Diary of a Network Geek

Hey, I almost missed this!
It was on this day in 1910 that the Boy Scouts of America was incorporated as a youth organization in the United States. The idea for the Boy Scouts came from a British Army Officer named Robert Baden-Powell who returned from a war in South Africa to find that the young people in his country had grown soft and undisciplined in his absence. He created the Boy Scouts as an organization and wrote a book called Scouting for Boys that became the Boy Scout manual.
I was a Boyscout. In fact, I was an Eagle Scout. (That’s the top rank a boy can earn, in case you were wondering.) Oh, my, that was years and years ago, it seems. But, you know, I still use things I learned in Scouts every day. Things like the motto: Be prepared. That has led me to have an umbrella in every car I’ve owned and to always travel long distances with at least one roll of toilet paper in the glove box. Also, that motto has motivated me to carry a pocket knife most of my life, not to mention a lighter. And you should see the things I have in my carry-on bag when I fly!
I was a “boy leader” when I was in Scouts, too. Not only a Patrol Leader, but the Senior Patrol Leader, in fact. That experience, along with the skills I learned while managing my Eagle Service Project, has served me well in business. (Alas, none of it helped my spelling!) I’m told that Eagle Scouts get an automatic chevron when they enlist in the Army. Now, if it only gave me an edge meeting attractive, interesting, young women…. Ah, well, maybe that’s a little too much to ask!
Anyway, Happy Birthday Boyscouts! Many happy returns!

There’s been a couple of security “issues” lately.
As many of my regular readers know, security is near and dear to my heart. In the past couple of weeks, there have been several computer security notes that have come up in the news. First, there was the Big Browser Bug. Basically, if you haven’t read about this yet, it’s based on a “feature” called IDN (International Domain Name) which allows people to use special characters in non-English languages to resolve domain names. Well, phishers can use this to disguise their domain name even more to lure unsuspecting suckers into giving up their information. Bad news. Worse news is that this is mainly a problem for non-Internet Explorer browsers, like Firefox and Mozilla. So, what to do? Well, in Mozilla, type “about:config” into the URL bar and set “network.enableIDN” to false. Simple. Of course, it disables an interesting feature, but better safe than sorry.
Second, there is the “evil twin” wireless router problem. In a nutshell, a cracker finds an office or apartment near an unsecured wi-fi router. (Which isn’t that hard. I’ve been squawking about how insecure wireless is for years. I think it even contributed to my job change at that-damn-boat-place.) Then, the naughty person sets up a router that mimics the unsecured one and forwards all the traffic on to the “real” router. Of course, before it does that, the “evil twin” router logs all the info. In a way, it’s just a more aggressive and sneaky way of phishing. The end result is the same. All your personal data ends up in the hands of a crook. That’s one of the reasons I ran Cat 5 in my house instead of going wireless.

Now, for a more positive story, the Register is running a bit about how computer forensics have cleared teachers and students of illicit porn collecting accusations. Apparently, a folder of pornographic images was found on a school computer and was seemingly updated during regular class time. The school brought in an independant consultant who was able to show that it was, in fact, a piece of spyware that was doing the downloading and updating. So, sometimes, we geeks can come in handy, eh?

You know, in today’s world of crackers, hackers, phishers, virus-writers and disgruntled employees, we just can’t be too concerned about security. It’s a very, very big deal. Every single person in IT is responsible, to a greater or lesser degree, for some aspect of computer security in their business. Even the Receptionist has to be thinking about security these days. After all, if I can get physical access to a machine, I’ve just beaten a majority of the normal security measures most companies put into place. It’s something every one of us need to think about every day, both at home and at work.