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{ Category Archives } Computer Security

Oh joy, a more sophisticated spam/extortion racket

My spam filters caught an interesting message recently, an email from myself (from field forged) claiming that my account was hacked and correctly naming my email address (account name) and a legit past password… hmm, I am paying more attention now… The would be extortionist is asking for bitcoin worth about $837 presently, and threatens […]

Dispicable and predatory practices by corporations (Microsoft)

This is nauseating… https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/67367/upgradegate-microsofts-upgrade-deceptions-undermining-windows-10 I was annoyed by Apple’s pushy iOS 9.3.2 upgrade pressure; but this is way beyond anything Apple has done so far…

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Steven Levy nails it, again – why are we fighting for the right to privacy again?

Steven Levy has an excellent article about the current attempt to squash privacy and encryption by the FBI and why this all sounds so familiar, it’s because we already had this battle before, twice, in the 1990s… and both times wisdom prevailed. Will it prevail again? https://backchannel.com/why-are-we-fighting-the-crypto-wars-again-b5310a423295 Remember the dreaded “Clipper” chip and everyone worrying […]

Ransomware targeting Mac OS X posing as Transmission 2.90

It looks like some extortionists hijacked the transmissionbt.com website, and published for about 36-48 hours a fake version of Transmission (bitTorrent client) that claims to be v2.90 but is actually RansomWare that will encrypt your files and demand payment for decryption keys. Don’t use Transmission v2.90 and be careful out there. http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/first-mac-targeting-ransomware-hits-transmission-users-researchers-say/ I guess Mac […]

XcodeGhost infected Applications; might include Mercury

First really serious hack to impact iOS devices that are not jail-broken manages to inject spyware into several apps that were actually in the Apple App store. There are several good articles covering XcodeGhost and the hacked apps that may have been developed with XcodeGhost. One of the better written ones is on ArsTechnica, of […]

Damn, the price of success is ugly….

For a very long time Mac OS X was very, very safe. Still no known viruses today, and very little malware, mostly exploiting Java, Flash, or SilverLight. That was due to two huge advantages: 1) a vastly more secure operating system than Microsoft Windows, and 2) a tiny user base not worth targeting with slimy […]

Really sophisticated email phishing scam claiming to be from Amazon

I have in my inbox two examples of the most sophisticated phishing scam emails I have ever seen. I only caught them because I always review full SMTP headers in my emails; and the return paths and from addressing did not match – these scam emails claim to be from Amazon Notification, and they have […]

AppleTV 2nd Generation and SHSH Blobs

I am a huge Apple fan, and I have three 2nd generation AppleTVs that I use to watch streaming media in different rooms of my house. I have hacked them all so I can stream a wide variety of formats and stream directly from a large SMB file share I have. I also like checking […]

L2TP VPN working on Mavericks finally!

I finally had a few minutes free to explore Jon Stacey’s excellent blog about getting L2TP working on Mavericks… His documentation is excellent, and can be found here: How to Setup a L2TP VPN Server on OS X Repeated here in case his blog goes away – but all credit to him… Go into Keychain […]

Computer Literacy Bookstore turned Indian Restaurant

I attended Sun Microsystem’s DC area reveal of the brand new Java and dancing Duke mascot at a Computer Literacy bookstore in the late 1990s… I just had lunch in the same spot which is now an Indian restaurant called Bombay Tandoor. Memories are funny things, I could actually still see (in my imagination) the […]