Welcome
- December 10, 2016
- POS Hacking on the Rise
-
Cybersecurity people are warning that point of sale hacking is on the rise. This adds risk to your shopping and the exploits harvesting payment account numbers and PINs will become increasingly prevalent.
They are pointing out the existence of serious vulnerablilities in the point of sale systems throughtout the country which could lead to bigger and more wide spread security breaches from the holiday shopping season well into next year.
Now then, the first thing I can think of is traversing the public domain. I believe more closed systems are in order to keep the data away from those out there prowling around looking for an easy mark.
These compromised networks upon which some business relies need to be a source of consequences for those stores who would take your card and store that data in areas which are easily accessible to malware payloads and other cyber nasties.
If they can't get to it they can't steal it. There needs to be more encryption and more vetting of those people handling the data. A person can compromise a well thought out network with a single access of some internet file or removable medium such as flash drives.
Retailers taking your financials need to think more and be more vigilant. It has been my experience that Point of Sale and Web Systems are often the same system. Kind of hard to isolate POS when it's your web front end as well.
Consequences for getting hacked should be more than the customer's — the stores should be fined and outed and closed or AT LEAST made subject to so much forensic investigation that they think twice about placing a slack POS interface at the people's disposal. I hate stupid computer people. Retail seems to have an over abundance of them.
- Comments (0)
- December 9, 2016
- John Glenn RIP
-
When I was four years old John Glenn was introduced as an astronaut in the fledgling NASA ... leaving me pretty much oblivious.
John Herschel Glenn Jr.
July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016
American aviator, engineer, astronaut
United States Senator from Ohio
Slowly over time I learned of who he was and what he was about and came to know the hero of science and technology he had become without fully grasping those risks of the era.
He was the first American to orbit the Earth in a capsule named Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962 which was a Mercury-Atlas 6 mission and circled the planet three times over the course of 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds flight time. At that moment he became the third American and fifth human being in space.
John Glenn was a US Senator from Ohio serving for 25 years and chaired the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.
He returned to NASA as a payload specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission on October 29, 1998 at age 77, becoming the oldest person to go into space.
This man, who had "the right stuff" passed yesterday in Columbus, Ohio at age 95. Thus we have lost an icon of whom I have known and respected my entire life.
Rest in peace.
- Comments (0)
- December 9, 2016
- Greg Lake RIP
-
Gregory Stuart Lake
November 10, 1947 - December 7, 2016
Musician, singer, songwriter, producer
King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Asia, et al
Rest in peaceI believe in Father Christmas
They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the virgin birth
I remember one Christmas morning
A winter's light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire
They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a silent night
And they told me a fairy story
'Till I believed in the Israelite
And I believed in father Christmas
And I looked to the sky with excited eyes
'Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise
I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish, pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
Hallelujah, Noel be it heaven or hell
The Christmas we get we deserve
Written by Greg Lake, Peter John Sinfield, Serge Prokofieff
Copyright © Peermusic Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Music Sales Corporation
- Comments (0)
- December 8, 2016
- Anonymity Is Conditional
-
I am so surprised when these people on social media apparently think they're totally anonymous when they've made no attempt to secure that status for themselves.
When you are using snapchat or any of the other myriad social media platforms there for your disposal you should always remember:
Caveat Emptor: let the buyer beware.
There are logs with which to contend that may be associated with your access credentials and correlated to both previous log ins as well as cross platform forensic information available to the law which may well decide that you may be interpolated and triangulated via those mechanisms by which you choose to access most any site in the world.
Now there may be exceptions in the darknet and peer to peer configurations such as tor (which I block from my networks) but there are even holes in those modalities as evidenced by your need to start from somewhere and end at that same place.
So as appeared in the local news hereabouts; when you're a school teacher (Collin County, Texas or anywhere else for that matter) thinking you're going to indulge illegal carnal relations with a 16 year old mouthy boy child student of yours ... THINK TWICE.
You are stupid to indulge the priorites of a teenager of the male persuasion ignorant of those inherent motivations which will be your downfall.
High school Harrys in particular have to tell all they know and will brag until you're outed then feign the "high road" and ... well, you can pretty much guess the rest of the braggadoio laden story.
Yet another story of wasted youth hitting up on an even younger idiot.
- Comments (0)
- December 7, 2016
- It's a sad day
-
Today is Pearl Harbor Day, and another anniversary of my dad being interred at his church in Salley, SC. Yesterday a childhood friend was interred at Oakwood Cemetery in Salley. We're coming up on the first anniversary of the passing of my stepfather and his interment at Fort Jackson National Cemetery just down the road from the house in which he lived.
While I remain somewhat on the sullen side I'm trying to continue my understanding of the circle of life and consider my spiritual beliefs. I sometimes lose my patience anymore and go off on a rant with little provocation these days. I'm hoping my attitude and my ability to adjust to the continuing loss finally materializes before too much longer.
So if you have a moment during your prayers I hope you'll put in a good word for me. I certainly could use it.
Thanks.
- Comments (0)
- December 6, 2016
- The Shuffle Defense against Exploits
-
I've been reading about a new software development scheme called "shuffling" whereby the code is continually rearranged repeatedly.
The obvious results include code blocks which cannot be anticipated by the Return Oriented Programming frequently used by hackers trying to breach defenses.
Now I can see the benefit of this unpredictable presentation where calling subroutines becomes a matter of random hit and miss with the majority of results being misses.
There is another technique (called address space layout randomization ASLR) whereby memory becomes rearranged during program launch which has also proved effective.
So the shuffler takes the ASLR randomization and mixes the code every fraction of a second and anything beyond that teensie time slice is obsolete from an exploit perspective.
The shuffler also randomizes itself in the process keeping the hacker out of it as well.
Of course there are bugs and crash issues to resolve and the not ready for prime time technology remains an up and coming star in the realm of exploit prevention.
My personal thoughts revolve around performance issues on top of everything else and there likely will be less of a propensity for VM cohabitation with a lot of shuffling going on from a resource availability point of view.
I just love it when a good plan materializes even if it's not quite "there".
- Comments (0)
- December 5, 2016
- Matters of Conscience
-
Yesterday Mom became ill with intractable right lower quadrant pain ... in the absence of those things which normally cause this type of pain like her appendix and gallbladder. She gave me a call and there was nothing to consider. I told her as soon as I dressed I would depart and I made haste to her house and subsequently to the emergency room.
After a very lengthy stay in a crowded ER she received her first pain shot along with the nausea medication and it provided relief quickly as it was delivered intravenously.
Prior to our departure from the ER almost 8 hours after our arrival she was given another dose of pain medication, had a CAT scan with contrast — then was sent home with instructions and prescriptions.
Now the moral of the story involves behaviors in matters of conscience. My siblings want to project concern as long as it's under their terms. Emergency Room visits, illness, and such cannot be made to conform to a particular set of criteria in real time because they involve too many unknowns.
I recall mom repeatedly apologizing to me for taking her to the hospital. All I could do is be glad I had the privilege of doing so. Love is not always a huggy kissie sort of thing. Often times the highest form of love you can provide is caring enough to be there in times of trouble regardless of the circumstances. I did nothing for her that she hasn't done for me many times over.
I already suffer from the "what if's" and the "if onlys". No one who is sick should ever go to the hospital unaccompanied for reasons which are multidimensional. I can't fathom why mom might think that the duty of a son to his mother is anything but the right thing to do.
Some things simply don't require a reason for action. You do it because a situation presents itself and acton is appropriate and necessary.
- Comments (0)
- December 4, 2016
- pavlovmedia spammer ring
-
There is a spammer ring called pavlovmedia that pelts the mail server with spam from diverse locations consisting of small subnets.
I had been rejecting their traffic up to the point that they began multiple attempts to deliver rejected communications and ever wary of backscatter black listing because of email rejection policies I opted for drastic action.
The situation grew so bad for me with so many of these unsolicted business emails that I ran a filter on my logs and extracted their IPs from which I derived their various subnets.
These I submitted to the firewall and now all of those (many) packets are dropped. I kept thinking that the Spamhaus project might pick up on their activity but alas, my efforts were to no avail ...
I like to reject their email when I gain contempt for an entity. Others I simply instruct the server to discard. The transaction appears normal to the delivering server and I simply never see the traffic cluttering up my inbox.
It would appear that my contempt for pavlovmedia didn't sit too well with a number of their spammer cohort given the various multiple log entries for a single delivery.
Oh well, be that as it may the die has been cast. I have an automated process extracting the trouble children now so that I may eliminate the rejection backscatter sooner rather than later.
Spammer cockroaches beware !
- Comments (0)
- December 3, 2016
- Twenty First Century Power Waste
-
Power. It's a commodity. It's a requirement. It's typically wasted in mass quantities by electrical products which have a lot of display implementation — typically in the form of lights and various meters which are there to provide input as to the functionality of whatever mechanism may be under consideration.
In the old days we were admonished regarding "vampire electricity" and urged to power down unnecessary electrical appliances to save this energy in use even when the device isn't being used.
I, for one have noticed the lack of total darkness in my bedroom due to the incessant twinkle of various LEDs and indicators on those electronics surrounding me. Having a profusely wired house with a gigabit backbone has contributed to that glow in which I exist.
I have also wondered periodically if my power bill would diminish should I power down all of the electronics in my midst. Alas, I really haven't considered the act as feasible due to interests beyond the homestead that originate here ... some of us have connections to maintain beyond our domiciles.
Sometimes the LEDs on the back of the cameras I have all over the place keep me awake. Alas, security remains a priority nonetheless.
I was reading in Yahoo News about a smart sensor being developed which can advise regarding devices wasting power in the home.
The device is a circuit which attaches to a power cord and has a USB interface for sensor data collection. Developed under the auspices of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Office of Naval Research it fills a need for a portable, low-cost smart sensor to optimize power consumption in their respective environments.
The progress with the device is said to be such that it may be available to consumers in time for Christmas of next year.
Bravo !
- Comments (0)
- December 2, 2016
- The Internet of Things and Hack Attempts
-
I was reading an interesting piece in CIO regarding things a CEO needs to know about securing the Internet of Things (IoT).
With the advent of things which may be networked in the home and business there are risks to take into account for each and every one of us.
Endpoints are subject to exploit on networks operated by the uninitiated and the IoT initiatives are starting to proliferate in businesses with what is becoming a "a new, massive and complex expansion of the security landscape".
Security Planning and Monitoring
Service providers are that direct link to allowing your devices to go rogue on you. My personal feelings toward the entire matter is to maintain any IoT infrastructure behind a firewall requiring encrypted authenticated access.
Anything less is asking for trouble.
Cloud solutions should be redundant with no one service providing the only access to any infrastructure. Service disruptions are a fact of life and some more likely than others. Exploit attempts happen 24/7 and range from trivial to devastating. This is why I maintain a router which detects exploit attempts and discards those packets after logging them.
Good Netizenship
The monitoring of traffic, network intrusion detection and prevention, and that oversight which enables you to thwart IoT exploits are not typically built into those IoT peripherals. Your management of these facets of network ops typically require that those hooks are embedded in the security layer traffic must traverse to get to the IoT devices on your network.
So as you can see, a layered approach is most feasible in the never ending pursuit of network security at the home or the office. While I manage these things with routing and firewall equipment expressly designed for these purposes, a person with adequate utilities can fit the bill quite nicely and indeed nothing beats a close tab on the logs generated by the systems at your disposal for the presence of that exploit or virus payload trying to find it's way into your network and devices.
- Comments (0)
- December 1, 2016
- World AIDS Day
-
Today is the first of December.
One of those things observed today since 1988 is World AIDS Day. It is a day dedicated to raising awareness of the scourge of AIDS, those characteristics of HIV infection, and remembering those who have died as the result of the devastation it causes the human body.
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was once a source of humor in my life. Nowadays I don't think it's very funny ... mainly due to the many who have succumbed to it's dreadful effects; but also due to my childhood friend, Chris who I lost some 22 years ago but did not find out until quite recently.
It is a sobering notion of that painful mechanism taking him with my understanding of it's course and outcome.
Be all of this as it may, I hope you'll take pause and say a little prayer for those suffering with the disease and contribute to those efforts to eradicate it if you can.
- Comments (0)
- November 30, 2016
- The End of November
-
The end of November finds me continuing with the sadness of January. Those holidays marking the season for which I waited so long are pretty much wasted on my downcast spirit qwelling my personal celebratory attitude with a dark melancholy I've not known in years.
I attempt a brave face for many around me and joke in the presence of an ache that won't go away. I try to be courageous and certainly redouble those efforts to perform at work.
But the hole in my life is large and will not be ignored. If I thought counselling would do any good I might pursue it but like everything else I have had to surmount in my years upon the Earth this grieving is simply another aspect with which I must contend.
Christmas and New Years rapidly approach yet I am far from that warm and fuzzy feeling I used to anticipate so long before they arrived.
It's hard for me right now. I guess that's why I just seem to want to do work related tasks presently in an effort to occupy my mind on something aside from my grief.
- Comments (0)
- November 29, 2016
- Hybridized System Benefits
-
I've been reviewing the performance of the web server after the retool I did over the Thanksgiving weekend. I've noticed a lot more control with no degradation in speed over the stats I'm viewing ...
And I've attained that ability to thwart exploits earlier and much more effectively on two fronts as well.
• I can instruct the web server to reject a remote host. • I can firewall the remote host or it's entire subnet. • None of these were effectively possible prior to the retrofit and reload because I was getting inadequate log information.
It would seem that the world could be a kinder, gentler place and forego those antics like scraping, SQL injection, and other ploys others have designed to either insert a control mechanism or damage or otherwise deface the presence of others.
Inasmuch as the elimination of this tendency by those who perpetrate such shenanagans is unlikely; I must remain content to eliminate them from the equation altogether.
This has nothing to do with the fact that web server exploiter like spammers and other netizens who are arrogant and abusive should be reigned in at each and every opportunity.
It's merely the fact that I'm going to terminate such goings on as exploits, scraping, and the like with extreme prejudice because I decline to let those perpetrators get over on me just because they would. I'm as tolerant as the next guy but BEHAVE or BEGONE !
- Comments (0)
- November 28, 2016
- Cyber Monday
-
Here we have yet another shopping notion called "Cyber Monday" which is that Monday immediately following "Black Friday" (aka Buy Nothing Day).
It just so happens that this day is also the Monday following Thanksgiving and it's a wide scale retail event promotion what are billed as exceptional bargains with the emphasis being "online" shopping ...
I don't see much in the way of shopping going down for me personally. Though I'm sure the bargains can be had I'm not one of those shoppers bent on getting over on the holiday season.
Suffice it to say that those few gifts I will purchase this year will likely be less sale items and more selections from the heart.
- Comments (0)