Is your PC infected or hacked?

Interestingly, I have been looking through the visitor logs for this site today and have discovered some interesting things. Lot of people who visit this blog have a User Agent (UA) string which identifies a bit of spyware or possible hack attack.

Two of the most common strings are:

SIMBAR – this appears to be involved in a “Team Evil” hack, while it is not clear to me what adds the SIMBAR to the string, it has also been discussed on TaoSecurity. The most recent visitor with this UA string was from London and the string read:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;SIMBAR Enabled; SIMBAR={0611EF31-5377-41a3-A9BB-228547113477};SIMBAR=0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

HOTBAR – there are quite a few hits from this “semi-non-consensual” browser add on, and I have no idea if it is bad software or not (Wiki has a debate on it if you are interested). The most recent visitors we have had was an NTL broadband user (connected via Harrogate area) with the following UA string:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; V1; Hotbar 4.5.1.0)

It is not really surprising this are IE based strings showing signs of oddness, and over the last few months there have been lots of hits from this two UAs, as well as other “suspicious” strings. I will pay more attention in future and see if there are any patterns to be discerned.

In a nutshell though, I would strongly suggest everyone gets a good anti-virus package (AVG is free) and some reliable anti-spyware packages.

[tags]Spyware, browsers, technology, websites, statistics[/tags]

Now I hate AOL

Sorry if you are an AOL user, but if you are then please think of changing your provider. As a bit of “Disclosure,” I used to be an AOL user in the mid 1990s but, thankfully, I got over it.

My recent tirade is a combination of dislike for AOL and Packard Bell’s choice of software.

I have bought a new laptop (Packard Bell, MZ36 series) and it is brilliant. I really like it. However, today I foolishly tried to uninstall the AOL software which is doing nothing but popping up every now and then, running in the background and taking up disk space.

Doing the decent thing, I used the control panel “uninstall” applet. Possibly my big mistake. I started the uninstall process at 1655hours (BST) and as I write this it is 1815hours (BST). The process still has not completed. I refuse to believe that the AOL 9.5 software is so large that an Intel Core 2 Duo processor takes over 1 hour, 20 mins to remove it so I assume the thing has crashed. Being new to Vista, I have no real idea on how to stop it or how to kill the process without causing problems (I tried doing it in Task Manager but it didn’t die).

Worryingly there is a large collection of software I have no intention of ever using which Packard Bell have “Helpfully” installed for me. Do I have the courage to remove all of them?

[tags]Technology, Rant, AOL, Computers, Bad Service, BT, Vista[/tags]

Misuse of email? Maybe

I am not fully sure yet, but it looks like ClassicFM needs to be added to my personal list of “Bad Organisations” which sell on your email address to spam houses.

I have mentioned this in the past, but basically when I sign up for various things online I use a Gishpuppy email address. Ok, it is an ugly website but the service is really useful. With Gishpuppy you can create an email account tailored for a specific use which re-directs your email to any account you want.

To this end, when I registered for a special offer at ClassicFM.com a while ago I used the email address classicfm.zqa at gishpuppy.com. This is the only place I have ever used the email address and the only time I used it.

While I was on holiday (and all day today), I have had in the region of 8 – 10 spam mails sent to that email address. Not a massive amount, but annoying – especially when I have only used the email in a single place. For completeness, the header information reads: (I have removed my real email address and munged the gishpuppy one)

Return-Path: <Pace2Calderon@comptia.com>
X-Original-To: [REAL EMAIL REMOVED]
X-Envelope-To: [REAL EMAIL REMOVED]
Delivered-To: [REAL EMAIL REMOVED]
Received: from minuteman.ai.net (minuteman.ai.net [205.134.188.6])
by robin.systems.pipex.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EEA4E0000EB
for [REAL EMAIL REMOVED]; Sat, 7 Jul 2007 18:34:00 +0100 (BST)
Received: by minuteman.ai.net (Postfix, from userid 1002)
id E73849A3; Sat, 7 Jul 2007 13:30:11 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from 1D597C28 (84.127.79.26.dyn.user.ono.com [84.127.79.26])
by minuteman.ai.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 60F0A9A3
for <classicfm.zqa @ gishpuppy.com>; Sat, 7 Jul 2007 13:30:10 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by event.comptime.net (Chostfix, from userid 322)
id 22DCE52121; Sat, 07 Jul 2007 12:33:17 -0800
X-Original-To: rat-07@guide.comptime.net
Delivered-To: industry-07@advertisement.comptime.net
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2007 12:33:17 -0800
From: “Clarke, Consuelo” <Pace2Calderon@comptia.com>
To: classicfm.zqa @ gishpuppy.com
Subject: Recruiting [GishPuppy]
Sender: Pace2Calderon@comptia.com
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: Pace2Calderon@comptia.com
Message-Id: <20070707173010.60F0A9A3@minuteman.ai.net>
X-Antivirus: AVG for E-mail 7.5.476 [269.10.2/890]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain

All of them were pretty much the same as this (with different return addresses and paths) and I am sure people who know much more about the subject than I do can make more sense of it.

It is possible that Gishpuppy is the weak link and sold my email address on (or had it stolen) but as I have dozens upon dozens of Gishpuppy addresses, I am not sure how likely that is.

At the moment, I can only assume that ClassicFM have either deliberately allowed my address to be used or are just inept at securing my details.

Shame on them.

[tags]Bad Shops, Spam, Classic FM,Gishpuppy[/tags]

There’s a word for this

Are you female? Do you spend your day talking about “accessorising”, “Pilates”, “size zero”, “superfoods”, “cellulite” and “kitten heels”? I thought not.

On the BBC website, there is a piece about “research” showing that women do not talk more than men but apparently have a larger vocabulary. This is “research” in the sense that it isn’t actually attributed but its results are amazingly specific.

Researchers in the US have laid waste to the long-held belief that women talk more than men. But the survey did find that female subjects get through an average of 16,215 words a day, compared with their male counterparts’ 15,669, a difference of 546

As a “lighthearted” talking point, the BBC lists some candidates for what these words might be (supposedly after consulting some women) and asks for other suggestions. There are a few phrases in the list that might be considered to be genuine specifically female concerns but most of the suggestions are what you’d get if you switched on a stereotyping machine and programmed it to reproduce the thoughts of a latter-day Bernard Manning.

I shouldn’t think I have to spell it out but I am going to anyway.

The general assumption behind most of this list is that women are complete airheads, mental sponges for Heat magazine. If the BBC had produced a similar list based on “jokey” “racial” chracteristics, you would expect that the website would have been (rightly) shut down by now.

But, hey, it’s all light-hearted fun. It couldn’t possibly be part of the cultural construction of masculinity and feminity, could it?

Disconnected from society

I will keep it short for now because it is late and I am tired having covered what feels like the entire length of the United Kingdom today (in a traffic jam).

The BBC have reported, in a news item titled “‘Islamic duty’ to help UK police” that:

Muslims have been told it is their “Islamic duty” to co-operate with the police to ensure Britain’s safety.

This blog has previously been accused of concentrating its attacks on Christianity, and often Atheism in general is accused of being “anti-Christian” rather than “anti-Deity” largely because it concentrates on the dominant religions in the English speaking world. There is no reason, however, why Islam should get off lightly and this brings to mind a startling example of what is really, really wrong with both the religion and how its adherents see themselves within the UK. (I can only assume this is valid elsewhere).

Basically, this statement (is it an edict?) from the Muslim Council of Britain (*) admits that “Muslims” within the United Kingdom see themselves as separate from society. The MCB are basically saying that unless told to do so by authority figures within Islam, Muslims living here will not function as members of the “British” society.

For centuries the “British” (OK, mainly the English) have been worried about Catholics coming to power here, as it was assumed they would place the authority of Rome over the needs, wants and laws of the People of Britain. While this is still a real concern (try to become king if you are Catholic for example), it seems no where near as much of a problem as this portrayal of Islam.

It is sad that a large segment of people born and bred in the United Kingdom feel patriotic towards another nation and will only behave as citizens of their homeland when ordered to do so by their Church. I am constantly amazed that so many people who dislike the lifestyles and behaviours of this (or any country) continue to live here, maybe they are some variation on the flagellants… 🙂

Isn’t the 21st century wonderful.

(*) Does Northern Ireland have its own? Do people forget that the UK is not just Britain? Does the MCB not like Northern Ireland – you could hardly blame them… 🙂 (and it would explain the B rather than MCUK…)