loose wire blog

KL’s Airport Gets Infected

If there’s one place you hope you won’t get infected by a computer virus, it’s an airport.

It’s not just that the virus may fiddle with your departure times; it’s the wider possibility that the virus may have infected more sensitive parts of the airport: ticketing, say, or—heaven forbid—flight control.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport—Malaysia’s main international airport—was on Friday infected by the W32.Downadup worm, which exploits a vulnerability in Windows Microsoft patched back in October. The worm, according to Symantec, does a number of things, creating an http server on the compromised computer, deletes restore points, downloads other file and then starts spreading itself to other computers.

Enlargement of the photo above. The notification says Symantec Antivirus has found the worm, but has not been able to clean or quarantine the file.

KL airport clearly isn’t keeping a tight rein on its security. The virus alert pictured above is at least 12 hours old and the vulnerability it exploits had been patched up a month before. Says Graham Cluley of UK-based security software company Sophos: “What's disturbing to me is that over a month later, the airport hasn't applied what was declared to be an extremely critical patch, and one which is being exploited by malware in the wild.”

What’s more worrying is that this isn’t the first time. It’s the first time I’ve noticed an infection on their departures/arrivals board, but one traveller spotted something similar a year and a half ago, with a Symantec Antivirus message popping up on one of the monitors. I saw a Symantec Antivirus message on one monitor that said it had “encountered a problem and needs to close”, suggesting that the worm had succeeded in disabling the airport’s own antivirus defences:

So how serious is all this? Cluely says: “Well, it's obviously a nuisance to many people, and maybe could cause some disruption.. but I think this is just the most "visible" sign of what may be a more widespread infection inside the airport.  I would be more concerned if ticketing and other computer systems were affected by the same attack.”

He points to computer viruses affecting other airports in recent years: In 2003, Continental Airlines checkin desks were knocked out by the Slammer worm. A year later, Sasser was blamed for leaving 300,000 Australian commuters stranded, and BA flights were also delayed.

For me, the bottom line about airports and air travel is confidence. As a traveler I need to feel confident that the people deciding which planes I fly and when are on top of basic security issues. And that doesn’t mean just frisking me at the gate. It also means keeping the computer systems that run the airport safe. This is probably just sloppy computer habits but what if it wasn’t? What if it was a worm preparing for a much more targeted threat, aimed specifically at air traffic?

(I’ve asked KL International Airport and Symantec for comment.)

Obese Texters, Back to the Future, and Scams

I make an appearance on the excellent Breakfast Club show on Radio Australia each Friday at about 01:15 GMT and some listeners have asked me post links to the stuff I talk about, so here they are.

Texting reduces obesity

If your kids are getting a little overweight, then treat them to a bit of texting. But it’s not quite how it sounds (I thought it might be something to do with the aerobic workout you get from the thumb twiddling.) No, a study by the University of North Carolina suggests that if obese kids are encouraged to keep a record of their eating habits via SMS, they are more likely to adhere to the health regimen—less TV, more exerices, less Coke—than those who just wrote down the same information. (Attrition rate was 28% against 61% for the paper diary kids and 50% for the control group.)

Part of this may be down to the fact that the kids get instant feedback via SMS on their results. So actually this is more about the interactivity of health regimes rather than the physical benefits of cellphones or texting. (Actually this whole SMS for health thing is quite a meme. Check out this conference here.)

The miracles of life in 2000—as seen from 1950

Popular Mechanics of February 1950 predicted a number of things, some of which have come true, some of which haven’t, and some of which should, if we got our act together.

What they got right

• Highways broad without any curves
• Doubledecked highways
• soup and milk come in frozen bricks (but thought that cooking would be a thing of the past)
• TV connected to the phone; but would buy stuff over the TV with store clerks holding the goods up obligingly for customers to inspect…
• robots in factories, but controlled by punch cards
• air travel would be frequent, but expensive because of jet fuel; rocket plane fare from Chicago to Paris would cost $5000

What they got wrong

• Heart of the town is the airport
• Clean as a whistle and quiet
• Crime to burn raw coal
• Illumnitated by electric suns on 200 ft high towers
• A house would cost only $5000 to build
• Houses don’t last more than 25 years
• Wash using chemicals that shave as well.
• Dishes dissolves in superheated water, so no washing machines
• Plastics derived from cottonseed hulls, Jerusalem artichocks and and fruit pips
• Clean the house by turning a hose on it; everything is synthetic fabric of waterproof plastic; drain in the middle of the floor
• worried by mass starvation, scientists came up with food from sawdust, table linen and rayon underwear converted into sweets
• ‘calculators’ would predict the weather
• storms diverted
• no one would have gone to the moon—yet…

What I wish they’d gotten right

• Used underwear recyled into candy

Scam lady

Janella Spears, nursing administrator in a place called Sweet Home, Oregon, who practices CPR and is a reverend, has given $400,000 to scammers. She got letters from President Bush, the president of Nigeria and FBI director Robert Mueller. Wiped out husband’s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took out a lien on the family car. Everyone told her to stop but she didn’t.

This is the problem with scams; it’s very hard to accept you’ve been scammed, and so perversely it’s easier to continuing giving money in the belief that it will all come good.

Pocket Keys

A team at UCal San Diego have come up with software, called Sneakey, that can take a picture of a key and convert it to a bitting code, which is enough for a locksmith to make a new key:

1. The user provides point locations on the target key with a reference key as a guide.
2. The system warps the target image into the pose of the reference key and overlays markings of where the bite codes are to be found.
3. The user specifies where the cut falls along each line and the bit depths are decoded by the system into a bitting code.

In one experiment, the Sneakey team installed a camera on their four story department building (77 feet above the ground) at an acute angle to a key sitting on a café table 195 feet away. The image captured (below) was correctly decoded.

They’ve not released the software but say it would be pretty easy to put together.

Death of a ‘Toughbook’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(update: after two days of nothing, the device is now booting again and Panasonic have offered to take a closer look at it and tell me what happened.)

My faith in my Panasonic Toughbook took a bath today when a waitress poured coffee all over it (and me.) It’s that absurd thing that waiters do of having to put coffee and food down right next to you when you’re clearly in the middle of a key discussion/interview/meeting/nap. It was bound to happen.

Still, I held out hope the Toughbook would be up to it. After all, the videos show guys doing stuff to their Toughbook we wouldn’t do to our partners (unless they asked us to.) I splashed the coffee off under a tap, knowing the damage coffee can wreak. To no avail: within minutes the screen went blank and the thing died.

Now I know why they call them ‘drop- and spill- resistant”. If it’s a spill, you might be ok, so long as it’s purified water. And “resistant”? It resists it, like Niles would Maris.

I bought a new one and am charging the hotel for it; they’ve agreed but I’ll send the lawyers home when I see the money. I happen to have a recording of the point when the coffee is spilt. It goes something like this:

Interviewee: in a fast growth  economy like India. Bangladesh, meanwhile.. [sound of crockery slipping, liquid spilling] oo shit!

Flaks (in chorus): oh no!

Me: (bizarrely quietly) Interesting…

Flaks (in chorus): oh dear!

Me: (still bizarrely quietly) OK…

[Sound of waitress disemboweling self with sugar spoon]

Lessons from all this?

• Don’t order coffee in five star hotel lobbies when you’ve got a laptop in the area.
• Don’t believe any waterproof claims from laptop manufacturers. Turns out that spillage only applies to the keyboard. You can see the waitress managed to get the latte everywhere except the keyboard.
• Don’t settle for less from those responsible than full replacement immediately. I made it clear to the phalanx of hotel management that they would face serious claims if I did not check and rehouse the hard drive as quickly as possible and that meant buying a replacement computer immediately (it helped I was down the road from the place I bought it at the time. Singapore is like that.) It’s not about the computer: it’s really about the data, but it’s also about your day. You’re a working stiff and you don’t deserve to sit on your hands while they try to wriggle out of a full refund.
• Back up your data regularly. I was lucky; the hard drive was safe. But I bet a lot wouldn’t be.

This, by the way, is what Panasonic say at the bottom of the page on spillage:

Furthermore, if you spill coffee, soft drinks, or similar liquids on the computer, the keyboard or other parts of the unit may become stained. Sugar and other substances may also cause corrosion, so liquids other than water are more problematic. Deal with such spills in the same way as directed for water and then have the unit checked.

Be aware that the spill resistance of these products in no way guarantees that liquids will not harm them or cause breakdowns.

del.icio.us Tags: toughbook,panasonic,coffee,failure,hotels

The Limits of the Cloud

Microsoft’s FolderShare, a folder synchronizing tool that I’ve recommended in previous columns, is going off the air for up to three days in the middle of the week “for server upgrades”:

FolderShare will be offline for a little while (48-72 hours) next week for some server upgrades.

• The outage begins Tuesday, June 17, at 6 PM Pacific Times (UTC-7).
• We hope to be back online by 6 PM Friday at the latest.

I share some of the disbelief of commenters to the blog post and ZDNet’s Michael Krigsman:

Users are attracted to services such as FolderShare for two reasons: useful features and the promise of always-on reliability. Remove reliability from the equation and the service’s value plummets.

(Zoliblog also points to some odd, unexplained changes in the way FolderShare works, whereby the index of files you’re syncing between two computers appears to now be stored on Microsoft’s servers. Whether this is important remains to be seen.)

The bigger point is this: If we are genuinely going to shift computing to the cloud—move our stuff online, think in terms of being able to compute from anywhere, anytime—then we need to have reliable access to our files and accounts.

That Microsoft, of all people, can switch off such access for up to three days in the middle of the week highlights the inadequacies of that thinking. In the longer run it may be that we are in error for considering relying on cloud computing, and Microsoft, for access to our stuff.

(The arguments that it’s free, and in beta, don’t wash. Imagine if Google took Gmail or Google Docs down for three days: beta no longer means broken, at least not for the majority of a working week.)

Windows Live FolderShare Team Blog: Planned system outage starting June 17

del.icio.us Tags: windows live,microsoft,backup,foldershare,cloud computing,online backup,synchronization,downtime,failure

Bluetooth Tracking

Research from Purdue University shows that Bluetooth would be a very good way to track travel time. Bluetooth devices give off unique IDs which could be used to measure speed and movement of pedestrians and vehicles.

But why stop there? Wouldn't it be possible to track people via their Bluetooth signal, if you knew one of their device IDs? Anyway, here's the abstract (thanks, Roland.)

Travel time is one of the most intuitive and widely understood performance measures. However, it is also one of the most difficult performance measures to accurately estimate. Toll tag tracking has demonstrated the utility of tracking electronic fingerprints to estimate link travel time. However, these devices have a small penetration outside of areas served by toll facilities, and the proprietary tag reading equipment is not widely available. This paper reports on tracking of a wide variety of consumer electronics that already contain unique digital fingerprints.

Method uses 'Bluetooth' to track travel time for vehicles, pedestrians

The Alarm Clock is Dead, Long Live the Cellphone

Gadgets, like software and services, often end up being used in ways the creator didn't intend. But how many companies make the most of this opportunity?

Take the cellphone. More than a third of Brits use their mobile phone as an alarm clock, according to a survey by British hotel chain Travelodge (thanks textually.org):

Budget hotel chain Travelodge quizzed 3,000 respondents on waking up habits and 71% of UK adults claimed that alarm clocks are now obsolete. The faithful bedside companion has been cast off in favour of the modern must-have, a mobile phone. Sixteen million Brits (36%) now prefer using the latest ring tone to rouse them from sleep rather than the shrill bleeping of an alarm clock.

Why? The article doesn't say, but the answers are pretty obvious:

• Who wants to take an extra device with you when you travel?
• Ever come across an alarm clock with a dozen different ring tones?
• Ever tried to program an alarm clock you're not familiar with?
• Ever tried to rely on wake up services?
• Most alarm clocks are badly designed.

This might even reveal itself in the Alarm Clock Law: if another device can handle the task of a dumber gadget, it will replace it. So does that mean that the alarm clock is dead?

Not exactly. The alarm clock performs a single function: wake the person up. But that has turned out not to be as easy as it looks. While the design of most alarm clocks have been outsourced to the brain-dead, other designers have recognised the potential of alarm clocks that don't merely wake up the owner, but keep them awake long enough to get up.

This list, for example, illustrates the thriving world of alarm clock design (think Clocky, that has wheels and has wheels and . And in this post about Seth Godin last September there was a bunch of responses suggesting that in fact alarm clock designers have tried to add features to make the alarm clock relevant. As one of the commenters pointed out, the problem is that we're just not ready to pay more for those features because alarm clocks have become a commodity.

I suspect it's a bit more complicated than this. There may be other factors:

• the decline of radio, and therefore the decline of alarm-clock-radios (34% of respondents wake up to the radio in the Travelodge survey);
• We travel more and carry more gadgets with us, so something had to stay behind;
• As home alarm clocks became more sophisticated (music, radio, mains-powered) so we were less likely to take them on the road with us;
• Then there's security: I know I stopped bringing an old-style ticking alarm clock with me because it made airport security professionals nervous.

Perhaps most important, we have developed a comfort level with our cellphone's inner workings, and few of us would like to entrust a morning alarm to something or someone we don't know.

Cellphone manufacturers, to their credit, seem to have acknowledged this new role: I tried to find the alarm function on a Nokia 6120 and did so in five seconds. I bet it would take me longer on any digital alarm clock. The process is quick and painless, and a little bell logo on the home screen reassuringly indicates it's set. The alarm itself is cute and starts out unobtrusively but then gets louder until you're up and about.

Or, more ominously, have thrown the phone across the room where it now sits in pieces. Maybe there is something to be said for keeping the alarm clock separate.

del.icio.us Tags: alarm clock,design,travel,sleep

Dark Age Messengers

Maybe I'm missing something, of I've been taken in by those TV ads of guys walking across stepping stones made out of frogmens' skulls, but I expect the big couriers to be somewhat snappier and higher-tech these days. Not based on today's experience:

• Call their hotline to get a guy in either Mexico or the Philippines (based on accent, and he wasn't saying) who scolded me for giving the second line of the address first, and then refused to accept the package as documents when I told him it was a book (it's actually a pile of edited pages, so I guess it could be either.) Stoopid that I am, I didn't realise the huge difference (commercial invoice in triplicate and duties for one, nothing for the other) and should have said "documents" when he asked me. So that session was a bust.
• My colleague, the recipient and courier account holder tried the other end, and we got somewhere, though both of us still had to give the details twice, including something called a "control number" (I've just been watching Terry Gilliams's Brazil so I'm on the lookout for things like this) to "smoothen things out".
• Of course when the guy came there were no documents, no smoothing things out, so we had to do everything by hand. All nine sections. Good luck to whoever has to decipher my atrocious handwriting. We'll be lucky if the package makes it before Christmas.

So, questions:

What happened to those handheld computers that couriers were using a few years ago to do all this? Wouldn't it be easier? Just type out the details or input them from Central Service -- the guy with the van already has my address, presumably, unless he just drove around knocking on everyone's doors, and as the recipient is the one being billed, presumably all they need is his account number for all those details to pop into the appropriate fields.

And then don't get me started on the whole "give-me-your-details-over-the-phone-and-can-you-spell-your-name-again-is-it-German-no-it's-not-it's-English-like-Shakespeare" (not that I have anything against German names) thing. Why can't we do this any better?

Off the top of my head, type "Fedex" or "UPS" into Skype and you're instantly connected to customer service where you can type your details in so they won't be misheard, and you don't have to sit on the line listening to "Rhinestone Cowboy" on a loop (actually it was worse; I think it was "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro).

I'd be up for a USB dongle that the guy carries, and the customer slips into their computer (who doesn't have one sitting around these days?) and a little courier program pops up so the user can fill in the details from their laptop or desktop. He just plugs it into his handheld device and the data zips across and self-checks. Courier guys could carry round free branded ones and hand them out as promotional items and so customers can fill out the fields in advance.

Or if that's too complicated, going to the website and opening up a chat box with a customer representative. (I've just checked Fedex's customer support page and it involves filling out 14 different fields. And don't try to sidestep any:

Yeah, I'm going to fill all those in.

Maybe these courier firms are smarter in other parts of the world, but I didn't come away feeling impressed. I'm sure their package tracking systems are second to none -- i.e. once the atoms are in the system. But it seems that the burden is still being passed to the customer, when it could be so much less painful for both parties if it was electronic.

Technorati Tags: couriers, shipping, dhl, fedex, ups, tnt

Poffertjes and Power

Continuing my search for a place to plug in and work at airports, I was pleasantly surprised to find that HSBC has laid out the red carpet for its Premier account holders, at least at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta Airport. If you have one of their fancy accounts, anywhere in the world, you and your partner can partake of their lounge services.

It's all a bit new, and, dare I say it, charmingly Indonesian: More people (three men watching one female doing the work) were involved in making my poffertjes (a Dutch batter treat popular in the former colony) than there were actual poffertjes:

HSBC's Poffertje-Making Team (4)

HSBC Poffertjes (3)

But that's not to say I wasn't pathetically grateful. Food is never good at these kinds of places, so that the HSBC PMT (Poffertje-Making Team) took such care with my poffertjes was in itself a cause for celebration.

What impressed me, though, was that there was ample room there to work -- several little cubicles, a couple of actual offices, and, blow me backwards, lots of power outlets -- either in the walls, or in the floor. Like these, which pop up at the flick of a little switch. No Wi-Fi or anything, but you can't have everything. Well done, HSBC.

Technorati Tags: pofferthes, indonesia, airports, power, outlets, wifi, laptops, travel

Heathrow's Old Windows

Snapped this on my way to Gate 1 at Heathrow's Terminal 3. I know the London hub has its problems, but I didn't realise one of them was that its passenger information system -- or at least part of it -- was running on Windows 95, a 12-year old operating system that has not been supported by Microsoft since 2001.

Does it matter that flight information is being run on a system that Microsoft not only no longer sells, but it no longer supports?

I guess not, in some ways. Who cares, if it's still working? (Well, in the case above, where one screen is in permanent 'shutdown' mode, and the other seems to be in permanent 'boot' mode, leaving me waiting patiently in the hope of getting some flight information, I guess I do.)

But how about security? If a software manufacturer no longer supports a product, it doesn't just mean their helpdesk is no longer taking calls from baffled customers. It also means they're not pushing out updates to the software that solve problems like the one above, or security patches to cover holes bad guys have found in the software.

This bit is more worrying. If a bad guy knows that Heathrow is using Windows 95 for some of its operations (and I guess he does now) it should be pretty easy to find a way in. While not many people use the software anymore (I couldn't find any surveys on this, but anecdotally there don't seem to be many folk out there using it), new vulnerabilities are appearing that affect both newer and older versions of Windows. So while XP users might get a patch, Windows 95, 98 and Me users won't.

Anyway, I caught my flight OK. So maybe there's nothing to worry about. Apart from realising that an airport I entrust my life to a few times a year is relying on software that, when first launched, didn't even support Internet access.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, windows 95, win95, operating systems, OS, heathrow, airports

Tight Angles at 30,000 Feet

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think that economy class seats are getting smaller. This is me trying to do some writing on my ThinkPad when the person in front had her seat in recline mode. Forget about it. It's impossible to lift the screen any higher than this (it's a Malaysian Airlines plane.)

So what's the answer? I want something I can type on when the muse strikes wherever I am, without worrying about space or whether I'm going to be told by attendants I can't use the device because it's really a phone.

I'm trying to get a new iGo ThinkOutside keyboard (spilt coffee over the last one) and was wondering whether a Palm LifeDrive might be the answer. Any thoughts? I'd like to have something with a bit of space on the screen and on the drive itself.

Technorati Tags: flying, mobile worker, laptops, lifedrive, palm, keyboards