Warning: Critical Patch for Windows Issued

Oh, yes.. more of the same. Act now and protect yourself. * Microsoft releases emergency patch for all versions of Windows

“The flaw, affecting Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1, can allow a hacker to take over a machine.” Read more..

And when I went to Start>Windows Update, I saw this new item..

No, thanks. I never want the first version of any thing.

Other news: More Items Like This * UCLA Health hit by hack; medical data on 4.5 million people exposed

“The LA-based university health system says the data stolen was not encrypted.” Read more..

[Silly me! I thought there were laws making such PII mandatory-encrypted.. ]

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Today’s quote: “Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.” ~ Robert Green Ingersoll Copyright 2007-2015 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories. Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Target. (And More.)

By now, you’ve probably heard of the “Target Breach”. (A “breach” is when a hacker has broken in and stolen stuff.) And you’ve heard it was bigger than first reported.. Here’s more news:

* Customers paying the price after Target breach

“Three weeks after news broke that 40 million accounts of Target shoppers were breached in a widespread hack, some customers of smaller banks are beginning to feel the repercussions.” Read more..

* Target estimates breach affected up to 110 million

“The massive data heist at Target stores across the country was more massive than previously revealed, with the retailer saying at least 70 to 110 million customers were hit — making it one of the largest security breaches of its kind.” Read more..

* Baby-faced teen suspected in Target data breach that hit 110M

“Security company IntelCrawler posted these Web images of a 17-year-old Russian it says may be the architect of the malware that hacked up to 110 million Target customers, and of online chats (left) it used to track him.” Read more..

* After Target breach, Homeland Security warns retailers

“Investigators probing the recent holiday season cyberattack are warning retailers about sophisticated malware that potentially affected a large number of stores.” Read more..

* Target breach notifications are a perfect example of what not to do …

“It’s bad enough that Target allowed more than 100 million accounts to be compromised, but the retailer’s response to the breach is an exercise …” Read more..

The “Internet of things” … well… it’s making a few people rich.

Is anyone else ready – YET – to call ‘cybercrime’ a national (better yet, global) security issue? If not, what’s it going to take?

In other news: I’ve busted the tail – twice. And today, broke a wing off. At this rate, my Hobbyzone Champ is going to be a piece of flying duct tape..

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Today’s quote: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Copyright 2007-2014 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Hackers Post One Million Account Details

More Good News.

Website ‘Hellfire’: Hackers release 1m accounts

“Hacktivist group GhostShell claims to have released one million account details from websites, in a project under the alias “Hellfire”.

The hacktivists, working with groups MidasBank and OphiusLab, posted online on Saturday what appears to be accounts and records gleaned from banks, government agencies, consulting firms, law enforcement and the CIA.” Read more

Today’s Geekspeak Translation: “Hacktivist” = Hacktivism is the act of hacking, or breaking into a computer system, for a politically or socially motivated purpose. (doing evil for what they think/believe is “good cause”.)(And I guess “gleaned” is the new “stolen”.)

Yippee yahoo.

Banks.
Government agencies.
Law enforcement.
And the CIA.

You’d like to think those guys have top-notch computer security.. wouldn’t you?

I mean.. like, bulletproof security.

Sigh.

Rather Important: Don’t let the UN steal the Internet

“If the UN seizes control of the Internet, they’ll take the Internet from the voices of freedom and give it to nations who’d prefer to either kill it or refashion it into another tool of state control.” Read more..

Copyright 2007-2012 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Topics Of Interest

Busy day here, but I found some good articles whose topics I hope you will find interesting, and the info provided, valuable. Some “recommended reading”, if you will.

• How The New ‘Protecting Children’ Bill Puts You At Risk

“A bill now makes the online activity of every American available to authorities upon request under the guise of protecting children from pornography..

“Protecting Children” forces ISPs to retain customer names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and dynamic IP addresses..

It’s like having your wallet plus the web sites you visit tracked and handed over on request. These logs are now going to be retained for the scope of one and a half years. ” Read more..

(Those of you with a brain might wanna make a point of reading this one.. This is just plain wrong [IMHO]. The article contains a link for voicing your opposition.)

• 10 ways to safeguard your college-bound student’s computer

“You protect your corporate systems, but what about that back-to-school laptop you just bought your kid? Here are some things you can do to keep your student safe from cyber dangers.” Read more..

• Five reasons Android is superior to the iPhone

“While on vacation, I was reminded (yet again) how superior the Android platform is to the iPhone.” Read more..

• Creating Shortcuts to Google’s Gmail, Docs, Tasks, Calendar and Contacts

“I am a big Gmail user and have come to depend on Google’s Gmail and many of the other Google apps as an online personal information manager.” Read more..

• Three things Chromebooks need to fix to win buyers

“While Chromebooks have the potential to win corporate customers, I still think three things need to happen before Chromebooks will attract consumers and businesses in large numbers.” Read more..

• The 10 Best Apps Of July From The Daily App

“From Google+ for iPhone to Firefox for Android, here’s a glimpse at the best mobile apps we’ve featured in July on The Daily App blog.” Read more..

• 10 things you should still do to every Windows PC

“There are at least 10 things you should take a few minutes to do to every new Windows PC to get it ready for daily use. Don’t let your back-to-school PC drag your first semester down. “ Read more..

• 10 Cool Security Features In Mac OS X Lion

“No doubt, when it comes to security, Apple’s new Mac OS X Lion is shedding its spots and is ready to roar. As the dust has settled on the release of Apple’s Mac OS X Lion, unveiled July 20, experts have started asking, “Yes, but is it secure?” ” Read more..

And for the super-Geeky.. (Here at T4E Headquarters, “geek” is a compliment.)

• i-NVMM: Securing non-volatile memory on the fly

“Computer memory is a treasure of unencrypted information. Fortunately, power off and it disappears. That’s not the case with next-generation memory.” Read more..

• 10 Biggest Cyber Attacks Of July

“The lazy days of summer were anything but for hackers this month. If anything, hackers were ramping up their efforts under increased pressure from international and domestic law enforcement agencies.” Read more..

(Hmmm.. maybe you all should look at this one also..)

Today’s quote: “I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.”  ~ Abraham Lincoln

Have a great day, everybody. And what do you say, let’s do the right thing.

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Internet Outages

The Internet has been acting very strange for me today, starting with a brief, but weird Gmail glitch.. later on, WordPress (which hosts this blog) went into “read only mode” and I could not post anything online all afternoon. Then Netflix went totally offline. I suspect there’s some “hacker” shenanigans afoot (aka Denial of Service attacks [DoS]) causing these outages.

Netflix suffers hour-long outage, fans complain via Twitter

CNET (blog) – Greg Sandoval – ‎1 hour ago‎

Netflix managers were investigating the cause of an hour-long outage that has left millions of subscribers without access to their queue or the ability to stream movies. Visitors to Netflix this evening were greeted by a note that notified …

Regardless of what the article states, my Netflix is still “unavailable”. A friend on the Right Coast says his services are normal and the Internet is okay.. so maybe it’s a Lefty Coast thing..

Related: A DDoS attack took WordPress offline just a week or so ago..

WordPress Outage Today: Taken Down By DDoS Attack
Product Reviews – Peter Chubb – ‎Mar 3, 2011‎

“A huge percentage of blogs were shocked to learn that there was a WordPress outage today, as it was taken down by a DDoS attack. Although WordPress managed to get things under control, there are fears that it could happen again..”

Ah. The joys of cloud computing..

[update: as of 7:45pm Pacific, both Netflix and WordPress have returned to service.]

Next Great App for Android, iPhone –> Rootkit

Rootkit, SMS text messages used to build a botnet of smartphones

The “hot” tech items to own these days are the (not inexpensive) iPhone and Android “smart phone” devices. (If you doubt that, ask yourself why does the news infotainment departments send reporters and camera crews to film lines of people standing outside the Apple Store when a new model comes out?)

These phones are really not phones anymore, but mini-computers – which happen to make cellular phones calls. They are Internet-connected, so they can send/receive e-mail, text and ‘chat’, and download files.. such as movies. They contain address books of your friends and family… In short, they have everything a cyber-criminal wants to target.

In the interest of making the world a better place, “a researcher at ShmooCon DC this weekend will demonstrate a smartphone botnet spewing spam, and unleash proof-of-concept code that builds a botnet out of Android and iPhone smartphones.”

Yes, that’s right. A “researcher” will show us all how it’s done, and provide the code.

Georgia Weidman, an independent researcher, says her botnet attack evolved out of work she did on making an Android application send SMS text messages transparently such that the user didn’t even know it was happening from his or her smartphone. “As I did more research, I [realized] if I did this in the base operating system instead of in ‘userspace’ where most apps are, it would be a better way to do it,” she says. “If I can remotely control someone’s phone, it can be part of a botnet.”

While there has been plenty of smartphone research that pits one smartphone against another in an attack, she says, a more likely attack scenario would be a user unknowingly downloading an app that contains malicious code. “I think the majority of malware installations will come from a user downloading infected apps,” which can easily be rigged with rootkits given the lack of sufficient vetting of most smartphone apps, she says.

Well.. now that all someone has to do is copy>paste the code, yeah, she’s right. Invisible viruses that turn your smart phone into relay stations for spammers — sending us come on’s for V1@gra and C1al1s, and virus-laden links and attachments are only, I estimate, weeks away.

… and before you get too angry at this particular person, there is a whole industry of people doing this “research”, and several conventions have been going on for years. I believe that (some of) these people actually believe they are doing a good thing.

And maybe they would be.. if they only released the code to the affected device (or software) manufacturers and developers. But you don’t get rich or famous for that. (Maybe you heard about the “teen hacker” who got hired after writing viruses that attacked Twitter? There’s a lot of that kind of idiocy in tech..)

Here is the entire Dark Reading article, Researcher To Release Smartphone Botnet Proof-Of-Concept Code. I suggest you read it. Particularly if you own a smart phone.

In case you don’t know what a “botnet” is, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet…
Or why a “rootkit” is the worst kind of virus, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

Does your smart phone have an antivirus? A firewall? Maybe you want those things?
Maybe it’s important to know that the apps at the app store are not checked (aka “vetted”) for malware? Doesn’t that *smell*?

IMHO, there is something wrong with this whole deal. Top to bottom.

Related:
* iPhone Users Are About to Be Screwed Over. The addition of the NFC chip to the iPhone isn’t for easy credit card purchases, but so the phone companies can control your financial transactions. Be warned. ~ By John C. Dvorak

“There has been a lot of talk about the addition of an NFC (near field communication) chip to the next-gen iPhone. This will allow the phone to be used as a swipe-it-yourself credit card. I consider this technology to be the most onerous ever.”

* CNet’s roundup of security apps for Android.

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Business As Usual: 1.5 million Stolen Facebook Accounts For Sale

One Cyber-Crook Offers 1.5 million User Accounts.. Sold In Lots Of 1,000

1.5 million stolen Facebook accounts up for grabs (click to read)

“Researchers at VeriSign’s iDefense have discovered a single hacker selling 1.5 million stolen Facebook account credentials on an underground market. The stolen credentials were put up for sale by a hacker with the handle “kirllos” who is believed to be from Eastern Europe. The hacker is selling batches of 1,000 accounts with 10 Facebook “friends” for $25 and 1,000 accounts with more than 10 “friends” for up to $45. It is estimated that 700,000 accounts have already been purchased. Compromised Facebook accounts can be used by cybercriminals to spread malware, send spam or attempt to defraud a user’s “friends.” – AM”

Kind of glad I never went in for that “social networking”/self-marketing hype. And I sincerely hope, Dear Reader, yours was not one of “krillos'” victimized accounts.

Related:
* Global cybercrime treaty rejected at U.N. (click to read)

“Russia, China and a number of developing countries could not reach agreement with the United States, Canada, the U.K. and European Union.”

* Facebook Safety: A Primer

Hmmm… wonder why China and the Ex-Soviets don’t want to get onboard..?

Maybe it’s because: “The Internet’s “shadow economy” of cybercrime is worth over $105 billion per year. Online crime is bigger business than the global drugs trade¹. No country, no person, no business and no government is immune from CyberCrime.”

Today’s recommended reading: Your Computer Is Lying To You… The Epidemic Of Rogues

Today’s free download: WOT is a free Internet security add-on for your web browser. It will help keep you safer from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites. WOT warns you before you interact with a risky Website. It’s easy and it’s free.

• So easy a child can use it
• Ratings for over 20 million websites
• Downloaded 3 million times
• The WOT browser add-on is light and updates automatically
• WOT rating icons appear beside search results in Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and webmail – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!
• Settings can be customized to better protect your family
• WOT Security Scorecard shows rating details and user comments

[addenda: Regular readers may be getting a bit tired of my Internet security-related postings. I do understand. There’s been more of them lately. But, I ask you to ask yourself this question: what does that tell you? (about the Internet, I mean.) I hope you will conclude that you need to be proactive in protecting yourself (and being more paranoid) while online.]

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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