Philosophy on Computers
Today I thought I would do something a little different here. I have been in front of a computer for over half of my life, which would be around 11 years or so. The amount of time I spend on computers is astounding, probably around 6 or 7 hours on average per day. I work on computers, I fix computers, and I play on computers. Sometimes I wonder if I am spending too much time on computers and not enough with other activities, its like an addiction that you can't control. Luckily I have other hobbies other than computers, which gives me a break when I feel like they are ruling over my life too much.
The reason why I bring all of this up is because I wanted to talk about how computers are both good and bad in society. They are good due to the higher technology that we have gained by building faster and better computers, they run most of the world and without them we would be a much more primitive society. On that same token though I believe they are also evil because of our dependence on them, they make us rely on hardware other than our own. One computer can do many more calculations than a human brain can do in one second, as well as a much smaller error margin when performing certain tasks that both humans and computers can perform. This last bit is mainly a plus, but again it puts the computer first and the human second, which means that more jobs will be taken out by computers as time rolls on.
It is amazing how the technology of the computer has progressed through the years, faster than anyone could imagine. Just ten years ago we though that we would never need more than 2GB of memory, now we have computers with over 20GB. The future of computers is uncertain, they will of course become more and more powerful as well as becoming smaller and smaller, but as for the new applications of computers, more and more pop up every day. It is an ever expanding pool of possibility out there, but hopefully we will never get to the point where computers are creating computers, as well as maintaining and upgrading. This would rid the need for technicians, and human interaction between the machine and its user.
Tabjacking
It is pretty common through the course of using the Internet and e-mail to run across phishing scams and fake web pages attempting to fool you into giving away your user name and passwords. Some are done better than others, and even the most careful users can fall in the trap.
There is a new type of vulnerability I want to help spread the word about. I feel that being educated on these types of phishing tactics is the only real way to prevent them from effecting you. And, while this type of scam is still not heavily exploited... the way in which it operates is ingenious, and could potentially cause massive amounts of trouble for PC users.
This new type of phishing tactic is being referred to as TagJacking. With the newest generations of browsers (IE 8, FireFox, Opera, Chrome) the new tab button is being used heavily as an easy alternative to opening new windows and increasing multitasking capabilities. By having so many open tabs this exploit is banking on the fact that a user may not remember that they have opened, for example, their bank account in another tab.
The site hosting the exploit has the ability to change the 'favicon' (the little picture by the site's name that helps users identify it, like a Bank of America logo), the site's title (to something like "Bank of America | Home | Personal"), and the site's contents... to look almost identical to a Bank of America log on page. White this would be one hard to pull off phishing attempt (considering the amount of security, and visual pass-phrases banks including BoA use to protect their clients) there are other examples that would cause just as much trouble for users.
Lets look at this example to see how nasty this variant of phishing could be:
Imagine logging into your web based e-mail account. Over the course of 10 minutes it is possibly you may have opened 5 separate tabs for individual messages, or links you've encountered in an email from a friend. Unfortunately, one of the pages you went to while checking your email contains code that will attempt to fool you. When you're not looking, and busy with another tab, the page will instantly transform without notice to look like your e-mail's log on screen. You were already in your email... so it is realistic that perhaps your session was timed out, and you do in fact need to re-log in. It is this feeling of security between tabs that makes this attack so dangerous.
There is a proof of concept located at: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/a-new-type-of-phishing-attack/
This page will transform after you look away from it into a picture of the gmail log in screen (to help show how the attack works, not to try to solicit information).
While this attack mode is still in it's infancy, it is good to recognize that it could cause problems in the future, and should be on the look out.
-Steve, for TTC
Street View = Wireless View? Oh boy
Umm. Hi. Google? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?
Man, I wish I could end my post right there. It sums everything up so beautifully. Allow me to explain.
Back on Friday, May 14th, Google announced on its blog that it has been inadvertently collecting data from unsecured wireless networks as its Street View cars have roamed the streets of the world for the past 4 years. At first Google said the only things they were actually collecting were SSIDs (the names of the wireless networks) and MAC addresses of the wireless routers. Well...they lied. Apparently they also managed to collect some 600 gigabytes of transmitted data in more than 30 countries. By today's standards, 600 GB isn't an astronomical amount of data, but it's about 600 GB more than I would like them to be collecting. And for some reason I don't think I'm alone in thinking that. Thankfully I secured my wireless network. But did you?
Google says that it has not used any of the data for anything, nor will it show up in their search engine, or elsewhere. Can we believe that, though? Once Google was aware of what was happening, it segregated the collected data onto another network, which was then "disconnected to make it inaccessible." Inaccessible to who? My goldfish? Call me crazy, but I feel like if something can be disconnected, it can probably be reconnected. Especially by the same people who disconnected it. I don't know. That's just a hunch. 
The obvious question, of course, is how did this even happen in the first place? Turns out there was a slight "oversight". I can't possibly explain it any better than Google did themselves, so here you go:
"In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software—although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data."
Okay. More questions for you, Google: Why did you want to collect SSID and MAC info to begin with? I think my favorite line is "code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data." What purpose could this possibly serve other than to collect payload data from the unsecured networks? And how do you not know what your code is really doing? Either you suck at testing your own products, or you suck at lying. Pick one, and explain yourself.
Now, Google is (at least in theory) working to get rid of the data it has collected. Data from Ireland has apparently been deleted, with confirmation from a third-party. Again, here is the link to Google's blog, and you will see at the top there is an update regarding this matter. Woah. 1 country has been taken care of in 10 days, and counting. Let's do the simple math here. There are over 30 countries involved, so at a minimum of 10 days per country, we'll still be dealing with this next year. Not exactly a blistering pace. That should give them plenty of time to fabricate a nice little story for us while they exploit the data as much as possible. Way to hustle, Google.
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?
-Mike
Review of the Motorola Droid
I have owned my Droid since March of this year, so about 3 months now. In these three months I have come to the conclusion that I made the right decision to stay away from the Iphone. For one thing, Verzion's service is much more reliable than AT&T's, I have had a 3G connection in the middle of nowhere, can't get that with AT&T. Something else that I want to mention is that although it might be more bulky than the Iphone, the screen size and resolution is slightly better, plus you have the option to use the qwerty keyboard, which I only use once in a while.
Functionality wise the Droid has everything I need, great applications, speed, memory space, and great call quality. I enjoy the screen resolution on the Droid, it is clear and as long as there isn't a glare on he screen it works great. The glare issue is fixed for the most part as long as you turn on the backlight, which drains the battery more but I charge it every night so that is not an issue. Speaking of the battery life, since I got the multimedia dock I have had no issues with the battery life. I plug it in every night, use it as a clock and an alarm and undock it before I leave for the day.
Price wise it is fairly expensive to keep this phone, $29.95 a month for the data plan, along with the rest of my plan makes it just slightly better than the Iphone, but as stated before, Verizon has a much better coverage at least where I live. It is great to have unlimited data usage wherever I go in the US. As for is it for everyone, of course not. If all you need is a phone that makes calls and text messages this is not the phone for you. If you are looking to use internet like a browser, email, and a GPS, this is the phone for you!
Overall I want to say that I have had a few issues with my phone freezing here and there, restart of the phone usually fixes the issue. Another issue I have run across is the wireless being very touchy, it seems that it needs a fairly strong signal to keep connected, and once in a while I would have to restart the wireless to have it find a network I was trying to connect to. The wireless isn't a big deal, as long as you are in the US and have the data plan access, but it is nice to use it like in Canada which I lived in for about four months, used it for two months in there. It is also useful for heavy downloading, when the wireless is faster than the connection you are getting with Verizon.
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