TechLetters #59 - Compromising printed media publishers leads to no printed press. Integer/date overflow fun in 2022. Space manoeuvres. The strategic problem of food hoarding.
Welcome to the first edition in 2022.
Security
Hacking printing. Publisher of 78 newspapers in Norway forced to stop printing for Wednesday (no newspaper printed, mostly without printing on Thursday). Due to a cyberattack (ransomware). Possibility of subscribers' data compromised. It does not help the already struggling areas of printed news…
Cyber during war? Article considering potential scenarios of Russian offensive on Ukraine with integrated cyberattacks: "targeted missile strikes to a limited incursion a full-scale invasion backed by cyber warfare... heavy artillery, long-range flamethrowers"
Linux PRNG. Pseudo-random number generation will be more secure and faster.
INT overflows 2022. Software bugs happening because 01.01.2021 date overflowed the standard signed int(eger) limit: +2147483647 “Today's date string ["YYMMDDHHMM"] is 2201010001, which is larger than that”. Exact severity and current implications unknown, but the issue is confirmed.
Other
Space manoeuvres. "Satellites of SpaceX forced China's space station to manoeuvre out of the way to avoid collisions twice this year"? "Near-collision". China complained to United Nations. Outer Space Treaty regulates conduct in space. So it would seem that today, private individuals (i.e. billionaires) may challenge superpowers in space, threatening their infrastructure directly. Even lead to the risk of conflict. Here, the international responsibility unambiguously falls on the state - the USA.
Food. China hoards over half the world's grain, pushing up global prices. So, when is it a good time to for such a storage? In anticipation of what?
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