Another one bites the dust…

T.J. Maxx Hacker Sentenced to 20 years in prisonhttp://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001207-38.html?tag=nl.e703

US Electrical Grid Compromised!

According to a report the United States Electrical Grid is being compromised by Russian, and Chinese attackers. 
This leads me to ask two questions.
1.  Why is our electrical grid on the internet?
This question is ridiculous that I have to ask it.  But at the very least if you are going to put the computers that run […]

Fair Use and the democratization of media

Here is an interesting judgment regarding fair use. 
 There is a continuum of legality for copyright.  Somewhere along the continuum is the ability to use something in a work that you make.  For instance, a 30 second youtube video with a baby dancing to a Prince song.  Somewhere along the line is outright copyright infringement.  For […]

If you only install one patch this year…

I don’t ordinarilly send out these types of things.  (Goes the mantra from your friends who always send you junk.)  It is true, I try not to be reactionary and alarmist.  I try not to rile people up with bug fixes they need to install NOW.  Most bug fixes can wait.  They tend to not be […]

So long, and thanks for all the bugs…

XP is finally leaving us.  It has been end of lifed by Microsoft.  They wanted to put a spike through its head the day Vista came out.  But, the business world wasn’t having it.  To be honest, Vista is still considered junk by businesses.  Maybe it has something to do with mission critical programs not […]

New Years Text Messages Got Delayed

This is something to take a look at, as we start to use cell phones, and email, for more important tasks.  In this story, New Years Eve revelers sent out text messages in large numbers.  These text messages, sent all at once, caused a logjam on the servers and some of the messages were delayed for […]

National Firewall anyone?

Here is yet another reason I think we should have a national firewall.  I think it is absolutely insane that we don’t have a firewall blocking other countries traffic.  We would then be able to block any malicious traffic.  If you look at the spam traffic from other countries, we could cut that out immediately.
I […]

Northeastern sues Google

Google is being sued by Northeastern and a company called Jarg out of Massachusetts.  I actually had heard a bit about Jarg previously.   Kenneth Baclawski was one of my professors at Northeastern.  In fact he was one of the best professors I had when I studied at Northeastern University.  I remember him telling me about Jarg way […]

Google cookies allow attacker to view contacts and emails

This article discusses how an ‘ethical hacker’ Petko Petkov of GNUCitizen was able to break into gmail using the google cookie placed on your computer. 
 Cookies have always been contraversial.  I think cookies are a good thing, but they really need to be used with caution, and your personal info needs to be protected.
 Cross site scripting […]

Michelle Madigan Dateline NBC reporter outed at Defcon!

Michelle Madigan a Dateline NBC Associate Producer was outed at Defcon over the weekend.  The funny part was they knew she was coming, and outed her before she even stepped foot on the plane.  They knew when her plane was taking off and when she would arrive.  She was violating the rules of the show […]