Phishing Gets Proactive

Scaring the bejesus out of a lot of security folk this weekend is a new kind of phishing attack that doesn’t require the victim to do anything but visit the usual websites he might visit anyway. It works like this: The bad guy uses a weakness in web servers running  Internet Information Services 5.0 (IIS) and … Read more

This week’s column – Not Wired, Just Weird

This week’s Loose Wire column is about some of the more obscure gadgets I found at CommunicAsia Expo in Singapore last week: WANDERING AROUND last week’s technology exhibition, CommunicAsia, in Singapore, I was struck by the gulf between the big players–with their huge, noisy stands, populated entirely by well-shaped, scantily-clad men and women all under … Read more

WhenU’s Popup Victory

WhenU, now known as Claria, has won what it calls an “important decision for the entire Internet industry” in its motion to enjoin the Utah Spyware Control Act, passed in March. WhenU had argued the Act “affects legitimate Internet advertising companies and therefore violates the First Amendment and dormant Commerce Clause of the United States … Read more

China’s Static Mobile Phone, And Its Mobile Static Phone

One of the things I noticed at last week’s CommunicAsia expo in Singapore was the range of phones. And not just fancy handhelds touted by dancing, skintight woven women, although that did claim some of my attention. But China, for example, is pumping out machines that run the gamut of needs, including desktop GSM phones. … Read more

Poor Man’s WiFi

Further to my piece on WiFi for the masses, here’s another way to cut costs: Make your own WiFi dish out of a Chinese cooking vat scoop, poke a USB WiFi dongle through the mesh, and you can pick up signals more than 10 kilometres away. Total cost: about $40 for the USB dongle, NZ$8 … Read more