Monday, March 15, 2004

The next time I see a child with an earache, and they are really crying, I will be able to empathize. I've got one, and they can be really painful. I'd give it close to an '8' on the medical Richter scale (or whatever it's called, a scale of 1-10, 10 is the highest). I was caused by a bit too much enthusiasm during the last ear-cleaning session with the 'cotton-tipped swab'. That caused the ear canal to get irritated, and yucky stuff ensued.

It started last Tuesday night, went to see the doctor Thursday AM, and he gave me some ear drops to fight the infection. By Friday, it was starting to get quite painful, so another visit to the doctor on Saturday morning got some more powerful antibiotic in pill form, along with some Tylonol with Codeine for the pain. I had to use that most of Saturday and Sunday to reduce the pain. Sunday night the pain had lessened, as the antibiotic started working to reduce the inflammation. It's still mildy painful today, but we're down to the "3" level, so it's bearable without using the pain medication.

I'd compare the pain to grabbing a whole bunch of nose hairs and pulling them out, continually. I'll probably not get any sympathy from any female reader that has had children, though.

Brian C (official apostrophe checker for these Digital Choke Daynotes) opined:

I've always wondered: If you're not supposed to use Q-tips (R)/cotton swabs in your ears, just what the heck are they for?

That's what I was thinking.

So that's the reason for the paucity of material here. Assuming somebody noticed.

"In other news".... the Bagel wars continue. Lots of Bagel messages out there this weekend. McAfee released a special update Saturday, then another one today. Those of you in charge of virus filters (yeah, that's me) need to pay attention to the updates, and blocking any encrypted zip file so that the 'zero-day' attack doesn't get inside your system.

And I note that Comcast is owning up to cutting down on virus-related spam, according to this article in "The Register":

Comcast, the US cable giant, is threatening to disconnect customers whose infected PC are being used to relay spam messages.

Up to 30 per cent of spam is now spewing from hijacked "zombie" PCs. Spammers use Trojan horses and worms to take over PCs and use them as spam engines, a practice that can severely disrupt the operation of ISPs.

And another example of clueless, bought-and-paid-for polititians, California's own Attorney General gets caught by some hidden stuff in a Word document he sent out about going against P-2-P file sharers ("The Register" again).

The democratic veneer over the business of buying the legislation you want has never looked thinner. California's State Attorney General Bill Lockyer has been caught acting as a public relations front for Hollywood's big money copyright holders, only on the public's dime. Nominally, the role of Attorney General is to act on behalf of all citizens of California, including consumers and recording artists.

Gotta watch out for that hidden stuff in your Word documents. Security tip of the day: use PDF docs (set to read-only) for documents you want to share.

And didn't we warn them about this? E-voting is not ready for "prime-time" ("Wired News" article):

Napa County in Northern California said on Friday that electronic voting machines used in the March presidential primary failed to record votes on some of its paper ballots, which will force the county to re-scan over 11,000 ballots and possibly change the outcome of some close local races.

And in the "Well, Duh!" category, this report from Symantec that computer viruses spread like biological diseases (again from "The Globe and Mail"):

Evidence that computer virus infections spread like biological disease was offered by security experts at Symantec Corp., which today released its semi-annual Internet Security Threat Report.

Ya think ?

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Phishing Alert !

A particularly well-done 'phishing' attempt using pages that look like AOL pages is documented here on the "Anti-Phishing" site (http://www.antiphishing.org/phishing_archive/aol_03-10-04.htm ). The phishing pages are quite believeable (pages are shown as graphic images in that link).

Although the phishing site is only available if you go directly to the site (I will not repeat the site name, but it was still active Tues afternoon), or if you "Google" for the AOL billing site, I predict that it won't be long until we see virus/spam trying to direct people to this site. Note that if the spam message is well-crafted and widespread, some people will go to the site and give away thier credit card information (two credit cards, actually). That will result in bogus charges on the credit cards, and the resultant identity theft problems.

And if (when) those emails start appearing, there doesn't have to be a virus payload to alert the anti-virus guys.

On the same site, they reference a "White Paper" from the US Dept of Justice about the increase in phishing attacks (http://www.antiphishing.org/DOJ_Special_Report_On_Phishing_Mar04.pdf ) .

If a 'phisher' gets a 0.5% response rate, and can send out a million emails (not hard to do nowadays, and that response rate is easily achieved), that's 50,000 credit card numbers (or 100,000 , if everyone fills out the entire form).

I looked at the phishing site, which you can find in the first link above, and it is quite believable. You'll see spam about this soon, I predict. Remember, you read it here first!

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

We went over to Pam's mother's house after work today. I needed to take some pictures of the trailer that we are trying to sell. There will be an ad in the classifieds of the local paper starting on Friday. The ad will include a link to some pages that I am building here (www.digitalchoke.com/pix , if you are interested). I took a bunch of pictures, so now need to optimize them before I post them up here. I did get some preliminary pages done with some descriptions of the trailer and a few other things. And I set up a mail form page for feedback, if any, along with a simple visit counter.

I am also going to try out selling a few of the woodworking tools on eBay. I'll be taking some more pictures of that stuff this weekend, during another stint at the garage. I've never gotten into the eBay fever, so that will be a learning experience. In most cases, it will be cheaper than separate ads in the local classifieds. And there will be the upcoming "Guy's Garage Sale". We'll do a big classified ad for that, along with signs and banners and stuff. That's at least a month away, though.

I also spent a bit of time getting a laptop ready for Stacy, off at college in Idaho. Pam is going back there for a "Mother's Weekend" this weekend, so I need to get it finished by tomorrow night.

Thursday, March 18, 2004

News this morning of Bagel.Q (and subsequent variants that use similar procedures). Sophos (anti-virus company) says that:

"If a user opens the message - and their version of Microsoft Outlook has not been patched against a five-month old critical vulnerability - malicious code is automatically downloaded. Once installed, the worms halt a wide range of security applications, potentially opening up your computer to further virus or hacker attack. The worm will also attempt to spread via file-sharing networks and infect other executable files. " (Link to their news release is at http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/bagletwist.html )

Note that you do *not* need to open an attachment for this one, you just have to preview or open the message on an un-patched system. (This vulnerability was closed by an Outlook patch last October.) Although this problem seems to apply to Outlook, it is not clear to me whether the same problem exists in web-based mail programs. And later reports seem to indicate the vulnerability also exists (or is through) un-patched Internet Explorer.

Windows update (at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com ) and Office Update (at http://office.microsoft.com/OfficeUpdate/default.aspx ) is where to go for updates. The "Office Update" site works similar to Windows Update, it scans your computer for current version info, then presents you with a list of updates to install. Some of the updates require access to the Office CD that was used to install the program (an irritant, and not appropriate given the updates that should be installed). I worked around that limitation by copying the MS-Office Disk 1 onto the local hard drive, and installing from there (uninstalling Office if needed). But I think that Microsoft should remove the need for the CD for all Office updates. Updating is more important than catching the few pirated copies.

The usual warnings now include ensuring MS-Office is updated. The anti-virus guys don't seem to have a handle on how to fix this new technique yet.

I spent some time getting the trailer pictures up on this site. The ad in the paper starts tomorrow, and includes the web link (www.digitalchoke.com/pix). So the pictures of the trailer are ready to look at. I need to tweak the pages a bit though.

I also worked on the list of tools, but they aren't ready for you to look at. I'll be spending some time there this weekend doing some more cleanup, and taking some more pictures.

Listening to the local rock-and-roll station. They are playing the long version of "Light My Fire" by The Doors. One of my favorites. The station tends to play some of the longer classic rock songs in the evening. So I am sitting out here on the patio with the laptop. The sun just went down, but it is still pleasant (about 77 degrees F, 48% humidity, "feels like" 77 F), with a very slight breeze. Ah, sunny Kahl-E-forn-ya!

Saturday, March 20, 2004

A busy two days. Friday started up real early: Pam had to get to the airport at 4:30am for a flight to Stacy's college (it's the "Mother-Daughter Weekend". So we woke up (that's a relative term) at about 3:00am, got ready, and drove to the airport, arriving right at 4:30am for her 6:00am flight. I headed into the office, stopping at the local Denny's for breakfast.

When you get to work that early (about 5:30am), you can get a lot done before everyone else arrives to interrupt you. I was able to complete a few things, and worked on learning some more about BindView (network auditing tool). I got some reports scheduled, and set it up so that the reports are automatically emailed to me. The next step is to set up some baseline reports, then schedule reports that will compare against the baseline to find problems that crop up. That might provide some interesting results.

I also set up the Languard Network Security Scanner program to also start doing some similar automated audits, with the results emailed to me. That program will also let me do baseline comparisons. I use the BindView program to audit the Novell NDS tree (for now), and the Languard program to look at system services. The two programs will help with the regular auditing of the network.

Another advantage of coming in early is that you get to leave early. So I left a bit after noon, and went home to change into some work clothes. I went over to the in-law's house to work on the messy garage. I made some good progress in one corner of the garage, and got about a half-truckfull of stuff ready to take to the dump. (Oops, sorry; it's the Material Resource Recovery Center.) I got about 1/4 of the garage cleaned up, getting rid of a bunch of old and obsolete stuff. Colleen (Pam's mother) brought me a plate of chicken strips from KFC, so I had that for dinner. By that time, it was too late to go to the dump (MRRC), so I just took the truck home.

After some church work on the computer, I hit the sack a bit after 9pm; I wasn't able to stay awake for "Magnum, P.I.".

So, now it's Saturday. You'd think that I would sleep in, but I woke up a bit before 5am, and finally got up about 6:30am. Did the morning shower/get dressed thing, and went downstairs for a bowl of Raisin Bran ("two scoops!") while reading the paper. Then off to the MRRC (the dump, right?), which opens at 8am. I got there about 8:10, and there was quite a line of people waiting to get in. I got the truck emptied (it cost $8.75), then back to Colleen's house to start on the garage again.

When I got there (9:30am, if anyone cares), Jared (son-in-law) was there, so we got started. He got the lawnmower started (it was new, but had never been used) with a bit of starting fluid, and he started on the lawn while I started in the garage. We both spent the rest of the morning, and a few hours after lunch cleaning up the garage. We made great progress. Another truckload of junk was the result, and the garage is much better. The next step will be to sort out the tools, and get things ready for the big "Guy's Garage Sale".

I went back to the MRRC with the second load, again waiting with about 25 loads ahead of me. Then back to Colleen's, where the grandkids had arrived, and we relaxed a bit before having some barbequed ribs and chicken as a reward for all our work.

Home now, doing a bit of surfing (where I was saddened to note that Brian & Marcia Bilbrey's "Sally" had gone to "where all the dogs are fast, and all the bunnies and squirrels fat and slow". It's always hard to lose a pet that is a close member of the family. Our condolences to them.

... more later ...
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