Blog Articles in Category “Security”

It's a good question, really. Where did the ol' computer virus go, and what's all this new crap people are talking about? Honestly, the term 'computer virus' has been so overloaded and misunderstood in the last decade that it doesn't really mean much anymore. In the same way, the method of doing nefarious things with people's computer has also changed pretty drastically in the last decade. Where we used to have a generic 'computer virus' we now have many different naughty programs exploiting people, depending on the purpose of naughty program. Not only that, with the improvements in antivirus software and operating system security, (please queue any dramatic music you happen to have nearby) we're the ones infecting our own computers.

That is correct! Given the current nature of the world, most of the computer problems we have are self inflicted. Not in the 'well you shouldn't have gone to that site' sort of way. In the 'you specifically downloaded and installed a program that is bad

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Today I'd like to tell you, dear reader, about the time I tracked down a ne'er-do-well on a forum I now own and operate. It's a story as old as time, really. You trust someone to do a simple job, but instead they deface your forum, expose your operational communications, blame it on an innocent, and perform the whole dirty deed using an abandoned account that (for some reason) still has administrative permissions.

It all started on a nice, sunny, Monday in early June. Or at least that's what the historical weather for the date I have in my notes says. I was informed by the then-owner that her forum had been hacked. I'd done small programming projects for her previously. She was a nice lady. And a friend of my wife. And also I hate black hats. My own hat may not be a pristine white, but I'm as chaotic good as they come. So, I picked up my proverbial hammer and went off in search of a black hat to smite with it.

The first thing I learned was that the response to any question akin to

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