This has not really been that normal a week for me, but at least another article made it into print. The June 2008 issue of TechNet Magazine is headlined by an article I wrote with my friend Roger Grimes, Security Adviser for Infoworld, on Security by Obscurity. It is another one of those point-counterpoint pieces like we did in the Vista Security book where Roger argues one side of the issue, and I explain why he is wrong; or, rather, argue the other.
Last night WSUS deployed XP Service Pack 3 to the sole remaining computer running XP that I have. This morning, I came down and was greeted with incessant reboots. The computer booted, apologized for not being able to boot properly, asked if I wanted to boot into safe mode, defaulted to normal boot, rebooted, and so on and so on. It would boot into safe mode fine, so I did that. Not knowing what it was, I ran a disk check, which turned out to be a real mistake. Once I configured the computer to run a disk check at … Continue reading Does your AMD-based computer boot after installing XP SP3?
What's wrong with this picture? If you answered "why would the IRS use a web server in Korea to ask for information about my tax refund" you are a winner! This is a phishing site preying on people who do not know that all you need to do to get your tax rebate is to file a tax return this year. Apparently, this is the hot new phishing scam, and the IRS has instructions for how to handle it. The e-mail came in at 21:07 PDT today. By 21:30 PDT it was not recognized as a phishing site by either Internet … Continue reading Phishing for a Tax Refund
I do not run any anti-malware software on my primary workstation. It's a habit I got into way back when I was doing penetration assessments. I showed up at the site, fired up ye olde laptop, and went to run some tool. …went to run some tool. Hey, where did that tool go? It was there when I left home?!? Turns out the anti-malware software that the company shoved down on my laptop had removed the tools I needed to do my job because they were deemed to be malware. Today I had another reminder of why this is probably … Continue reading Warning! Don’t run Anti-Malware Software on Your Research Machine
