Category Archives: Security and Privacy

See, I’ve got records on y’all now!

Since doing the clean install of my site on the 19th, my security has noted that my first spambot attack came from IP blocks in Malaysia, Poland and California at three in the morning, Seattle time. These were searching for … Continue reading

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Recovering from a Spambot Attack

So, sometime towards the middle or end of March, my site got hit with a spamdexing attack. Nearly all my pages got littered with links to illegal boner pill sites. I suspect, and I really can’t prove this, the attack … Continue reading

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More blathering about decentralized, interoperable social networks

So, since many of my friends overseas or far away are there, I’m forced to use Facebook. I find Facebook objectionable for many reasons, most of which, most people don’t care about. Facebook has a lot of powerful functions and … Continue reading

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Recognizing comment spam

Now that my site is back up, spambots are bludgeoning it with comment spam, which was also true in my Movable Type days. Luckily I have things set here to require my approval before allowing them to appear on my … Continue reading

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Some poorly framed thoughts on why I'm unhappy with SMS and social networking tools

Now that I have a mobile phone, I’ve decided to rant about this and e-mail. I’ve ranted about e-mail before. I think it was poorly implemented to start with, lacking friendly, easy to use crypto for example, and got worse … Continue reading

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How the little folks can do their part

Okay, those of us who’ve been paying attention to search engine results lately have noticed something new: splogs. A splog is blog generated by a robot that searches other stable and long lasting blogs and sites searching for content that … Continue reading

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Bill and Ray call for security by obscurity

About a week or so ago Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy condemned the publication of the genome of the virus responsible for the flu epidemic of 1918. Kurzweil in particular called for the genome to be censored. I’m not an … Continue reading

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Security and Privacy Roundup

Over the past few months I’ve collected several articles about privacy and security: Automated Lockdown for XP: Still useful for Service Pack 2. VOA Releases Secure Tunneling Tool for Chinese Internet Users How to Run with Least Privilege in XP: … Continue reading

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If you must use IE–

If you must use Internet Explorer, please, please, please, turn off all scripting, Java and ActiveX support. Learning how to restrict security in Internet Explorer is easy. Once you turn off all JavaScript, VBScript, ActiveX and Java support, 99% of … Continue reading

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The most clever social engineering I've seen so far.

On Saturday, around 2 in the morning, I received a blind carbon at one of my work addresses that had a frighteningly clever phishing scheme posing as a Red Hat security update. I thought it was real and the only … Continue reading

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