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{ Category Archives } Computer Security

Stuxnet and Cyber-Warfare

VanityFair has a new, easier to read story about the Stuxnet virus and cuber-warfare: A Declaration of Cyber-War

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2011 03 04 snolan Foreign Policy Comments (0)

Computer Security and Global Security, Windows Virus?

There are some very interesting developments in the news regarding the Stuxnet virus. I confess that I mostly ignored this virus, like most computer viruses, when it came out as it appeared to impact only computers running the Windows operating system. It turns out I was wrong, it actually uses Windows to spread itself, but […]

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2011 01 17 snolan Computers
Foreign Policy
News
Windows Comments (0)

Very happy I disabled Adobe/Macromedia Flash on my Macs

A few weeks ago I decided to disable Adobe/Macromedia Flash on all my Macintosh computers. I am here to tell you I do NOT regret it at all, and now recommend it highly. Flash was an extremely useful extension for many years; it made it possible to view videos on the web without specialized software […]

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2010 12 29 snolan Computers
Web Design Comments (1)

Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Security Flaws

There is a pretty good write up of the dangers in allowing your browser to accept Cross Site Scripting (XSS) or allowing your web server to carry XSS here: Guardian Article on Javascript based XSS Twitter Hack The article mainly focuses on the recent Twitter exploit, and the dangers of server-side XSS exploits, but we […]

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2010 09 23 snolan Web Design
Web Hosting Comments (0)

Linksys/Amazon/Firefox/DNS bug causes router crash

A lot of us have Linksys home routers. They are cheap, effective, and easy to use. I’ve have a BEFSR81 8 port fast ethernet broadband router/firewall for many years… it recently started locking up when anyone in the house shops Amazon.com using Firefox (started in early May we think). Frequently the router will lock up […]

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2010 08 31 snolan Computers
House Comments (3)

iOS 4.0.2 Update, strongly recommended

support.apple.com/kb/HT4291 Apple has released iOS 4.0.2 update for iPhone and 3.2.2 for iPad. These updates fix the gaping security hole identified by the JailBreakMe tools, which may frustrate people who want to “Jailbreak” their phones, but the security patch is crucial; the odds are very good that someone more malicious would abuse the same holes […]

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2010 08 11 snolan Comments (0)

Serious iPhone/AT&T problem

Important Revision: Improper use of iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS multitasking in iOS 4 appears to be the cause of dramatic increase in data plan usage for many people, and faster battery drain for many people. The important take away, is that so long as you have enough memory, when you switch applications on the […]

2010 08 03 snolan Personal Comments (7)

Malicious Javascripts Prevalent on Facebook

A recent trend in computer insecurity has been the growing prevalence of malicious javascripts with cross-site scripting hacks that exploit web browsers that are already logged into Facebook to do things to the user’s Facebook account they had no intention of doing. Cross-site scripting hacks are potentially dangerous because they take advantage of your being […]

2010 08 02 snolan Web Hosting Comments (0)

Xmarks for Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Explorer

I have continued to have stability problems on Safari 5 for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) at work, and diligently reported the problems to Apple, and looked for and found two problems with my configuration and fixed them both. Safari on Snow Leopard continues to crash regularly (though it is very stable on my […]

2010 07 22 snolan Personal Comments (0)

Useful Safari extension

Tired of those annoying IntelliTXT ads? They can be blocked with this simple extension for Safari, hurrah! http://homepage.mac.com/drewthaler/jsblacklist/ JavaScript Blacklist also blocks those annoying snap.com previews, and the stupid tynt copy & paste blocker (though I have not been running into either of these as much lately). Thank you Drew Thaler! Update: First you will […]

2010 06 14 snolan Computers
Web Design Comments (0)