PC & IT 01 (May 08 - Oct 08)

[blid2def]

Type a URL of a website (e.g. http://www.soccernet.com) into the Wayback Machine text box... click "Take Me Back" and you'll see.

[winston]

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

-- Local Web administrators have been warned that hackers are planting malicious codes in legitimate web pages that infect internet users who visit the sites.

[winston]

SEO Don't: Cloaking
By Alexis Siemon

This week, a story came to my attention that I don't hear too often. It seems there's some buzz around the real estate industry that a fairly well-known website is participating in cloaking.

If this news is true, it could mean two things: They did it on purpose, in which case Papa Google will swiftly ban the real estate site from its index. Or they did it unknowingly, meaning they have a very naive SEO specialist working for them and will still have to answer to Papa Google.

So what, exactly, is cloaking - and why does it irritate Google so much?

Cloaking is the practice of serving a different version of your website to the search engines than you do to the end user. When the practice first started, there was a much larger gap between what looked good to the end user and what looked good to the search engines. So cloaking seemed like the perfect solution - not to mention, mighty tempting.

But it was quickly, and rightly, deemed a black hat and spammy practice. Google specifies in its webmaster guidelines that if they suspect you of cloaking, they will remove your site from their index.

To hear that a prominent website could be cloaking is surprising. An experienced SEO specialist knows that it is a deceptive, outlawed, and, frankly, lazy technique. There are so many legitimate ways you can optimize your site for both search engine and visitor usability these days. I hope for this real estate site's sake that the allegations are false. But if they're true, they should start shopping for a new SEO guy.

[blid2def]

Spore - by Maxis (Sim City, The Sims), distributed by EA Games. Much-awaited, much-hyped, 7 Sep. Seems a bit like Black & White though.

http://www.ea.com.sg/spore/

[blid2def]

Cross-posting:

Dug these up for a friend who had a corrupted CF card. I've personally used TestDisk to fix some problems with my HDDs in the past. Photorec, I'm not so sure - haven't tried.

(1) PhotoRec

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks and CDRom and lost pictures (thus, its 'Photo Recovery' name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's filesystem has been severely damaged or re-formatted.

PhotoRec is free, this open source multi-platform application is distributed under GNU Public License. PhotoRec is a companion program to TestDisk, an app for recovering lost partitions on a wide variety of filesystems and making non-bootable disks bootable again. You can download them from this link.

(2) Test Disk

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting your Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

TestDisk can

* Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
* Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
* Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
* Fix FAT tables
* Rebuild NTFS boot sector
* Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
* Fix MFT using MFT mirror
* Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock

TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. For those who know little or nothing about data recovery techniques, TestDisk can be used to collect detailed information about a non-booting drive which can then be sent to a tech for further analysis. Those more familiar with such procedures should find TestDisk a handy tool in performing onsite recovery.

[kennynah]

McAfee, Norton, too expensive?

How about this affordable Anti-Virus solution....

[millionairemind]

WL..... super funny man!!!

[winston]

Hackers hijack web servers in shift of tactics
Timothy Chui

Cyber criminals have switched tactics and are now hijacking web servers rather than sewing viruses, phishing or using spyware, the city's internet security team has warned.

Hong Kong Productivity Council's computer emergency response team said groups of professional hackers are focusing on web servers with "drive- by downloads" and "structured query language" injection attacks to compromise computers and websites.

According to the team's statistics, viruses made up the bulk of internet attacks before 2004 with 3,211 incidents reported that year compared with 936 security incidents due to SQL injection, spyware or phishing.

But over the next three years, security incidents topped virus attacks, with 1,271 in 2007 compared with 516 virus incidents.

Although it does not have any data for DBD and SQL injection attacks, team manager Roy Ko Wai-tak said he sounded the alarm because 79 attacks have been detected since the team started keeping records in April.

The injection-style attacks differ from previous online threats because users can be infected by conducting regular and legitimate online activities, unlike phishing or spamming that require users to click on suspicious links.

For DBD attacks, hackers find vulnerabilities in sloppily programmed websites, hijacking legitimate web servers and web page applications which redirect end-users to malicious websites, Ko said yesterday.

From there, malware is downloaded turning a user's computer into a spam, phishing and denial-of-service launching machine while leaving personal data vulnerable.

SQL injection also takes advantage of poorly written websites to infect end- users and websites, where cyber criminals may extract or delete data and accounts, alter information or leave back doors for future attacks.

The council's executive director, Wilson Fung Wing-yip, said anyone's computer may be infected merely by browsing these websites.

He suggested end-users remove all injected codes immediately by restoring databases from a clean backup copy.

They should also apply all patches to installed software and review and change all passwords.

End-users may also install basic security and anti-malware software and personal firewalls while observing advisories and backing up data as a preventive measure.

The response team has also changed direction in its operation by going on the offensive and actively looking for compromised websites.

Previously, it relied on reports to open investigations.

[blid2def]

The new Tomb Raider / Lara Croft: Alison Carroll

[kennynah]

some thoughts...