TECHNOLOGY: React to Yahoo Address Book compromise

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

ADVISING A FRIEND UPON A MALWARE INFECTION

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This is an attack that I’ve seen on many others. It’s basically vectored against your Yahoo address book. It can be (I’ve seen both) (a) maware on windoze personal computer; or (b) your Yahoo account is compromised.

I suggest:

(1) Get a backup of your data asap. I like lots of copies taken differently.

(2) Adding a known unique address like “XYZXYZXYZ _ reinke@reinke.cc” to your yahoo address book, that exists no where else, so you can know when your book is accessed.

(3) Immediately changing your Yahoo account password to a 30 character random like “NFVjviIUAiDipmo3EiYgSQoSdb3XO8”. Read my blog about alpha spammers. Eventually they id every yahoo, gmail, or hotmail account and then begin to attack them to find out the password. Once discovered, they take over the account, lock you out, and all sorts of mischief ensured. When you’re locked out, it becomes nearly impossible to recapture it.

(4) Run all the various anti-malware packages on your machines until you find the culprit. Some times, like XYZXYZXYZ, you find it after only three. Some times, it takes dozens, but it is there. In rare occasions, (2/42), you lose the whole machine and have to do the dreaded “bare metal restore”.

This is an immediate threat to your computing environment. Once the bad guy “discover” your account, you only have days to react to it. (I imagine the bad guys “finding bot” factory discovering accounts, then they turn on the “cracking bot”. Then they turn it over to real people.)

imho,
fjohn

p.s., that why I recommend having one’s own domain. It’s not worth attacking. Too sparss a target. And, probably practices good info sec hygiene.

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May I suggest that you have your own domain? The common wisdom, or is that common whizdumb, is to own your own name as a domain name. I own “reinke.cc”. (I like saying “sea sea me at reinke.cc”! me@reinke.cc will actually work!) I gives one quite a bit of control. And, it’s very cheap. I know three solutions at 15$/year using wordpressdotcom with gmail, 25$/year email only with 1and1, and 60$/year for domain+email+webspace also at 1and1. My point is not that you should use 1and1. http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=9113251 I could care less which one you use. It’s that getting on to your own domain with email is cheap and easy. And, it’s not hotmail, yahoo, or gmail. It IS your own “personal brand”.

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TECHNOLOGY: Yeah, a centuries old stone is technology; it’s a warning

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42688590/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

Tsunami warnings, written in stone, saved some
Sentinels mark previous waves: ‘Do not build your homes below this point!’
Ko Sasaki for The New York Times
A stone tablet in Aneyoshi, Japan, warns residents not to build homes below it.
By MARTIN FACKLER
updated 4/20/2011 5:55:02 PM ET

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ANEYOSHI, Japan — The stone tablet has stood on this forested hillside since before they were born, but the villagers have faithfully obeyed the stark warning carved on its weathered face: “Do not build your homes below this point!”

Residents say this injunction from their ancestors kept their tiny village of 11 households safely out of reach of the deadly tsunami last month that wiped out hundreds of miles of Japanese coast and rose to record heights near here. The waves stopped just 300 feet below the stone, and the village beyond it.

“They knew the horrors of tsunamis, so they erected that stone to warn us,” said Tamishige Kimura, 64, the village leader of Aneyoshi.

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Technology is in the eye of the beholder. These stones were placed for the purpose of warning their descendants.

Now the Japanese government is looking for a 21st Century equivalents.

Seems like those stones were are pretty good equivalents!

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SERVICE: Why the “cloud” is a problem; you have no control

Monday, May 2, 2011

From: apps-noreply@google.com
Date: May 2, 2011 4:00 AM
To: @letters2mychild.com, @gmail.com
Subject: Two week notice: Google Apps accounts will be automatically transitioned

Dear Google Apps administrator,

Google Apps accounts are undergoing an improvement, allowing you to give users access to over 60 additional applications from Google. We encourage you to transition your organization’s accounts on your own schedule now.

   * There are several advantages to transitioning on your own schedule: Make the change on your own timeline

   * Have time to try the new infrastructure with a subset of your accounts first

   * Use automated mailing lists and email templates to pre-notify your users

   * Get access to over 60 additional applications from Google right away

Start the transition today by clicking the “Get started” or “Transition more users” button in your control panel:

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/

We plan to fully transition your organization soon — including all users that you have not yet transitioned yourself. If you have not transitioned by the week of May 16, 2011, we’ll complete the transition for you.

If you have questions about this transition, we encourage you to explore our Help Center documentation for administrators and for end-users.

Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

————-

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps account.

Please don’t reply to this email, as we won’t be able to review your response. You may file a case in your control panel if you need additional help.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

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Suppose now is NOT convenient for me to do all this work or do all this testing!

And, don’t you just love the SPAMMY nature of this email. “Don’t reply” because we don’t care enough to even pretend to listen!

Great marketing message. What genius thought of that?

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SERVICE: GOOGLE APPS FREE is getting “smaller”

Saturday, April 30, 2011

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From: Google Apps Team <apps-noreply@google.com>
Date: April 28, 2011 6:41 PM
To: @reinke.cc
Subject: Update on changes to Google Apps

Hello,

We recently announced upcoming changes to the maximum number of users for Google Apps. We want to let you know that, as a current customer, the changes will not affect you.

As of May 10, any organization that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users. We honor our commitment to all existing customers and will allow you to add more than 10 users to your account for reinkefaceslife.com at no additional charge, based on the limit in place when you joined us.

Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

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It would seem that anyone with a domain should register it with Google Apps to preserve future flexibility.

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TECHNOLOGY: Kindle E-book lending

Friday, April 29, 2011

http://www.macworld.com/article/159351/2011/04/kindle_lending_library.html

Amazon announces the Kindle Lending Library
by Lex Friedman, Macworld.com Apr 20, 2011 10:18 am

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E-book lending, periodicals reading in apps coming to Kindle

Amazon on Wednesday announced that later this year it will launch the Kindle Lending Library, a feature that will allow Kindle customers to borrow books from 11,000 libraries across the United States. The Kindle Lending Library—which Amazon is forming in partnership with digital media distributor OverDrive—will work with all Kindles, and all Kindle apps, including the Mac and iOS editions.

Once the feature launches, customers will be able to borrow Kindle e-books from their local libraries and start reading them instantly. If you check out a Kindle book a second time, or later purchase your own copy from Amazon, you don’t lose any notes and bookmarks you’ve added; they remain linked to your Amazon account. (And, in an advantage over old-school paper-and-binding books, you can make as many notes on your e-copy as you like without mucking up the book for the next person to borrow it.)

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The Gooferment and its “copyright” diktats have and will muddle this technology.

* Copyrights are now a centuries lock on the information. Weren’t patents and copyright supposed to expire and allow the public to benefit? Wasn’t, isn’t, that the only reason for giving an author a monopoly?

* Publishers allow books to go out of print. Disney puts stuff “back in the vault”. And, some copyrights have their ownership lost in time.

* A library, or a person, can “loan” or sell their copy. (The doctrine of “first sale” and all this “software licensing” nonsense.) Why is an ebook different?

* Libraries should be restricted to loaning out a single copy of e-books at a time as they would be with paper books. There shouldn’t be question.

* “Expiration”, like when publisher HarperCollins changed its agreement with OverDrive, dictating that its e-books should “expire” after 26 checkouts. That’s just wrong.

Did I miss anything?

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HARDWARE: Newell Rubbermaid kills CARDSCAN sync and they try and sell me more hardware! I don’t think so.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

http://links.mkt2703.com/servlet/MailView?ms=MzY1NDU1MjES1&r=NTE3MDUxMDQwMgS2&j=OTk5MDgzNzcS1&mt=1&rt=0

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DYMO, a member of the Newell Rubbermaid family of brands.

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You kill the CARDSCAN sync service and then have chutzpah to try and sell me something. Why should I believe ANY promise that you make?

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Why would you trust these people? Ever!

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SERVICE: LULU pushes my content to the Apple iBookstore

Sunday, April 24, 2011
Lulu.com


Publish | Buy | Services

Visit the Lulu Blog

Dear Ferdinand Reinke,

Lulu’s goal is a simple one: help you sell more books. This note is to tell you about an exciting new effort from Lulu to help achieve this goal by ensuring your work is able to reach readers across all devices, starting with the 130 million+ customers who own an iPhone®, iPad®, or iPod touch® and shop at the iBookstore℠. Over the coming weeks, at no charge to you, we’ll be making the title you have for sale on Lulu.com also available as an eBook edition on the iBookstore.

If for any reason you don’t want your book available in the iBookstore, you can opt-out easily. Just send an email to ipad_opt_out@lulu.com with the subjectline Opt-Out of eBook conversion. If you wish to opt-out, please make sure to do so within 5 business days of receiving this message. Otherwise, you don’t have to do anything to have your book included in this program and we think it’s a great idea to join the ranks of Lulu authors who have already sold 60,000 eBooks through the iBookstore.

We cannot guarantee the new eBook formatted version of your book will appear on the iBookstore, but we’re taking measures to ensure a high success rate. Here’s how the process will work:

  1. We’ll begin the process on your behalf by converting “Church 10?19?62” into an ePub formatted eBook – absolutely free.
  2. Next, we’ll submit your newly formatted eBook to Apple and request a listing in the iBookstore. In some cases we may need to make tweaks to your book’s catalog data* in order to meet Apple’s requirements.
  3. We will notify you once your eBook has been accepted by Apple and is available for sale in the iBookstore. At first, your book will be listed in the iBookstore with default pricing.
  4. We’ll place a new eBook project in your My Projects list on Lulu. You’ll then have full control over the project, and can opt-out of iBookstore distribution, change the default price, etc. at any time. Additionally, this ePub file will be available for you to distribute to our expanding list of eBook retail partners.

To learn more about this exciting iBookstore program, visit our knowledge base. Thank you for your continued support of Lulu and our ongoing efforts to help you sell more books.

Best,

Lulu Enterprises, Inc.

*Note: “Tweaks to book catalog data (metadata)” will be minor edits such as correcting capitalization problems. We will, of course, contact you before making any significant changes.
Apple, iPhone, and iPod touch are trademarks or Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. iPad is the trademark of Apple Inc. The iBookstore is a service mark of Apple Inc.
Copyright © 2002-2011 Lulu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This email was sent to ******

Lulu.com | 3101 Hillsborough St. | Raleigh | NC | 27607-5436
Manage your account preferences

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SERVICE: What do you do when the “cloud” is out

Saturday, April 23, 2011

http://trace5.com/fb/fb/0F365CE6ECE11D44AA96CC4B1441D016ECD54962070B0526C755486C0D97C488/show.aspx

201104220848.jpg

The answer: “Not much”.

That’s what’s wrong with a “put everything in the cloud” architecture.

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TECHNOLOGY: McGraw-Hill and ebooks

Thursday, April 21, 2011

http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/64169

McGraw-Hill Create: Customized eBooks for the Classroom
April 14, 2011 12:28
From CNBC:

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The McGraw-Hill Create platform enables instructors to easily customize digital content for their courses, combining their own course-specific materials with a range of other resources. Instructors have instant access to a vast library of McGraw-Hill resources to develop instructional materials adapted specifically to the needs of local markets. At Create’s core is a Google-like search engine functionality that enables professors to immediately pull from a wide range of quality content, including 4,000 McGraw-Hill textbooks, 5,500 articles, 11,000 literature, philosophy and humanities readings, and 25,000 business case studies from prominent providers such as the Harvard Business School

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Perhaps they are feeling the heat, as their “franchise” swirls the bowl? I guess the days of big over-priced textbooks is over and the inet hosted ebooks is just over the horizon. Obviously, this has implications for MC, the faculty, and staff. Not to mention the Library, and the Technology Architecture. Argh! I guess my big concern would be who own’s the copyrights and the “organization of the dikw (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom)”. Maybe I’m a skeptic, but, since “crowd sourcing” is all the rage, perhaps the “customized digital content”, and the organization there of, becomes the property of McGraw-Hill. Then, they turn around and “sell” it as a new “title” to anyone who will buy it? Bet some evil lawyer has billed a lot of hours writing that licensing agreement that will be a quick pop up. Hmmmm?

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SERVICE: Yahoo email hacked … …

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Greetings from XXXXX – Alive and Well in Singapore
Posted by: “XXXXX”

Sat Apr 9, 2011 12:01 am (PDT)

HI Guys, Saturday, April 9th, 2011.

Greetings from Singapore.

I understand that on March 22nd an “Emergency Help!!!” SCAM e-mail was sent in my name to the Manhattan Prep 1964 Yahoo Group.

My apologies if it created any alarm.

However, I am sure that any Prepster who received this e-mail would have realized that the exaggerated emotional tone and piss poor grammar gave it away as a scam…

Here is the background on the scam…

On the evening of March 22nd, someone hacked into my Yahoo/Prodigy Account, hijacked my address book, which contained about 1,400 addresses and then proceeded to send out an “Emergency Help” E-mail asking for money. The hacker even changed my password and set up a forwarding address edward1.coll@yahoo.com to which all my incoming e-mails went so he could try and continue to perpetrate this scam.

Within a few minutes of the scam e-mail being sent, I started receiving phone calls and e-mails from all over the world from people on my contact list enquiring if I was O.K. and whether they should send money to me via a Western Union Office in London .

I told them that this was a big SCAM and to just ignore the e-mail and not even reply as the hacker had arranged to have all the replies forwarded to him. What an operator !!!

It was really frustrating as this hacker also changed my password so I could not initially access my account to see what was going on

I was finally able to get in touch with Yahoo’s Customer Service Department and spent about two hours on the phone with them to get my password reset so I could access the account and cancel out all the forwarding addresses that the hacker had set up.

The worst thing was that he erased my Yahoo Address book and the 1,400 names it contained. Fortunately, I had backed up the address book so I was able to re-import the contacts to my yahoo account.

I hope this matter is settled now. and that no one was duped into sending this hacker any money.

My e-mail address, {Privacy Invoked} should be secure now.

Best regards,

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I’m glad you’re OK. It’s not that we have any fellow alum to spare.
On a technical note, were you able to determine, how the hack was accomplished? I’m interested from an InfoSec pov. The default assumption was that someone kept “knocking on the door” with passwords until it opened. It’s not hard to imagine a bot (software robot) doing that. But, it’s also possible that it was malware on your computer or malware on a site you visited with an old browser.
Interesting?
May I suggest that you, or anyone, have your own domain? The common wisdom, or is that common whizdumb, is to own your own name as a domain name. I own “reinke.cc”. (I like saying “sea sea me at reinke.cc”! me@reinke.cc will actually work!)
I can send you some links to stuff that I’ve posted on my blog “Reinke Faces Life” about how to “do” email to avoid such unpleasantries. It’s neither hard not expensive.
Unfortunately, having a yahoo, gmail, or hotmail account makes you are target for the black hats. Eventually they find everyone who has one of those “free accounts”.
At the very least, one can hide by using a very long random string password. I use twenty characters. Of course, I use tools like roboform, last pass, and even the infamous yellow stickie to remember them.
But I doubt anyone has as many unique ids and passwords as I do. I’m a little nuts about it.
I’m now off to change my Yahoo password to something longer. I’m sure someone is listening.
:-)

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