Spear-Phishing

One of the newer techniques employed by scammers is that of spear phishing. Phishing has been around for awhile and it’s defined as attempts by scammers to get email recipients to click on email links and redirecting them to their own web pages. These pages will mimic authentic sites and they will then try to entice the user to enter their account information. Amongst the more common types of phishing are these emails that appear to be from reputable banks threatening to cut off accounts if the account isn’t logged in. Most individuals are too sophisticated for these blatant attempts to steal credentials.

One of the newer attempts has been labeled as “spear-phishing”. Spear-phishing is where an individual specifically targets their victims – usually within a specific organization. With the proliferation of information on the Internet, it is very easy for a scammer to gather information particular to an organization such as: department names, manager names or perhaps even project names.

The scammers will then use methods to find individuals employed by a specific organization and target them for attack. The email itself has the same intent – it either has a malware “payload” (i.e. Trojan horse or other forms of mal-ware), or it attempts to convince the reader to click on a link. The premise behind spear-phishing is that by referencing projects, manager names or other organizational information, this form of social engineering will give the email a sense of credibility and increase the chance of the reader clicking on links.

The same ways of protecting yourself applies to phishing and spear-fishing. Never click on links – copy and paste the URL. If it’s a secure site, then look for the https: prefix or your browsers indicator that it’s a secured site and most of all, don’t trust an email just because of the subject or contents of the message

And Now for Something Completely Different...

Probably not something I would normally write about, but heck - I read a story today and thought to myself "meh - it kind of has technology in it - and it sure has the humanity angle in it, so what the heck"!

Woman in the UK allegedly fell off her Wii Fit Board. That in itself is certainly not newsworthy in the least. However, her claim is that with this accident, she damaged a nerve and has been diagnosed with...how did it go...."persistent arousal syndrome" or something like that? She claims that just her cellphone vibrating or the sound of the blender arouses her and she has up to 10 orgasms a day. What made my day - at the end of the article - it went on to say that this woman is single and...currently looking for a boyfriend lol.

Something tells me that a lot of men will read this and then go out and surprise their wife with a Wii Fit board :)

No...wait...upon reflection...I think that spontaneously giving your lovely wife a Wii Fit board is not necessarily the best thing to do if you want to "get some" :)

Technology and Warfare - a TOS Premonition?

Technology becomes an ever-increasing target as we become more and more reliant on it.

Although I can't state this as fact - yet - I am pretty sure that terrorist groups have recognized that cyber-attacks can be just as effective as "hard-attacks". The facility or capability to bring down a banking or law enforcement system must be an overwhelming temptation.

The other benefit is that these attacks can be conducted from anywhere. No longer do militants have to deal with the logistics of meeting/planning in person, technology is yet just another one tool in the kit of intimidation and nefarious criminal activity.

I'm reminded of this based on an article in PC World which states that the US Air Force is now training their recruits on basic cyber-warfare techniques and concepts.

As I read this article, I had a total flash-back to one particular Star Trek episode (THE Star Trek - TOS with Captain Kirk). This episode had the crew of the Enterprise (if memory serves!) beam down to the surface of a planet to mediate a war between two different groups of society. To his surprise, Kirk determines that HOW they conduct their war is that each side's computer randomly selects members of the opposing faction. If your number was "up", then you were required to calmly march to the extermination chamber.

I remember Kirk's soliloquy...the army heads of this faction justified this approach with something along the lines of "well - this is a more humane way to battle - less property damage, collateral damage, etc...". Kirk's response - in a very dramatic and extremely Kirk-ian way - was that this is why the war was lingering, because they weren't seeing the horrors of war, that they had lost the "humanity" of war.

I also recall after watching this episode how the general plot got the point across very eloquently and that it had the kind of logic that perhaps would make Spock proud.

I read this article today and instantly thought to myself - is there where war is headed?

Oh Come On - How Stupid and Gullible are People?

I'm getting kind of tired of these emails/IM that try to get others to forward the response to 10 friends - or whatever.

Today on Snopes, they have "busted" the myth that you can receive a $60 or $160 cell phone credit by forwarding a specific text message to 10 friends.

This has been going on for YEARS now. Have people not clued in yet? I guess not, because there must be people that fall for these and perpetuate the myth.

I clearly remember the early days of ICQ. We'd get a message saying something along the lines of "if you don't forward this IM to 10 other people, they'll think that your account in active and kill it". Bloody ridiculous that people would even for a second think that this is the case.

Wake up and give your head a shake, this Internet isn't a new thing and here's Rick's Rule of The Internet #1 - don't take ANYTHING at face value. Question it - and challenge it - and see if it holds weight.

Technodrool v1.0

Earlier this week, I was reading about the new USB 3.0 standard coming out and how it's throughput was estimated to be about 320 megabits/second (about 10x the throughput of USB 2.0).

Upon reading this, I was quite intrigued and started thinking how technology continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

Today, there's an article about a Japanese company (seems to be fairly well established - no fly-by-night sort of thing) who has announced a fibre-optic based communication link - basically, the future of USB.

First of all, what's interesting about this technology is that it's capabilities exceed that of the existing USB capabilities. Reportedly, the thought that this new fibre optic link will not only link USB devices, but also other devices with communication links. One of the primary links would be between the computer and the monitor.

For one thing, if this comes to pass, this might alleviate some of the proliferation of non-standard communication interfaces out there (one cable does all, sort of approach).

What really got my techno-drool factor going though is that the CURRENT expected throughput is about 10 gigabytes per second - an improvement 30 fold over USB 3.0 and 300x greater than the current standard USB 2.0.

Scientists there speculate that in the future, they expect the throughput to be up in the 30gbps range.

The (Legal) Eagle Has Landed!

The more that we get immersed in this technology, the more it appears that it has a drastic impact on all areas of our lives, and this is something that we don't always take into consideration.

Case in point, in the news today are two totally unrelated, but still "related" (if you follow me) stories as it revolves around the legalities of the Internet.

Story #1 - Copyrighted Materials (Part I)
Photographers have either filed, are in the process of filing, or are considering filing a suit against Google. The premise of this suit is that their photographs in books that Google has been scanning as part of their "open library" perspective are including copyrighted photographic images and the photographers are not being compensated accordingly.

Story #2 - Defamation of Character in a Digital Age
A 16 year old Arkansas boy is suing his mother for allegedly hacking his Facebook and posting slanderous comments about him.

Story #3 - Copyrighted Materials (Part II)
Okay - this one technically isn't related to my topic as it has nothing to do with the Internet, but the basic premise is there and I wonder if in context of story #1, if it has more relevance than would be originally believed.

This story is about Canadian (Toronto?) establishments that are playing music for their customers. The legal eagles are sending these restaurant and bar owners cease and desist orders and/or bills for having played copyrighted materials without compensating the artist.

This story, I'm especially interested in as my nephew is a lawyer in the entertainment industry and I'm sure that he'd have some interesting views on this.

Regardless, as I mentioned, story #3 doesn't have any "virtual" component...yet...but how long will it be before individuals and corporations "mine" the Internet looking for material that belongs to them and suing the pants off of the publisher looking for compensation?

I Would Never Have Even Considered!

Printer.com reported a study that was undertaken. Apparently (and this actually makes sense when you stop to think about it), the fonts that you choose can have affect your printing costs.

According to their study, two printers were setup to print two documents. One of the documents used Arial (a pretty common font) and the other used Century Gothic. Their study shows that the printer that printed the Century Gothic document used 31% less ink! Feel free to extrapolate the net cost savings per year and if it's just worthwhile or not.

Very interesting tid-bit for a rainy and dull Wednesday afternoon!