Posts by happygeek

Agreed :)

Really?? How do you get ardav out of mississippi?

Dark glasses, a wig and fake passport...

Following the arrest of 25 suspected members of the Anonymous hacking collective in Europe and South America, the INTERPOL website went offline. Coincidence? I don't think so. After all, Anonymous has already proven it isn't scared, or indeed incapable. of taking down law enforcement sites. Earlier in the month it managed to take the CIA website offline and even managed to listen in to a private conference call between FBI agents and Scotland Yard detectives who were discussing how to deal with Anonymous hacking attacks amongst other things. The fact that the INTERPOL site went down within hours of INTERPOL announcement concerning the arrests, and stayed down most of Tuesday, would seem to suggest that Anonymous were successful in pwning yet another law enforcement site. Indeed, Anonymous member accounts on Twitter soon claimed responsibility for the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

INTERPOL unleashed Operation Unmask , a reference to the V for Vendetta 'Guy Fawkes' mask associated with the Anonymous collective as well as the Occupy movement, across Argentina, Chile, Columbia and Spain in the middle of February. This culminated in the arrest of 25 suspected Anonymous members aged between 17 and 40, the seizure of more than 250 bits of hardware including computers and mobile phones, as well as credit cards and cash from the hackers at 40 different locations within 15 cities in total.

"This operation shows that crime in the virtual world does have real consequences …

So, let;s see if I have got this right:

You are a Houston locksmith who happens to be based in India? That's one heck of a commute.

You also double up as a Houston Web Designer according to a couple of other accounts you have registered here.

What's that I smell? Oh yes, it's spam...

So, you are really Debbie Asisdas? :)

I'm a geek.

I'm happy.

Simples :)

I don't give my mobile number(s) to anyone other than close friends and family. I certainly don't let it get into the hands of my business associates or I wouldn't have any peace. For the last 20 years I have been telling clients and business contacts to email me, and for the whole that seems to work quite well. I do have a landline in the office, but even that number is only given out to existing clients only. Maybe I have lost work over the years, who can tell? But I don't care, my work/life balance is all the better for not having business calls interrupt me wherever I happen to be.

Should I admit that I carry, erm, two iPhones at the moment? I bought an iPhone 4S before my iPhone 4 was out of contract (combination of tech journo habits and problems with the current network provider) and as I am still paying for the 4 I'm keeping it and using it until that runs out in 3 months. However, I'm with Three on the 4S (as opposed to Vodacrap) and get 'unlimited' data so use the 4S for data intensive stuff when away from home.

Or at least I would if it weren't for the fact that I also carry an iPad 2 around with me which is on a 15Gb a month of data plan and I tend to use that a lot as well.

I may have just hung myself with my own petard or something... :)

Agreed about the sympathy or lack thereof. While downvoted posts are hardly something to get too upset about, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter after all, if it's someone deliberately harassing another member then it is a legitimate concern and one that TPTB should and would be interested in.

Dantin, do you know of anyone you have annoyed or got into a flame war with before the downvoting started? As an admin I cannot find out who downvoted you, as James has said that's something Dani may be able to do but I doubt it would be high on her todo list given the amount of work she's doing re-coding the site at present. I suspect I know who is behind it, however, but have no proof and therefore cannot take any action.

My advice, ignore them and they will (like all petulant children) simply go away.

I Parted (mis-print) - by Ivor Biggun

Cracking game, could have gone either way, full credit to Wales for the win. Absolute Certs for the 6N and Grand Slam now I reckon.

England have, at last, come alive. Manu is the man, and Farrell is proving to be a pretty effective 10 after all. Great game all round...

Ireland v Italy tuning into a bit of a scrappy/crappy game. Can't see Ireland winning the 6N on this form...

Absolutely agreed AD!

My name is Davey Winder, and I am a phoneaphobic. At first glance it would appear that I am anything but alone if the results of a recent study into attitudes towards mobile phone usage are to be believed. But first impressions are often misleading and that's the case here, as unlike me it seems that the majority of people do not have a phobia of simply speaking on the phone (or more accurately having my train of thought interrupted by meaningless telephone conversations when an email will usually suffice) but rather the exact opposite. Nomophobia is the fear of losing mobile phone contact, and the survey by SecurEnvoy and OnePoll reveals that an astonishing 66 percent of UK respondents suffer from it. That's up from the first such survey conducted in 2008 when only 53 percent admitted to being nomophobic.

Of the people interviewed, some 41 percent actually have two or more mobile phones in order to ensure such a lack of connectivity never strikes. Women are more likely (70 percent) to be scared of cellphone loss than men (61 percent), while men (47 percent) are more likely to have two phone than women (36 percent). "I’d be inclined to draw the conclusion that, perhaps because more men have two phones, they’re less likely to misplace both and therefore be left phone-less" said Andy Kemshall SecurEnvoy CTO and co founder, adding "there is another study into mobile phone use that found …

Welcome :)

I'm still trying to understand the logic myself. Hodgson was the obvious choice as Flood appears a little match rusty right now. I really rate Farrell, but not as a 10 and not in this game.

The iPad is, as those annoyingly creative TV adverts show us, used for all sorts of things by all sorts of people. However, according to a press release that hit the DaniWeb news desk today, you might be forgiven for thinking that shopping isn't one of them. As usual though, the devil is in the detail.

The press release exclaimed that the Apple iPad was failing to be used by online shoppers and went on to reveal that a nationwide study of consumer habits in the UK had shown that Brits are not embracing tablets for online shopping and claimed that "only 4 percent of Brits are using a tablet for online shopping".

It pays to read on though, as the research wasn't actually showing that people with iPads don't use them to shop, but rather that the majority of people shopping online don’t actually own a tablet. And that's something altogether different.

The survey, commissioned by ecommerce site builder Basekit, is revealing in that it does show that currently the British are not embracing mobile shopping as much as might be expected given the amount of hype surrounding tablet and smartphone usage.

Here's what the research really discovered:

42 percent of Brits still do their online shopping from a Windows-based PC, and 42 percent from a Windows-based laptop. Only 9 percent use an Apple Mac, with laptops twice as popular as desktops in this regard.

4 percent of Brits are using a tablet to shop, …

Good to have Dell officially back on DaniWeb :)

Most security vendors will have added signatures to cover this Trojan by now, some have free online scanners to check for it as well.

done

What?

The Ainslot.L Trojan appears to be much the same as any other at first glance; logging user activity and sending Gmail and Facebook passwords to the bad guys, downloading further malware, taking over your computer and the main payload of being a Banking Trojan stealing account login data. But Ainslot.L has one rather more unusual trick up its sleeve in that it will also scan your system for evidence of other bot-related infections such as Zeus or DarkComet and remove any that it finds. Of course, Ainslot.L isn't doing this in order to cleanse your computer but rather to ensure that it is the only active bot and therefore getting all the gravy in terms of data and system resource access.

PandaLabs , the anti-malware research facility arm of vendor Panda Security, warns that Ainslot.L is distributed via a fake email which claims to be coming from a UK clothing company called CULT and takes the format of a 'you have placed the following order' social engineering scam. The sting being the link which supposedly allows the worried user, who has of course not ordered anything, view the order with a value of UKP 200 which it is claimed has been charged to your credit card. Clicking that link executes a download of Ainslot.L to the victims computer.

The bad guys in this case have done quite a good job of obfuscating their true intentions, with the file name of the executable being the …

Happy Danibirthday Rick :)

Yes :)

I think there may be another NSFW Wavey Davey who dominates the Google results these days :)

The point was to spam this thread, and that spam is now deleted...

CLOSED - I think there have been quite enough obvious explanations added to this sig spam fest of a thread.

So, Jessica, do please explain further how 'an Ethernet' uses radio waves...

So email deepfreeze tech support and ask them?

The wire.

Literally...

Wales showed the sort of determination, flair and spark that I think will lift them the 6N this year - but only in the second half, and the Scots being a man down for 20 minutes may have helped a tad. Which is a little worrying. Wales, like every other side at the moment, need to play a consistent 80 minutes of committed rugby.

They eithe play well in the first half then fall asleep in the second, or vice-versa. No challenge from the Johnson era then... :(

If you use, or operate, a password-free wireless network then legal action being taken in the US by the adult movie industry might just be about to rain on your parade warns one European IT threat mitigation expert.

The lawsuit was filed by Liberty Media Holdings, a producer of adult movie content based in San Diego, and accuses in excess of 50 people in Massachusetts (where the lawsuit has been filed) of downloading and consequently sharing a gay porn movie illegally via BitTorrent. The complaint itself makes a point of claiming that the defendants either have direct responsibility as they downloaded the movie themselves or, importantly, that they contributed to the act of piracy by way of their negligence in not securing the wireless network concerned. In other words, whether they downloaded it themselves or not doesn't matter, they are being held responsible for the controlling, or rather not controlling in this case, access to the Internet which was then used to infringe copyright.

The filing itself claims "Defendants failed to adequately secure their internet access, whether accessible only through their computer when physically connected to an internet router or accessible to many computers by use of a wireless router".

This is being seen as an important test case when it comes to legal liability, as currently there would appear to be no case law which covers such claims for negligence under these circumstances. Worryingly, if the case does go in favour of Liberty (oh the …

The 'you have a problem, give us remote access, pay us a fee to resolve it, and we'll install some malware at the same time' is a very common scam this side of the pond, most often leveraging the reputations of Microsoft or Dell (most likely to hit a victim using either a Dell PC or running Windows) and heavily reported in the tech press over the last 18 months or so - I lose count of the number of words I have written on the subject warning people about the scams, or explaining how they work.

Interestingly, most of these scams use call centre operations set up in India to do the phoning. Looking at the UK caller ID/number you have for the call (0808 189 0481) this links to a company called SugarCRM Consulting which appears to have a connection with Veon Consulting which appears to be based in India- a quick bit of Googling reveals. Not that I'm suggesting that either company is party to any illegal activity, but it might be a good start for any investigation you wish to carry out Dani...

Always a sign of team past its prime when 'blame the ref' is used to excuse a piss-poor performance. As you say, the Oirish were pretty pants for much of the game. Defensively I reckon my 80 year old mum could have driven a zimmer frame through them with ease.

(and I have Irish Romany blood swimming strongly through my English veins, so it pains me to say as much)

dont get many UK tv in Aus or Can, but, the byline in old
.Net PC_Direct PC_Pro Computer_Life
magazines
The Times on Sunday (2 weeks late)
3 books on my shelves
awards out the wazoo

guru << happygeek

Awww shucks :)

Currently have settled into being Contributing Editor for PC Pro (for past 16 years or so) along with my DaniWeb roles and Contributing Editorships at IT Pro and Cloud Pro as well. Plenty of other stuff in-between, but such is the CV of a jobbing freelance journalist and author I guess.

I used to be known as Wavey Davey back then (punky looking bloke in wheelchair at first, then with a stick) and presented some stuff for The Late Show (BBC) which I also wrote about the music scene. I also wrote for and presented on The Net (BBC) which was the first prog in the UK which really looked at the Internet from a cultural as well as technical perspective - did OK, got a couple of million viewers per show. Then there were bits and bobs over the years on TV and radio, including being one of the in-studio presenters for the Radio One Internet Night which was the first interactive/collaborative live radio and Internet broadcast (we had Blur playing live at the Cyberia cybercafe in London, and me and the guy who used to produce Yazz taking questions in the studio about the Internet, from a music perspective, with Jo Wiley). This was all back in the very early 90's though, at the start of the Internet revolution on this side of the pond.

Funnily enough, I'm on the verge of starting doing TV again with a prime-time show for Channel 4 called Scambusters which will be a cross between The Real Hustle and Watchdog, combining consumer journalism with hands-on stuff in order to warn people about the types of scams they can face today. I will be one of three presenters, taking on the role of the security/hacking expert and demonstrating how the hacks/scams actually work. …

What software?

I actually think that Italy could give England a very good run for their money, and may even win this one going on that abysmal display last weekend.

Wales should decimate the Scots, even without Davies(good decision to kick him out of the 6N I thought, they needed to be tough to stop others doing likewise).

Ireland and France will be the game of the weekend, as the Oirish are buggers after they've lost at home, especially when they feel an injustice has happened - the lack of a red for Davies and the yellow for Ferris.

I own my own company, and I have regularly appeared on national television looking like that and representing my company. I t has never done me, or my company, any harm.

The kind of public that judge a book by the cover are not the kind of public I want to do business with, frankly.

I am lucky that, after 20 years in the business, I can pick and choose my clients and do just that. I only work with people I like. Read my previous posts and you will see, however, that my often very challenging looks have never held me back career wise. In fact, they have got me more work than I have ever lost - including a stint presenting a couple of TV series here in the UK.

The Apple iWork office productivity suite for the Mac has been around for ages, and was recently joined by an iOS version. iWork documents have, up until now, been seen as being pretty safe courtesy of the particular implementation of the 128-bit AES encryption Apple used to secure them. I say up until now as it appears that iWork passwords have been pretty comprehensively broken thanks to the latest in a long line of 'password recovery' applications from Russian outfit Elcomsoft.

Of course, truth be told, it has been possible to brute force these iWork document passwords before now but the problem has been one of the resources vs. reward ratio: for the most part it would take too long, or require too much effort, to crack the passwords of random documents on the off chance they contained something of value to the bad guys. That could have all changed now that Elcomsoft has released a version of its Distributed Password Recovery tool that supports the 'recovery' of iWorks passwords on both platforms and across the Numbers, Pages and Keynote applications.

Elcomsoft CTO Andy Malyshev says that as Apple iWork is sold at consumer market price points it is less likely that the average user will have a security policy that enforces a long and complex password, making the distributed attack methodology and its 500 attempts per second barrier worthwhile. What's more he states that they are "likely to re-use their passwords, with little …

I used to go out with her...

And the winner is... Oh, I mean, done :)

I'm generally only downvoting and neg repping spammers so no ham done :)

If I downvote someone I will almost always give a reason and hit the negative rep as a result. Personally I don't find much use for the downvote only button, as if I'm that minded to actually click the button then I'm also minded enough to say why. If you see what I mean.

I used to write for those 'web guide' magazines a decade or more ago. There even used to be some very successful 'yellow pages' style directories of websites published in book format that people happily paid rather a lot of money for.

That was then, now there is no need surely? Best is subjective, choice is plentiful, so just Go Google and compile your own lists.

I seem to have bucked that trend in that I was just starting my career yet was heavily facially pierced, heavily tattooed and dressed in a punk/biker/goth mix style yet managed to get plenty of large corporate clients including Microsoft, National Westminster Bank, Royal Mail etc etc.

Perhaps it helped,20 years ago, that there weren't that many Internet consultants to choose from in the UK. But not once did I miss out on a job because of my appearance, and I can say that with some confidence as every potential client I approached (or who approached me) ended up being an actual client.

I do understand what you are saying, and agree to a large degree. However, it is possible to be both an individual and have a successful career - it is almost certainly a lot harder but not impossible.

Personally, I would rather stay true to myself that bend over for 'the man' and comply with their idea of what I should look like... Even if that meant my choice of employees/clients were to be rather smaller than the average.

Probably the most common Olympic Games 2012 scam is that of unofficial ticket sales. No great surprise there, but the fact that Google appears to be in on the act might come as a shock to many. So what, exactly, is going on?

A little known law in the UK is, and I kid you not, the 'London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006' which, amongst other things, makes it a criminal offence to sell tickets for the Olympics without the explicit permission of the authorities running the Olympics 2012 event. Yet when the BBC investigated how easy it was to get just such unauthorised tickets earlier this year, what it discovered was that unofficial ticket vendors and cybercriminals alike were exploiting Google AdWords and the use of multiple backlinking URLs to do just that.

Most end users do not actually care if the source of the tickets they are buying is authorised or not, to be honest, but perhaps they should. The allure of getting the ticket for an event you want to watch, at any cost, is a strong one. But that cost could turn out to be way higher than expected, and I'm not talking about the difference between face value ticketing and the selling price from a ticket tout for want of a better word. There's also the cybercriminal angle to take into account as Carl Leonard from the Websense Security Labs points out:

"We're used to cybercriminals …

There already is: look for the exclamation mark (!) inside a red triangle towards the top right.

As for kwasiy, dealt with - thanks :)