Wednesday, July 6, 2011

SOMEONE HAD TO SAY IT

HELL'S KITCHEN

BIKER BAR

LAKE ELSINORE, CALIFORNIA

Sunday, June 26, 2011

MACHETES, BOTTLE ROCKETS, LAWN DARTS and a HANGMANS NOOSE

An old Led Zep song starts out with the lyrics,

"IN THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH I WAS TOLD WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN..."

and continues

"GOOD TIMES, BAD TIMES, YOU KNOW I'VE HAD MY SHARE..."

As a boy, I was a constant source of worry for my poor mother. I was an adrenaline junkie. Always questing for the next dose, with absolutely no regard for the outcome, as it pertained to me. For reasons I can't explain, I loved to play with the things I was warned not to mess with. And on several occasions those unheeded warnings cost me dearly. One specific warning was over my affection for fire works, bottle rockets, specifically. Unlike many of the boys I grew up with, I didn't smoke cigarettes. But I did use cigarettes. I would hold a lit one in my mouth and use it to light the fuse on a cherry bomb or an M-80 so I could launch them from my slingshot and achieve that most sought after effect, "THE LONG RANGE AIR BURST." I would also use the smokes to light the fuse on bottle rockets and throw them in the direction of opposing team members in a game we called "ROCKET WARS."

On July 5, 1968, 8 short weeks before my 16th birthday, I stepped out into my front yard with a box of matches, 1 Bel Air cigarette and 5 dozen bottle rockets. The first rocket launched perfectly, went approximately 50 feet up and disintegrated in a loud bang. I put the second rocket in the same hole in the ground as the first one and lit the fuse and stepped back to watch the launch. The fuse sputtered and hissed just like the previous one did. But the launch was a failure, a DUD. That thing cost me like 3cents and I was pissed about being ripped off. Cussing under my breath as I stepped up and leaned over to pull the rocket from the launch hole, the frigging thing took off and hit me squarely in my left eye, throwing me literally to the ground. The pain was blinding, and so was the rocket strike. I must have yelped in pain because my mom was at the door in a flash. Covering my right eye and looking into the bright Carolina sun with my left eye, proved that I was indeed blinded by the hit. All I saw was a total blackness. The rocket had torn my iris at the top where it attaches to the white of my eye, leaving an opening in the shape of an arc that went from 10:00 - 2:00. The tear filled the interior of my eye with blood and that blocked light from striking my retina.

A CLASSIC DEFINITION OF THE WORD BLIND!

A quick ambulance ride to the Naval Hospital, Camp Lejeune. Admitted to the ophthalmology ward for treatment. I don't recall the doctors name. But he told me there was a 10% chance, if I did exactly what he told me, that I would regain the sight in my left eye. He wrapped my eyes with white bandages and ordered me to lay flat on my back for 2 weeks to let the blood drain out of my eye. everything was going fine until i had to use the toilet. The corpsmen refused to let me up and brought me a bed pan instead. After using it once, I vowed to never do it again. And for the remainder of the two weeks I refused to eat anything. When the staff questioned my lack appetite, I told them I felt sick to my stomach and didn't feel like eating.

At the end of the 2 weeks, when the doctor removed the bandages, for the second time in my life, I could see with both eyes. But because of the extra hole in my eye, bright light was painful. So I wore a pair of teardrop sunglasses during most of my waking hours. When school resumed in September, my first class I was told by one Mr.Daughtry,

"no wearing sunglasses in his classroom without a note from a doctor."

His jaw dropped so hard, you'd think he got sucker punched, when I walked up and handed him my doctor's prescription giving me permission to wear sunglasses during all daylight hours. A plus for having been blinded . And my classmates believed I was a stoner because I wore shades constantly. There were even some rumors that I had blackmail evidence on some teacher, and that's why they let me wear my Raybans in class.

Fast forward 43 years to Wednesday 22 June 2011, at VA Hospital San Diego, Ca. One of the unexpected side effects of my chemotherapy is a complete cataract of my injured eye. For the second time in my life I was blind in my left eye, only this time laying on my back for a few weeks made no difference. Cataract surgery is not a laser procedure. It is an interocular operation that entails surgical removal and replacement of the clouded lens. But because my eye had a damaged iris (the mechanism that holds the lens in place) lens replacement was a bit more complex (ain't that just like me?).

So, as the gurney crossed the O.R. threshold I prayed this little prayer:

Dr. KARIN THOMAS IS THE GREATEST EYE SURGEON THAT GOD EVER LET DRAW BREATH. AND IN HIS INFINITE WISDOM AND MERCY, HE HAS PLACED ME IN HER CARE...

2 HOURS LATER I LOOKED LIKE THIS

The pain was bearable but constant. It felt like someone was pressing on my eyeball with a large thumb. After beating a four year morphine/vicodin jag, I definitely didn't want to start up on narcotics again. And for the third time in the short history of me, I can see with both eyes...

NEXT WEEK I GO IN TO HAVE THE STITCHES REMOVED FROM MY CORNEA.

DID YOU EVER SAY

"STICK A NEEDLE IN MY EYE?"

ME TOO...

SAY IT AGAIN... I DARE YOU!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

HOW TO HACK A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT

FIRESHEEP

FIRESHEEP

POINT & CLICK HACKING OF FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

NOW AVAILABLE AS AN EXTENSION

FIREFOX

Firesheep is an extension developed by Eric Butler for the Firefox web browser. The extension uses a packet sniffer to intercept unencrypted cookies from certain websites (such as Facebook and Twitter) as the cookies are transmitted over networks, exploiting session hijacking vulnerabilities. It shows the discovered identities on a sidebar displayed in the browser, and allows the user to instantly take on the log-in credentials of the user by double-clicking on the victim's name.

The extension was created as a demonstration of the security risk to users of web sites that only encrypt the login process and not the cookie(s) created during the login process.

It has been warned that the use of the extension to capture login details without permission would violate wiretapping laws and/or computer security laws in some countries. Despite the security threat surrounding Firesheep, representatives for Mozilla Add-ons have stated that it would not use the browser's internal add-on blacklist to disable use of Firesheep, as the blacklist has only been used to disable spyware or add-ons which inadvertently create security vulnerabilities, as opposed to attack tools (which may legitimately be used to test the security of one's own systems).

A MANAGING EDITOR AT

PC WORLD

SAYS:

How to Hijack Facebook Using Firesheep

I hijacked a Facebook account with Firesheep; it was easy, and here's what you should do to avoid falling victim.

By Sharon Machlis, Computerworld Oct 30, 2010 1:02 pm

I hijacked someone's Facebook account with Firesheep. It was incredibly easy.

Before you call the authorities on me, the "hijack" was an experiment with a colleague's account while we were waiting for a plane, and she gave me permission. But let me tell you: Firesheep, the Firefox add-on designed to show the security holes in sites that don't use encryption for all their traffic, works as advertised.
All I had to do was download and install the add-on, open the Firesheep sidebar and click "Start Capturing." When her account appeared on the list, I double-clicked on it. Once I made sure that I wasn't logged into the same site myself with my own account, her account appeared in my browser.
Happily, I couldn't change her account information without knowing her password. But I could see all her friends, read her private messages and even issue a status update that went to all her friends.
Also good news: Google and Yahoo mail both appeared secure, even if logged into other portions of those sites.
However, sitting at the Online News Association conference this morning -- a conference of journalists who are very Web-savvy but perhaps less so on latest security issues -- I see a steady stream of accounts show up (see a sample below). Facebook. Twitter. Tumblr. I saw someone's Wordpress blog account (but no, I don't know if I could have clicked through and posted an item).
I was also alarmed to see my own accounts showing up. I hadn't remembered that I'd left my work laptop logged into my Google account, but there was my Gmail address popping up on the Firesheep sidebar when I surfed to Google to do a search.
So here's what I'm doing about Firesheep. Even though I'm not interested in seizing control of strangers' accounts, I'm keeping Firesheep loaded on my system and firing it up whenever I'm using public Wi-Fi: to make sure none of my own accounts pop up. Firesheep has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. I can't count on the fact that I'm the only one on the network who knows about it.
If I was in charge of IT and/or IT security at an organization, I'd be giving Firesheep demonstrations to managers to drive the point home that it's just not safe to use public Wi-Fi connections without using proper safeguards.

Sharon Machlis is online managing editor at Computerworld. Her e-mail address is smachlis@computerworld.com. You can follow her on Twitter Twitter @sharon000, on Facebook or by subscribing to her RSS feeds:
articles Machlis RSS | blogs Machlis RSS.

##########WTF##########

MANY SECURITY PUNDITS WARN THAT TO PROTECT YOURSELF, YOU SHOULD NEVER USE FREE WI-FI ACCESS POINTS.

THAT'S THROWING THE SHEEP OUT WITH THE DIP.

FREE WI-FI IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

IT'S A FAILURE BY THE SITES YOU VISIT (facebook, twitter, google, etc) TO USE PROPER SECURITY MEASURES (ie, https encrypted sessions beyond the login).

ANOTHER RECOMMENDATION, USE A VPN (Virtual Private Network) TUNNEL TO ACCESS YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT. GOOD ADVICE, BUT VPN SERVICES ARE NOT FREE AND WHILE THE MAY BE CHEAP ($5.00-$10.00/MONTH) NOW YOU'VE JUST NEGATED THE FREE PART OF FREE WI-FI.

QUOTED FROM COMPUTERWORLD

If free is the object, there are options there, too, said Wisniewski, Sullivan and Gallagher, who pointed to a pair of free Firefox add-ons that force the browser to use an encrypted connection when it accesses certain sites.
One of those Firefox add-ons, HTTPS-Everywhere, provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), only works with a defined list of sites, including Twitter, Facebook, PayPal and Google's search engine.
The other choice, Force-TLS, serves the same purpose as the EFF's extension, but lets users specify which sites on which to enforce encryption.

AND "BLACK SHEEP" IS FIREFOX PLUGIN DESIGNED TO COMBAT FIRESHEEP, BY DROPPING "FAKE" SESSION INFORMATION ON THE WIRE AND MONITORING TO SEE IF IT GETS HIJACKED.

x#x#x#x#x#x#x#x#x#x

WHILE IT IS TRUE THAT FIRESHEEP GIVES HACKING ABILITIES TO USERS

FIREFOX 3.5 AND NEWER, 32bit only.

IT IS NOT TRUE THAT USERS OF OTHER BROWSERS WOULD BE SAFE

FROM A ROGUE FIRESHEEP USER.

Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera are all VULNERABLE, REGARDLESS OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM BEHIND YOUR BROWSER.

FOR THOSE BROWSERS, THE ONLY WAY TO PREVENT A FIRESHEEP SNOOP IS TO USE A VPN CONNECTION, SHIFT TO AND INSTALL THE EXTENSION MENTIONED ABOVE, TO FIREFOX. OR CONTACT THE TECH SUP WEENIES AT FACEBOOK AND GET INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO CONFIGURE YOUR ACCOUNT TO USE ONLY HTTPS SESSIONS...

Monday, June 6, 2011

2 YEARS + 400 POSTS

THIS IS POST #400

I've never jumped out of an airplane. I never really wanted to do it either. I don't have a fear of

falling/flying/dying/heights.

It just never came up as a dare, offer or invitation.

My daughter, on the other hand:

that's her on the left. A college graduate...

Was given a B-Day present from a friend (gotta wonder about friends like that) to jump from a plane.

staging

two thumbs up!

All aboard

In the plane...

OUT OF THE PLANE

FREE FALLING

LOOK

up in the sky!

its a bird...

its a plane...

ITS AMANDA

TOUCHDOWN

GOD knows, I love that girl.

###########+++++++++++##########

I THANK Y'ALL FOR STOPPING BYE LO THESE PAST TWO YEARS. WHAT A LONG STRANGE ROAD IT'S BEEN. I NEVER IMAGINED IT WOULD LEAD TO MAKING FRIENDS AND CARING ABOUT PEOPLE I NEVER EVEN SET EYES ON. BUT IT HAS A VERY SPECIAL WAY TO CONNECT WITH PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD (USA, Canada, England, Australia, Scotland, South Africa, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and HAWAII).

All of this reminds me of an old song.