Tag Archive for 2012

| April 26, 2012
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Kid Got Lost Inside a Computer

Kid Got Lost Inside a ComputerThe Next Web has a great little anecdote about a 10-year-old kid who got lost inside a computer at Michigan State University in the 1950s. The story goes like this:

In 1950, I was 10 years old, visiting the Michigan State University campus. The computer was on the ground floor, turned off, with the door open. It was perhaps half the size of a gym, with many rows of cabinets taller than me. I wandered up and down the rows looking at the vacuum tubes until I got bored. By then I couldn’t see the door and didn’t remember how to get back out. I was literally “lost in the computer”. So I continued wandering, eventually found the open door back out, and left.

Magnetic Core Plane for ILLIAC II Memoryrb-

That was the time when computers less powerful than your current phone were bigger than most homes.

Related articles
  • UNIVAC: the first mass-produced commercial computer (infographic) (royal.pingdom.com)
  • History and Generations (thetakenyoutake.wordpress.com)

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 24, 2012
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States Collect More School Kid Data Than Needed

States Collect More School Kid Data Than NeededStates often collect far more information about school students than necessary and fail to take adequate steps to protect their privacy, a national study by Fordham University concludes. The Washington Post reports that dossiers go far beyond test scores, including Social Security numbers, poverty data, health information, and disciplinary incidents.

PrivacyThe study from the Fordham University Center on Law and Information Policy casts light on data systems created at the urging of the federal government to track student progress. One finding: States often fail to spell out protocols for purging records after students graduate.

“Ten, 15 years later, these kids are adults, and information from their elementary, middle, and high school years will easily be exposed by hackers and others who put it to misuse,” said Fordham law professor Joel R. Reidenberg, who oversaw the study. States, he told the Washington Post, “are trampling the privacy interests of those students.”

No Child Left BehindThe movement toward statewide databases with unique student identifiers, rooted in the standards-and-testing movement of the 1990s, has grown significantly in this decade under the federal No Child Left Behind law and is getting a fresh push this school year from the Obama administration. The article says federal officials want to link student test scores to teacher files to help evaluate instruction. They also envision systems that track students from pre-kindergarten through college, to help raise college completion rates.

Nearly all states, have built or are planning virtual education “data warehouses,” aided by federal funding. Advocates say the warehouses have strong privacy protections, but they acknowledge potential shortcomings according to the author.

Data mining“Is there data collected that’s not necessary anymore?” asked Aimee Guidera, executive director of the Data Quality Campaign, based in the District, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. “Probably.” She cited Kansas and Tennessee schools as leaders in establishing rules for data control.

But a larger concern, Guidera said, is that states often lack “a strategic, thoughtful way of connecting information and using it to answer questions.”

The Fordham study canvassed public information on state data systems and compliance with federal privacy law writes the Washington Post. Among the findings, at least 23 states note reasons for withdrawal from schools such as jail, illness, or mental health issues. At least 22 count student absences. At least 29 track whether students are homeless.

Data theftThe study also found that at least 16 states use or allow the use of Social Security numbers to identify school students and at least 10 note whether a student is a single parent. Another finding: Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, and North Carolina track the date of a student’s last medical exam.

The Washington Post says Fordham recommended that states tighten protocols to keep data anonymous, with special provisions for those in local schools who need to know more; that they articulate reasons for collecting data and jettison what is unjustified; and that they appoint officers to oversee compliance with state and federal privacy laws.

Charles Pyle, a Virginia Department of Education spokesman, said data are protected through policies and programming that prevent unauthorized access. The data help the states comply with NCLB, he said, and help pinpoint student needs. “You need a statewide system to keep track of the kids,” Grover Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, told the paper. He oversaw education research for President George W. Bush’s administration and claims, “Otherwise, they fall off the screen.”

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The lackadaisical attitude toward data security and privacy I see in K-12 amazes me. This article tells me it’s a national problem. – Why don’t I feel any better about that?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Data protection | Tags: , , , , , ,
| April 19, 2012
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The Connected Home

Help – My Thermostat is Calling China!

The Connected HomePhil Neray of Q1 Labs, an IBM (IBM) company posted that in the recent Chinese hack of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s network. One attack vector was a thermostat. The thermostat at a Chamber townhouse on Capitol Hill was communicating with an Internet address in China. At the same time, a printer spontaneously started printing pages with Chinese characters (rb- I wrote about securing printers here).

The blog says that the hackers were in the network for more than a year before being detected is not unusual. He cites the 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report, more than 60% of breaches remain undiscovered for months or longer (versus days or weeks).

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This is one of the risks of the Internet of Things. Security is in the era of IoT will have to use machines to monitor the machines.

CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher

CIA Chief: We'll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher Spencer Ackerman at Wired points out that more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet. They are no part of the Internet of Things. \U.S.CIA Director General David Petraeus cannot wait to use your appliances to spy on you through them.

General Petraeus recently spoke about the “Internet of Things” at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft” the blog recounts.

Mr. Ackerman predicts that people will be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real-time. This will happen when they open their Sears (SHLD) Craftsman garage door with an app on an Apple (AAPL) iPhone. “Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.” Petraeus said, “the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”

Wired says the CIA has a lot of legal restrictions against spying on American citizens. But collecting ambient geolocation data from devices is a grayer area. This espcially ture especially after the 2008 carve-outs to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Hardware manufacturers, it turns out, store a trove of geolocation data; and some legislators have grown alarmed at how easy it is for the government to track you through your Apple iPhone or Sony (SNE) PlayStation.

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The implications of the “Internet of Things” are profound when linked to the transformational nature of the connected home network. The CIA sees great opportunities in wired home devices. Any home gadget with RFID, sensor networks, embedded servers, or energy harvesters is ripe for interception by spy agencies.

Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor Gives Your Plant a Voice

Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor Gives Your Plant a Voiceat CeBIT 2012 in Hannover Koubachi, the Swiss start-up company behind the popular iPhone plant care assistant presented its newest innovation. It is called the Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor according to ITnewsLink. Building on the success of its popular interactive plant care assistant, the sensor integrates into the Koubachi system to literally gives your plant a voice.

The Wi-Fi Plant Sensor measures soil moisture, light intensity, and temperature. Using Wi-Fi, the data is sent to the Koubachi cloud. There it is analyzed by the Koubachi Plant Care Engine. The plant owner gets detailed care instructions on watering, fertilizing, misting, temperature and light through push notifications or email. “The Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor is the first device ever that enables real-time monitoring of the plant’s vitality,” says Philipp Bolliger, CEO of Koubachi. “It’s a truly unique product in the field of “Internet of Things” and bringing state-of-the-art technology to plant care.”

Smart Gadgets are Like Sleeper Cells in Your Kitchen

Smart Gadgets are Like Sleeper Cells in Your KitchenManufacturers are “future-proofing” their appliances with “Internet of Things” capabilities that are latent for now. Christopher Mims at MIT’s Technology Review asserts that major appliances bought in the last three years probably contain a Zigbee capable wireless radio. The radio can send out information about a device’s status and energy use and receive commands that alter its behavior.

Many appliance makers don’t announce these capabilities. Mr. Mims interviewed Mike Beyerle, an engineer at GE (GE) about GE‘s Nucleus home energy management system. “We want to build up a base before we make a big deal out of it,” says Mr. Beyerle.

The author says that manufacturers aren’t telling consumers what their devices are capable of. They are reluctant to do so in part because the abilities are useless without an energy management hub like GE’s Nucleus or a utility company‘s smart meter. In both cases, smart appliances must be “bound” to a hub to communicate with the outside world.

Once a device is hooked up to an energy management system and becomes part of the IoT, it gets interesting. Mr. Mims says that users who signed up for a “demand response” program with their utility to get a lower bill, enable the utility to control their appliances. For example, a refrigerator’s icemaker’s defrost cycle or the elements in a clothes dryer can be manipulated to drive down power use during times of peak demand.

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Most people do not realize that installing a new smart meter can activate a technological sleeper cell in their HDTV, kitchen, or laundry room. All of these “smart” devices will be part of the “Internet of Things.” They will have an IP address (probably an IPv6 address) and will be broadcast via a Zigbee wireless network. This is why the CIA says it can spy on people through their dishwasher.

Connected Kitchen

Connected KitchenEngadget says the Samsung RF3289 fridge is designed to let users access Pandora or tweet while grabbing a snack. Samsung touts it as the first to feature integrated WiFi. The Wi-Fi also offers the ability to view Google calendars, check the weather, download recipes from Epicurious, or leave digital notes

Engadet also reports LG’s Thinq line of connected appliances includes vacuum, oven, refrigerator, and washer/dryer. They support Wi-Fi and ZigBee to communicate with each other, the smart meter, smartphones, and tablets.  That’s a pretty strong foundation to build the Internet of Things especially if the home is already equipped with ZigBee devices. CNET says the line can be troubleshot remotely; tech support can log in to the device see what’s wrong and fix it. Kenmore has a similar product line.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 17, 2012
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Steve Jobs and Neil Young Planned Hi-Fi iPod

Steve Jobs and Neil Young Planned Hi-Fi iPodRock icon Neil Young took his campaign for higher-fidelity digital music to the stage of All Things D’s D: Dive Into Digital conference. The Huffington Post reports that the master of the one-note guitar solo says he was discussing a Hi-Fi iPod type device with the late Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs didn't use his iPod at homeYoung said the Apple (AAPL) co-founder was such a fan of music that he didn’t use his iPod and its digitally compressed files at home. Instead, he used a physical format well-known to have better sound. “Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music. His legacy is tremendous,” Young said. “But when he went home, he listened to vinyl (albums).”

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Young says that he spoke with Jobs about creating a high fidelity format that has 20 times better than files in the most current digital formats, including MP3.

Neil YoungSuch a format, he said, would contain 100 percent of the data of music as it is created in a studio, as opposed to 5 percent in compressed formats including Apple’s AAC. Each song would be huge, and a new storage and playback device might only hold 30 albums. Each song would take about 30 minutes to download, which is fine if you leave your device on overnight, he said. “Sleep well. Wake up in the morning. Play some real music and listen to the joy of 100 percent of the sound of music,” he said.

Although Young didn’t have a practical plan for developing such a format – saying it’s for “rich people” to decide – he said Jobs was on board with the idea before he died. “I talked to Steve about it. We were working on it,” Young said. “You’ve got to believe if he lived long enough he would eventually try to do what I’m trying to do.”

Apple iPod NanoWalt Mossberg, a journalist with News Corp.’s All Things D website, which hosted Jobs at its conferences confirmed Young’s opinion of Jobs. Mossberg said Jobs expressed surprise that “people traded quality, to the extent they had, for convenience or price.”

An Apple Inc. spokesperson declined to comment to the HuffPost.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 12, 2012
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What is Malware?

MalwareMost users I talk to about malware seem to use the following terms interchangeably; malware, virus, trojan, keylogger, worm, backdoor, bot, rootkit, ransomware, adware, spyware, and dialer. Raymond.cc offers some standard definitions to clarify the conversations.

MalwareMalware is short for Malicious Software where all the terms above fall into this category because they are all malicious. The different term being used instead of just plain virus is to categorize what the malicious software is capable of doing.

Virus spreads on its own by smuggling its code into application software. The name is in analogy to its biological archetype. Not only does a computer virus spread many times and make the host software unusable, but also runs malicious routines.

Trojan horseTrojan horse/Trojan is a type of malware disguised as useful software. The aim is that the user executes the Trojan, which gives it full control of your PC and the possibility to use it for its own purposes. Most of the time, more malware will be installed in your system, such as backdoors or key loggers.

Worms are malicious software that aims at spreading as fast as possible once your PC has been infected. Unlike viruses, it is not other programs that are used to spread the worms, but storage devices such as USB sticks, communication media such as e-mail, or vulnerabilities in your OS. Their propagation slows down the performance of PCs and networks, or direct malicious routines will be implemented.

Key loggerKey loggers log any keyboard input without you even noticing, which enables pirates to get their hands on passwords or other important data such as online banking details.

Dialers are relics from a time when modems or ISDN were still used to go online. They dialed expensive premium-rates numbers and thus caused your telephone bill to reach astronomic amounts. Dialers have no effect on ADSL or cable connections, but they are making a comeback with mobile devices and QR codes (I covered Attaging here).

BotnetBackdoor / Bots is usually a piece of software implemented by the authors themselves that enable access to your PC or any kind of protected function of a computer program. Backdoors are often installed once Trojans have been executed, so whoever attacks your PC will gain direct access to your PC. The infected PC, also called “bot”, will become part of a botnet.

Exploits are used to systematically exploit vulnerabilities of a computer program. Whoever attacks your PC will gain control of your PC or at least parts of it.

Spyware is software that spies on you, i.e. collect different user data from your PC without you even noticing.

AdwareAdware is derived from “advertisement”. Besides the actual function of the software, the user will see advertisements. Adware itself is not dangerous, but tons of displayed adverts are considered a nuisance and thus are detected by good anti-malware solutions.

Rootkit mostly consists of several parts that will grant unauthorized access to your PC. Plus, processes and program parts will be hidden. They can be installed, for instance, through an exploit or a Trojan.

Rogues / Scareware are also know as “Rogue Anti-Spyware” or “Rogue Anti-Virus”, rogues pretend to be security software. Often, fake warnings are used to make you buy the security software, which the pirates profit from.

RansomwareRansomware “Ransom” is just what you think it is. Ransomware will encrypt personal user data or block your entire PC. Once you have paid the “ransom” through an anonymous service, your PC will be unblocked.

There are different categories of malware the author says that most of the malware today combines different kinds of malware to achieve a higher rate of infection and giving more control to the hacker. Most malware is invisible that runs silently without your knowledge to avoid detection except for ransomware and adware.

Using “virus” as a catch-all phrase to include all types of malware is no longer right. The correct word to use should be malware. However, don’t expect the big anti-virus companies to rebrand their products to Kaspersky Anti-Malware or Bitdefender Anti-Malware because doing that may risk losing their brand identity even if they do offer a complete anti-malware solution.

The blog says it doesn’t mean that you’re safe if you don’t see it so it is important to run an anti-virus software from reputable brands such as Kaspersky, ESET, Avast, Avira, AVG (at one time AVG was installing a Yahoo toolbar without notice) MSE together with a second opinion anti-malware such as HitmanPro, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and SUPERAntiSpyware. As for Emsisoft Anti-Malware, it comes with its own Anti-Malware engine and Ikarus Anti-Virus Engine.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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