Diff, Security, exFAT, Nvidia, GDPR, Perimeter Protection

• Checking differences in files should be trivial using python's difflib. This is great, because it allows you to see, if the data offsets are drifting. Which is usually very bad news for traditional block / hash based de-duplication. Yet another way of finding matches is lzma compressing files twice with "unlimited" window. Yet this is of course much more computationally intensive and does actually account for data block shifts in data. So this isn't good test for de-duplication. I restore a few older versions of data from backup, and check out if the data blocks remain static (and or changed in place) which is important for efficient block based de-duplication. If the difflib only returns equal, replace, equal... And only at end insert / delete, then I'm very happy. Because I know it's optimal for the de-duplication methods which Duplicati 2 is using.
• Data Security (Is it something we can eat while having a nice meeting? ) - In one video conference one dude showed all Administrator credentials for their client systems on the video feed. I even managed to get a screenshot, even if the session wasn't being officially recorded. So funny. Usually in these cases, nobody cares and even the credentials won't be renewed after obvious leak. Unfortunately most likely they don't even realize the magnitude of the problem that what happened. Why? Because it's continuously totally normal to leak key information like this. Anyway, according the GDPR this is just the kind of situation which should be interpreted that you've lost control of the data stored in the system(s). If you go and leak key administrative credentials, which allows you to circumvent all the basic access control methods and taking full control of the system and servers. You don't really know, if the information has been leaked, and what it is being used for since that point. Therefore you're obligated to inform the customers and their customers, and so on about this. But luckily there's the reality option. When you don't consider that kind of leak as a problem, there's nothing to report, nobody to blame and no need to change credentials and everything is just fine. Of course we can always assume that people don't have any ill intentions. And after all even if the credentials leaked, if someone abuses those, they're committing crime. So it's not our fault. - This is the unfortunate truth about data security. It's nil, null, None and \x00.
• Did I already say exFAT issues? du shows 3,7 gigabytes used and disk free shows 7,0 gigabytes used. If I format the medium and copy same files back to it, then the disk space is normalized and shown correctly. Classic 1 + 2 = 5 or something like that trap due to bad technology.
• Tech fun. Nvidia so much fun. It seems that the power saving (DPMS off) isn't working. If I power off screens, screen setup gets messed up. If I don't power off the screens, the screens remain on, even if blanked. I guess this is top engineering and green thinking. I'll try once again, but I'm pretty sure it just isn't working. So if workstation is locked, the password prompt remains on screen all the time. I guess the developers are even more sarcastic than me. Because the password prompt shows "screen burner" logo. Haha.
• Unofficially interviewed a bunch of IT guys and colleagues in undisclosed organizations and positions. Their attitude was that GDPR is bs, and they're nor anybody shouldn't get bothered by it and it can be mostly dismissed and ignored. - Great attitude, this once again, is the state of security. Even if there are regulation in place, nobody cares about it. If there are instructions how to operate safely and securely, nobody cares about it and so on. - Well, nothing new I guess.
• Had really long discussion with friends about different perimeter protection systems and benefits, pros, cons and so on. Depending on threat scenario, do you want there's the "official authority" which can disable the system or is responsible for forwarding the alarms, or if you want the system to operate using several parallel fully independent (detection & alarm) technologies without any central control point. Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems (PIDS) - Perimeter Security

2019-08-04