Reading Report #1

1/25/09

There are many things that I have learned from this first reading in lib 103. I had no idea that there were so many different types of mischief on the Internet. Like counterfeit websites disguise that themselves as legitimate sites for a purpose of releasing misinformation. And disinformation web sites which release of known false information with the intention of influencing the people that receive it. I am very interested to view the work of theses many counterfeiters. I found it very intriguing how most of these people use information as a weapon. A weapon they use to fight for their cause, whether or not the information is true is irrelevant, as long as the public believes it. I personally had no clue that you could “hijack” a website until I read about in this article. When a website is hacked, the contents of it are changed or even redirected to an unwanted site. A lot of scams happen after a major disaster or event, usually they are sent though e-mail and request for you to make a donation to a charity. There are a number of ways you can avoid scams like this including

- Only deal with the charity sites directly.
- Only donate to well known organizations.
- Most charity sites do not send out e-mails asking for money.
- Check the URL address; make sure you are where you think you are at.

I have actually fallen prey to a Phishing web site before. It was about 2 years ago when myspace had a break in security and I accidentally gave away my password thinking I was at myspace.com and the hackers wiped my account clean, but before that they sent credit card scams to all my friends list. Myspace had to delete my account and I had to start over.

News Report # 1

News Report #1

Downadup virus exposes millions of PCs to hijack http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/ptech/01/16/virus.downadup/index.html?eref=rss_tech

CNN. com By Barry Neild

1/16/09

One of the worlds worst outbreaks of a computer virus happened a week ago and has been infecting computers on a world wide basis. This new bug is thought to have been created in the Ukraine and most likely engineered by a group of people who have spent time making it very complicated to analyze and remove. Computer researchers are unclear of what the virus does but have figured out that it is some sort of gateway, opening up your computer and then waiting for the creator to issue it orders. This virus only infects computers with windows installed, in return micosoft has created a patch to prevent the bug from infecting anymore computers. But it may be too late it is estimated that 8 million computers have already been infected.

I'm just curious why people make viruses, I understand the ones that steal credit card infromation and ones that steal passwords but why would someone make a virus that just crashes computers. I guess it might just be someone having some “fun” on a world wide basis. I think that it was smart of microsoft to come out with a pach for it so quickly, if they had not acted as fast as they did, a lot more computers wold have been infected. I guess we will just have to see what this virus is going to do and how we can learn from it.I belive that this has something to deal with stealing money, because who would go through all this trouble and not get any reward for their work… I guess will just have to wait and see.

My first post

This is my first blog, hopefully I like writing these or I'm really going to hate this semester.