On-Site Computer Services

In the News: Out of date TP-Link routers ("SOHO routers") targeted and compromised by Russian Federation GRU's "APT28" intelligence group.

While some OCS clients have TP-Link routers, they do not appear to have been targeted by APT28's attacks on American household and small business routers.

All OCS supported TP-Link routers are:
Newer than the models so targeted;
Have up-to-date firmware;
Do NOT have public facing administrative interfaces.

For non-OCS users of older TP-Link routers, the USA NSC obtained court approval to counter attack the GRU's operation(s) involved in this set of attacks and state that they caused compromised routers to update to the latest firmware in their counter operations.

Depending on how one interprets second-hand messaging from the NSC, the NSC served up a counter attack at unspecified GRU infrastructure. "Tap, tap, we saw that!!!"

Articles read by OCS do not indicate any theft of a traditional monetary type. The indication is that a general sweep attacking said older and unupdated routers, scanning for government intelligence, likely military IP, unstated but one might think high end business IP might have been of interest to them as well. That general sweep was followed by more granular targeting of "intelligence rich" routers creating a man-in-the-middle intelligence skimming operation.

Moral, keep your firmware up to date as much as possible.

- OCS

RANT:

OCS ran into another update fiasco from a major software maker, who has been around for decades AND has made the same mistake previously but, obviously, did not learn from those previous experiences.

Late last week or over the weekend they rolled out an "update" which reconfigured systems to use a "New" mail client, as the default mail client while relegating a user's default "Classic" mail client both from being the "Default" application and replaced its icon from a prime location. Note that most icons placed on said prime location (and, in particular, mail client icons) are only placed there MANUALLY by the user or their selected techie.

In the process all the settings put in place, including credentials and other settings related to accessing the user's e-mail were NOT inherited by the "New" mail client (software).

We found this out after a new laptop was provided to a user last week, who tested everything just fine prior to going into the field over a thousand miles from their home office, cut off from their mail (luckily they at least had the same mail on their phone) and away from direct support.

We reverted the friendly "update" but found that doing so in the way performed wiped out the settings from the "Classic" mail client. Normally, not that big a deal but the hosting company has a convoluted system and that proved troublesome to start from scratch. Going to online Knowledge Base articles, we found that this has been an acknowledged problem, later, we found that this situation has been so for several months with individual systems experiencing varying degrees of this issue.

This blog entry is labeled a "RANT" because there is not much to do except make sure your documentation is updated, just in case. In our case, the original configuration inherited from others who had NOT documented the configuration or the process therefore. Plus, the hosting company's documented procedure had key errors!!! Working with their support, we found, adjusted and noted those errors and informing them what they needed to fix in their documentation.

Moral, one manifestation of stupidity is to NOT learn from one's mistakes and to repeatedly make said mistakes. This nameless software company, apparently, fits grandly as an example of this manifestation of stupidity/insanity.

Fact Point (https://www.facebook.com/TheFactPoint?__cft__[0]=AZV1aFbd3KMa5Zj-D0QoeuO7JplZyeA2Y-Asr6ZZMRNrFuwBr0ejQr0DvAlIMnE5rVJeypGiqyMpaLcCdbpmaPuP0Qz2Xs97mrOyhtAQYXfPwYIkDmoBZht9ZHQ_TI37JU7T3rKGPUUPZ-2k783cyyz4T2AG7bZRuSyugudp8vGUIkuopUHDH268-8siGobKLegL1KtmfgZ6ajO0rLHqbhuo&__tn__=-UC%2CP-R) posted on Facebook, "Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicts AI smart glasses will soon replace traditional devices, offering real-time features like translation and object recognition. He warns those without them may face a cognitive disadvantage. Despite major financial losses in Meta’s Reality Labs, he remains committed to AI wearables as the future of computing."

Zuck may have a bit of a point, BUT, automation is NOT the end all. We suspect that while wearable AI can be a huge tool (in a good way), sometimes having a broader/bigger canvas to work with can have major advantages too. Think of how an old-school small notepad can be really handy but not always the best way to organize one's thoughts on broad topics and for design/planning/organizing work where multiple bits of information and/or thoughts may be better considered in a free-form method.

At least with the early releases, this really should be kept in mind.

Further down the road AI lenses could also perform more complex functions allowing a visual-only whiteboard system, likely including a sharing option.

But, we suspect the initial offerings will not have all that function at first.

The point being that automation at any level is often NOT the end all. Further, when it fails, one should always have an "old school" fall back method, especially for important and/or mission critical tasks, can include frequently recurring simple tasks.