like show weather and currency rates, then you could rest assured that it would infect every single computer in the country.
If you were savvy, though, what you’d do is forever sacrifice 50% of your CPU and RAM to the anti-virus and pray to fucking gods you don’t touch anything newer than the last version of it you have. Because anything uncaught can and will infect absolutely everything and anything the computer has access to. And your only option would be to just nuke the entire system with all of your data because because any backups you make would also get infected.
Even later, when broadband got cheap and widely available, the internet was for a long time a complete shit show. Remember Flash? Every single ad and every other site used Flash. That shit, along with java applets, was equivalent to automatically downloading and executing any app you see, before you actually even see it. It was also filled with shit like rapidshare and depositfiles, with questionable content and ads on ads over ads, as there was a financial incentive to spam that garbage everywhere and bury anything half-legit under it.
Kids these days really got it easy. See an app requesting something you don’t think it needs? Just say no. Us, boomers, didn’t have such a luxury. By the time you suspect anything shady going on, it was already too late. There is a downside, though, that manufacturers control what you can and cannot do. It took, like, almost a decade for trivial things like screen recording to even be possible on Android, and things like CheatEngine are straight up impossible. But hey, I’d say that’s a reasonable price to pay for not being completely paranoid.
It was considered best practice to never install anything
In what universe? You might as well never turn on your computer.
In this universe. I didnt want to have 10 fucking different toolbars for my browser. You had to see the correct download button, so that you get your wanted download plus malware/viruses. If you got the wrong you got a lot of malware xD
De-centralization and open source was always the better way. Technology started on this path and the corporate powers have done everything they can to sabotage and destroy open tech.
Been this way with every new tech I reckon. See also DVD burners and DRM/regional codes.
Reminds me of that Futurama clip from over 20 years ago where Fry is on the internet and a literal mob of advertisements surround him.
My God…it’s full of
starsads!
Aggressive capitalism coupled with user ignorance is the main issue. The advice still remains don’t install all this shit, but people growing uo with smartphones have bought in to this idea that it’s reasonable for Google to spy on your every move, so why not every other app?
So many users have no idea how their devices work - even an inkling - now what apps do, how to keep devices secure and private, and what happens with their data. Business has taken advantage of that - people want things to “just work” so business use that as a way to abuse users and make every app a trojan horse for data mining.
Even Google, Apple etc privacy settings are bullshit - they’re just figleafs of psuedo privacy that enable them as the platform makers to dictate the terms.
I switched away from Windows to Linux on PC, and I use FOSS alternatives on my Android device (even considering replacing android with FOSS system - difficult with some work essential apps unfortunately). But even if you stay on windows/android there are plenty of things users can do to protect themselves - they just don’t know how or worse can’t be bothered by the whole issue.
