Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Staying safe online, the UK edition

In two consecutive days I was exposed to the stupidity of UK media and goverment in regards to online security.

Case 1:
On 3 June the media exploaded with scary titles like GameOver Zeus: Computer users given fortnight warning over virus threat, GameOver Zeus virus is coming for YOUR computer- here's how to swat the cyber bugs, Gameover Warning: People Given Two Weeks to Protect Against 'Powerful Computer Attack'. The colleagues in the office welcomed me with questions on what they can do to protect themselves. Everyone was worried what would happen in 2 weeks.

Bullshit! This is what would happen!

The media is writing crap again just to sell their stories. Here's the original announcement from the FBI. Yes a botnet was disrupted and yes it infected up to 1mln PCs worldwide. But no, nothing bad would happen in 2 weeks. Moreover if something bad was about to happen, it happened already.

I read the above mentioned articles few times and couldn't find any explanation why 2 weeks and what will happen. That's journalism at it's best!

Case 2:
On 4 June the folks over at Hacker News noticed that the UK government backed website Get Safe Online and its password stregth checker tool send plaintext passwords in the URL over HTTP. This is what I call lead bby example... How can you trust those people to give you advice if they cannot sort their own website. Morons.

In the comments people spotted more and more stupid and moronic claim like that Password12345 is ranked 93% exceptional. Yes, this is a very "useful" tool indeed.

I hope someone tell the goverment to immediately cut funding for crap like this.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Just how low can the education system go?

Answer: Very low!

Last week I attended a one-day course in mobile UX. The course was very basic and just useless for me. A lot of it revolved around the fact that people hold iPads with 2 hands and iPhones with 1 hand and they use them in different environments. Nothing technical was ever discussed. I do not recommend to anyone already working in Marketing, Design or Web Development. Probably very useful for C-level management that doesn't have a clue.

One of the fellow attendants was from the University of Nottingham (I'm not 100% sure this was the name of the university but I believe so). He explained that he is attending a series of trainings with this company, learning about web development, so he can then teach this subject at the university.

Seriously, mate?!

I was utterly confused when I heard this, I refused to believe it.  I cannot imagine the quality of this course when this man starts teaching it after just a series of basic trainings... I thought there's some legal requirements about who can teach what, obviously I've been wrong.

Too bad for the poor bloke who enrolls into this future course with the University of Nottingham, which by the way is ranked #75 in the world.