“I run Linux…it’s so safe”….yeah….right.

So I opened my email today to find the following:

Hello,

You are receiving this message because you have an account registered with this address on ubuntuforums.org.

The Ubuntu forums software was compromised by an external attacker. As a result, the attacker has gained access to read your username, email address and an encrypted copy of your password from the forum database.

If you have used this password and email address to authenticate at any other website, you are urged to reset the password on those accounts immediately as the attacker may be able to use the compromised personal information to access these other accounts. It is important to have a distinct password for different accounts.

The ubuntuforums.org website is currently offline and we are working to restore this service. Please take the time to change your ubuntuforums.org account password when service is restored.

We apologize for any inconvenience to the Ubuntu community, thank you for your understanding.

The Canonical Sysadmins.

Ubuntu Forums is  an online forums provided by Ubuntu for users to post questions, and to learn more about Ubuntu Linux.  Their server that runs Ubuntu was running an app (this app created the website for the forums) which was hacked.

So to be clear: Linux wasn’t hacked, but an app that was running was, which was used as a way into the Linux O/S.  This just goes to show you that you MUST be aware of updates and security issues for not just the O/S, but also any app you install…even “Server-Dudes” have to follow this rule! ;-)

Ouch…

-SuperDale

"I see nothing" -sgt schultz

Cool little product....hide important info...saw it at Office Depot

H-Commerce…Hacking Documentary

I couldn’t find the original (I think they took it down) so I posted the full video for you.  EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH THIS….AND LEARN!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzU82Ul96pU

-SuperDale

Disable Inprivate Browsing

InPrivate mode in Internet Explorer 8 is the new feature that allows a web user to surf anonymously, leaving no traces of their activity behind. Designed for privacy conscious users, surfing in InPrivate leaves no record of sites visited in your Internet History and it erases any cookies, URLs visited, usernames and passwords, and temporary internet files that would normally accumulate during a browsing session.

However, there are some people who would probably like to shut of InPrivate mode for good. Parents, for example, may not want their children to have access to this feature. Also, in an enterprise setting, I.T. administrators may want to restrict their users from going “InPrivate,” especially in companies where all internet communication has to be recorded for legal purposes.

To disable the setting, it’s as simple as making a change to the registry key located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Privacy\EnableInPrivateMode.

When enabled (the default), the dword value is set to 00000001. To disable InPrivate mode, just change that last “1” to a “0” as in 00000000.

1. Logon to your machine with an account that has administrative rights.
2. Right-click on your desktop and select "New"..."Text Document".
3. Rename it to something like "IE8SafeMode.reg"  (Note: change the file extension from .txt to .reg)
4. Save the change and tell Windows you know you changed the file extension name.
5. Right-click on the file you just made and select "Edit". It should open in notepad.
6. Copy the following text (all three lines) and paste it into that Notepad file:

   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Privacy]
   "EnableInPrivateBrowsing"=dword:00000000

7. Save the file and then close it.
8. When you double-click the file it will ask you if you want to add those changes into the Registry. Select Yes.
9. Then reopen IE8 and you should now have InPrivate mode disabled.

ID theft isn’t always digital

I’ve always said “The "SAFEST” computer is the one that is never built”.  That’s because there is always “the physical” security issue.  A doctor’s office might have all the digital security measures in place…but what about the employees (I’m not picking on the medical field…just using it as an example).  What about a real-estate office that helped you purchase your new home…what personal info do they have at the office…in paper format?  If someone “lifted” it, would anyone notice?  Just this week I got an email from an online video service (traveling I enjoy watching movies on my Note2).  Here’s what the email said:

Dear Dale,
We want to let you know that there was a break-in at the VUDU offices on March 24, 2013, and a number of items were stolen, including hard drives.
Our investigation thus far indicates that these hard drives contained customer information, including names, email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, account activity, dates of birth and the last four digits of some credit card numbers. It's important to note that the drives did NOT contain full credit card numbers, as we do not store that information. Additionally, please note if you have never set a password on the VUDU site and have only logged in through another site, your password was not on the hard drives.
While the stolen hard drives included VUDU account passwords, those passwords were encrypted. We believe it would be difficult to break the password encryption, but we can't rule out that possibility given the circumstances of this theft. So we think it's best to be proactive and ask that you be proactive as well.

Interesting enough, my wife discovered (while doing her weekly “check all accounts” routine) that someone had opened a PennyTalk account with her name and used one of her credit cards, (which she very seldom uses) which resulted in almost $100 in charges.  She quickly called both the credit card company and PennyTalk (their investigation showed that someone in New Mexico (or least the area code of 505) was responsible, and they were calling someone in Uganda.  The credit

So lesson for this week…Be aware that your info isn’t JUST digital….and check your accounts (bank, credit card, etc) OFTEN!!! :-)

-SuperDale

Extortionware…gets nasty: “You’ve been looking at Child Pornography”

Windows users being extorted by malicious software into handing over money is nothing new. Fake anti-virus utilities in particular are notorious for warning about non-existent threats and making a computer very difficult to use (if not impossible) until a "license" is bought in order to remove the "infection".

Extortionware on the other hand is even more sly. You can find, for example, extortionware that will scramble documents and other data on a users' hard disk drive, and will only decrypt the information if the user pays up. This kind of infection is particularly nasty, because removing the extortionware infection might not help to retrieve your original data, and who knows, maybe paying up won't either.

Even more nasty is the use of emotional blackmail to force a user to get out a credit card. Germany's Federal Criminal police office, the Bundeskriminalamt, is warning Germans about a virus doing the rounds now that accuses victims of viewing "juvenile pornography."It pops up a window on the victim's computer, and locks out access to the system. The interface is designed to look like it was prepared by the Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BKI) and the office responsible for copyright infringement prosecution in the country.

It displays a picture of a child, and asserts that sex abuse images of the child have been viewed on the computer. It also claims that the computer has been used to download and spread pirated content, and demands that the user pay a €100 fine for the criminal acts, or else the computer will remain locked.

250,000 Twitter Account get hacked

The social media giant Twitter acknowledged that it has become the latest victim in a number of cyber-attacks against media companies, saying hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users.
The company said a blog post on Friday it detected attempts to gain access to its user data earlier in the week. It shut down one attack moments after it was detected.
But Twitter discovered that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users they describe as `a very small percentage of our users.” …. Full Story here!

Short version here…LONG PASSWORDS!  See my previous posts about creating the right kind of password!….OR EMAIL ME!