Security

The holidays are over. Hopefully the tech world will start to slowly come out of it’s hangover induced lethargy.
Thus ends the slew off Off Topic posts. We now return to our regularly scheduled program.

Web Site Feedback On A Couple Of Issues

1 – Errors – A reader had contacted me earlier and said when he went to this site it appeared as a download. I didn’t understand what he meant but I’ve now seen it. The problem seems to exist for a while and then go away. My new web host is Inmotion. Their tech support continues to deny the situation exists and if it does it must be on my end. Never mind that I keep telling them that the problem first appeared when I switched to them. If you see this issue PLEASE take a screenshot and send it to me at tweakblog@gmail.com .

2 – Quote font color. I’ve been trying to differentiate quoted text via color vs italics. Is the color too light? Any suggestions?

Software Updates
7-Zip 18.06
Notepad++ 7.6.2

Windows 10 is now more popular than Windows 7
The latest Windows 10 operating system is now the most popular desktop OS in the world, finally beating Windows 7’s market share according to Net Applications. Windows 10 held 39.22 percent of desktop OS market share in December 2018, compared to 36.9 percent for Windows 7. It’s a statistic that’s taken Microsoft three and a half years to achieve, and it demonstrates just how popular Windows 7 has been since its release nearly 10 years ago.
For the most part you haven’t been able to by a Windows 7 computer in 2 years and Win10 was being given away for free (still is). Congrats on nothing Microsoft.

First-Ever UEFI Rootkit Tied to Sednit APT
Researchers hunting cyber-espionage group Sednit (an APT also known as Sofacy, Fancy Bear and APT28) say they have discovered the first-ever instance of a rootkit targeting the Windows Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) in successful attacks…The rootkit is named LoJax. The name is a nod to the underlying code, which is a modified version of Absolute Software’s LoJack recovery software for laptops…The infection chain is typical: An attack begins with a phishing email or equivalent, successfully tricking a victim into downloading and executing a small rpcnetp.exe dropper agent. The rpcnetp.exe installs and reaches out to the system’s Internet Explorer browser, which is used to communicate with the configured domains…Once the UEFI rootkit is installed, there’s not much a user can do to remove it besides re-flashing the SPI memory or throwing out the motherboard…By enabling Secure Boot, and making sure their UEFI firmware is up to date, end users can protect themselves against attack
Great, just great.

Stuff I bookmarked recently. Some off topic, some not:

Netflix drops satire episode critical of Saudi Arabia
Netflix confirmed Tuesday that it removed an episode of a satirical comedy show that criticizes Saudi Arabia, after officials in the kingdom reportedly complained.
Another American tech company sacrificing freedom for a dollar.

New Horizons Successfully Explores Ultima Thule
“Congratulations to NASA’s New Horizons team, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the Southwest Research Institute for making history yet again. In addition to being the first to explore Pluto, today New Horizons flew by the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft and became the first to directly explore an object that holds remnants from the birth of our solar system,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “This is what leadership in space exploration is all about.”
Well done NASA.

Kentucky Distillers Scientifically Emulate A Century-Old Bottle Of Bourbon
But that antique bottle of Old Taylor, which was originally released in 1917, inspired Eaves — whose background is in chemical engineering — to use new technology to examine the bourbon’s past.”The most dominant flavor in that 1917 bourbon was the butterscotch note,” Eaves says. “That’s something that bourbon aficionados and the ‘dusty hunters’ recognize about historic Old Taylor bourbon is this beautiful, rich, creamy, sweet butterscotch note — and the mouthfeel of that particular bottle was really unique for a historic whiskey.”…According to Reigler, many people still don’t recognize all the science and technological innovations that underpin the bourbon industry — from increasingly computerized distilling systems to spirits analytics like what Eaves did with the antique bourbon.