oregonnerd: differing views

A Personal Note, and Then a Warning–Be Paranoid On The Internet!

August 12, 2008 at 12:10 pm Leave a comment

I’m feeling calmer now. I walked a quarter mile to the grocery store, and then back with 20 pounds of cat litter, cleaned the house, and exercised. Not enough energy to have a seizure or go into one of the autistic-like rages that have been characteristic of me since I was a tiny child when I was under enormous stress. Little things, you know, like Mom marrying an abusive alcoholic and then giving me up to my aunt and uncle… I’m starting at least to really recover from what turned out to be nearly 6 months in the hospital. I am back up to 155 pounds, sometimes make it up to 160–back to what I weighed when I got out of high school, to put things in perspective, what I weighed when I got out of boot camp.

Last note. Don’t stay logged into “social-networking sites”. There’s a thing called a GIFAR (.gif + .jar, evidently, so it’s the Ajax, which is java-script and active-x), which can slip right into your browser and then make itself homely in your computer, doing cool things like key-logging and then checking out your bank account. It was found to be a vulnerability even of LinkSys. I tend not to like them anyway. And use a lot of care downloading any kind of picture through the internet. Right at this point, I’m not sure I’d do it. I know I’d “white-line” something by opening it with Notepad ++ (contact me for a link if you want; much better than Notepad, performs all its functions and it cannot be used to run ***t) and if it wouldn’t open I probably wouldn’t use it. I got infected with a virus while setting Windows back up, and the only sites I can recall accessing at that time were Gmail (had a vulnerability that was announced at the Black Hat conference, fixed, notionally–BUT DON’T USE GOOGLE GADGETS!!!!!!!!!!–Open Office has everything Star Office has and every other bit of functionality can be had off the net at less-used and therefore less-vulnerable sites) and Microsoft. No links through IM not confirmed through e-mail, a posting, and a sample of the giver’s blood…the keynote theme of Black Hat this year seems to be ‘The Internet is Broken’ and while not true the keyword is paranoia. After that, realize you’re not careful enough. Zone Alarm!–Haute Secure is a well-maintained badsite list that it uses, it’s free. Threatfire, which does behavior-based scanning. Free. Let me know if you need links.

–Glenn

Entry filed under: computers/tech, current news, writing and thought. Tags: anti badware, black hat, danger, gifar, notepad++, social networking sites, the internet is broken, threatfire, Zone Alarm.