News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
In a post-9/11 world, attempting to hijack a plane, for any reason, is not the most intelligent thing to do. Yet six men did just that on a flight in China. They were overcome by the passengers and crew, with two of the hijackers later dying from their injuries. (Note that there is some disagreement about whether or not this was an actual hijack attempt.)
Link: http://www.foxnews.com/…
(via The Daily Caller)
The DNSChanger trojan infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide and changed their DNS server settings to point to rogue servers. (Your DNS setting tells your computer where to go to look up a URL such as www.chadsnews.com. Without one, you’re effectively shut off from the Internet.) The FBI shut down the source of the malware but realized that turning off those rogue servers would have severe effects for those who were infected—they would lose Internet access. So as a stopgap measure, the FBI set up real DNS servers to replace the malicious ones. This Monday (July 9th), however, the FBI is going to permanently turn off those servers.
The FBI has a webpage with instructions on how to determine if your computer is infected. I suggest taking a few minutes now to verify that your DNS is okay. If you’re infected, and even if you’re not, this might be a good time to consider using OpenDNS as your DNS provider.
Link #1 (PDF): http://www.fbi.gov/…
Link #2: http://www.kvue.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
I remember having to deal with leap seconds from my time in the military when I worked with satellites, but I never thought they’d affect down-to-earth things like websites. Yet that’s exactly what happened when an extra second was inserted at midnight on the evening of June 30th. Linux and Java didn’t handle the transition very well, causing affected systems to hang and thrash. As a result, several major websites went down briefly. Google, being on top of things like this, had its own plan for dealing with the leap second: the leap smear.
Link #1: http://www.wired.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Link #2: http://arstechnica.com/…
Here at Chad’s News, we have an entire category devoted to stupid criminals, but here’s an example of people just begging to be stolen from, primarily because of their inexperience with debit/credit card security. These people (mostly teenagers) have been posting pictures of their debit cards to social media sites, giving criminals everything they need to use the cards fraudulently. An unknown person, in an apparent effort to draw attention to the problem, has created a Twitter feed, @NeedADebitCard, that re-tweets such pictures.
Link: http://www.securityweek.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
If you’ve ever tried to change an icon under Windows (for a folder or shortcut, for example), the icon selection dialog defaults to the shell32.dll file. Admittedly, shell32.dll contains a lot of good icons, but sometimes you just need a better selection. Here’s a list of 17 Windows 7 files that contain an additional 1200+ icons (note: I imagine many of these are valid for other versions of Windows):
C:\Windows\explorer.exeC:\Windows\System32\accessibilitycpl.dllC:\Windows\System32\ddores.dllC:\Windows\System32\gameux.dllC:\Windows\System32\imageres.dllC:\Windows\System32\moricons.dllC:\Windows\System32\mmcndmgr.dllC:\Windows\System32\mmres.dllC:\Windows\System32\netcenter.dllC:\Windows\System32\netshell.dllC:\Windows\System32\networkexplorer.dllC:\Windows\System32\pifmgr.dllC:\Windows\System32\pnidui.dllC:\Windows\System32\sensorscpl.dllC:\Windows\System32\setupapi.dllC:\Windows\System32\wmploc.dllC:\Windows\System32\wpdshext.dll
Sealand is a decommissioned anti-aircraft platform seven miles off the English coast. The occupants have declared it to be a sovereign nation, but it’s not recognized as such, and the UK government has just decided to ignore them. Back in the year 2000, a company named HavenCo installed computer servers in Sealand, making it the ultimate data haven, unfettered by governments, laws, or regulations. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. The linked article has the full story.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
A new incarnation of an old virus is making the rounds, but this one has a strange feature. It prints pages and pages of garbage to your printer, and has already wasted thousands of pages for businesses that have been infected. According to the security experts who dissected the virus, the printing appears to be an unintentional side effect.
Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/…
(via Kim Komando)
Back in the ’80s and ’90s, American Airlines sold passes that allow an unlimited amount of first class travel for the owner and a companion. Priced at about $350,000 originally, the people who bought them have never regretted the decision—although that’s not the case for American. They’re losing millions of dollars on these passes and are looking for any way to cancel them.
Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via Neatorama)
After a certain battle during the American Civil War, some soldiers discovered that their wounds were glowing in the dark. And these men were more likely to recover from their injuries. Modern researchers have concluded that the culprit was a bioluminescent bacteria named Photorhabdus luminescens. And one of the things that P. luminescens does is release a toxin that kills other, competing bacteria—thus acting as a primitive antibacterial.
The Pwn Plug (for those who aren’t familiar with the term “pwn”, here’s a definition) is a miniature computer about the size of a large AC adapter. You plug it into the wall and connect it to a network. It will attempt to hack into the network and then communicate with you, giving you access to the compromised network. A great tool for illegal hacking activities, you might think, but they actually sell quite a few to corporations that use them for in-house penetration testing and remote network management.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
The linked article explains how to erase personal data from a computer while still keeping the Windows operating system intact. This is useful, for example, when you’re giving an older computer to a friend or family member.
Link: http://www.komando.com/…
So you’ve got something on your computer that you don’t want anyone else to see. To this effect, you’ve encrypted the hard drive. But then you’re put into a situation where an official requires that you unlock the computer so they can inspect the contents (this could happen at a border crossing, for example). That’s where Plausible Deniability comes into play. It’s a feature of TrueCrypt, where you have two hidden encrypted volumes on the same disk partition, and the password you enter determines which one you actually see. So you enter the decoy password, and it unlocks the decoy partition which contains no sensitive files. The other hidden partition appears to be empty space containing nothing but random data. Note that this probably won’t prevent a computer forensics expert from realizing that you have a hidden partition, but the casual observer will probably be fooled.
Link: http://www.truecrypt.org/…
(via TechRepublic)
