What I am reading 3/26/2021

 Schneier on Security - Hacking Weapons Systems -

Basically, there is no reason to believe that software in weapons systems is any more vulnerability free than any other software

Naked Security - Alan Turing’s £50 banknote officially unveiled

IT Security Guru - Two vulnerabilities found in Intel Processors -

Receiving access to the two vulnerabilities opens up a special mode, which is normally only available to Intel engineers. They affect processors used in netbooks, tablets, and cash registers, although potentially may be present in all current Intel processors. Experts have stated that the instructions ”allow you to bypass all the existing protection mechanisms of the x86 architecture in modern processors”. This poses a huge potential threat to Intel and their devices.

 Al Jazeera - Dislodging Suez Canal ship said to need at least a week -

The task of re-floating the 200,000-ton ship, still firmly wedged across the vital maritime trading route, will require about a week of work and potentially longer, said people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss private details. Rescue efforts had initially been expected to last only a couple of days.

Al Jazeera - Philippines, Vietnam press China over South China Sea activities -

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed “concern” to China’s ambassador about Chinese vessels massing in the disputed South China Sea, his spokesman said, as Vietnam urged Beijing to respect its maritime sovereignty.

International concern has grown in recent days over what the Philippines has described as a “swarming and threatening presence” of more than 200 vessels that it believes are part of China’s maritime militia.

Fox News - Facebook whistleblower pens tell-all book after work to expose anti-conservative bias leaves her unemployable -

But after a few weeks on the job in Texas, she said she noticed that some profiles and pages were secretly marked in a way that would reduce the reach of their live videos.

She said in the following weeks she saw a pattern, and she only noticed such flags on pages belonging to conservatives, not to any liberals. And that they were hidden from the account holders.

I have no idea how true any of what she says is, I just posted this because it reminded me of  Chaos Monkeys - Revised Edition: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley  which was a pretty good book.