That's a 2018 incident filed, with 2019 on that article.

Question is were all these things fixed since then.

or this https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/12/02/massive-apple-security-vulnerability-allows-hackers-to-take-control-of-iphones/

So explain something like this? https://cntechpost.com/2020/11/18/security-vulnerabilities-in-apple-m1-chip-devices-iphone-12-pro/

encryption does not equal security

Javascript creation is decent competition. If Planned Parenthood were holding an adult termination program I'd select both of them.

It's terrible that this data exists. Well intentioned pathway to hell these IDs are.

It's incomprehensible that anything has or can get access to such values. Such should be lock boxed and only root accessible. Definitely nothing a browser or other shi!tware should be able to retrieve. Yet they can and do. Speaks for the need of standardized JAILS for all programs in any computing environment.

This is a good reference to give distro hoppers a fair chance and reduce search and research fatigue for SystemD-less distros: https://www.slant.co/topics/18348/~linux-distros-that-don-t-use-systemd

Awesome, I'll add that to the blog post. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing. Another good reason to not run systemd !

Im running mxlinux with sysv init.

->cat /etc/machine-id

cat: /etc/machine-id: No such file or directory

😊

That's true. I've set a cronjob to change it every 2hours. Even more reasons to finally move to Artix.

Furthermore, I just tested Tails and they DO change the machine-id after every reboot. I'm downloading Whonix right now as well to test, but I've got shit rural internet so that'll take some time.

I'll update the blog with my finding when I do.

The fact Tails randomizes it after each reboot should be enough to hint that it's likely a good idea to not have any identifying ID tied to your system...

Good to know. I'm planning to switch over to Artix anyway. But for now I'm going to apply the suggested fix.

I think at the time MSN and ICQ were a thing that existed, Win98 was already obsolete. But I could remember wrong.

As far as I remember, Win98 wasn't even capable of connecting to the Internet out of the box.

I was young and was probably running Win98 with the Yahoo! and Ask! toolbars, with a cool Comet Cursor so I could update my Angelfire site while downloading over Napster. Using Yahoo, MSN and ICQ messengers to connect with my friends from school.

But I could play Age Of Empires and Quake, so that's all I really cared about.

I don't know why machine-id exists, but what I do know is that this only exists on Linux operating systems that use systemd, based on this command:

sudo systemd-machine-id-setup

So the way to avoid it entirely is by switching to a systemd-less Linux, such as Salix OS (clear net only). Actually, systemd has a lot of problems (clear net only), so you should avoid it anyway.

And as to what is it good for besides compromising privacy... I also have no idea. I guess Lennart Poettering Red Hat wanted to do something with it, but they didn't know what to do with it, so they left it as a privacy compromising thing of however many Linux users are being used by systemd.

Honesty, I'm not certain, but it appears in every mainstream distro that uses systemd.

Most people are aware of MAC addresses, but if you search the web for machine-ID being seen as a privacy concern, you'll find nothing.

No need to have a constant, unchanging value that exists from the moment a system is installed.

I'll research it more and update the blog post if I find anything noteworthy.

If you use Adobe anything you have only yourself to blame. It's a contender for worst software creator in all of human history.

Did you skip Win98 or how did that abomination not manage to push you away to Linux?

Why does this machine-id exist in the first place? What is it good for other than compromising privacy?

Microsoft talking about disinformation?????? What do we have here...

We have a once monopoly company, plus a 'creative' company that is so far up average internet users a$$ with ads and profiling, then the mouthpiece of MI-6.

Blah blah blah.

Anti fake news.

When did Microsoft ever care about open source and standards? Had to reverse engineer much of their stuff to have Open Source alternatives and viewers.

Fuck these companies. Fuck their founders. Fuck that fake organization too.

Never too late to adopt. Widows XP sp3 was the last Windows OS I've ran, and haven't looked back since. Though I'll admit that I like simple desktop environments like MATE and XFCE to replicate the classic and familiar navigation that I grew used to from Windows NT 3.1, 95, 98, 2000 and XP.

For newcomers you can't really go wrong with something like Pop_OS, Ubuntu or Mint. They seem to have good support and are really new-user friendly communities behind them.

I've already lost track of how many spy codes are in images. There are so many ways of burying "metadata" in those formats - it's what they were MADE for - and programs that claim to "strip" it are probably "accidentally" forgetting something.

This looks like one more whack at it - I'm not sure from reading that it is a tremendously NEW thing - I'm not sure how they plan to change, say, a .GIF file (not that that didn't have open-ended spy data storage protocols built in already). Are they doing so?

That will be my final push to switch to linux

Apple has a falwless securty record on contents of your iPhone.

They enhance that part every year, annoying FBI. Read all the court battles in the news of FBI vs Apple regarding getting into iPhones and getting into iCloud

In fact , they even now in 2021 suddenly map EVERY attempt to have google "safe browsing" go through a single apple proxy that uses a second layer of obfuscation and hash on that to make no ones browsing ever trackable by Google.

you are probably right :apple now has spy circuits built into their chips for audio to text, and circuits to do face identification built into chip, and this month apple big sur OS on m1 macs is VERY HARD to run older unsigned code and very very hard to turn off "SIP" elements to modify kernel files, or even use a debugger, and if you do turn off SIP, you must perform an action from the spy software inside the m1 mac that makes machine never load the new iOS compatibility engine code.

apple iCloud might be safe from FBI, but soon Apple china will maybe own all of you.

I never once typed a single word discussing "tor" network.

tor is NOT the tor browser, fool.

Do you know a single thing about crypto?

You are saying that Tor is an honeypot for the most various 3-letter agencies around the world while Apple has unhackable cloud technologies... Sure thing man, you are believable as hell!