Data leaks from the "Identity and Passport Service"

Thanks to Wendell, I have found another article (follow the link of the title). It seems that information already detained by the State is not secured... In the Identity and Passport Service, which is setting up the National Identity Register, some members of the staff "hacked" the system to access private data from citizens...

Personal information about every British passport holder - including their date of birth, mother's maiden name, address and photographs - is already held in the IPS computers.

Now, do you remember one of the most common question bank ask you when they try to retrieve information about you... Yes your mother's maiden name! But it is simple to use it on Google, Yahoo or MSN to access to the mailbox... because in this case too, the mother's maiden name is often one of the recovery question... So even with so few information, which could already lead to an identity theft... you can already do some very harmful things... The problem with the dream of the British Big Brother is that it seems that every one can look over its shoulder... So imagine what could happen in the future with biometric data (have a look to this cartoon thank you Anonymous ;-) ) That's why I think that we have to think very carefully to the information we let institutions to record... And how they do that! That was the principal reason of my previous post...

Tags: maiden, big brother, National Identity Register, Identity and Passport Service

Heathrow becomes biometric

The Heathrow airport is beginning to test an iris scan biometric machine to identify passengers at customs. Big Brother is not yet here and biometric passport are not yet mandatory... In fact passengers at Heathrow airport are being invited to take part in a trial of tech biometric scanning equipment which aims to make the travelling process easier by getting people through identity checks faster than ever before... All iris scan are record in a database, which will permit later to speed up the check of passenger... But the problem is how to be sure that this database will be safe, that information will not leak... Some people already sell data about others like address, phone number, gender, bank account number... So imagine what might happen with your biometric characteristics... Have you ever seen "Minority Report" and "Gattaca"? In Minority Report, all the shops use your iris to display targeted advertising... In Gattaca, even if there are plenty of biometric detector, one guy is able to fool all of them... This technology can be very useful but data have to be recorded carefully, maybe by using a fuzzy system... This time you don't record the biometric characteristic but a key c and the distance between c and your biometric characteristic x, which is name d. Now we use a fuzzy hash function: minor error leads to the same result, medium error produces a different hash. So in your database you have:

(h(c),d)

when you present your biometric characteristic, you compute: h(d+x') which has to match h(c) to be accepted...

The result is that you can change the secret if the database is compromise... It is maybe not the best method, as it requests a good function h but it is probably better than let the data on an untrusted server... Live and learn to see how this system will be broken...

Tags: heathrow, fuzzy, biometric, database, hash, Minority Report, Gattaca

Flash Player 9 and Linux

YES, now I will be able to play to the games written in Flash and to enjoy the new web sites based on Flex2.0. This time, it is as easy as pie to install : just download the plugin from this adress:
http://www.adobe.com/go/fp9_update_b2_installer_linuxplugin
uncompress it and copy libflashplayer.so in your user's directory of plugins of Mozilla: it must be something as: ~/.mozilla/plugins/ ... Restart it, and now you are ready for web site based on flash (you can test the MacDo's game). And now enjoy the beauty of flash...

Tags: flash player, flash 9, linux, Firefox, Flex2.0

Close and manage file with vim

Let's continue with the best practice of the vim software:

:q
to close vim
:q!
to close vim without recording the modifications
:w
to write the modification
:w [NEW_FILE]
to write the file you are editing in NEW_FILE
:w! [FILE]
it is the same action as before but you force the action
:n,mw [FILE]
save the lines from n to m in the file FILE
:n,mw >>[FILE]
add the lines from n to m at the end of the file FILE
:wq ou :x ou ZZ
Save the file and close vim
:e!
edit the file again but with the version on the disk
:e [FILE]
edit the file FILE rather than the current file (:e! to force the action)
:r [FILE]
insert the file FILE after the current line
:rn [FILE] ou :nr [FILE]
insert the file FILE after the line n
n is either a number, or . for the current line, or $ for the last line.
:version
display information about vim

it should be enough today to play a little and increase your productivity lol ;-)

Tags: vim, productivity, linux

Brothers in court "for making pet dog obese"

At first glance, you could think that if Derek and David Denton go to a court for their dog, it is because of some Fast Food for dog, like a Royal McDo... Not at all they are guilty to have feed their dog too much...


I am waiting now the first trial of parents, who let their child becoming obese...

Tags: Fast Food, dog

A search engine dedicated to Security

I have played a little with the Google's technology to develop a search engine dedicated to the Security (of Internet, Computer, Networks...)

The search engine can be found at this adress:

http://cosearch.googlepages.com/cosecurity.html

For the moment only those urls are recorded for researches:
http://www.sans.org
http://secunia.com/
http://www.securityfocus.com/
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/20/internet.libel.ap/index.html(Court OKs broad Web libel immunity)
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/20/internet.libel.ap/index.html(Hackers plant virus on Website of China's largest bankcard operator)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1953213,00.html(GPs revolt over patient files privacy)
http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/(Carnegie Mellon CyLab)
http://news.netcraft.com/ (Netcraft)

In fact I use it at my office, but it seems that it is not yet enough mature for the moment only : there are not enough urls in its database... So if some people want to take part to the adventure or post some interesting url...

Tags: netcraft, sans, secunia, securityfocus, cosearch

How to launch Vim

We have to begin with the beginning: it is not easy to use Vim at 100%, but as soon as you will you can win a huge amount of time ;-)

To open a file:
vim myfile
To have a list of all the file you can recover:
vim -r
To recover a file after a crash:
vim -r to find recovery files available (they end with .swp)
Then, when you find it, type
vim -r .pass.txt.swp
if you want to open a file at the line N for example: just type:
vim +N myfile
to open it and go directly to the end of the file:
vim + myfile
To open file at the first line containing some regular expression regexp
vim +/regexp myfile
Enough for this post...

Tags: linux, vim, time, recover

Vim

In my office, because we are in a Windows environment for our laptop/destop, but because all our server run Linux/Unix, I have to program in command line and as consequence I use Vim... If you want to know what is vim go to wikipedia, if you don't want to change the page (;-) good girl or good boy or good alien) : here is the Vim's introduction directly from Wikipedia:

Vim, which stands for Vi IMproved, is an open source, multiplatform text editor extended from vi. It was first released by Bram Moolenaar in 1991. Since then, numerous features have been added to Vim, many of which are helpful in editing program source code. Vim is today one of the two most popular editors for programmers and users of Unix-like operating systems, alongside Emacs.

Vim is a very powerful editor... as soon as you know how to use it! Son in the next day I will try to give you the main command and explain to you how to use it at 100%.

Tags: editor, text, vim, wikipedia, Moolenaar, Emacs

A McDonald's game?

I have already talked about Fast Food Nation and the way the Fast Food business makes huges profits by jeopardizing the health of american citizens... Why not try to see what is the problem with MacDonald by becoming Ronald McDonald? You will understand why trying too much money too quickly prevent you to verify the health of cows... and the consequences of that...

Tags: MacDonald, McDonald, Ronald, Fast Food, Fast Food Nation, game

What is air guitar?

Have you ever done as you are playing guitar? Have you ever dreamed to be a Clapton? Probably but what you probably don't know is that you were playing air guitar: if you think you are better as people in the video you should thing to take part to the annual Air Guitar Championship or let me message on this blog so you could create an air band ;-)

Tags: air guitar, clapton, air band

Paris-London = 2H

soon... Next year in fact... It will take 20 minutes less to go from Paris to London. Have you ever noticed that the Eurostar is always slower in England than in France: it is because the railway is not suitable to the TGV: so they will move from Waterloo Station to St Pancras station in the north of London near Regent's Park. Isn'it paradoxical that to earn 20 minutes the train will have to drive farer? The Eurostar station will move on the 13/14th November 2007 night... I think it is mainly for the Olympics Games and for the potential earning due to London 2012. Anyway it is a very good news for all the travelers like me ;-)

Tags: eurostar, Paris, London, Olympics Games, St Pancras, Waterloo

Adsens is down

AdSense est indisponible, phénomène assez rare chez Google pour être noté.

Tags: google, adsense

Kapersky and the 20 viruses

Kaspersky has just published its list of the top 20 malwaress (Virus/Trojan/Worm/...) spreaded by mail. As a consequence, in the case you see those little creature: don't click on them, don't try to play with them...

1. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.q
2. Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.dn
3. Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.gen
4. Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.gen
5. Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.ev
6. Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.mail
7. Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.dc
8. Email-Worm.Win32.Mydoom.l
9. Email-Worm.Win32.Mydoom.m
10. Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.e
11. Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.do
12. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.aa
13. Email-Worm.Win32.NetSky.b
14. Net-Worm.Win32.Mytob.c
15. Trojan-Spy.HTML.Bankfraud.od
16. Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.eu
17. Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.gen
18. Email-Worm.Win32.Bagle.dx
19. Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.dh
20. Email-Worm.Win32.Scano.aq
    

Some new players in the team: Warezov.dn, Warezov.ev, Warezov.dc, Warezov.do, Warezov.eu, Warezov.gen, Warezov.dh.
Some malwares which begin to extinguish: NetSky.b, Mytob.c, Bankfraud.od, Scano.aq. Unfortunately we can notice the return of: NetSky.q, Bagle.gen, Bagle.mail, Mydoom.l, Mydoom.m, Scano.e, NetSky.aa, Bagle.dx, this means that some people don't have an uptodate antivirus, as a consequence they are infected and spread the threat! So install an antivirus if you haven't one already and ensure that it is uptodate (not only Kapersky, but Norton too, or ClamWin...)

Tags: antivirus, kapersky, clamwin, Norton, virus, worm, trojan, mail

LastFMproxy, Streamripper and Amarok

I have recently discovered Lastfm, the community radio. It is a great thing just give it the name of some artists you like and it will gather musics of this artists or similar artists... After that you can be a little more specific and say if you like the music or if you want to ban it! Most of the time the choices are excellent and they are becoming more and more relevant with the time and your selection. If you want to read the lastfm flux in one of your old player on linux, you should try lastfmproxy (you can find it here ), just uncompress the archive with this command:
tar -xvzf lastfmproxy-1.1.tar.gz
then go inside the directory you have just created, modify the config.py file with your username and password for Last.fm. That's it, now you can run the main script:
python main.py
you should see something like:
Starting LastFMProxy 1.1...
Connecting to last.fm server...
To tune in, point your browser to:
http://localhost:1881/
The last line stand to give you the url you can listen in your old player... So start it and open this url. That's working ;-) Great.
In all the previous part I said "old player", it is because with the great player of linux: Amarok, you can directly play Last.fm: you need to go in Settings and that's it! You can now choose open a Last.fm flux! Enjoy.
You probably wonder why I told you about LastFmproxy if you don't need it to play LastFM if you use Amarok... It is because there is a little trick: if you listen LastFM, you only listen it, when you shut down your computer, or when the music is finished, there is no way to listen it again! So let install streamripper to record all this music on your computer. First of all you should only record music with a copy left, otherwise you are out of law! Now start lastfmproxy as explained before. And type this little command:
streamripper http://localhost:1881/lastfm.mp3 -d /home/mynqme/mydirectory -r
you can notice 3 arguments:
the radio you want to listen and record
the directory in which you will save music
the last argument will let you listen the music you are recording.
Launch the command, go to Amarok and open the url http://localhost:8000
That's it you can listen and record music on LastFM

Tags: amarok, streamripper, lastfm, lastfmproxy, streaming, music

Monty Python

Did you know that the word SPAM comes from a Monty Python sketch? Yes SPAM: these mails that you receive everyday in your mail box, these mails which promize you a big cash prize in a lottery ( or a purchase for a lottery ticket) or those which ask you the detail of you bank account, or a big winning prize and at last but not the least, the man in some country, who asks you to give him money in order to save funds from some dictators... All this new threats (SCAM or SPAM) are now named according a sketch by Monty Python

Tags: security, Monty Python, winning prize, SCAM, SPAM, lottery

Lottery Scam

Since I received this letter from Euromillones, I made some researches about scams... In fact it was my first but there is not only the Italian Lottery which is used: the british one too. It’s worth noting that there is really a UK national lottery. The National lottery does not run an email campaign at all. As usually in SCAM, you will be asked for a series of charges to get the prize in cash or details of your bank account and it will never arrive! This is a scam so ignore it. Here a copy of this mail:

The National Lottery,
P O Box 1010,
L70 1NL Liverpool,
UNITED KINGDOM
(Customer Services)

Batch: 074/05/ZY369
Ref: UK/9420X2/68





WINNING NOTIFICATION:
We happily announce to you the draw (#963) of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY,online Sweepstakes International program held on the 21st July, 2006.
Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:56475600545 188 with Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers:12-18-22-24-32-33(bonus no.), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.ematch 5 plus bonus.You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £250,000 (Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling) in cash credited to file KTU/9023118308/03.

This is from a total cash prize of £1,000,000 shared amongst the first four (4) lucky winners in this category i.e Match 5 plus bonus. All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions, associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online. This promotion takes place periodically.

Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your play coupon.In view of this, your £250,000 (Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling) would be released to you by any of our payment offices in Europe. Our European agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your funds as soon as you contact him.

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claim is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program. Please be warned.

The UK NATIONAL LOTTERY Awards is proudly sponsored by the Microsoft Corporation, the Intel Group, Toshiba, Dell computers, Mckintosh and a conglomeration of other international IT companies. The UK NATIONAL LOTTERY internet draw is held once in a year and is so organized to encourage the use of the internet and computers worldwide. We are proud to say that over 200 Million Pounds are won annually in more than 150 countries worldwide.

To file for your claim, please send your details; Age, Sex, Country, Amount Won, Phone Number and Fax to our fudiciary agent
Fudiciary Agent: Mr Jack Collins
Email: jackcollins0001@yahoo.co.uk
Goodluck from me and members of staff of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY.




Yours faithfully,
Brian Hunt.
Online coordinator
UK NATIONAL LOTTERY,
Sweepstakes International Program.
Open 7 days 7am-7pm.

Tags: scam, spam, prize, lottery, cash

Someone try to steal my bank account number...

This morning, I received a strange mail from the Euromillones lottery primitiva s.a. This is surprising because I never buy a ticket... Moreover this mail come from Spain... But what is very annoying is that the name on the letter, has the same error as the name I gave to BT! In fact, when I opened my BT line, they miswrite my name and this is exactly the same error which appears on the letter I received: this is probably not a coincidence! BT leaks information about its customers, which could give the possibility to someone to send me a letter or even try to steal my identity! In fact in the letter it is written (I will copy this letter, so you will be able to compare if you received the same) that I won 615 810 euros... but I must give them my bank account number so they will be able to transfer the money to my account: THIS IS PHISHING. Sorry man I am not dumb. I will probably try to contact BT and explain them the situation... For the moment I will copy the letter here, so you can compare, if you receive the same letter:

FROM: THE DESK OF THE VICE PRESIDENT
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION/PRICE AWARD
ATTN:STAKE WINNER

RE: AWARD FINAL NOTIFICATION

This is to inform you on the release of the Euromillones loteria internaltional program held on the 23th DEC. 2005. Due to mix up of some numbers and names, the results were released on the 23th OCT. 2006. Your name attached to ticket number ...................... with serial number ......... drew the lucky numbers of ............... which consequently won the lottery in the 3rd category.

You have therefore been approved for a lump sum payout of 615,810.00 euros in cash credited to file with REF NO ....... This is from a total cash price of 5,600,000.00 euros. Shared among the twelve international winners in there respective categories. CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Your fund is now deposited with a security company and insured in your name. Due to mix up of some numbers and name, we ask that you keep this award from public notice until your claim has been processed and money remitted to your account as this part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unwarranted taking advantage of this program by participants.

All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 25,000 names from Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, America and North America as part of our International promotions program which we conduct once every year. We hope your lucky name will draw a bigger cash prize in the next year's program.
To begin your lottery claim, please contact your claims agent DR. RAUL GOMEZ the Foreign operations manager of GROUPAMA SEGUROS S.A On Tel: 0034 658 520 602. Fax: 0034 911 814 182 for the processing and remittance of your winning prize money to a destignation of your choice.

Remember, all price money must be claimed not later than, 27th NOV 2006. After this date all funds will be returned to the MINISTERIO DE ECONOMICO Y HACIENDA as unclaimed. And also be informed that 10% of your lottery Winning belongs to GROUPAMA SEGUROS S.A. because they are your claims agent. This is 10% will be remitted after you have received your winnings because the money is insured in your name already.

.... bla bla.....

place of the letter now: bin

Tags: phishing, groupama seguro, letter, BT

The best killer: Golgo13

I am currently reading this manga. In fact I am reading the best 13 stories of Golgo13, and I try to read only one episode per day. From Wikipédia: "

Golgo 13 has been called a Japanese counterpart to James Bond, except with a darker character, a much more hardcore attitude towards sex, and a complete lack of morality. Golgo 13 is described as a mystery man of undetermined origin, possibility being at least part Japanese, who takes any assignment for any employer (it has been said he has worked for the CIA and the KGB) as long as the right price is given (usually around 1 million dollars for a hit) and will always fulfill his contracts, even if he has two or more opposing contracts at the same time. He is an uncanny sharpshooter, with near 100% accuracy (with only one missed shot) and capable of lethal trick shooting, and regularly uses a customized, scoped M-16 rifle in his assassinations. He also is a heavy smoker of cigars."
That is a real killer not one of the James Bond or other hero from Hollywood: Goglo13 never does something randomly. He is well trained and is a bit like a killer machine.

Tags: killer, golgo13, James Bond, M-16, CIA, KGB

Müller Advertising

one of my prefered ads: I like the music

Tags: mülller, publicite, ads

Fast Food Nation

This is the spookiest book I have ever read! Do you know E.coli 0157:H7? This is a bacteria, a stain of Escherichia coli. Everyone has some non pathogenic stain of Escherichia coli. But if you have E.coli 0157:H7, you should got to the hospital as soon as possible. Actually this stain can be lethal, it leads to kidneys disease... Why I speak about E.coli 0157:H7? Because I am reading the excellent book of Eric Schlosser: "Fast Food Nation". In this book you learn how big firms jeopardize the health of all the American nation... They try to make as much money as possible and the easiest way to do that is to give money to Congress in order it forgets to control what Fast Food are doing and what happens in slaughterhouse. You will never eat an hamburger after this book:

A best seller!

Tags: E.coli 0157:H7, bacteria, Escherichia coli, slaughterhouse, Eric Schlosser, Fast Food, book, USA, MacDonald, KFC