Digital Choke Daynotes

Today was much quieter than usual...the grandkids came yesterday. I don't really mind the noise, because they are great kids. When they arrive, they come running to me, yelling "Poppa!" with big smiles on their faces. After I get a hug, they go get one from Pam. But I get to be first.

Still pretty warm this weekend. Upper 90's, approaching 100 (F). But the humidity stays under 30%, so it's not too bad. And the air conditioning in the house works well. Even with the AC running quite a bit (and we do have the thermostat set properly: 79 when we are at home, and 83 when we're at work), the electric bill is much less than at the old house. Of course, at the old house we had an electric well, electric dryer, electric kitchen, and a heat pump (for heat and AC). And leaky windows, with foam wall insulation that had shrunk and cracked. The new place is much better.

An interesting article over at the Internet Storm Center. One of the 'handlers' there (they monitor things) decided to experiment with adware/spyware. The first installment is here, and although parts are a bit technical, you might find it interesting. Don't know when the next installment will be, although I suspect sometime this week. In the meantime, the diary for today has some other interesting information. The Internet Storm Center is one of my daily stops as I make the rounds of the 'net.

In fact, here is their Internet Safety Tip of the day:

Many people use credit cards for online purchases. One thing you can do to help protect yourself is to get a credit card that you only use for online purchases and have the limit set low, say for $500. This way if your information is stolen, you have a lower limit for which someone can take advantage. Always make sure to keep an eye on that credit card statement.
Some banks will allow you to setup a one-time use only card number online, or a temporary number that is only valid for a couple of months and has a smaller limit then your main card.
For more information on what you can be held liable for and steps you can take if you believe that your credit card information has been stolen see http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/atmcard.htm

Sounds like a good idea.

The big news today in the security world is the MyDoom virus, version "O" (or "N"). Somewhat clever technique for harvesting email addresses, which seems to be it's main purpose. Like most viruses, it will search your hard drive for email addresses. It also seems to look for obfusticated email addresses, like "mmouse at disney dot com" or "fred dot smith at fancypants dot com". And it also looks for domain names, then uses commands to do a web search for that site, then harvest the email addresses from that site. It also puts a back door onto the infected system, presumably to get the email addresses. Or it could use the infected computer as a mail relay for spamming.

The result is that the search sites got hammered a bit today. They have recovered by now. There is also some indication that the 'net as a whole got a bit slower.

You might wander over to the Internet Storm Center to see their analysis, and a bunch of links to more information.

And today is the start of the Democratic National Convention. You might wander over to "JibJab" for a little ditty about the Presidential race. Quite funny. (As usual, my link will open up a window, and their site will also open up a window, so turn off your pop-up blocking for a bit.)

Here's a link to some web blogs of Microsoft employees. I haven't looked too deeply there, but there is quite a variety. And here's a Wired story about web blogs that might include a few links of interest.

Several meetings today for various projects. One of them was a demo of the web site program I've been modifying in my spare time for another department. Had some problems: forgot to bring along the power adapter for the laptop, and I didn't charge up the laptop overnight like I usually do. But I fixed a problem with the edit screen that was bugging me, so the application is just about done. Although it is suffering a bit from 'feature creep'.

Weather is still warm around here, hovering around 100F. Cooling trend coming up, though; the weather dweebs says low 90's by the end of the week. Luckily, the nights cool off nicely, and the humidity stays under 30%.

Watched "Starsky and Hutch" tonight. An OK movie, perhaps 2 of 4 stars (almost 3), but there wasn't much other choices. Pam has not been feeling good and stayed home today (nothing serious). So she got the head rub during the movie, which helps a lot when she's not feeling well.

Take a look at the Internet Storm Center diary for today. Seems that MyDoom.O has a few more interesting features. Like a close relationship with the Zindos worm. Zindos is built for a Denial of Service against Microsoft, but it's not working right. But the next (inevitable) version might be more efficient.

Another demo of the Cold Fusion app that I've been working on. This one went a bit better -- had a fully charged battery on the laptop, and brought along the charger and an extra-long network cable. This one was for the medium-level bosses. It went quite well. They wanted some minor design changes that will be easy to implement.

In fact, that's what I worked on most of the afternoon. I had a list of things to fix, and got most of them done. I am having a problem with the 'cfmail' command trying to send it to a comma-delimited list of people. I've got it all set up just like the docs say, but the messages never get sent out. Just before I went home, I found another possible technique on the Macromedia Cold Fusion developer's site. I'll give that a try tomorrow.

I found a link to an indexed PDF version of the 9/11 report is here. Wired magazine reported on other sites that have the report in different formats. Interesting reading.

And I must go now. I hear some Drumstick flavored ice cream calling my name.

Wow. Done with July already. Time flies, etc.

Microsoft has just released MS04-025, the update to Internet Explorer versions 5 and 6 (for Win98, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003 server) that fixes several 'remote execution' vulnerabilities. These are related to the 'download.ject' ("Russian Hack") issue of late last month. Readers will recall that MS released a quick registry change, but that fix was not complete.

This new update should be applied on all computers. You can get it through Windows Update (everyone is configured for automatic updates, right?). My personal automatic updates are all set to get this update.

I believe that MS issued this ahead of the normal 2nd-Tuesday patch cycle because it was such a high-visibility issue. And I believe that they spent a lot of time testing this —- rather than pushing something out fast that might have broken a lot of things.

You might find the Internet Explorer Team blog interesting. It's fairly new. There are quite a few Microsoft employee blogs. They seem to be pretty independent, although they can't tell everything that is going on. You can start on the IE blog page and wander around to some other sites.

Another good place is the "Channel 9" area of Microsoft. Some interesting peeks at new stuff there, including lots of video interviews with the developers of various projects.

The folks at "MailFrontier" (their product is mail filtering software) have created a "Phishing Test". There are 10 samples of actual email messages. You get to decide which are legitimate and which are 'phishing' attempts. ("Phishing" = attempts to get your financial information via a legitimate-looking email or web page. Very profitable for the scammers.)

It's getting harder to determine a phishing attempt, as evidenced by the test. For instance, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about this subject, but I missed 2 out of 10.

More info about phishing from the "Anti-Phishing Working Group". There are samples of the latest phishing attempts, and other good preventative tips.

Stopped by Lowe's on the way home today for a few more plants and ground cover. I'll stick them in the ground tomorrow. The weather has cooled off into the 80's with a light breeze, so it won't be too uncomfortable. I'm sort of new at this planting thing. At the last house, I spent most of my Saturdays just mowing the weeds. Don't have to do that here, so figure that it might be interesting to figure out the color of my thumb.

Pam and I watched "Radio" (Cuba Gooding) tonight. Good flick.

... more later ...
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