Phishing Attack on Twitter

Posted about 10 months ago on: 28/10/2009 - No comments
Tagged in: twitter, phishing, scam.

If you get any DM's with links to http://blogger.djhxkcs.com it seems to be a phishing scam coming from China (or a server compromised in China) - Details are:

IP: 220.164.144.202

Just add it your host files and direct it to 12.0.0.1 - If you own networks with lots of users, consider banning it on IP tables.

Simply add:

iptables -A INPUT -p all -s 220.164.144.202 -j DROP
iptables -A OUTPUT -p all -s 220.164.144.202 -j DROP

To your chains at least till the attack is over.

That craving

Posted about 10 months ago on: 27/10/2009 - 6 comments
Tagged in: craving, brain fart, hosting, development, freelance.

For the last few months I've been sounding out a few old contacts and doing various bits of freelance development again after a years hiatus from doing anything serious. Some of the folks that have known me some years know that I ran a successful email system and was a happy freelancer for a long time. I also run a hosting endeavour at the moment. The hosting works, makes money and because of my experience as a systems admin is semi-trivial and doesn't really take up a lot of time.

The fact of the matter is that I don't want to up-scale it and the reason is it doesn't financially up-scale all that well due to competition (that I can't and won't try to compete with), I've been there before and frankly I'd rather not loose sleep. Also there would come a time when I would need to make a choice, a choice I'm not in the mood to make right now because of the current financial markets.

That said... after a conversation I had earlier, I'm craving. So thanks Jake, thanks a lot... no really :-)

Also, I managed to catch up with a few people I've not spoken to in nearly six years this evening; as it's the first time I'd logged on to MSN for probably that long. WIN.

A year on without Lady

Posted about 10 months ago on: 23/10/2009 - 1 comment
Tagged in: lady.

So today it's been a year since I had to put my dog to sleep. I think about her everyday and miss her terribly. I think it's easy for anyone to understand that if you spend the amount of time I did with your dog then it does leave a massive hole in your life when they're gone.

Simple things like being used to being greeted and knocked over when you come home, the interactivity, the level of trust and responsibility you feel, the loyalty, the knowing no matter how shit you feel they always seem to cheer you up. I can't really get it across in words very well to be honest. All I know is her being gone leaves a gap that won't be filled. I spent the entire of my adult life with her, the up and the downs. She wasn't an ordinary dog in any sense. Fiercely loyal to me, wasn't frightened of anything or anyone and had tenacity in buckets.

I still have her daughter, who hasn't been the same since, she still looks for her mum from time to time and strangly enough she's been quite quiet the last few days, maybe she's picking up vibes from me or she actually remembers; I don't know.

You're not forgotten Lady and sorely missed by not just me :o(


x

I love freedom of speech

Posted about 10 months ago on: 21/10/2009 - 4 comments
Tagged in: censorship, bnp, labour, bbc, question time, hain.

With all the media frenzy about the BNP being on Question Time it has gotten me thinking, a lot. Personally I can't stand, no, HATE the BNP. I've spent a lot of time at anti-fascist protests in the past and I don't mind admitting I've had my fair share of scuffles with right-wing muppets.

I'm however quite shocked at the level of media coverage of Mr Hain and his insistence on not letting the BNP on Question Time because he argues that the BNP is illegal because it does not allow ethnic minorities to join. Does that mean we'll not ever allow ANY of the people who claimed for stupid things and took tax payers money because they committed fraud? I want the BNP on Question Time and I'll tell you why, I want Griffin to make his own noose and hang his party on TV, hopefully with the help of Jack Straw. I also think that to try and censor them is more abhorrent to me than listening to them. I'd like to keep the freedom of choosing not listen, rather than have that choice made for me.

Like I say, I hate the BNP but I hate censorship through political arguments a LOT more. I'm quite aware I'm generalising here and this post is more a brain fart than anything else so feel free to flame away.

On a more tongue in cheek note; could it be argued that because of the idiot leadership of New Labour that in itself is the reason that the BNP got votes in the first place, have a seat; and are appearing on the TV?

Visit Hope Note Hate and get involved if you really hate the BNP, just remember when it comes to silencing people, who knows when you'll be next eh?

Nice try idiots

Posted about 10 months ago on: 20/10/2009 - No comments
Tagged in: idiots, spam, bot-net, windows, microsoft, phishing.

From: no-reply@tek.org.uk
To: tek@tek.org.uk
Subject:A new settings file for the tek@tek.org.uk has just been released
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:15:49 +0530 (08:45 BST)


Dear user of the tek.org.uk mailing service!

We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (tek@tek.org.uk) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:

http://tek.org.uk/owa/service_directory/settings.php?email=tek@tek.org.uk&from=tek.org.uk&fromname=tek

(which was actually http://tek.org.uk.ttl1lll.net/owa/service_directory/settings.php?email=tek@tek.org.uk&from=tek.org.uk&fromname=tek)

Best regards, tek.org.uk Technical Support.

Nice Try, shame I am the admin, user and owner of the box and domain eh?

When will these pricks learn.

Edit: Since this post I am now getting a massive amount of them from different "accounts" @tek.org.uk all targeting my tek@ account, it is amusing and ANNOYING at the same time. Every single email suggests they're being pumped out of a bot-net and each box is, funnily enough, using Outlook to send them. It's at times like this that I hate a certain OS vendor.

GDM Greeter Builder

Posted about 10 months ago on: 19/10/2009 - No comments
Tagged in: gdm, gnome, builder, web-app.

I've been building & testing some code recently. I'll get what I've been working on up sometime tonight. Basically I have been making a web-app that you can make GDM Greeter Themes with. GDM is the logon screen for GNOME if you aren't aware. So.. You upload a picture of your choice, fill in some other details and you have a greeter.tar.gz file spat back at you which you can use to install the theme.

So far it's quite basic, you can choose colours and upload a background image; but that is all. The idea is not to create visually stunning themes with multiple images, but allow perhaps the less technical users a chance at having a more personal login theme.

Edit: Obviously I didn't get chance to put the GDM Builder up, I was way to busy reading through the Twitter API and messing about with it. Sorry.

BrightKite and the XFCE Dusk Theme

Posted about 10 months ago on: 15/10/2009 - No comments
Tagged in: greasemonkey, brightkite, script, xfce.debian, iceweasel, firefox.

I use a dark theme on my notebook (XFCE Dusk) and with the new BrightKite the text areas for comments have been given a background colour (background:) of white, but the foreground (color:) doesn't seem to be set or my theme is overriding it in IceWeasel (The Debian version of Firefox).

So I decided to make a simple GreaseMonkey (developer site is here) script to correct the problem for me. If you've never used GreaseMonkey it's a brilliant add-on for Firefox that allows you to automatically affect the DOM (the web page you've loaded) so you can remove or even add elements to the page, add or remove CSS and pretty much anything else you want to do.

You can download the script here.