Digital Choke Daynotes |
What's a Daynote?"Daynotes" are daily (usually) journal entries of interesting happening and discussions. They are not 'blogs', which are often just a collection of links to other information (although we do include links occasionally). Daynotes are much more interesting (we hope). These "Digital Choke Daynotes" were inspired by the collection of daily journals of the "Daynotes Gang" (see sites at .com, .net), a collection of daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. If you have comments, send us an email. A bit more about me is here. You might also enjoy our little story about the death of the 'net. |
Reports
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Had a big family dinner yesterday. My mother, Pam's mother, Stacy's new boyfriend, the local missionaries, and the Jensen's (oldest daughter, her husband, three cute children). It was quite a crowd.
BBQ chicken was on the menu. Chicken thighs with BBQ sauce, chicken breasts in marinade, potato salad, homemade rolls, fruit salad. Yep, lots of food, and a good time was had by all.
Nothing of note in the security front, other than the usual: identity theft, worms, viruses, etc.
Stacy is off to Idaho tomorrow for a quick visit with her teachers to plan for her final semester there. At least, the final semester of her nursing program.
And we're looking forward to the long three-day weekend. We'll be heading up to the cabin to relax. Some reading, some computing, and some minor repair work. The only unfortunate part is the lack of web connectivity. Not sure how that will work out; there may be some severe geek withdrawal.
Perhaps I'll work on updating 'the story'. Any suggestions (use the mail form here)?
If I looked outside and saw these clouds, I'd get seriously freaked out. Especially if I had just watched the new 'War of the Worlds".
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(Click on the pictures to get a bigger image. And go here to see more.)
These are called 'mammatus' clouds, and are not as dangerous as they look. More info about these types of clouds are here, along with explanations and more pictures.
On the security front, I see that the University of Connecticut had a security breach into servers that stored personal identifcation (names, addresses, SSN, etc.). Seems that their server had been "r00ted" ("0wned", compromised with a trojan/back door) since 2003. They just found out about it this month.
And they said that there was no indication of any exposure of the information. That doesn't sound right ... if the server was owned by a hacker/cracker, how would they know that the data was not accessed? As 'r00t' (administrator), you can delete log files and other indications of your access to a server.
Also noticed that the encryption virus/worm is back. That's the one that gets into your computer (by the user running a program attached to a message), then it encrypts all of your documents and files. Then you get a message (in a text file) that you have to send email to the hacker -- a payment to the hacker will get you a program that will unencrypt your files. Although there is no mention that the program might also do other nefarious things.
Be careful out there!
Saw this on another blog:
WARNING
Please stop the offshore drilling, and we'll stop eating your children.
The Sharks
It was worth a small giggle here (although I am not against offshore drilling ... the US needs to get at that oil.)
Noticed a few updates: a new version of Microsoft Anti-Spyware is available. If you already have it installed (recommended, even though it's still in 'beta'), you should get a notice to do the upgrade. And if you don't have it installed, we strongly recommend that you go to www.microsoft.com/protect and get it for your home computer.
Microsoft has also released a big update for Windows 2000. Even though that OS is five years old, a lot of people are using it. Microsoft is ending active support of that OS, although security patches will still be available as needed. Our recommendation is to install that update (available through the Windows Update site). The update is not available right now if you are using the Microsoft Software Update Server (SUS) or Windows Software Update Server (WSUS), although it will be added to there in a week or two. (Corporate and business users are strongly recommended to implement WSUS -- it's free, and will help keep your Windows and Office software updated.) In the meantime, home users still using Windows 2000 are strongly encouraged to get the update.
I spent most of the day (in between other activities) rebuilding my older desktop system here at work. It had Windows 2000, but I decided to get WinXP Pro installed. It has taken a while to get it installed and all the updates installed (my CD only had SP1, not SP2, so that CD was a bit behind in updates). But the updates are fairly automatic using the Windows Update process. There wasn't anything important on it, so I opted for a complete replacement, rather than an upgrade of the OS.
That computer will eventually be used for some automated vulnerability assessments of systems here. They are currently running on an even older system, which needs to be retired.
... more later ...
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