Most modern day internet users have never heard of an IRC channel but the best way to describe it in relation to todays myspace,facebook and twitter sites is to say that IRC is CB radio and twtter is an Iphone in comparison. sure both CB radios are still used and IRC is still used as well by ever diminishing groups of people.  As technology marches on it’s easy to choose to move to a newer, faster, better? equipment or software but if there is a learning curve is the loss of productivity always worth it. it depends. look at this recent discovery out of some research into an unrelated botnet . turns out that the bot herder was actually using twitter as a means of sending commands to  download updates to infected computers. I’m sure there are others doing something like this and I’m sure it will be an interesting fight for Twitter to keep on top of the many facets of running such a flexible platform and still keep it from becoming a victim much like our old friend the IRC. you almost forgot about that didn’t you. well it’s alive in all 4 corners of the World Wide Web. it’s just go t a PR problem. it’s a lightweight fast, non-centralized means of communicating that works great if you are in a game with friends and don’t want aim,or msn, or one of the other big brother apps running on your pc.  like The recent case on twitter it can also be used for not so nice things.  I’ll leave it at that lest anyone get some ideas. bot control is already pretty well documented out there. so I don’t need to say much about it. besides a little bit of developer work on the problem and it’s less attractive to future crackers who would want to exploit twitter in the future.

I’m not suggesting that this Twitter  case is going to lead to problems for twitter as they seem like smart guys and are adapting to all the things that have been happening with such an open platform. so I give them kudos for that.  in the meantime get those discount codes on twitter or see what Ashton Kucher is up to… I sure hope so!

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Here’s something you might not have ever thought before. There is no such thing as anonymity online.Prove it? OK.
Do you ever notice how web sites present different ads when you log on from different computers? Recently, While traveling it became obvious just how much information can be gathered by advertisers from simply where you log on from. Are you Familiar with IP addresses? If not take a seat while I explain how the internet is in no way as anonymous as you thought it was.
I could take a long time to explain how routers work and peering agreements but I’m only going to say this one thing. your data has an address that everyone on the internet can see. it’s not some kind of temporary type of thing either this stuff gets logged and can be reported months, even years later. In fact some countries right now are requiring this data be collected and maintained for years. So how does knowing this now help me? well for one thing there are tools out there that one can use to hide their IP. (Disclaimer time:I am in no way encouraging you to use this information to break the law or do anything that is or could be considered a crime. ) this can come in handy if you are in a location that disallows specific sites for instance in a country that has a State controlled Internet connection and you can’t get to http://www.wwtdd.com because it’s blocked. these kinds of tools will not only hide your originating IP address but in many cases will allow you to bypass these places restricted sites list. there are a number of good products on the market, there are also free sites set up out there but you should NEVER use them to do anything involving sensitive information as there are many free so call proxies out there that are not secure or even worse actively capturing data of anyone who uses the service. A better move is to go with a proven product such as the one that hide-my-ip provides.

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It’s patch time again from Microsoft.

I’m not delusional–I  know that the majority of the public runs Microsoft Windows.These updates are necessary and over the past several years Microsoft has made installing them so easy, that if you set your computer up with the auto-Update turned on you’ll get them and they install without any user intervention.  The only trouble I’ve seen is when you are working on a file and leave it open overnight you might find your computer has rebooted when you come in the next morning to the login screen when you expected it to be locked ( you do lock your machine at night, Right?)

So what is broken now and why do I need these Patches?

There are a few potentially dangaerous bugs that have been found this month,  of the 8 updates 5 can lead to remote execution of code where a cleverly crafted web page or downloaded file can give a Malicious user the ability to install any number of programs on your machine that could capture data or other nasty surprises. the other 3 are related to denial of service and permission escalation.  basically make it so yoru internet and other applications that depend on the network will no longer work and make it possible to obtain more access to the computer than the administrator intended.  One of the themes repeated in several of these items was that running as a non Admin user on your computer. could prevent the desired effect of the malicious software. Windows Vista has technology which requires a user to actually allow resources to access the system at the admin level which can be annoying but much better than a keylogger or other rogue program stealing your banking information wouldn’t you agree?

Windows XP does not have them same capability installed and as such these patches are Vital to its security.

For more info www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms09-apr.mspx

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(added March 23, 2009) A full-content feed is available at http://www.us-cert.gov/current/index.atom

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Browsers bashed first in hacking contest

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