Somewhere in the OraBorg, an RSS feed is being updated

It’s Tuesday. My pre-OraBorg Google reader subscription shows a stream of security updates. Looks pretty bad:

Backup Performance or Recovery Performance?

“There is not a guaranteed 1:1 mapping between backup and recovery performance…” Preston de Guise, “The Networker Blog”

Prestons post reminded me of one of our attempts to build a sane disaster recovery plan. The attempt went something like this: 

1. Hire consultants
2. Consultants interview key staff
3. Consultants draft recovery plan
4. Consultants present recovery plan to executives

Well formed Comcast phishing attempt - “Update Your Account Information”

A well formed e-mail:



No obvious spelling errors, reasonably good grammar, etc. One red flag is the URL to the Comcast logo, but I wouldn’t bet on users catching that. The embedded link is another red flag:

http://login.comcast.net.billings.bulkemail4sale.com/update/l0gin.htm

[s/0/o/]

But one that would fool many. Users will not see that URL unless their e-mail client has the ability to ‘hover’ a link destination.

The ‘login page’ is well formed & indistinguishable from Comcast’s Xfinity login page:



All the links in the bogus login page (except the form submit) go to real Comcast URL’s, the images are real, the page layout is nearly identical. The only hint is that the form submit doesn’t post to Comcast, but rather to[snip].bulkemail4sale.com/Zola.php:



Zola.php? Hmmm…

Filling out the bogus login page with a random user and password leads to a “Comcast Billing Verification” form requesting last, middle & first names, billing address, credit card details including PIN number, card issuing bank, bank routing number, SSN, date of birth, mothers maiden name, drivers license number, etc…

The “Comcast Billing Verification” form is very well constructed, generally indistinguishable from normal Comcast/Xfinity web pages. The submit action for the “Comcast Billing Verification” form is:



Hacker.php? This is not going to end well.

This is a very well constructed phishing attempt. Impressive, ‘eh?

It took me a bit of detective work to determine the non-validity of this phish. Ordinary users don’t have a chance.

Where is anonymous when you need them?

The benevolent dictator has determined…

…that you are not qualified to decide what content you read on the device you’ve purchased.

If the New York Times story is true, Apple is rejecting an application because the application allows access to purchased documents outside the walled garden of the iTunes app store.

“Apple told Sony that from now on, all in-app purchases would have to go through Apple, said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division.”
I keep thinking that there’d have been an outcry if Microsoft, at the height of their monopoly, had exercised complete control over the documents that you were allowed to purchase and read on your Windows PC’s.