Explosive

 

Image from Pixabay

Boom! A loud bang shattered the silence in the living room. My wife, who was there alone, looked around in shock. What was that? A few seconds later she heard splashing. Her eyes followed her ears and found the source of the sound. Then she shouted upstairs, with strong urgency in her voice, “Stop what you're doing and come help now!”

Five heartbeats later I saw pink liquid dripping from the display case. There, in that cupboard, we started a modest collection of Beautiful Bottles a few years ago, when I pointed out to the children on holiday in the south of France a bottle of wine on which the gendarme of Saint-Tropez was depicted - a frenetic film role by the French comedian Louis de Funès from my youth (well, the film itself is older than me, but I have seen several films with this actor in the past – remember Fantomâs?). Even though I don't like alcoholic drinks, my son gave me that bottle as a gift because he understood the sentimental value. Since a recent stay in Croatia, there is also a beautiful bottle of vodka from Old Pilots, decorated with aviation symbols – we bought that for our son, the aspiring pilot.

My daughter also contributed a little while ago. She had a school trip to Spain and brought back a bottle with bright pink contents. For the display cabinet. It was this bottle which had exploded. Well, exploded – the cap had popped off and all but an inch of its contents had spilled out. Please note: the bottle was still upright. The liquid found its way into lower parts of the cabinet. Armed with towels and cleaning cloths, we tackled the stuff. I even had to unscrew a cupboard door to get to some spots. Ultimately, the damage was limited to that one deformed screw cap. What on earth had happened here?

The 250 ml (8.5 fl oz) bottle label says kombucha. Wikipedia says about this: “a drink resulting from fermentation of sweetened tea by acetic acid bacteria and yeast cultures”. And on the label I read that you should always keep the stuff in the refrigerator, between two and eight degrees centigrade (35-46 degrees Fahrenheit). These are circumstances that our display case cannot meet. And so those bacteria woke up, conspired with the yeast and formed gas. And about two months later, the pressure became too much for that poor screw cap, who saw only one way out: up. After which almost all the contents bubbled out of the bottle.

A few blogs ago I advocated reading manuals. I would now like to add labels to that advice. Although I wonder if that would have helped. If you're not planning on consuming something anyway, why would you refrigerate it? And if I had already read the ingredients list, would I have realized that I had something explosive in my hands? I do not think so. In retrospect, I am surprised that the stuff is allowed to be sold at all, or that there is not at least a clear warning on the label. The substance also seems to be controversial due to unproven health benefits. In fact, there can even be very dangerous molds in the drink. Maybe it's a good thing the stuff is gone now. The empty bottle is back in the display case, as a reminder of the school trip and the explosion.

Sometimes it is useful to dose manuals and instructions, because otherwise they can be overwhelming. This week I saw a clever example of that. I recently started taking out a new service from a company. After a few days they sent me an email saying: secure your account even better, enable two-factor authentication (2FA). I like that. In this way they help people who do not read manuals and labels to make a step forward. By the way, I had already enabled 2FA as soon as I saw that they supported it. Do you also have it turned on everywhere? It protects you if one of your passwords ever leaks, for example due to a hack at an organization where you have an account. Without 2FA you are the sucker, and if you use the same password elsewhere without 2FA (ugh!), then you have to change those passwords immediately.

I've said it before: use a password manager, which not only stores your passwords, but also generates them for you. Make them at least twelve characters long, and because you rarely have to type in those passwords yourself, fifteen is even better. Even the best password cannot withstand a hack at an organization that does not properly protect your password; That's why you enable 2FA wherever possible.

 

And in the big bad world...

• the EU may be on the verge of requiring client side scanning in chat apps.
• the boss of one of the chat apps strongly opposes these EU plans.
• North American cyber insurance companies processed significantly more claims in 2023.
• Dutch politicians advocate a Governmental Mail Service and a Governmental Chat Service. [DUTCH]
• this article completely ignores the security aspects of AI. [DUTCH]
• cybercrime can be deadly.
• that email from Microsoft may not be from Microsoft at all.
• The Netherlands must brace itself for criminals with cloned voices. [DUTCH]
• Google wants to train its AI with your Chrome history.
• Cyber Dad argues why you shouldn't publish photos of your young children.
• the US military conducted an anti-vax campaign in the Philippines with fake social media accounts.

Gyro Gearloose

 

Image from Pixabay

Gyro Gearloose is a crane after my own heart. He can invent a genius device to order, or he has something lying around that just happens to come in handy in one of the many comic book adventures in which he appears. They always excel in both simplicity and effectiveness and all inventions have one thing in common: they could not exist in the real world.

Donald Duck is a completely different bird. The duck would rather be lazy than tired and is impulsive, short-tempered. Not exactly someone who reads the manual first when he buys a new TV or something else. Donald often seeks Gyro’s help. And while Gyro patiently tries to explain how his gadget works, Donald is already flying through the door with it, because he knows it all. Sometimes Gyro shouts after him that the device is not completely finished yet, or that it has side effects. Later in the comic strip, Donald invariably pays the price for his stubbornness.

I personally don't like it when people just press buttons without knowing what they are for, hoping that the device will do what they want. The more complex the device is, the more can go wrong, or the further you sink into the swamp of incorrect settings. So I'm one of those people who still read manuals. Admittedly, not with every device; I was able to get our new juicer working without first consulting the manual. That booklet was still included, by the way; Nowadays, because no one reads the manual anyway and all that printing costs a lot of money, you only get a quick start guide and a QR code for the extensive manual.

Computers, apps and the internet don't have manuals. These have been replaced by help functions. If you realize that you cannot find a solution, you can consult those. Sometimes you can call them up by pressing F1, sometimes you have to consult an FAQ, and otherwise you just have to google. But you will be using all those things before you have read a letter about them. On the one hand it is nice that many things work so intuitively that this is possible, but on the other hand it is difficult for someone who wants something more than the basic settings.

Donald shows time and time again that it is often not safe to just turn something on or turn all the controls to maximum. Instead of saving the world, he often brings it to the brink of destruction. Fortunately, the wise cousins Huey, Dewey and Louie always manage to turn the tide in the nick of time. They do have a manual: the Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook, the pocket book that knows everything.

In a safe world, everyone has read the manual before starting anything. I know that this is a utopia. But that does mean that people drive cars without knowing how to turn on the lights, that an air conditioner somewhere heats instead of cools or that you get frustrated because you cannot get your smart speaker to work. And that makes the world less safe: traffic accidents, heat strokes and hackers are lurking. You may think that's a bit far-fetched, but hey, I get paid to be a doomsayer so I'm always looking for what could possibly go wrong. Putting things into perspective will come later, when others speak out their hope that it couldn’t be that bad.

Ducks regularly stroll along the local cycle paths – real ducks, not cartoon characters. When you cycle along, they invariably waddle in the wrong direction: they cross the path in the direction you cycle past a few seconds later. I just want to say: they are not the smartest animals. I have no experience with cranes, but if we take Gyro as an example, it looks like they are a lot smarter. Maybe that's why I've never come across one on the cycle path.

Moral of the story: if you're more of a Donald Duck yourself, listen to what the Gyro Gearlooses around you have to say. If, on the other hand, you are a Gyro Gearloose yourself, take a good look at what the Donald Ducks of this world really need and offer an (obviously safe) solution for that.

You just read the five hundredth Security (b)log.

 

And in the big bad world...

• Two-factor authentication is only safe if you don't let yourself be fooled.
• a criminal allegedly stole information from Europol.
• a South Korean goes to prison for hacking into 400,000 households and selling CCTV footage from those homes.
• the police arrested three men on suspicion of bank helpdesk fraud and friend-in-need fraud.  [DUTCH]
• your Android phone protects itself if it thinks it's stolen.
• the new Dutch cabinet will tackle cybercrime more stringently.  [DUTCH]
• the British NSCS has published guidelines for paying ransoms.
• Google has to pay a million-dollar fine for using French news reports to train their AI.  [DUTCH]
• some car models disappear from the market due to cybersecurity regulations.  [DUTCH]