How VeriSign Could Stop Drive-By Downloads

I found this story by way of Slashdot this morning. I try not to post just every old thing on Slashdot, but this one is too interesting not to highlight on our blog.

Evidently there are several parts of VeriSign's own contracts that Verisign is ignoring in issuing or not revoking certificates that allow drive-by downloads. If you or anyone you know has been a victim of a drive-by download (and isn't that just about everyone?), this should be of interest to you.

Read the article and see what you think. "After reading it, I think VeriSign could help with this problem by enforcing it's existing contracts if it had the will. I would really enjoy reading Versign's response, if any to this article.

I like to be fair and their are two sides to every story. Does Verisign have a credible reason for not doing something about this? Or have they tried and failed? If so why? So many questions...

A Good Overview of Quantum Cryptography

Canada.com has a nice, lightweight, overview of the burgeoning field of quantum cryptography. It's a good read, easily grasped by the less technically oriented among us.

Jack

Dual core Intel desktops this spring!

The Extreme Edition chip will support dual cores, each with Hyperthreading -- it will look like a 4-way to the operating system. Will come with the 955 Genwood chipset.

The "regular" P4 variation on Prescott will not be HT. Comes with the 945 Smithfield.

My guess is throughput on the EE chip at 3.8 GHz will be ~40-50% better than today's uniprocessor EE @ 3.8 GHz on some multiprocessing applications...but your milage will vary.

Expect mass-market consumer machines based on this new technology on a limited basis in June, and in volume for the back-to-school season starting in July.

Peter S. Kastner

OCPodcast

This is the On Computers podcast for 02-13-2005. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.

Dell Reports (Ho Hum) Another Stellar Quarter

-Revenue of $49.2 billion, up 19%
-Operating income of $4.3 billion, up 20%
-Pro forma EPS of $1.291, up 28%; Reported EPS of $1.18
-Cash Flow from Operations of $5.3 billion, up 45%
-Repurchased nearly 120 million shares for $4.2 billion
-Sold 5.2 million printers; $1.3 billion in printing and imaging
revenue

Dell is Not Just a PC Company

+Enterprise revenue run-rate of $8.5 billion
– Grew servers 40% faster than the market FY05
– Total storage revenues up 180% since FY02
+Enhanced services revenue run-rate of $4 billion
– Enhanced services growth of roughly 40% for past three years
+S&P revenue run-rate of nearly $8 billion
– In FY05, sold over 5.2 million printers; $1.3 billion in imaging revenue
+Mobility revenue run-rate of nearly $12 billion
+Non-US revenues have increased almost 60% over the past two years
+Non-PC businesses are over 60% of revenues

These guys just run like the Energizer Bunny. No end in sight. Turmoil at HP and inability of IBM to close the Lenovo PC deal work to Dell's advantage.

Peter. S. Kastner

I Missed the Show Because of Telephone Problems

Everybody loves to complain about the phone company except us. Well, until recently, that is. SBC has been a wonderful provider for us for years. Lately, though, they've made us frustrated and mad at times, with unexplained charges and (if not outright deceptive) less than forthright sales pitches.

And today my phone died in the hour preceeding the show. What a drag! We'll get it fixed and I'll be back next week.

Jack

Microsoft Posts Major Security Fixes

It's that time of the month again. Windows users should definitely go to the web for the latest security patches -- including 7 critical-level patches.

Peter S. Kastner

Dell's new desktops sport BTX chassis

Very quietly and with amazingly little notice, a new motherboard design/case form factor architecture is ramping up. Today's desktops are all of the ATX generation -- CPU is right-of-center on the motherboard. But today's hot-as-the-sun processors, graphics cards, and all the other stuff we cram into a case have overshot the ability of component engineers to deal with case thermal and noise issues. BTX is an industry standard which will, over the next several years, replace the old ATX kit. Not surprisingly, this will not happen over night for the obvious reason that literally entire factories will have to be re-tooled, as in, for example, cases.

Big changes:

• CPU goes to the front of the chassis, closest to the fresh, cool intake air. A dedicated plastic shroud will be commonplace for the CPU air.
• Better front-to-back air flow paths will minimize areas with poor air flow
• Larger but slower fan(s) with demand-driven variable fan speeds
• Potential for smaller cases, even with top-of-the-line (e.g., hottest) processors

Dell joins Gateway in delivering BTX. Dell's huge volume for corporate desktops will accelerate the shift to more, and cheaper, BTX parts. However, it will be next year before build-your-own hobbyists see BTX case and motherboard choices and prices which surpass the mature -- OK, commodity -- ATX parts market.

Peter S. Kastner

Oops, my bad.

I just plain old didn't realize it until Joanne pointed it out last evening. (thanks Joanne!) . I have posted stories here that were published on subscription only sites. I know that many of you are put off by subscription sites and you will not read an article rather than give them your personal info.

There is a solution to the problem. Of course you could always subscribe. Before I knew there was a another way I did subscribe with almost real information though I always enjoy posing as a 90 year old man (figuring that 90 year olds are not an attractive demographic group to advertisers) just to throw the whole subscription thing off a bit. I have free, online subscriptions to the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and Chicago Tribune. However I don't even bother with them if I don't have to. Instead I use a handy little tool called Bugmenot.

So go the Bugmenot web site, and read all about it. Decide whether you'd rather give a newspaper your personal information so that they can target ads or whatever else they want, or if you would rather use Bugmenot. Some people have a moral problem with evading subscription. I don't have a problem with it for the reasons outlined here.

BTW, I have no problem with what sites like Salon do -- ask you to watch an "ultramercial" (several screens of info with a multi-part ad for a sponsor) and get a day pass to their premium content. That is a fair trade to me, and extremely above board. In fact I actually make an effort to read the ad because I believe it is fair to both publisher and reader. There is no user identifiable registration or subscription involved, and no usernames or passwords to remember.

In the meantime, I'll try not to link to subscription sites, if I can find a non-subscription alternative for the same article. Or if it is truly subscription only, I'll try to post a warning on my article.

What a week I have had! :(

Boy did I have a week! I told you about last week (or was that the week before?) I borrowed some parts out of the computer I used for my encoder (Broadcast computer). I borrowed the RAM and CPU for a customer's computer. He was a programmer and needed his computer. When the new parts came in I went out to his house and swapped the new parts for my parts.

When I installed them back into the computer they came out of, it wouldn't POST! I was Tweaked! I remember when this computer was new last it did the same thing and I had Fry's test the RAM, the MoBo and the CPU, all were OK. All of a sudden the computer started to boot. And ran fine with reboot after reboot.

I was tired of messing with this Cheap ECS Mobo, so I ordered a new Mobo from NewEgg. I ordered an AlbaTron KX600S. It's a very nice Mobo, I have the last version in this computer.

My Problem was it comes with Sata and onboard RAID, and I was not planning on using them now, I'm being cheap and using the two 80GB ATA100 harddrives in the box already.

First I tried to do a repair installation of WindowsXP Pro and it didn't work. OK, This was the encoder computer it didn't have a lot I couldn't live without. So I did a full format and reinstall! Or so I though, Because of the onboard Sata/RAID you have to press F6 to install the drivers before you can install WindowsXP. The problem was it only wanted a floppy. I moved the file I though it wanted to a floppy, but it was an .exe and it couldn't work with that, I guess it need another file format.

I stopped at this point and went to add another GB of RAM to the computer that started all of this.

Problem number 2! :(

I inserted the RAM and when I turned the computer on I got a long beep Yahoo! Then another long Beep, and then a few seconds later another. :(

Monday I am calling NewEgg and will talk to their tech support and see if I can RMA the Mobo and get a new one. (I sure hope I don't have to buy this guy a new Mobo. That would sux since I didn't charge him any labor for this RUSH upgrade. He is a friend and when he placed an ad in the yellow pages last year the Telco screwed up and put him under computer repair, so any calls he received he turned over to me.

The GOOD NEWS is: I got the laptop Encoder back from Best Buy, they only had it for 5 days less than a month this time. (Last time they missed having it for a full month by 1 day.) They replaced the Mobo, I bet the Harddrive they replaced in November was good.

This sure turned out to be a mouth full. Talk to ya live on Sunday.

While writing this BLOG I have been on hold with my wireless ISP, (my download speed is max 133KB/ps tonight) So far I have been on hold listening to the same song on hold for 1 hour and 50 minutes. How long should I stay on hold?

Tune in to find out.

Joe Polinsky AKA AlaskaJoe

Security | News.blog | CNET News.com

This is a potpourri of security related information from Cnet. Some of it you may have heard before, some not. But if hearing any of it saves anyone some grief down the line, it is worth reading.

SCO's Hometown of Lindon, Utah, Declares Emergency

Okay; This is humor, folks, so don't email me about the facts. I just saw this and thought everyone else deserves a look at it, too. As with all decent satire, there is more than a grain of truth in it. Enjoy

Jack

Broken Links Lined With Gold for Paxfire

Here's a story that I missed almost 2 weeks ago, but it is good enough to go back to today. Remember when Verisign/Network Solutions tried to redirect any non-existent domain to its niftly little search and pay-per-click ad page? Well here is a company who is trying to sell the same thing to ISPs at the ISP level.

If my ISP discounted my service for having to put up with this nonsense I might consider it. But if I'm paying them for the privilege and get nothing but annoyance, it certainly would be time for me to find another ISP that doesn't subject me to that kind of garbage.

I really get tired of my eyeballs being a commodity for someone else to make money from.

Patch now against virus-writing clowns

Another antiivirus company with a big flaw problem. This time it is the F-secure folks with the problem. Does this stuff just feel like a never ending battle?

I haven't even posted all of them I've seen this week. There is even a trojan out there that is targeting the MS Antispyware Beta. I guess I didn't mention it because it is a beta and frankly, we've had a lot of news on the MS front this week, so I really was trying to lay of off of them just a bit because this was a deliberate attack against a beta version. Other than that, many of the reports about MS Antispy have been like this one: Microsoft's Free AntiSpyware Beta. In other words: good.

Sender Authentication Widely Used To Fool Spam Defenses

Did you think that SPF and Sender ID would stem the flow of spewage into your e-mailbox? Seems it is about as effective as a DMA friendly CAN-SPAM law. Personally I have always bought into the idea that the spammers would use the very authentication tools designed to stop them to authenticate the spam, thereby letting it breeze by any defenses the hapless end user has put in place.

Personally I have found a combination of checking e-mail against both personal and community blacklists (I find SpamCop pretty effective) and Bayesian filters to be about 98% effective. I have to hand sort the rest of it. I have very, very few false positives -- so few that it is really not an issue. Also I use an anti-spam client which will allows me to restore an e-mail deleted by mistake.

There is only one way to stop spam and that is if nobody buys anything from spam, or nobody falls for phishing. That's not going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

HP's Software Strangles Worms

This is a very cool idea. Basically if "Virus Throttle" suspects malicious code, it stops the computer from making connections and notifies the admin.

Sadly this is only available for certain HP products, but then again, the good news is that this is available for certain HP products. It will be intersting to see if this kind of thing is implemented for other systems. I suppose that depends on whether it is patented, what the license terms are, and all that other good legal IP stuff.

Microsoft to Make MSN Messenger Fixes Mandatory

This is just a heads up for users of MSN Messenger.

Hands off our Wi-Fi network!

It is to nice to see this problem illuminated.

Yahoo Releases Toolbar Beta For Firefox

As Firefox picks up steam I believe that we will be seeing more and more familiar tools being offered in Firefox versions. In my opinion, it is this sort of support from third parties which will make moving away from Internet Explorer ever easier.

Does this mean that I think that folks who love Internet Explorer don't have a right to their choice? Not at all, though the security issues surrounding ActiveX still concern me. However, the most important thing for me is that we all have more than 1 viable choice of browser on the Windows Platform. To that end, I'm cheering -- Go Firefox!

Symantec flaw leaves opening for viruses

Speaking of security, if you are running any Symantec (Norton) security products you need to make sure that they are patched. Not much for me to say. Patch first, then read the article.