6 ms·

If the maker of ShieldsUp! claims anything, I am deeply, deeply, unconvinced.

by medimikka 4y ago

daniel-s 4y ago
What's wrong with Shieldsup? My experience is that it works perfectly fine.
- codazoda 4y ago
  Is this still a thing?!?
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  I don't know if there's anything wrong with Sheildsup (other than my recollection of it being a pretty run of the mill tool for reporting open ports), but the guy who makes Shieldsup is, in my opinion, basically a charlatan. He writes loads and loads of technical-sounding blather on his website that is very transparently designed to make him look like an expert on security to people who don't know any better. He's made a career out of selling tools people don't need but which are hyped up to make them sound critically important. Here's an example of some hype I just found about a device he "invented" that is supposed to really put home routers through their paces, because he's the only one looking out for us. [1] Of course, it maybe doesn't exist, and his claims of what it's going to do sound far-fetched and misguided, but it sure does seem aimed to make him sound like a real security expert. Not sure if he ever made any claims about having evaluated any routers with it. [1] https://www.grc.com/r&d/assimilator.htm https://www.grc.com/r&d/assimilator.htm
  - ay 4y ago
    FWIW, he’s been at it for about 20 years.
    - killjoywashere 4y ago
      > he’s been at it for about 20 years. At least. I remember finding his site back in 2004 and it felt long in the tooth then. Complete with blink tags.
      - pdonis 4y ago
        Gibson Research Corporation was founded in 1985. I can remember seeing references to articles of his in the late 1980s on Compuserve.
    - heleninboodler 4y ago
      One of his most infamous crusades was how he yelled about Windows XP raw sockets -- a fake problem that he hyped up as if the sky was falling -- well after Windows XP was EOL'd.
      - timbit42 4y ago
        What is your source for this "information"? He brought it up in 2001, the year XP was released[1]. Microsoft fixed it three years later in SP2. XP was EOL'ed in 2009[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_programmer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_program... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP
        heleninboodler 4y ago
        My apologies for misstating this. According to the internet archive, he stopped complaining about this problem sometime in 2008, a mere four years after the raw sockets restrictions were added to XP. Do keep in mind, however, that his entire reason for continuing to publicize this was because it allowed him to continue making foolish claims like "Microsoft Does Not Understand Security," and to pretend that the eventual restrictions (not removal) of raw sockets in XP were proof that he was right. They were not. In fact, the entire issue was over his own misunderstanding of security. You can't secure a network by asking client operating systems to restrict their own behavior on some kind of honor system (guess what: the bad guys' computers will not have these restrictions). The use of raw sockets did not disappear and the internet still exists. The claim that this was "a tremendous threat to the global Internet" basically amounted to "the sky is falling and only I can see it because none of the other security experts 'get it' like I do." Which is entirely bogus.
        SixDouble5321 4y ago
        I always imagine all the Gibson haters are still stuck on this drama from the XP days. Not sure why it was so polarizing, but for what it's worth I don't think "Microsoft understands security." It's not any one person or one thing, it's the culture. It's the laissez-faire attitude. It's the lack of investment. And the ubiquity of their software compounds all of it.
  - icecube123 4y ago
    Thats over 20 years old. Its not worth mentioning in this discussion. He only sells one product, Spin-Rite which actually works pretty well for its purpose, tho it’s becoming less important as we move more towards SSD. It sounds like you’re spreading misinformation just for the hell of it.
    - CyberDildonics 4y ago
      You only have one other comment and it was 16 months ago, this must have really touched a nerve.
    - svc0 4y ago
      I've always been curious why people so fervently dislike Gibson. I think the most genuine criticism is that Spin-Rite is not a backup solution and people may rely on it as such. Ideally, no one should need it since all data should be replicated and backed up. Any drive can fail at any time for any reason and it may be totally unrecoverable. [Side Note: He also once claimed in a "testimonial" that a special ops team recovered data off of a hard drive during a mission in which they hit a terrorist with a computer.] That being said, he produces a free security podcast which is quite good. He knows his stuff.
      - pdonis 4y ago
        > Any drive can fail at any time for any reason and it may be totally unrecoverable. While in principle this is true, I have been using hard drives for more than 30 years now in PCs and I have never had one fail. I still back things up to separate drives since there's always a first time, but I've never used SpinRite or any other extra "protection" over and above what my OS provided.
        svc0 4y ago
        There are stats on failure rates and bathtub curves. Consumer hard drives these days have an AFT of ~1.41%. Never used SpinRite and I don't know if there is evidence for it but I suggest you backup your data. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2022/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - easeout 4y ago
    I feel like what you're describing is just marketing, in the sense of exaggerating the necessity of a product that works but which you really can do without. Or do you mean Gibson's products don't really work?
    - heleninboodler 4y ago
      Sure, it's "just marketing," but it's particularly egregious marketing because it relies heavily on fear and borderline lies about his expertise. And he puts out baloney like the "CSPRNG" in the OP that's not even sound. You may note that it's been 5 years since he was notified of the flaws in it, but it's still promoted in exactly the same irresponsible way.
InCityDreams 4y ago
I still use the DNS speed finder.
- CyberDildonics 4y ago
  Is this a joke? What does that mean?
  - blacksmith_tb 4y ago
    At a guess, that would be this freeware util[1], which looks like a Win-only and slightly spiffier version of Namebench[2]. 1: https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm 2: https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench/ https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench/
    - xrayarx 4y ago
      There doesn’t seem to be any new versions of Namebench since 2010. The grc tool was last updated in 2019 according to the website. There are other tools, but it is not as important as it used to be.
  - KyeRussell 4y ago
    Touch grass.
    - CyberDildonics 4y ago
      Are you upset because I can't tell if a "DNS speed finer" is a real 'tool'? Wouldn't that just be pinging a list of dns servers?
      - SixDouble5321 4y ago
        Yep, that's what it does. A person can just use whatever DNS is provided by their ISP, which is the fastest in some cases. Or they can test and find out for sure.
MertsA 4y ago
Forget "ShieldsUp!" This is the guy who still sells SpinRite for $90 when it hasn't seen an update since 2004. It's old enough to vote at this point and Steve Gibson is always spouting off blatant lies about how it's great for recovering SSDs. He's claimed that it can magically read uncorrectable sectors on modern drives (SATA, not SAS, no SCSI READ LONG here and no ancient IDE drives that still supported READ LONG for ATA) and compare results to figure out what the original data was. He claims that it's data recovery software and that people should run it on a failing hard drive before trying to copy data off of it with a real data recovery program! That piece of garbage doesn't even support writing data to a separate disk, the only thing it can do is write the data the drive was able to read back to the failing drive itself. The technical documentation claims stuff like that it disables bad sector allocation. That's actually a thing, but if you read the man page for some reputable software like hdparm you'll see a nice little note: > Control of this feature via the -D option is not supported for most modern drives since ATA-4; thus this command may fail. ATA-4 was standardized in 1998. It can probably actually disable write caching, but it's not like that's unique to SpinRite in the slightest. It's even trivial to change that on Windows which is otherwise horrible for anything low level involving disks. SpinRite doesn't even use LBA48 addressing so if your drive can't address the full capacity in ye olde CHS then too bad, but SpinRite will try to spin that as a problem with your BIOS, a problem with your SATA controller, etc. I don't see why anyone respects anything he says given his long history of selling snake oil and other shyster tactics. Even the Wikipedia page for SpinRite looks astroturfed and the talk section has a bunch of responses from an unregistered user that all seem to have a similar tone and be suspiciously supportive of some of SpinRite's dubious claims. If Steve Gibson told me that the sky was blue I think I'd have to go outside and check. http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=2929 http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=2929
- pdonis 4y ago
  For a similar take on Gibson, see here: https://radsoft.net/news/roundups/grc/ https://radsoft.net/news/roundups/grc/
- SixDouble5321 4y ago
  Doesn't sound like you have used Spinrite, but if you don't think it's worth the money don't buy it. Not sure what makes you think a developer has to reduce the price of their software, just because it's old. Adobe has done no such thing. The software still does what it did when it was first made. If you have a bug report, file it, my guess is that you don't.

If the maker of ShieldsUp! claims anything, I am deeply, deeply, unconvinced.

daniel-s 4y ago

What's wrong with Shieldsup? My experience is that it works perfectly fine.

codazoda 4y ago
Is this still a thing?!?
heleninboodler 4y ago
I don't know if there's anything wrong with Sheildsup (other than my recollection of it being a pretty run of the mill tool for reporting open ports), but the guy who makes Shieldsup is, in my opinion, basically a charlatan. He writes loads and loads of technical-sounding blather on his website that is very transparently designed to make him look like an expert on security to people who don't know any better. He's made a career out of selling tools people don't need but which are hyped up to make them sound critically important. Here's an example of some hype I just found about a device he "invented" that is supposed to really put home routers through their paces, because he's the only one looking out for us. [1] Of course, it maybe doesn't exist, and his claims of what it's going to do sound far-fetched and misguided, but it sure does seem aimed to make him sound like a real security expert. Not sure if he ever made any claims about having evaluated any routers with it. [1] https://www.grc.com/r&d/assimilator.htm https://www.grc.com/r&d/assimilator.htm
- ay 4y ago
  FWIW, he’s been at it for about 20 years.
  - killjoywashere 4y ago
    > he’s been at it for about 20 years. At least. I remember finding his site back in 2004 and it felt long in the tooth then. Complete with blink tags.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      Gibson Research Corporation was founded in 1985. I can remember seeing references to articles of his in the late 1980s on Compuserve.
  - heleninboodler 4y ago
    One of his most infamous crusades was how he yelled about Windows XP raw sockets -- a fake problem that he hyped up as if the sky was falling -- well after Windows XP was EOL'd.
    - timbit42 4y ago
      What is your source for this "information"? He brought it up in 2001, the year XP was released[1]. Microsoft fixed it three years later in SP2. XP was EOL'ed in 2009[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_programmer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_program... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP
      - heleninboodler 4y ago
        My apologies for misstating this. According to the internet archive, he stopped complaining about this problem sometime in 2008, a mere four years after the raw sockets restrictions were added to XP. Do keep in mind, however, that his entire reason for continuing to publicize this was because it allowed him to continue making foolish claims like "Microsoft Does Not Understand Security," and to pretend that the eventual restrictions (not removal) of raw sockets in XP were proof that he was right. They were not. In fact, the entire issue was over his own misunderstanding of security. You can't secure a network by asking client operating systems to restrict their own behavior on some kind of honor system (guess what: the bad guys' computers will not have these restrictions). The use of raw sockets did not disappear and the internet still exists. The claim that this was "a tremendous threat to the global Internet" basically amounted to "the sky is falling and only I can see it because none of the other security experts 'get it' like I do." Which is entirely bogus.
        SixDouble5321 4y ago
        I always imagine all the Gibson haters are still stuck on this drama from the XP days. Not sure why it was so polarizing, but for what it's worth I don't think "Microsoft understands security." It's not any one person or one thing, it's the culture. It's the laissez-faire attitude. It's the lack of investment. And the ubiquity of their software compounds all of it.
- icecube123 4y ago
  Thats over 20 years old. Its not worth mentioning in this discussion. He only sells one product, Spin-Rite which actually works pretty well for its purpose, tho it’s becoming less important as we move more towards SSD. It sounds like you’re spreading misinformation just for the hell of it.
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago
    You only have one other comment and it was 16 months ago, this must have really touched a nerve.
  - svc0 4y ago
    I've always been curious why people so fervently dislike Gibson. I think the most genuine criticism is that Spin-Rite is not a backup solution and people may rely on it as such. Ideally, no one should need it since all data should be replicated and backed up. Any drive can fail at any time for any reason and it may be totally unrecoverable. [Side Note: He also once claimed in a "testimonial" that a special ops team recovered data off of a hard drive during a mission in which they hit a terrorist with a computer.] That being said, he produces a free security podcast which is quite good. He knows his stuff.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > Any drive can fail at any time for any reason and it may be totally unrecoverable. While in principle this is true, I have been using hard drives for more than 30 years now in PCs and I have never had one fail. I still back things up to separate drives since there's always a first time, but I've never used SpinRite or any other extra "protection" over and above what my OS provided.
      - svc0 4y ago
        There are stats on failure rates and bathtub curves. Consumer hard drives these days have an AFT of ~1.41%. Never used SpinRite and I don't know if there is evidence for it but I suggest you backup your data. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2022/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- easeout 4y ago
  I feel like what you're describing is just marketing, in the sense of exaggerating the necessity of a product that works but which you really can do without. Or do you mean Gibson's products don't really work?
  - heleninboodler 4y ago
    Sure, it's "just marketing," but it's particularly egregious marketing because it relies heavily on fear and borderline lies about his expertise. And he puts out baloney like the "CSPRNG" in the OP that's not even sound. You may note that it's been 5 years since he was notified of the flaws in it, but it's still promoted in exactly the same irresponsible way.

InCityDreams 4y ago

I still use the DNS speed finder.

CyberDildonics 4y ago
Is this a joke? What does that mean?
- blacksmith_tb 4y ago
  At a guess, that would be this freeware util[1], which looks like a Win-only and slightly spiffier version of Namebench[2]. 1: https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm 2: https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench/ https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench/
  - xrayarx 4y ago
    There doesn’t seem to be any new versions of Namebench since 2010. The grc tool was last updated in 2019 according to the website. There are other tools, but it is not as important as it used to be.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  Touch grass.
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago
    Are you upset because I can't tell if a "DNS speed finer" is a real 'tool'? Wouldn't that just be pinging a list of dns servers?
    - SixDouble5321 4y ago
      Yep, that's what it does. A person can just use whatever DNS is provided by their ISP, which is the fastest in some cases. Or they can test and find out for sure.

MertsA 4y ago

Forget "ShieldsUp!" This is the guy who still sells SpinRite for $90 when it hasn't seen an update since 2004. It's old enough to vote at this point and Steve Gibson is always spouting off blatant lies about how it's great for recovering SSDs. He's claimed that it can magically read uncorrectable sectors on modern drives (SATA, not SAS, no SCSI READ LONG here and no ancient IDE drives that still supported READ LONG for ATA) and compare results to figure out what the original data was. He claims that it's data recovery software and that people should run it on a failing hard drive before trying to copy data off of it with a real data recovery program! That piece of garbage doesn't even support writing data to a separate disk, the only thing it can do is write the data the drive was able to read back to the failing drive itself. The technical documentation claims stuff like that it disables bad sector allocation. That's actually a thing, but if you read the man page for some reputable software like hdparm you'll see a nice little note: > Control of this feature via the -D option is not supported for most modern drives since ATA-4; thus this command may fail. ATA-4 was standardized in 1998. It can probably actually disable write caching, but it's not like that's unique to SpinRite in the slightest. It's even trivial to change that on Windows which is otherwise horrible for anything low level involving disks. SpinRite doesn't even use LBA48 addressing so if your drive can't address the full capacity in ye olde CHS then too bad, but SpinRite will try to spin that as a problem with your BIOS, a problem with your SATA controller, etc. I don't see why anyone respects anything he says given his long history of selling snake oil and other shyster tactics. Even the Wikipedia page for SpinRite looks astroturfed and the talk section has a bunch of responses from an unregistered user that all seem to have a similar tone and be suspiciously supportive of some of SpinRite's dubious claims. If Steve Gibson told me that the sky was blue I think I'd have to go outside and check. http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=2929 http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=2929

pdonis 4y ago
For a similar take on Gibson, see here: https://radsoft.net/news/roundups/grc/ https://radsoft.net/news/roundups/grc/
SixDouble5321 4y ago
Doesn't sound like you have used Spinrite, but if you don't think it's worth the money don't buy it. Not sure what makes you think a developer has to reduce the price of their software, just because it's old. Adobe has done no such thing. The software still does what it did when it was first made. If you have a bug report, file it, my guess is that you don't.