Friday Squid Blogging: Chinese Squid Fishing Near the Galapagos

The Chinese have been illegally squid fishing near the Galapagos Islands.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Read my blog posting guidelines here.

Tags: China, squid

Posted on October 16, 2020 at 4:03 PM • 257 Comments

first poster • October 18, 2020 10:37 AM

Ive yet to see anyone talking about the computer repair shop that supposedly had the Biden hard drive NYP is claiming…

TL&DR: their internal network security is atrocious. Public servers easy to find and decades out of date, clearly infested with webshells, self-hosted non-SSL-enabled IMAP/POP and mail servers, etc… its almost certain that belligerent nations found this info years ago already and had free admin access to anything inside…

The only question is what actually happened.

shodan.io/host/70.91.28.242

hxxp://demacshop[.]net/http/

newb poster • October 20, 2020 10:16 AM

Just in case, if it didn’t pop up here before, here’s an update on COVID-19 longevity in darkness under optimal conditions.
I assume Clive Robinson and our gracious host Bruce Schneier might still care about this.

On flat thoroughly cleaned surfaces and in moderate cold at 20 degrees a COVID-19 biofilm can survive (remain viable) for up to 28 days on steel and phone screens, while on cotton, which is a rough porous surface, this survival time dramatically decreases to 6 days. Increase environmental temps, UV exposure, this decreases further.

Disclaimer, the numbers above are overly simplified. If you care you should read the source.

Of note:
In general rough porous surfaces, wool and the like (non-laminated wood) tend to dry out and destroy, that is inactivate germs, bacteria and virii. You’d need some serious biofilms, grease, to make germs survive on porous surfaces. But stainless steel and glass and especially polymers, common plastic, love to preserve germs when paired with greasy fingers.

Also, you can still detect inactivated, non-viable virii and bacteria and in some cases reactivate them.

And there’s always the issue of contention, virii and bacteria fight each other, the study takes that into account by lowering competition for the biofilm shelter.

Normally, even after washing hands you retain a healthy dose of germs on your hands. Excessive hand-sanitizing tends to create optimal conditions for opportunistic germs, which is why you ought to re-apply some moisture and fat to preserve your skin and repopulate the harmless germs on your hands after some time.

A rant, anyway, here’s the link:

The effect of temperature on persistence of SARS-CoV-2 on common surfaces.
ht tps:// virologyj.biomed central.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-020-01418-7