February 5, 2020

University of Maastricht pays 197.000 euro in ransomware

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 4:21 pm

Just before Christmas, the University of Maastricht fell victim to a cyberattack, as their IT system was held hostage and shut down for weeks. The university saw no other way out than to pay a whopping 197.000 euro to get control back of their computers.

According to a computer security company, hackers got into the system after someone on a laptop clicked on a link in a phishing email. In October and November 2019, the hackers were getting ready to hold six servers hostage that didn’t have the proper updated security updates. On 21 November, they controlled the entire system, and on 23 December, they deactivated the antivirus software and froze up the entire IT system.

The hackers were probably Grace-RAT (TA505), an Eastern European, Russian-speaking cybercriminals who have been around since 2014 and from the likes of it, business is going well: 197,000 euro is a whole lot of ‘dengi’ (‘money’).

(Link: bright.nl)

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January 29, 2020

Dutchman fails test 10 times, needs it to graduate

Filed under: Online,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:44 pm

For the past couple of years 22-year-old university student at the Eindhoven University of Technology keeps failing the same two exams over and over, stopping him from graduating. The exams are calculus and ‘some kind of algebra’, whatever that means. Both exams are from his first year, and he’s now in his fourth year.

He’s not too worried, but his friends think it’s amusing. On Heeft Daan calculus al gehaald (‘Has Daan finally passed calculus?’) you can check his progress. His friends helped build the site.

In the Netherlands grades go from 0 to 10, and on Daan’s last attempt at passing the calculus test, he got a two. “I felt like shit,” he said. In a way, I want to Daan to pass because he’s very much the underdog, and in another, I’m glad he’s not studying to be a doctor or a dentist.

There’s another Dutch concept that’s good to know, it’s called the ‘zesjescultuur’ (‘sixes culture’, as in 6 out of 10, a passing grade) and for many people that’s enough.

Daan’s the poster boy for it now.

(Link: www.nhnieuws.nl)

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January 8, 2020

Dutch book about ‘Depressing Destinations’ out in January

Filed under: Architecture,History,Literature by Orangemaster @ 1:44 pm

Publishing his second book roughly entitled ‘Depressing Destinations’ (‘Treurtrips’), journalist and photographer Mark van Wonderen decided to show the Dutch what a good chunk of their country really looks like.

“The Netherlands is a beautiful country that is neatly divided up. Ever square metre has been carefully arranged and countless zoning plans have been drawn up. When a place risks falling into disrepair, municipalities and project jump at the chance to fix the situation.”

Van Wonderen will show you half-abandoned malls, tacky buildings and lots of concrete in the wrong place: the dark side of quaint Dutch design is ‘treurnis’ (sad, gloomy and slowly falling apart). And he thinks it’s beautiful. In 2018, he wrote ‘Chin. Ind. Spec. Rest., a disappearing Dutch phenomenon’ about the last 1097 Chinese Indonesian restaurants in the country, the first four runs of which have completely sold out.

We’ll be at the launch!

(Photo of cover by Mark van Wonderen)

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January 7, 2020

Father spots his kids damaging property with fireworks

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:04 pm

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After all the property damage, injuries, fires and even deaths related to people using fireworks in the Netherlands on New Year’s Eve, the issue of anybody using fireworks is finally being hotly debated at the national level.

One father in Enschede, Overijssel who I bet thought his children were good kids, found out through social media that his kids are destructive little shits. Football club Sparta Enschede put out a film of the destructive little shits trashing the club’s stands on social media and the father recognised his destructive little shits. He contacted the club to tell them that and agreed to pay the 10,000 euro worth of damages caused by his destructive little shits.

“Luckily there are still honest people who accept responsibility,” one of the club’s Board members said. Hopefully dad will set a good example for these destructive little shits and punish them accorgdingly. It has not been mentioned whether the destructive little shits are also members of the club. I can’t imagine they would be welcome any time soon even as spectators.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of Football by Bramus, some rights reserved)

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