Why Cyber Monday could mean Virus Monday

This year I'm advising my clients and friends to keep a careful eye about shopping online this holiday season. With the struggling economy the electronic shopping season will likely be the primary means of shopping, however this will also mark a near record in the virus/malware infections and manipulation. If last year results mirror this year we are looking at a significant intrusion situation. I believe that many of the malware writers and phishers will be trying to attract new online shoppers by offering deals to their favorite stores. Those who get attracted will either buy a $500 dollar mac book which will not ship at all or have their machines turn into zombie slaves for distributed denial of services attacks (DDoS).

I am also concern with even the tightest securities centers. The Pentagon and even newly elected Barack Obama have both suffered significant security attacks. A rogue worm has infiltrated the Pentagon allegedly and is considered the largest attack since in the Pentagons history. Obama this week had his phone records from his Verizon cell phone distributed through a Verizon employee. Barack plans on being a president of change, and one of those is being one that uses the PC. There is a reason why there is no computers in the oval office, trust me on this one.

This increase of computer related infestation isn't just on the American side. In London 3 Hospitals had to shutdown their computer systems due to virus attack. Luckily doctors over there still know how to use pen and paper, unlike the myspace/facebook generation. Overall the advice is that data can be manipulated everywhere and a keen eye may help with protecting ourselves this coming week.

My tips this shopping season.

1. Buy from reputable shops, consider using froogle.com, shopzilla.com, or pricegrabber.com to ensure the place of purchase is reputable.
2. Use Credit, not Debit. One its not tied to your bank, two it is protected by the Fair Credit Billing Act.
3. Do not provide more information than you have to in order to receive product. These companies only need your transaction information, not your bank information or even typical shopping habits. Especially avoid in emails or pop-up prompts.
   
4. Print out each sell transaction, most sites should have fraud prevention and/or customer service numbers present to ensure your transaction is safe. Also the printout can be used in relation to your credit records.
5. Contact Better Business Bureau or Federal Trade Commission if you feel you have been taken advantage.
6. Never pay with Western Union. Many international scammers use this method. There is no way to get your money back.

My anti-virus software has gone crazy!

I was listening to a radio show that discusses computer issues on Wednesday nights. One of the callers brought up an issue in regards to AVG 8.0 and Windows XP SP2 (I found that SP3 may be affected to). http://caster.wgnradio.com/uncut/stevejohnnieuncut-081113a.mp3

An update was released a few days ago for AVG 8.0. This update somehow has caused AVG to give a false positive for a Trojan horse on a Windows system file The specific file is "user32.dll" and the Trojan horse is "Trojan Horse PSW banker4". Deleting this file causes the system Blue Screen and the system will be unable to reboot into windows properly.

I did find a solution to restore user32.dll if it was deleted. It something that a novice probably could probably not do. It requires loading the Windows XP system recovery tool and copying the file manually. This fix also assumes that the user has the original Windows XP CD or can get access to a Windows XP disc.

The problem only affects users of AVG 8 products running the Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish language versions of Windows XP. If this bug had affected all versions of Windowx XP this issue would have been more widespread. If this issue had affected me, I would be very skeptical about recommending AVG to anyone.

On my desktop computer I am running AVG 8.0 and on my laptop I am running Avast. I'm beginning to think about removing AVG on my desktop and replacing it with Avast. There have been reports that AVG 8.0 has caused performance issues on many computers. It seems that version 8.0 has become "bloated" with too many accessories.

We expect our anti-virus software to protect our computers from viruses. Occasionally there may be some viruses that are missed because an update has not been released. We don't expect our anti-virus software to randomly assume windows system files have been affected with Trojan horses.

Nanotech in a nutshell, literally.

1. The human cell contains 75 MB of genetic information
2. A sperm 37.5 MB.
3. In a milliliter, we have 100 million sperms. On average, one ejaculation releases 2.25 ml in 5 seconds. Using basic math we can compute the bandwidth of the human male penis as: (37.5MB x 100M x 2.25)/5 = (37,500,000 bytes/sperm x 100,000,000 sperm/ml x 2.25 ml) / 5 seconds = 1,687,500,000,000,000 bytes/sec = 1,687.5 Terabytes/sec

Sweet DoS attack!!! a bukkake would probably be a DDoS then 11 men would give 17 petabytes/sec

The only comment I have with this quote is that my fiance can not say I haven't given here any input on anything and that condoms make for the best firewall on the planet. In all seriousness, there use to be so much hype about nanotechnology in regards to circuitry and media storage but now it seems to be one of those stories that was brought out to increase stock prices. Technology has always tried to mimic nature, how far fetch would it be to grow biological technology for storage and media transmission. I think part of the reason is the security mechanisms along with current already paid for infrastructure keeps the consumer back. Back as in using traditional copper as form of transfer medium which for the most part is still not secure.

Just some small future notes about where this blog is headed. I have a few short videos in the works with a working title of "This (timeframehere) in tech", where I plan to cover topics such as the retail failures toward consumers, USB issues, and throwbacks to my childhood 80's/90's tech cartoons. I hope to do all this with the worst technology methods possible and maybe have a laugh or two along the way.

(2:58:37 AM) JasonB: i suppose they can make new hard drives from seman
(3:01:17 AM) MichaelR: I'm sure Seagate is on the job already
(3:01:34 AM) JasonB: thats why they bought maxtor

Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, so to speak.

Our contract with GoDaddy.com has expired and reflecting on their services would be similar to stabbing myself in the face with a soldering iron. It isn't necessarily GoDaddy's fault but, websites as we know it are gone.

Calumet Tech was long overdue to make the switch to a blogging formation. I believe our traditional ways of making websites for ourselves and others have expired.

Our favorite CalumetTech 1.0 experience was from a German Scientist mistaking us for Caltech.edu. He asked us about the ballistic material of some type of alloy. We knew that our original site was going nowhere fast and a change is required. So onto Blogger for their free hosting for awhile. I think it will quickly create an interactive experience and demonstrate some of the ideas we have on technology.