Well it’s been an eventful few weeks here in the Linux blogosphere, what with all the various scandals that have erupted recently over Digg and Ubuntu’s off-and-on romance with Dell, to name just two. Then there was Debian’s birthday on Monday! Happy 17th, Debian! By far the hottest topic in recent days, however, was news that Canonical has begun tracking Ubuntu installations. It’s true! The new “canonical-census” package apparently sends an “I am alive” ping to Canonical each day as a way to help the company track the users of OEM Ubuntu installations.

Yikes so big brother is watching, Baldy

Canonical Teaches Ubuntu to Phone Home Every Day

10 Things You Can Do To Make Your Linux Hosted Website More Secure By Corey W. 10. Get cooperation from your Linux host. Make sure your host is updating their software at the server and network levels. This includes any available kernel updates, as well as updates for packages such as Apache and PHP.

For those new webmasters that need the hint, Baldy

 

10 Things You Can Do To Make Your Linux Hosted Website More Secure

A currently ongoing ransomware campaign is using a novel approach to extort money from end users whose PCs have been locked down.

By pretending to be the fake ICPP Foundation (icpp-online.com), the ransomware locks down the user’s desktop issuing a “Copyright violation: copyrighted content detected” message, which lists torrent files found on the infected PC, and forces the user to pay $400 for the copyright holder’s fine, emphasizing on the fact that “the maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.
[...]
Gullible end users who fall victim to the scam, will then be asked to pay $399.85 for a “Legal license purchase“, “Copyright holder fine“, a “Copyright protection organization fee for the use of software tracking illegal file downloads” and a “Traffic fee“.

Basically, you’ve got a profit margin driven ransomware business model, that’s ironically charging you a fee for the development of ransomware “software” itself.

Pay attention folks this is another attempt by idiots to take advantage of you, Baldy

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Ransomware Taking A Novel Approach To Extortion

Often, even if we do catch a virus, it’s not so difficult to eradicate it using installed anti-virus—but if your system has been crippled, try using Linux to scan the drive for viruses instead. As any Linux veteran knows, one of Linux’s greatest uses is fixing unbootable drives—recovering files, deleting files, and even killing viruses. For those of you that aren’t quite as well-versed in Linux, technology blog gHacks has a tutorial for doing just that, though we recommend a few tweaks to their process.

Face it virus’s attack every where and here is the chance to convert a old friend that loves winblows folks take a look, Baldy

Use Linux to Scan Unusable Windows Drives for Viruses

Yeah, everyone has stolen Wi-Fi at one point or another, but not everyone has called into a tech show in order to complain about the fact that someone put the kibosh on said stealing.

Meet Jennifer, she had been unwittingly yoinking Wi-Fi for more than a year and a half when the gravy train ran out, after which she called into Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy radio show in a state of utter confusion.

Read and Listen to it here

“The first worm to infect the Apple iPhone has been discovered spreading “in the wild” in Australia.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8349905.stm

Boy am I glad I got a Droid, Baldy

Worm attack bites at Apple iPhone

Sooner Boomer writes “Nigerian police in what is named Operation ‘Eagle Claw’ have shut down 800 scam web sites, and arrested members of 18 syndicates behind the fraudulent scam sites. Reports on Breitbart.com and Pointblank give details on the busts. The investigation was done in cooperation with Microsoft, to help develop smart technology software capable of detecting fraudulent emails. From Breitbart ‘When operating at full capacity, within the next six months, the scheme, dubbed “Eagle Claw,” should be able to forewarn around a quarter of million potential victims.’”

Darn does this mean that nice General really didn’t need my bank account after all LOL, Baldy

 

Nigerian “Scam Police” Shut Down 800 Web Sites

AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Enviornment) is a tool to check the file integrity. It is an opensource substitute for TRIPWIRE. It allows to take snapshots of all the major configuration files, binaries as well as libraries stats. It helps to find which binaries have been changed in case of compromisation of the system.

Nice little tool I have just started to play with it and so far no problems, Baldy

Linux Security Notes – AIDE File Integrity

Conficker is one nasty Virus! It is able to spread on the LAN, infect other machines, and even auto-update itself! Learn how scan your network using the open-source nmap tool, and identify machines which are possible infected with Conficker

Hey it is late but it works just fine and great to show those at the top you do know what you are doing with all that money they pay you. LOL Baldy

Scanning your LAN for conficker using nmap

The Psyb0t worm infects Linux-based routers, including consumer-level broadband routers, and turns them into botnet nodes. Psyb0t finds easy entry because they are misconfigured. Eric Geier tells how to find out if you are infected and what to do about it, and gives sound advice that is pertinent to all routers.

Pay Attention folks this is a good read, Baldy

How to Detect and Prevent Psyb0t, the Linux Router Worm