Posts from the ‘TechBook’ Category

The national TV news disgrace

“The Russian government is responsible for attacks on the US election parties.  This is well know because the IP address of the attackers are in Russia.”

So claims the national TV news.  And that is totally garbage!
And it illustrates the stupid ignorance of our national TV news authorities.

A Russian government attack would use US hosting company servers and the attack would be extremely difficult to trace.  What the “TV News” is reporting is/are the many amateur hackers based in Russia, India, China, the US and everywhere around the world.

Hacking is a game and many ruskies love it.  Google for black hat hackers websites just to see.   The IP (internet protocol) address is the location of the server.  If you use Comcast, Yahoo, AOL, Google or any other hosting company, your IP address will be involved.

Interested in your IP address.  Go to ipaddress.com and click the My IP tab on the top of the page.  You can see where your server is located.  Try entering a website address such as amazon.com, gigharbortimes.com or yahoo.com, etc to see where their servers are located.

This is simple child’s play.  The Russian government would not use Russian servers.  They would either route through a US server or simply hire a US server.  Or perhaps they might use a United Kingdom server to make the attack look like it was from Britain.

The distasteful display of ignorance by our national TV news is disgusting.  Beware of what you see on TV, even from the “news”.

Hackers produce YouTube instructional videos

This video, hosted on YouTube, shows how to hack a website.  The method is unimportant, but is used here to give a glimpse of the sub-culture that is out to hack your website or bank account.

Many hackers are fairly benign in their intentions.  Often, they just want to show you that your website (if you have one) has vulnerabilities.  Sometimes they will include a script that will use your email address to send out spam.  A more sinister method is to hack your website and not provide a clue that it’s been hacked.  Instead, they will insert a script (an application, if you will) that uses your email server to send spam or capture your banking information.
THEY MAKE MONEY AT IT!  – yes, that’s right, there’s money to be made in the black market for simply capturing information to sell to others.

This article is only meant as in introduction to dangers of the REAL WORLD internet.  You may feel comfortable at home when doing your on-line banking, but there’s someone out there that just needs a scrap of information about you (from Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, etc).
Bottom line: Beware.  Keep strong passwords and anti-virus / anti-malware up to date and active.

Web searches for religious topics on the increase

Researchers at Penn State University found that web searches for religious topics has been on the increase across all religious demographics.

The researchers examined how people use search engines to locate religious information online. They analyzed more than 5.5 million searches collected from three Web search engines between 1997 and 2005 to investigate attributes of religious searching on the Web.

The religious landscape within the United States has been described as increasingly secularized and factionalized. However, Jim Jansen, associate professor, information sciences and technology and his colleagues, Andrea Tapia, assistant professor, information sciences and technology and Amanda Spink, professor, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, found from looking at religious Web searching behaviors that no evidence of secularization exists, and that religious and religious-related interests held steady and were generally mainstream.

They also found that the results dispelled the stereotype that religious people are not as accustomed to technology as non-religious people.

“Our results showed that people searching for these religious topics were just as tactically skilled as the general Web population,” said Jansen. “This actually fits well with the historical use of technology by religious groups and organizations.”

There was a general increase in religious searching over time, which may be due to the advancement in technology, increased availability of religious content online and a change in the Web population.

“In the days of the earlier data sets, there were limited topics online,” Jansen said. “As the Internet and Web became more main stream, a cornucopia of topics emerged — religion was one.”

Jansen also evaluated how well search engines delivered relevant content in response to religious queries, finding that the search engines performed poorly.

“I don’t believe it is an intentional bias on the part of the search engines,” he said. “It is probably due to the localized nature of many religious Web sites. Small businesses face similar issues in trying to get ranked within the search engines.”
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From the Penn State media center – Dec 7, 2009