ArtistBlog.ME

I’m going to dedicate an entire section on my site about my encounters with technology. The good and the bad sides. I’ll discuss these throughout with my wits and perspective.

In some parts I’d already be dreaming of gadgets which are still not available on this planet. The current age has created us toys which can be as small as a phone, to the size of a cricket.

Still, I am amazed what this world spawns. From armored card machines to automatic vacuum cleaners. Still, with an expense. The software is often out-to-date, slow, not userfriendly or even insecure to use while sitting in that nice armored behemot.

Topics to be opened soon (with short introduction):

• Personal Computer Widescreen is the only way to go?You can’t walk over the street without seeing these fancy laptops with glossy screens. I can’t stand glossy but I must say this is rather a preference. Still, where are those normal LCD screens which are NOT widescreen? I have to buy a 22″ widescreen before I can use the normal resolution of a normal 20 inch screen!
• Computer systems a menace for the tactical audiophile?Lot’s of DJ’s prefer MP3’s and computer systems to mix. I don’t give a damn, these things don’t give any tactical feedback at all. Same for the production of music. Fruityloops, Cubase, Reason or good sequencer can be used for dance tracks. One small detail, you’re working on a screen without any buttons, unless you got your controller placed in front of you. Still, where’s the fun of having seperate devices and using them modular? Different outputs, controls, feedback and learning curve. Everything can be done in software but you’ll still be limited by that software. I’ve been working with software for over 10 years, abandoned it for real hardware and have been producing ever well since that change!
• Noisy slow computer-systems everywhere!Last time I was sitting at a desk I was terribly annoyed by the vacuum cleaner next to my ear. Not only this vacuum cleaner had an alternating noise, just like my PC has at home, but it was slow as freak too. Remarkable, like the PC at home too! I am missing that age of silent computing. The P3 and P4 were pretty stable in sound, why do these newer CPU’s have to immitate that 5$ vacuum cleaner you found at the pawn shop?
• Data storage, a window to a black age for the greedy?
  
  Data storage opened a portal to many ways. For audio and video it was the solution for high-definition productions. It opened an entire new door to distributed computing, bloated software and operating systems with the size you could yank “MOMMA?” at! It also opened a bad doorway to those who are greedy and out of empowering their wealth. Data collection happens at governmental level but in end 2000 also at corporation level. This data can be used and abused at any given time; for as long as it exists. Do you still feel safe with that innocent mail which became illegal 50 years later?
• Immortality at a price of knowledge.Want to be immortal? Too bad! You got to die! Still, you can be immortal in many ways. The information high-way has evolved to an entire incorporated society which can pass your soul for many ages! Immortality at the price of bandwidth. If you create content which is worthy surviving for eternity you should sure think about the Internet to do so!
• Updates & Windows still not the safest way to go!Those updates, together with one of the top-best virus-scanners are still not best. This month a hacker tried to access one of my XP systems while I was working on it. Stupid. This system was fully patched, fully firewalled with F-secure Internet Security. It didn’t help. After cleaning the system completely of any backdoors (and there were 3 installed!) I noticed another box popping up. A nice Courtesy Shell. This was time to reinstall this machine, put it on another IP, firewall it externally and honeynet this attacker. Bottom line of the story: Updates and firewalls installed on machine level are not always as safe as you think!
• Defective public transportation automation.In Belgium we got these armored machines, running under a very cheap system which provides tickets to use the public transportation. It’s a nice system when it’s broken for sure! If only these tram-drivers would have the guts to price for the normal price when it’s broken!
• Cards everywhere! Do I need a new wallet?A card for these 2 shops I go to and one for the bakery where I buy croissants at, two to get a pizza at the corner, one for these office supplies, credit card, SIS card and I’m for sure not ending here. These cards often are not fully understood in policy…
• Windows Vista, is bloat really necessary?Windows Vista, the new flagship of Microsoft is not really more than an upgraded XP, with new screen/presentation enhancements, much slower and uses lots more memory. Together with the vacuum cleaner mentioned before.. Great! I knew there was a reason to live!
• Lots more …

Trust or distrust
These days there is a huge gap between trust and distrust. You cannot trust your house to be 100% safe anymore, you are not safe of getting robbed or hit on the back so somebody can have your money. Not only your house or you can be
insecure but your computer can be insecure too.

Unwanted people (hackers) could be watching every move you do on your PC, right now. They could read, alter or destroy your files, your personal data. Your passwords and your VISA card number is not that safe anymore on a insecure computer!

Currently there are dozen of utilities that can be used to log keystrokes, so every password or VISA card number or even any private information can be logged and sent to somebody who is your neightbour or somebody who lives 5000 miles from you away. People can virtually stalk you, you can have a hacker watching all your (private) mails and documents and gathering all kinds of information about you.

A lot of these insecurities can be found in Microsoft products. I am using Windows 98, without outlook, without Exchange, without Internet Explorer …

Currently I am sending x-mas cards to friends. All of these friends using Outlook are sending me the Badtrans virus back. If I would be using Outlook I would be infected as well and spread the same infection over and over until the worm has infested a dozens of addressbooks!

Why am I not running Windows 2000, ME or XP you might ask? Because I do not want to have my system infested with worms, virusses and trojans. I do not wish people to see what I am currently doing and I do not wish my personal data to be transmitted to somebody who I (might) not know.

Windows eXPloited
For example, Windows XP, the product that extends your view to a green landscape with fluffy clouds is not so safe afterall. By installing it on your PC without patching the software will give ANY hacker out there access to your PC without any limits! There are 7 million copies sold in 14 days, how many people are vurnerable and having a backdoor to their PC? This hole affects versions of 98 with XP file sharing and all versions of ME as well! (msnbc | nipc.gov)

Next to that, XP is slower on my 1500mhz PC than Windows 98 is on my 400Mhz!

Fixes
Microsoft does make fixes for such bugs, though the last half year there are so many bugs on their products that a normal household having a PC running Microsoft’s products will not patch their PC every 7 days! Hence, most of these people do not even know what a patch is.

The vault with the backdoor
You can best compare this with a heavy-guarded vault. The doors are locked with magnetic cards, 2 guards standing next to the doors, cameras watching all over the place. You walk from the entrance to a portal, from the portal you get authenticated to enter a hallway and you go with two guards to the vault which gets opened with a magnetic card and a code.

Now… there is a small backdoor TO the vault, without cameras, without code, without guards watching this backdoor – where you can enter at will. Is the content safe without prying eyes in this vault? NO!

Surfing could be bad for PC health
Not only XP is buggy though. If you are browsing the web you could be attacked too. By entering a malicious website a trojan or worm can be downloaded and executed automatically. You will not know your PC is infested with a trojan or worm and you will be spreading it to your friends in your addressbook without you knowing it.

Even worse, a hacker could be gaining access to your system doing whatever he wants, with your PC and your files!

If you are using Internet Explorer you could be attacked without you knowing it.
This browser contains code that can automatically execute malicious programs.

Who says paper mail can be dangerous?
If you are using Outlook or Exchange you could be in the same boat … These days you cannot trust attachments from your own friends anymore. Whenever I get a e-mail with executable attachments I do not run them… why? because I cannot trust these attachments. My PC could be trashed completely, all my files could get deleted or I am getting watched by somebody I might (not) know!

Outlook has code that also executes attachments automatically, so you do not even have to click these malicious programs, Microsoft will do it for you! You can be misguided because of double extensions. A lot of worms out-there distribute with double extensions, like trojan.gif.exe. On Outlook you might only see “trojan.gif…” which looks like a image but is in reality a executable file trashing your PC.

Office work could be spreading bugs
If you think we are finished … there are still the famous Office virusses. Whenever receiving a document from a co-worker it could be having a virus. The same for Excel and the other programs that use macro’s.

Service …
There are Windows NT servers running on the Internet that are still not patched. The most system administrators need to be looking at mailinglists alike Bugtraq and Microsoft bulletins to stay informed. To be having a secure system you should check atleast once a day or the server could be exploited. Many of these administrators have registered their products with name, address and even e-mail address but do not receive any information about a new exploit or a CD with security fixes on it. Not all people do check Microsoft’s security bulletins ya know!

These days Microsoft has a new rule that vurnerabilities may NOT be posted on such lists anymore. This creates problems because hackers might be already exploiting your system or any NT server on the net without their administrator knowing about it or even having a fix for this!

alternatives ..
There are alternatives though, if you are using Windows you should stick to the older versions. It seems to be policy at Microsoft: the higher the version, the higher amount of bugs!

• That’s why I use Windows 98. For my servers I use BSD and Linux, because they are a lot more reliable than Microsoft products.
• for E-mail I use The BatIt does not automatically start malicious programs and it is pretty secure with trojans and double extentions.
• for surfing the web I use Netscape as browser. There are also alternatives like Opera, Mozilla and others.
• I use AVP as virus scanner.

Why to use Microsoft products?
I use Microsoft products like Windows because they have (good) working programs, Office and other programs are the most used programs. I could use alternatives like StarOffice etc… though they are not completely compatible with the so-large population using Windows. For a business you also need to be in line.

Most people are used to Microsoft products, but the suggestion here is – do not be TOO used. If Microsoft is implementing their code in other products (like a EMC diskarray) with such security risks, reliability could get chaos. A hacker can take the exploit-du-jour and hack into such products without any hesitation bringing a entire company or even government network down. Could you imagine the chaos this could create?

The financial world survived the WTC crash through reliability. They had realtime copies (mirrors) of data kept
on other locations. What would have happened if a hacker with the exploit-du-jour would hack such data-recovery centers? chaos!

Do you believe every commercial?
Microsoft made their press-articles that their new product(s) did not suffer from buffer-overflows while the last year there have been dozens of buffer overflows reported on the net!

Such marketing is very great but where is the reality? How long does it take before people really start seeing that there are problems with such products?

Windows XP was billed as most secure ever, while it is having open gaping holes waiting to be infested with hackers!

Bottom line … People trust their products too much. Some people are spreading trojans like hell, some of them do not know what is going on and just leave their PC turned on connected to the cablemodem; while hackers can fest on the PC by using it to hack other people.

Usefull links

Windows XP not so secure! (washingtonpost)
Microsoft issues Windows XP fix (wired)

FBI urges extra caution with XP bug (msnbc)
XP uPnP bug advisory (nipc)

Microsoft To Plug Devastating Browser Download Hole (newsbytes)
Description of Welyah WORM (datafellows)
Description of Sadmind WORM (datafellows)

‘Goner’ Virus Infects Businesses (iwon)

The Bat e-mail client (ritlabs)
Netscape browser
Opera browser

The blue nowhere (book about a hacker-murder colleting info …)
F-secure (AVP)

Slashdot a good news portal!

This small article contains a few topics at once …

Driving problems in 2001, Computer Security and Microsoft is a bad cocktail, terrorists and Outlook problems, war, snooping, sms (cellphone hacking) and much more!

First things first …
I have lately been having moral problems being on the road.

When driving around in Holland, especially where I stay a lot, in Emmen, it has been on my mind that people cannot drive anymore!

The people do not drive the car but the car drives the people! These days it looks like we are driving in London. All people are driving LEFT, trucks are driving RIGHT!

These times you can drive +/- 90Km/h instead of 120Km/h on the highways! The time they see a curve they hit the breaking pedal. The time they see a warning sign of ANY kind they start breaking and creating traffic jams from here to the North Sea! (as a figure of speaking!)

Microsoft, the famous softwarecompany that is present high-numbered has still no clue about computer security! (every word contains a link!); Then Microsoft’s chief security advisor will be leaving MS to work in the Whitehouse as security advisor; hope he gives better advice to them than to his previous employer! (This same guy told in a 1998 interview he denied that viruses in mail attachments are no problems!

The latest worm (new news!) is Goner what can spread through Outlook and ICQ!

Then, there is WAR. War against who? Against terrorists? or against the civilians? These days the government can sniff your Internet connection at their own will! Some references are Magic Lantern (not to be detected by MacAfee and Symantec; how long does it take to be standard in XP service pack 2 to be used as counter-intelligence tool or to wiretap people/companies unrelated to any crime (investigation)?), Carnivore (1 | 2 | 3), Echelon (1 | 2 | 3 | target=”new”>4>), …

Not even better news is that the famous MP3 P2P network is needing to shut down or face a penalty of 100 guilders (40US$/45Euro) per day to Buma/Stemra (the US RIAA equivalent in Holland).

The @home Bankrupcy story…
@Home is dead in the United States; Excite@home and Comcast/AT&T has reached a agreement through a $160 million deal [cnet news] to get 70% of the large population of rough 45% of Internet Users in the US (back) working! Hope it has nothing to do with the latest Orange in the UK, the very populair social; first text message community called Locust Cellular needs to be closed. There is even a saveLocust.org for the supporting people of Locust. SMS is getting too commercial these days .. you even hear the famous “beep-beep, …, beep-beep” on the radio to attract Nokia owners! The same is happening with MTN SMS and Proximus in Belgium, MTNSMS cannot send SMS’s to Proximus phones anymore!

Then yet again, Nokia phones are not really crash-free! You can crash a (and the very popular 6110,6150, 6210,6250,7110,3310 and 3330) Nokia phone over SMS!

I have seen a movie called “Silverlake Life” from Discovery Channel about a gay couple that has been seperated by AIDS. A very shocking and good visual document what makes you think twice! I have written an article about the upcoming risks of HIV! (this article is currently in re-edit!)