Another great ABC story John but if I get this right my IOS devices have been at risk for the last 10 years of being hacked due to some flaw in a chip. This is not only true of apple devices but also android devices, apparently there is going to be a patch put out by Apple and the other manufacturers in the coming days to fix it. So why suddenly this huge concern and what are we supposed to do about it anyhow throw all all our devices away or just not use them ? 

Cheers BB

You can put a dozen articles saying the same thing but my comment is still the same what do you want us to do differently apparently this has been a rsk for 10 years ? Smells a bit like the Y2k bug where the computing industry made billions helping people to avoiid what was probably a non existent problem.

The Y2K bug was real. I worked for many years on it, starting in the early 1980s when forecasting went beyond Dec 31, 1999. HR systems had already been re-written to cope with actuarial forecasts beyond 2000. Then I was full time from 1996. Dates were stored in computers in YYMMDD format for sorting. Dec 31, 1999 was 991231. The next day was 000101 so all date sorting, forecasting were going to go haywire. The fact that no one was effected by the Y2K bug was a testament to the amount of money and effort that was put into eliminating this potential disaster. Date format was changed to CCYYMMDD in existing systems (19991231 then 20000101). New systems used a date relative to something like 1/Jan/1900 with dates before being negative & dates after being positive. 28/Dec/1899 was -3 and 3/Jan1900 was +3.

Some computers stored dates in Julian format (YYMMM) where mmm is the day number in the year. Today being 18006. These dates became CCYYMMM (2018006). This is easier to count days and the new +/- days offers similar simplicity behind the scenes.

-- Edited by RustyD on Saturday 6th of January 2018 04:03:38 PM

There has always been weaknesses in Microsoft (Windows) and Apple (IOS) systems / chips. As Microsoft had a massive market share compared to Apple and Apple users tended to be more computer savvy and didn't download stuff of the internet willy-nilly, hackers only concentrated on Microsoft products and applications. However with the prolific growth of Apple & Android phones & tablets, not sure if this is still the case. Just hope that the OS writers are keeping one step ahead of the hackers.

rockylizard wrote:

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The Belmont Bear wrote:

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John as usual you are very clever at attaching links or cartoons to back up your points of view?????? but in this case I'm still waiting for you to give us one. I have read your????? articles, I understand the risks but for the 3rd time (and I can only assume its all true) what are they recommending that people like me do differently ?

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Gday...

   Fer gawd's sake ......  they are not MY articles ... they are links to information released via media by Apple concerning issues they have discovered and advising they are instigating remedial measures ... apparently in upcoming releases.

I have no opinion or knowledge or 'point of view' or advice to offer you, fer gawd's sake ..... I am but the messenger of information, verified information, that would quite probably be of interest to those who have machines that are within the remit of the advice from Apple.

I posted the links, it is up to you to read it ... absorb (or discard) the information .. and make up your own damned mind on what you want (or not want) to do with it.

cheers -   - John

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John my first response to your original post was that it was an interesting article by the ABC (not you) but as the problem had existed for some time I couldnt see what I could do differently = this was made as a general  comment on the article and was only my point of view. You responded by posting more links to articles along with some cartoon suggesting perhaps i was a little slow. Again I suggested that although I understand that this is a problem none of those links tell me what I could do differently. Your response was another even more sarcastic cartoon - you dont like my reaction then start thinking about what you are posting, you may see these cartoons as being funny or smart those you direct them against may interpret them as being insulting.

Fair enough John lets call a halt to our verbal jousting, to tell you the truth although I am not a great fan of the ABC I dont actually watch it or use any of their services so Im not in the best position to judge how effectively they do their job. All I know is I have to go back to work tomorrow so I can send nearly half what I earn back to the Australian government in order to help them fund (or add to the credit card)everything that they have committed to and that includes our public broadcaster.

RustyD has it right. The resources expended to ensure Y2K was a non-issue was quite a burden on most organizations. Add to that the effort required to ready some systems for GST made 2001 a welcome sight. Apple devices have never really been immune from attack despite the general belief and personal devices of all types aren't immune from social engineering either. Whatever you use, devote the necessary bandwidth to keeping it up to.date in a timely fashion. As an aside, the only software I encountered that wasn't and couldn't be patched for Y2K was an Apple messagng system and the only fix was a total replacement at outrageous Apple pricing.