Avoid all of these things with all your might, beware, don’t even think about it. You know it’s going to hurt. Stay away. You’ve been warned. Pay attention.
- Office documents, because Visual Basic macros and ILOVEYOU.
- Jira and Confluence, because there’s a new CVE every week and it’s obvious at this point that Atlassian has thrown the towel.
- Zoom, because it’s a bad joke.
- Windows, because please please please tell me I don’t need to tell you why.
- macOS, because Apple couldn’t care less about fixing vulnerabilities and also
goto fail. - Linux and other open sores projects, because who knows what’s in it, damn communists.
- Android, because store full of malware.
- iOS, because in-app purchase scams.
- E-mail, because phishing.
- Unsigned 32-bit executables you compiled 20 years ago and just found in an old backup, because Windows Defender or whatever sandbox in your operating system will block them from running and good luck compiling them again.
- Web browsers, because (in roughly chronological order) Java applets and ActiveX components and JavaScript
eval()and Flash players and tracking cookies and privacy issues and phishing and malware and ads and Facebook and… - Intel chips, because Pentium FDIV and Spectre and Meltdown and Joanna says so.
- Docker Hub, because rogue containers.
- Kubernetes, because secrets encoded with base64.
- Consoles and terminals, because you might inadvertently execute
rm -rf /. - Short passwords, because easy to crack.
- Long passwords, because quantum computers are coming.
- Passwords managers, because… wait, no, this one is OK to use.
- Two-factor authentication over SMS, because SIM card spoofing.
- HTTP, because lack of encryption.
- HTTPS, because man-in-the-middle attacks.
- Telnet, because we’re not in 1993.
- FTP, because, ahem.
- USB drives, because they can take over your machine.
- OpenSSL, because Heartbleed.
- Electron and React Native apps, because JavaScript.
- JavaScript, because npm.
- Twitter, because their chief of security quit.
- Facebook, because Zuck is more interested in legless avatars.
- Google products, because they’ll be phased out soon.
- BASIC, because GOTO considered harmful.
- C and C++, because buffer overruns.
- PHP (and by extension WordPress, MediaWiki, Moodle…), because SQL injection and XSS attacks.
- Cookies, because the European Union says so.
- Package managers, because no SBOMs.
- Chats, because impersonation and dubious encryption standards and on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.
- Programmers, because shift left is a myth and good luck communicating with them.
- Cryptocurrencies, because.
Actually, just stop using computers in general, because they were made by humans, and you know how they are.