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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 27m

@sundogplanets You make me glad that I’m retired and no longer have to put up with that sort of nonsense.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 3h

@bontchev Oops! That is indeed very bad—and why I qualified my post with “TLS certificate”. Thanks.

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bontchev.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy @bontchev.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 3h

@SteveBellovin I am told that two of the certificates are code signing certs. This is much worse than a spoofed web site. But, yes, the PHP thing is way worse.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 3h

No two ways about it; the eMudhra failure belongs in the category of “things that should never happen”. All that said, it’s not a huge issue for most people. A spoofed TLS certificate is only useful to on-path attachers, typically your ISP or a government. Now, if you use a WiFi hotspot run by […]

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 6h

Maybe Houdini didn’t die of a ruptured appendix: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/arts/hou… (Gift link. I used to be leery of posting gift links here, but the NYT site itself offers options to post to other […]

infosec.exchange

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 7h

"And it's 1, 2, 3, what are we fighting *4*?"

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Steggy @steggy.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 17h

Four shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be four. Five shalt thou not count, nor either count thou three, excepting that thou then proceed to four. Six is right out. Once the number four, being the fourth number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Private […]

sunny.garden

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 20h

“Iran’s precision strikes picked apart Gulf infrastructure, blunting US war plans”: www.reuters.com/investigates/specia…

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Urban Dinosaurs @urbandinosaurs.urbanists.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/10/2026

Back to Patuxent Research Refuge today. The prize photos: two shots of an osprey, which really shouldn’t be there at this time of year. Also: a killdeer and an eastern bluebird. #birds #wildlifePhotography #birdsforbecsnan

The osprey is soaring right to left in a clear sky.

The osprey is flapping its wings, flying left to right.

The killdeer is hard to see against a background of dead leaves and bare ground.

The bluebird is perched on a near-vertical branch of a bare tree, facing me but looking to its left.

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fraggle @fraggle.social.coop.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026

See, THIS is what the Internet is supposed to be for

People also ask
Who legally owns the One Ring?

Realistically the Nation of Gondor would have the strongest claim and thus Aragorn as it rightful head of state.
While Isildur took the ring as spoils of war it was never taken from him or sold. Just lost this becoming an artifact. It was found by Deagol and should have been given to the Gondorian authorities for curation in a museum. Though Mordor does have valid.claim as the artefact was created by one of its citizens and is a cultural price of great importance

Isn't it technically Sauron's property?

I thought this was made pretty clear. It "answers to him and him alone" could imply ownership in perpetuity. Probably more than a few quotes to back that up. Everyone else who possesses it brings it back to Sauron in one way or another. Or the sackville bagginses.

also he never willingly abbandoned it. so legally don't think anyone else has a claim

The Deagol estate.

Possibly the actual answer, if abandonment kicks in while it's in the river, he might be the true owner when. he dies.

But if he died intestate without a will, it would revert through escheatment to the local government, since killing Deagol does not make it Sméagol's. So it would become the possession of whatever government the Stoors have??

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 19/10/2026

@sundogplanets It’s reassuring that even professional astronomers spend time just looking at the sky and marveling (albeit far more knowledgeably than I can), rather than just running simulations, staring at photos in non-visible wavelengths, etc…

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

Just back from the local No Kings rally, where a bunch of people were dressed as ballot drop boxes. Favorite signs included: Jail to the Chief I'm not tariff-ied, I'm in-fuhrer-iated Trump has tiny hands, etc.

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Paul Hoffman @paulehoffman.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

There is a large-scale impersonation attack happening on Mastodon. People are registering typos of real people on mastodon.social and then following people who the real people follow. I’ve gotten two different ones today.

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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

Fully expecting an SNL cold-open where the new Press Sec is introduced, but Trump keeps banging a gong and swapping in a new blonde mid-sentence as each either says something moronic or is asked about some outrageous lie on their CV.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

@normative.bsky.social Only real-world uses I can think of are getting across a flooded area—which you shouldn’t be driving near anyway—and getting out of a snowed-in parking space. Neither seems worth it. (But I’m sure we’ll hear about the car’s self-driving mode using it to avoid crashes […]

infosec.exchange

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Heidi Li Feldman @heidilifeldman.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

Sadly, it is more than time for people of South Asian descent or origin to recognize that to the MAGA crowd, they are just like Jewish and Black people: others, at the least to be ejected from the U.S. and at worst to be exterminated […]

mastodon.social

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Ali @ali.river.geek.nz.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

Brendan Larsen from Ngāmotu in Aotearoa and a member of the New Plymouth Astronomical Society took this stack over a couple of hours and estimates 14000 satellite trails. This is how bad it is now, it's set to get much much much worse - and then we lose Low […] [Original post on river.geek.nz]

Stacked series of long exposure astro landscape images depicting thousands and thousands of trails from satellites over the conical volcano Taranaki Maunga in Aotearoa New Zealand.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

@ncweaver.skerry-tech.com bsky.app/profile/did:plc:caohk5ypnj… says it all—and JD Vance, a reliable suck-up, is in the 64% of Republicans who don’t want it.

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Adam Shostack :donor: :rebelverified: @adamshostack.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

Apropos of nothing in particular, the “Administration of Justice” act was one of the three intolerable acts. It allowed the King to remove his agents from the scene of their crimes and ensure they weren’t tried in the community where they broke the law […]

infosec.exchange

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

Dreams are weird. For no apparent reason—it’s not an issue I’ve read about, talked about, or thought about for years—last night I dreamed about Puerto Rico voting for independence. OK, fine, no problem and not improbable. But that woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep for a while because […]

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Urban Dinosaurs @urbandinosaurs.urbanists.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

Crescent moon at sunset. (1/60, f/6.3, ISO 8000, 140 mm.) #astrophotography

The moon setting over an orange sunset above some trees.

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Patrick Howell O’Neill @patrickhowelloneill.com · 13/10/2026

This whole Yandex incident has been a nice and tidy case study in a bunch of people posting what they feel and hope to be true (and seemingly winging it on the definition of the word "bot") vs relatively quick and sound pushback from actual experts

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

@ncweaver.skerry-tech.com That’s a British/US English distinction. From the OED: "As a general term the word includes all the cereals, wheat, rye, barley, oats, maize, rice, etc., and, with qualification (as black corn, pulse corn), is extended to leguminous plants, as pease, beans, etc […]

infosec.exchange

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2026

I just finished reading “The Korean Messiah”, about the Christian roots of the Kim dynasty in North Korea. (Kim Il Sung was Presbyterian; his parents were activists in the church.) The point of the book is how much Christian iconography went into Kim’s cult of personality. But then I got to the […]

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Kevin McCurley @tragiccommons.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

Now that everyone is talking about hybrid crypto schemes to defend against AI advances, I am reminded that I wrote a paper in 1988 😲 about a key distribution system that would be secure if _either_ factoring or discrete logarithms were hard. My reasoning was extremely crude in those days...but […]

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

What I'd like to see live-streamed is Trump and Hegseth's trial at The Hague for crimes against humanity. (Civilized countries don't even have a death penalty.)

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

Wondering if they’re going to bring back gladiator fights next, in case the NFL isn’t enough. I’m not actually surprised at this latest plan by the administration — I’d actually wondered if they’d do something like this, but figured it was too barbaric even for them. I should have known better.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

“Super intelligence” is a new entry in the NEWSPOKE dictionary.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

@ncweaver.skerry-tech.com I’m proud to be on Trump’s enemies list. Pardon me, in his orthography it’s probably “ENEMY’S List.”

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

@aka_pugs Glad I’m not the only one who thought of that, though I was thinking of posting about her dying when a LEM landed on her…

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

@rsalz @peterhoneyman I think it was just the sight of Peter that scared them.

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Tom Lyon ✅ @aka-pugs.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

OTD 1975: The second #UNIX Users Group meeting, hosted by Cuny. I was lucky to be there! This was the organization that became #Usenix.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

@peterhoneyman No problem — but I’m usually tired, so how can I tell?

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

Got my flu and Covid shots today, in opposite arms which should help me with direction-finding to 5G towers.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

Can Paxton be indicted for conspiracy to commit manslaughter?

flipboard.com

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Urban Dinosaurs @urbandinosaurs.urbanists.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

A great egret with a small fish in its mouth, a hunting great egret, a praying mantis, and a solitary sandpiper. #birds #wildlifePhotography #birdsforbecsnan

The egret is standing in the water. Its beak is slightly open as it repositions the fish.

The osprey is soaring over the water, looking down.

The mantis is perched head-down on a reed. Its head is below and to the left of the exact center, with two antennae visible below and to the left of the head.

The sandpiper is wading in muddy water, with its left leg bent.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

[incredibly depressing, satellites] @sundogplanets A rhyme I heard as a child—I'm not sure just when, but I'm old enough that I remember the first Sputnik. Star light, start bright, First start I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might. Aw, nuts, it's a satellite.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

Trying to figure out what was going on with this car, parked in a “Police Cars Only” area around Judiciary Square in DC. Make it look like a real scofflaw, to be really unmarked?

A white Bronco with NY plates with three characters taped over.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

Just got a message purporting to be from Amazon (and it might actually be) about how to verify that a message from them is legit, and saying “Do not engage with a suspicious message in any way before verifying.” Naturally, the message itself contains links to click on…

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

@fugueish I’ve disabled automatic sync, which means I get to choose before it acts. But I’m very annoyed that the option on the phone isn’t honored and the option on Finder isn’t sticky.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

Is there *any* way to keep my iToys from backing up automatically to iCloud? My older iPad and now my new iPhone insist on doing that by default, even though iCloud backup is off in Settings on the devices.

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Steve Bellovin @stevebellovin.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

@sundogplanets You mean lines like this from the article: "The chips can operate for about 15 minutes in space before needing to be shut down so they can cool off, said Travis Beals, Google’s senior director of product management for Project Suncatcher."? Or that you have to restart after bit […]

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