Blob Storage I love you. Sometimes.

Reading contracts isn’t my strong suit; I often find myself paying penalties or high costs. It can happen, and it does, but I think it’s useful to share my experiences.

Today, I want to share my experience with Azure Blob Storage.

I’ll start by saying that I’ve used the service for years and consider it to be of excellent quality. However, having undertaken a European consolidation of my resources, I decided to move my data from Microsoft to OVH Object Storage.

On Azure, I had a container of about 12TB containing a few million objects. On Sunday morning, I started studying the situation and after a few hours of study, I decided that rclone was what I needed.

Over the past few months, the cost of invoices had remained largely unchanged. Last month, however, I noticed a significant increase.

I linked this increase to the fact that I had granted access to two colleagues to allow them to use the data, which I used sporadically. Essentially, I was saving information that I almost never read. This kept the cost below a certain level. As soon as I started downloading data from the container, the costs went up. Curious to see what would happen with the migration of the entire container, I’m monitoring the situation, and so far, after moving about half the data, this is the situation.

As you can see, the storage reduction has an impact, but the skyrocketing bandwidth costs significantly increase the invoice amount. Personally, I’ve never had large amounts of data stored in the cloud, so perhaps that’s why the situation surprised me.

For me, this type of service is perfect for information I want to save and access occasionally; for other scenarios, I’ll continue to use local storage.

I love optimists

I don’t know much about how Clawdbot works. I’ve never installed it and I’ve only had a quick look at the repo.

Let’s just say I know I don’t know shit about it.

But do so many people really need to expose the service on the internet? Without any restrictions whatsoever?

Have respect for those who study…

please, don’t call every idiot who commits crimes using a computer a “hacker”. I know I’m harping on about this, but it’s very important to me. The term “hacker” refers to an individual who studies, commits himself, and is driven by an indomitable passion. The press, however, decided that this term was appropriate for any idiot who commits a crime using a computer.

Today I bring you a splendid example of an idiot that some will call a “hacker”.

This genius registered a domain (helpvdeskerify247[.]com) to install a kit to steal credentials from Bank of America customers. Matrix discovered the domain and reported it as “opendir.”

The domain was flagged on urlscan some minutes after registration 😉

Since it was clearly suspicious, Matrix continued monitoring. After a few hours Matrix intercepts a change on the site and identifies a cloacker, which it then reports as a possible threat.

A day later, the criminal takes down the site and exposes the kit: Matrix then intercepts, downloads, and analyzes it. It identifies and reports it, highlighting the threat.

Here, the criminal already proves he’s no genius. Analyzing the kit, however, reveals a hidden gem… To secure the credentials, the kit uses a Telegram bot:

7937236406:AAGHUl2hThlX_SuxhkIuxVk2ZhAPoxuW8Ao

Okay, nothing unusual, so what’s the strangeness? The genius, instead of leaving the information in the bot’s queue, decides to record a callback. The attack therefore seems a bit more complex than usual. But here’s where the genius shines: the callback is based on the same domain where the kit is located!

So, after traveling around the world, where did the stolen credentials end up? In a damn JSON file on the same machine. 😀 😀 😀

I challenge anyone here to use the term “hacker” to describe this guy!!!

Besides, after two days, GSB and VT continue to ignore this domain. Very well, I’d say.

European online translator

I am terrible at learning new languages so I often find myself having to use a translator to create understandable sentences or translate words.

Google Translator has always been a great help to me, and I considered it irreplaceable. A few months ago, however, I switched to a European translator based in Germany, and I must say that it is every bit as good as Google’s service!

The service is DeepL.com, and I recommend you try it. I don’t think you’ll go back.

Back to the EU

Following changes beyond my control, I found myself thinking about my dependence, as a European citizen, on services and products made in the USA. This never used to bother me, but lately it has started to worry me. I therefore decided to start moving the services that are most important to my private and professional life to Europe.

It took me about a month to draw up a list of services, actions, and priorities. I started with the list of the most important services, but the more I thought about it, the longer the list grew: internet domains, email accounts, cloud storage. These were just the beginning.

This service was a great help: https://european-alternatives.eu/

I used to use GoDaddy to manage my internet domains, but I chose OVH as a European replacement and I must say that the migration was fairly painless.

The step that scared me the most was email: my main personal account was Gmail and I am gradually replacing it with my Proton account. I also decided to move my business accounts to Proton. These were previously on Office 365, which obviously offers many other services in addition to email. I didn’t use all of Office 365 services, so I was able to cover my needs with the Proton suite without any compromises: email, calendar, drive. The migration was fairly easy. To replace Microsoft Office, I chose Libre Office. I replaced Outlook with Proton Mail, and I must say that after some initial confusion, now, after about a month, I’m very happy with it.

Last weekend, I reinstalled Debian on almost all my computers and reset my iPhone.

You don’t realize how many services/applications you use until you start throwing stuff away and looking for replacements! I decided to start tidying up my phone, and I must say that I now have far fewer apps.

For now, I’ve decided to continue using iPhone and iCloud. Trying to change smartphones at this point could be fatal. Next year, I plan to buy a Jolla smartphone and maybe try to contribute to the project.

As for the browser, after many years, I decided to abandon Chrome and switch to Brave and DuckDuckGo instead of Google as my search engine.

As for work, many of the systems I use are local, and the rest are OVH and Hetzner machines. I have a few TB of storage on Azure with content produced by Matrix, which I’ll move in my spare time to cancel the subscription.

Clearly, this journey does not end here. To date, I have moved a lot of services to Europe and kept some in the US. For now, I wanted to be sure that no one could deactivate my email account without explanation, as happened with my Twitter account 🙂

Do we control the technology we use?

Social networks are a great vehicle for sharing. Each user contributes by sharing their own experiences. Our smartphone has more information about us than our parents or our partner do. This allows us to create relationships and improve existing ones, enabling us to get to know others better.

One of the many drawbacks is that all the data we put on social networks is accumulated by companies that become its owners. These companies have a view of the world that is more comprehensive than anyone has ever had before. Knowing people’s tastes, orientations, thoughts, and moods allows them to be monitored, but above all, it enables them to be solicited, guided, and ultimately led.

This happens with social networks and with the lives of the people who participate in them. I won’t comment on who profits from this; there are journalists who deal with these things on a daily basis and are certainly more reliable than I am.

However, this mechanism does not work well with companies. Of course, by looking at a company’s website, we can see what it does. By looking at LinkedIn, we can understand who works there and possibly what they do and how they do it. It always remains at a high level; from the outside, we can peek in, but not much more. Typically, unless there is a leak, we know what a company wants us to know.

So how could someone from the outside really understand how a company works? How could someone understand the business processes, methodologies, and technologies used in a particular company?

The solution could be to create an assistant based on artificial intelligence!

Once this is done, it is advertised as the future, with speculation that it will allow anyone to do anything, and surely someone will find it convenient to share everything they would not even confide to their mother in a chatbot (about which they know nothing).

Because in exchange for their secrets, the chatbot gives users something they could not otherwise have (except through hard work and perhaps even study): the feeling of being autonomous. Even in contexts unknown to the user. No need to ask, no need for professionals, no need for culture and knowledge. Artificial intelligence does everything. Just pay and share. So you pay twice. Brilliant!

You don’t know how to use Photoshop but you want an image? There’s GenAI! You don’t know how to write code but you want to make an app? Long live Vibe Coding!

In the end, it doesn’t matter that you had to share your secrets with a stranger to get a solution, because the user thinks they did it all themselves in the silence of their office. Them and their computer.

It doesn’t matter where the information ended up because they got an answer in return. They did it all themselves. A kind of masturbation, live on TV.

A doubt about eBay

After weeks of eBay stressing me because I don’t have a payment method associated, I decided to do as they ask and associate a payment method. I thought a credit card would be fine, but no, they want a bank account. I start the procedure: they ask me for the bank I use, a popup from my bank opens asking me for credentials, I enter them and here, rightly, the bank asks me to agree to provide authorizations to eBay. Here I notice two things that I don’t understand: first, the authorizations that eBay is asking me to grant are related, not only to the checking account, but also to a credit card. In addition to this, which already seems excessive to me, the list of authorizations includes: coordinates, balance and list of transactions.

I could also find a justification for these requests, but more easily I see a desire to mind my own business.