New story: Tormented by Teledildonics

Let me get this out of the way: I am a bad person and I feel bad. I thought I was done with this crap. But last week was bad in computer security. PHP got rooted–no, no, you can’t root a computer language, except when every web site based on PHP is vulnerable to an attack, PHP got rooted. On the same day, digital security company eMudhra was found to have deployed a poor private key for signing X.509 certificates. Only a digital security company with very special skills would use a private key of “4.” People without deep expertise might ask “how bad was this, really?” Several other security firms immediately disclosed failures that, any other time, would have triggered blaring headlines and deeply annoyed techies. They were mere blips. This was the kind of week where everyone affected needed a shot of whiskey and a prolonged hug. I had neither—but he did have a full-day meltdown. I bounced it past fellow author Lucy Snyder. She raised it from a shriek of pain to a tale with depth.…