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“An attacker is able to remotely control a system, including the ability to list directories, send and receive files, and execute programs. The backdoor operates with the privileges of the logged-on user.”
When you buy off-the-shelf peripherals such as this, it’s easy to assume they have been tested and are safe, and wouldn’t normally pose much of a security risk to your computer. Remember, however, that Humans made them, and so they are still subject to the same flaws (or subterfuge) that something you download from the Internet is.
Facebook keep redesigning their interface, and thus messing up instructions people have written for doing simple things such as integrating your blog posts with Facebook. If you have every wanted to make it so that your blog updates Facebook automatically, this is how, as of this writing:
1. Log in to Facebook
2. In the upper right, click the arrow next to Account and in the drop-down menu, choose Application Settings
3. In the list of applications, find Notes and click it
4. On the right is a box for Notes Settings. In it, click “Import a blog”
5. Enter the blog URL: http://www.yourblog.com
6. Check the box about agreeing to accept the terms
7. Click Start Importing
8. You are shown a preview of the blog import
9. On the right, click Confirm Import if all looks as it should
As long as your blog has a working RSS feed, Facebook will find it and use it to do the import.
After reading yesterday’s announcement from Apple regarding the iPad, then browsing their site while drooling over the specs, I decided I would try and get one when they become available. I have become so accustomed to my iPhone 3Gs that I can’t imagine having a bigger extension of that for use around the house or while travelling.
But then, I started reading about all the Digital Restrictions Management that gets bundled with the product(s), and really started questioning my ideals. Being a proponent of the free and open source software movement, I am all about not being restricted to do what I want with devices and software I purchase. The sad fact of the matter is that everything Apple does works against that.
The people over at DefectiveByDesign.org lays it all out pretty well, which further convinced me that I have been duped by vendor lock-in, with restrictions on everything I can do with my devices. This sucks, and it is something I hope all of you think about and question. While the gadget lust is still there, I am feeling conflict from my true geek side, which tells me not to waste my money on something that is, in effect, defective by design.
I ran into this problem where I was unable to install Firebug in Firefox. It would act like it was installing, Firefox would restart, but the plugin was simply not there.
A little research revealed there could be a variety of reasons for this, but for me it turned out Avast! antivirus was preventing it from working.
I disabled the Network service in Avast! long enough to try again, and it all worked.
Hopefully this will help someone else who runs into the problem.
I discovered an excellent article listing some of the little-known features, disabled by default, that phpMyAdmin has. Check it out:
http://blog.ht4.ca/2009/12/29/hidden-phpmyadmin-features/
Some of the more useful ones include the Query History and Query Bookmarking. There is also a Designer Mode which lets you see the relations amongst your tables and more. I wish I had known about these, oh, 8 years ago!
After eating lunch at a local restaurant yesterday, I noticed that when I was signing my receipt they had printed my whole credit card number on there. I hadn’t seen that happen in years, and I immediately scratched it out. I happened to be with a group of cyber security guys, and they were all in disbelief as well.
It would be very easy for a thief to pick up your receipt just after you leave, then go home and have an online shopping spree. The server or anyone else handling your receipt could do the same thing. Read the rest of this entry »
Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf from the Computer Crime Investigation Unit of the NSW Police says, “”If you are using the internet for a commercial transaction, use a Linux boot up disk – such as Ubuntu or some of the other flavours…It gives you an operating system which is perfectly clean and operates only in the memory of the computer and is a perfectly safe way of doing internet banking,”
Sounds like a good plan to me, but then, I’m sure most of you reading this are already in agreement. It’s just good to see this sort of thing hitting major news sites.
There are certain free apps I have come to rely upon when setting up any new installation of Windows. Some of these aid in my work, some of them just aid in a providing better Windows experience. I thought I’d create a list of my top 5 favorites. To qualify for this list, applications must be lightweight on system resources when running, preferrably open source, and free.
If you have any suggestions for apps which fit that description and make your life easier, post them in the comments.
If you find any of these tools useful, please make a donation to the author!
1. DColor is a great tool for saving space on your desktop by tweaking your icons. It allows you to resize them, and even display them in ‘list view’, as you would see a list of files in Windows Explorer. DColor will also let you recolor the icon text and background. It’s a tiny app which takes up very little system resources.
2. Color Cop is an eyedropper color picker which can sit in the foreground of all open windows. This comes in really handy when you are swapping back and forth between Photoshop and Dreamweaver, or are trying to pick colors from photographs. It allows for easy copy/paste to and from using your choice of RGB or several flavors of hex values. No installation — just launch it and use it.
3. ImgBurn is my favorite disc burning tool. You can run it from a command line or from the graphical interface, and it supports CD, DVD, HD DVD, and Blue Ray discs. ImgBurn is lightweight and sports a ton of tools and options. I have yet to run across a disc drive which it didn’t support out of the box.
4. Filezilla – I never leave home without this one. Not only is it free for Windows, but Filezilla supports Mac, Linux, BSD, and more. Providing a great interface for FTP and SFTP file transfers, it’s easy to use, lightweight, and full of options. My favorite combo of traits!
During some recent server patches on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, I kept getting ‘depsolve’ errors on several packages. This was odd, as I had not made any changes to anything, installed anything new, or removed anything.
Turns out this is a known bug in 5.3, and luckily, the solution is simple:
$> yum clean all
Run that, and it refreshes your local repository. The next time you go to update packages your server will refresh everything with the Red Hat respository, and all will be good!