Update: Friendster is a Noun. It’s Official

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 You know you’ve arrived when your website name becomes a noun or a verb (and people making fun of your name in school doesn’t count, which rules me out). Friendster, the social-networking service I mentioned a few weeks back, will hit 1 million users this week, and is expanding at a rate of 20 percent a week, Wired reports.
 
 
So much so, that it quotes Danah Boyd, a U.C. Berkeley Ph.D. student researching online social networks, as saying the word “friendster” is entering common usage. Just as “googling” now means looking something (or usually someone) up on the Internet, “friendster” is now used to describe a person that someone meets or knows through the network. “A friendster is not exactly a friend, but rather an online acquaintance about whom a lot is known, thanks to the degree of disclosure in their social resume, which, of course, may or may not be true,” Wired says.
 
Worse, or better, depend on whether you think this is a good way to get to cram your PDA address book, Friendster networks are popping up for sale on eBay. Friendster engineers are also working on an interface that lets users see their social networks as an array of faces arranged like a spider’s web on their screens.

News: “You Can Do What You Like With Your Ink Cartridge in North Carolina”

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 The North Carolina Senate has deliberated and its verdict is clear: You can pretty much do what you like with your Ford, so why not your printer cartridge? The Associated Press reported that the state House agreed Tuesday to Senate changes to a bill that would give printer owners the right to refill any printer ink cartridge, voiding purchase agreements that ban the practice. In effect it means that if you want, you can get your printer cartridge refilled elsewhere — legally.
 
The bill was prompted by a lawsuit filed by printer company Lexmark International against Static Control Components of Sanford, which makes components for the laser printer cartridge industry, AP reports from Raleigh. Static Control makes computer chips that allow less expensive ink cartridges to be adapted to Lexmark printers. After Lexmark sued Static Control to try to stop it from manufacturing the chips, the Sanford company filed its own lawsuit, accusing Lexmark of monopolizing the toner cartridge market and falsely representing their products. The Static Control chips mean consumers don’t have to send their cartridges back to Lexmark for refills. Many Lexmark buyers agree to return the cartridges to Lexmark’s factory in Kentucky in exchange for a rebate. The agreement is found on the box or in paperwork inside.
 
 
(No, that’s not an ink cartridge spill, it’s Static’s logo.)
 
Here’s Static’s view of the battle, along with a picture of the executives looking grim, undergunned, but determined. Here’s Lexmark’s, sadly without any grim-looking execs although they do have a picture, seemingly obligatory these days, of a corporate woman with glasses.

Update: The Citibank Robbery

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
  A bit more on that backdoor Trojan that made me think Citibank didn’t like me anymore: Symantec’s website says it’s a brand new version, and seems to only appear in a Citibank form. No wonder I couldn’t find it on Google. Symantec call it Backdoor.Berbew. Other names: 
  • Downloader-DI [McAfee]
  • TrojanProxy.Win32.Webber.10 [KAV]
  • Troj/Webber-A [Sophos]
I thought everyone had agreed to use the same names for all these things. My advice: watch out. Trojans are getting smarter, unlike the Monty Python Trojan Rabbit.
 
 

News: Hanging’s Too Good For Spammers, Says Joe Public

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 
 Just when you thought there was nothing more to say about spam, someone goes and says something. This time it’s the turn of Harris Interactive, which has conducted two polls. (Neither seem to be on their website at the time of posting this.) Their conclusions?
  • 80% of online adults (whatever that means) now favor making mass-spamming illegal. Only 10% oppose doing so.
  • On average people online estimate that they receive more than 40 emails a day, including those at home, work or at other locations, and that 40% of these emails are spam.
  • The types of email which annoy the most people a lot are pornography (86%), mortgages and loans (71%), prescription drugs such as Viagra (60%), and investments (59%). Many, but fewer people, are annoyed a lot by spam selling real estate (51%), software (36%) and computer and other hardware (31%).
All that makes sense. But there are paradoxes. Those who favor making spamming illegal have increased (from 74% last December to 79% now). But those who find spamming very annoying have declined from 80% last year to 64% now, and somewhat fewer people (but still substantial majorities) are annoyed a lot by the main types of spam. Harris reckons that “while people may have become more efficient at identifying and deleting spam, this has not in any way reduced their desire to eliminate or reduce it”. That, or people are getting used to spam.

News: Beware The Trojan

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 I got my first password stealing trojan yesterday. My, they’re good. I’ve never shopped at Citibank (sorry, Ditta) but for a moment I thought that maybe I had . This was what the email looked like:
 
Dear sir,
 
Thank you for your online application for a Citibank Home Equity Loan. In order to be approved for any loan application we pull your Credit Profile and Chexsystems information, which didn’t satisfy our minimum needs. Consequently, we regret to say that we cannot approve you for Citibank Home Equity Loan at this time.
 
*Attached are copy of your Credit Profile and Your Application that you submitted with us. Please take a close look at it, you will receive hard copy by mail withing next few days.
 
The email came with all the right headers, and my virus checker didn’t notice anything wrong, but the folks at Sophos have identified the attachment as a two component backdoor Trojan, specifically, Troj/Webber-A. The first bit attempts to connect to http://www.joro71.addr.com, download a file to rtdx32.exe in the Windows system folder and execute it. The second bit is a password stealing Trojan that attempts to extract sensitive information from several locations on the system and sends them to CGI scripts at http://weyrauch.addr.com. Yuck. Beware.