Well this is embarrassing.
Users on Reddit are sounding the alarm that when booting into their Windows 10 PCs this morning, they are being met with a deactivated machine as Microsoft’s activation servers seem to have decided to misbehave. The core symptom is that that those affected are being asked to install Windows 10 Home instead, as their Pro license apparently no longer works. So if you see something like this hit your PC, don’t reinstall your OS. It appears those affected are users who upgraded using older Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 product keys. Devices that shipped with Windows 10 Pro appear to be unaffected at this time.
Microsoft support says that this is an issue caused by its activation servers, and that the problem will be resolved soon. How soon nobody knows. If I get any info on that front, it will be posted here.
Canada Post Pwned…. 4500 Cannabis Customers Had Their Data Swiped
Posted in Commentary with tags Canada, Hacked on November 8, 2018 by itnerdCannabis has been legal in Canada for the last few weeks. And if you live in Ontario, the only way to buy Cannabis legally is online via a government run store who will deliver your stash to you via Canada Post. Too bad Canada Post had to announce that they got pwned:
The postal service said in a statement that someone had used its delivery tracking tool to gain access to personal information of 4,500 customers of the Ontario Cannabis Store but declined to identify the information.
And it seems that the Ontario Cannabis Store is accusing Canada Post of being slow to act:
In a statement on Wednesday, the Ontario Cannabis Store said it referred the matter to the province’s privacy commissioner. The statement also said the store had “encouraged” Canada Post to take immediate action to notify its customers.
“To date, Canada Post has not taken action in this regard,” the store said in its statement. “Although Canada Post is making its own determination as to whether notification of customers is required in this instance, the OCS has notified all relevant customers.”
So if you bought some weed from the Ontario Cannabis Store, you might have someone reaching out to you.
Now my first thought upon reading this, beyond my usual reaction of “I hope that someone slaps the relevant parties silly for this data breach”, is that this is a huge problem. For example, one could be barred from traveling to the US or to other companies if it became known that you smoked the stuff. Thus there needs some serious questions answered by both Canada Post and the Ontario Cannabis Store.
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