Tech | Cyber crime: The issue that defined 2005

Typically, at the end of every year, we take a look at some of the trends in information technology that shaped the outgoing year and look ahead to what may be the trends shaping the upcoming one.

So as not to go on about the usual and expected developments we witnessed in 2005, like new, better or cheaper hardware and software products, winners and losers in the ICT market and so on; let's just take one key issue, with its subsets, which attracted the most substantial attention, media exposure and contributed the most to people's conversations in 2005. Then, we'll take a look at how that issue could evolve in 2006.

The issue of cyber crime would have to top anyone's list in 2005. It’s been another worm/hacking ravaged year, piercing more holes in Windows and every other software application; but more so. The big problem is that there's no end in sight to insecure computing, no matter what so-called experts claim.

Phishing and Pharming became common practices, both of which 'cultivate' email spam lists to trick users into revealing personal or financial information, which would then be used to illegally profit from people's gullibility. In other words, scammers had a field day on the Internet in 2005.

These new techniques were tied into the more classic forms of cybercrime, viruses and hacking, as worms would enter systems to harvest email address, which would then be used for phishing or pharming.

Hackers would also get in on the act, focusing on stealing email addresses to popular domains, like Microsoft.com, cia.com, citigroup.com - would you believe- then sending emails to millions of users all over the world, making claims and trying to profit!

It all got very messy and embarassing, and emotions ran high amoung users who lashed out at software giant Mircosoft regarding its inability to produce secure operating systems and software. Microsoft tamely responded producing patches and updates on a monthly, and sometimes weekly, basis. The effectiveness, and uptake, of these patches was limited.

Which brings us, neatly, to the main launch everyone is looking forward to in 2006: Windows Vista, which is the first OS launch from Microsoft since Windows XP around five years ago. Will it solve security problems? Or, at least, will it minimize the dangers?

Expect massive hype to accompany the launch, and a certain degree of 'wait and see' among both home and business users, so rest assured it will gradually replace XP in a process that will take years, not months.

Apparently, to this day, millions of users around the world still have Windows 98 running on their PCs. Imagine that!In anycase, it is now generally accepted that virus writers, hackers, phishers and all kinds of digital scammers will find ways around or into suppossedly secured systems and software. It is a never-ending race between software companies and intruders.

Here’s a safe prediction for you: This mess will continue into 2006.

Happy New Year? Yes, of course. There’s more to life than computing. Right? Hope you have a good one.

zanasser@gmail.com

DigiLife | Emailing your self in the future!

In the Internet age, the modern-day equivalent of 'a time capsule' has emerged.

Traditionally, a 'time capsule' is a stored under the ground or inside a safety deposit box, or so on, and includes information and items relating to the era in which it was created. Newspapers, magazines, personal items, technology items of the day and a variety of other bits and pieces are placed in it to provide whoever opens it with an idea on the way the world was when the capsule was prepared. It could also include messages, letters and warnings for the future.

Anyway, the magic and mystery surrounding this practice is that a time capsule usually has a pre-determined opening date some years, decades or even centuries later.

Back to our present day, a website called FutureMe.org is allowing you to open an account which will send you emails in the future, at the date of your choice!

For example, the site shows a publicly-viewable sample of an email prepared by a man called Greg who which has sent it to himself in the year 2009, on the day of 25 April. It says "I am now majoring in computer science and dating a girl called Michelle."

What motivates people to follow Greg's example? Well, a sense of curiosity and nostalgia.

Apparently, there are many people interested in this kind of service. FutureMe is just one of several web sites already offering it.

The operators of these services are urging people to sign-up and hold onto their email addresses that they input, for several years, in order to receive the messages. Naturally, these sites claim to respect user privacy and information security and say that they've already faithfully delivered messages to users who inputted them some years ago.

FutureMe, for example, has been around for four years and has actually delivered messages to thousands of users over the years. It was founded by two college students, one of whom was quoted in a newspaper report to have said, "We want people to think about their future and what their goals and dreams and hopes and fears are."

He also said a large number of the messages do one of two basic things: tell the future person what the past person was doing at the time, and ask the future person if he or she had met the aspirations of the past person.

It's quite an idea, and it's recently attracted some high profile admirers like Forbes and Yahoo who have partnered to offer their own "e-mail time capsule" promotion. Forbes has succeeded in collecting more than 140,000 letters in six weeks. Nearly 20 percent are supposed to reach the sender in 20 years, but others requested shorter time frames.

Apparently, users are attracted to the fact that it makes you stop and think about your life in a way that you usually don't!

Indeed. It makes you think that there's a growing ego-centric attitude associated with the Internet's emergence as your virtual web diary (blogging) and, now, your time capsule.

Whatever will happen next?

zanasser@gmail.com

Wikipedia founder 'shot by friend of Siegenthaler'

World mourns Lazarus for the Web 2.0 generation

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been shot dead, according to Wikipedia, the online, up-to-the-minute encyclopedia.
Apparently, the assassin was a "friend" of the victim of a recent controversy which ironically, smeared former Robert F Kennedy aid John Seigenthaler as a suspect in the assassination of both Kennedy brothers. That claim, which the site carried for several months, along with the assertion that Seigenthaler had lived in Russia, was eventually proved false.

"At 18:54 EST on December 12, John Seigenthaler's wife, who was infuriated at Wikipedia regarding the recent scandal regarding his role in the Kennedy Assassination, came into the house, where Jim was having dinner. Wearing a mask, he [sic] shot him three times in the head and ran," reported the online reference source.

The free-for-all, write-it-yourself website prides itself on its fact checking.
Wales made his fortune in bond trading before setting up the Bomis pornography ring. A long time devotee of Ayn Rand, Wales recently criticized the decision to grant federal funds to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, according to reports on a web discussion board.


With co-founder Larry Sanger, who has since left the project, he helped kick-start the project just as the dot com boom was collapsing, and now he's the public face of Wikipedia. Before his "death", Jimmy Wales had become a familiar sight on cable TV news, usually vowing to "tighten up" the project's editing processes in response to the public scandal that had broken that week.
His death will be mourned by many across the internet.

The news of the "shooting" even made the venerable London Times, yesterday. The Times noted that after the first Seigenthaler scandal broke, the now "deceased" Jimmy Wales had, as he has so often, promised to tighten up a few nuts and bolts in the "encyclopedia's" editorial processes.

He certainly had his work cut out.

"A cursory search today suggested that these procedures - which require contributors to register basic details before posting articles - were being defeated by a relentless wave of vandals, apparently co-ordinating their assaults from a series of chatrooms dedicated to its demise."

"The loss of credibility has caused commentators to question whether Wikipedia is destined to follow the LA Times's doomed experiment in unrestricted internet comment, Wikitorial, which had to be closed down after just two days under a bombardment of pornographic postings."
Is nothing sacred?

So is Wikipedia a source of reference, or just a great big game?

Speaking to The Register last month, former Britannica editor Bob McHenry charictarized Wikipedia as a game, one of many multiplayer shoot-em-up games that have been made popular by the spread of networked computers.

"It's got the public playing the encyclopedia game," he told us recently. "It's also like playing a game in the sense that playing it has no consequences. If something goes wrong, you just restart. No problem!"

For the record, The Register must note that the ubermeister of Wikipedia appears to be alive and well

The "news" of his death consisted of a random edit to his own, particularly fulsome entry on the encyclopedia he helped create.

TECH | Spam: A thing of the past!

Can we ever really eliminate spam (junk email)?

Apparently, Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, thinks so. He has made a bold statement that his company is developing solutions that will make spam a thing of the past, within two years."

To begin with, let's commend Mr. Gates on his bright vision of the future and hope that his company can actually do enough to substantially reduce spam, even if not eliminate it completely. The technologies to do so are now in the works.

This week, in particular, users around the world were praying for a solution, as the Sober worm, in several of its guises, spammed the Internet endlessly bringing down servers that were over run with the amount of incoming email.

Even commercial-based spam has escalated to ridiculously high levels as spammers have focused more on two or three particular fields which include personal finance (stock and investment advice and services), medical products (especially aphrodisiacs) and, of course, pornography.

Since early 2004, Microsoft has been pursuing means to fight this net infestation, and it's recently revealed a tool called 'SNARF' which sniffs out spam from Internet servers all over the world.

Still, these technologies are not thoroughly tested, and haven't proven their effectiveness yet. But it's a start.

More interesting are some ideas that 'tax' or 'charge' a spammer. If an email sender is broadcasting, for example, more than 10,000 emails, then there would be a fee or charge to do so. That way, spammers who exceed a set limit will be unable to carry out their activities.

Gates once explained that "human challenges" that force the sender to solve a puzzle, or the computer sending the e-mail to do a simple computation could make it very difficult and very expensive for a spammer sending out tens of thousands of messages!

So, this is the line of thinking that Microsoft is pursuing.

Responding to what Gates said, several software security firms have actually stepped up to warn users not to let down their guard and to understand that spam will remain a problem throughout 2006. Some of these companies, like Sophos, have gone as far as to say that "Gates is wrong regarding spam. There is no end in sight for spam".

But, there's always hope and we all agree that, at the very least, a solution is diligently sought and the extent of the spam problem must be reduced.

As the Internet grows, so will spam, and try to imagine how much you will depend on the Internet in every facet of your life, and then imagine how you might have to cope with tedious, virus-infested spam every step of the way. It's not a pretty picture.

For once, and it pains me to say this, let's all stand behind Bill Gates.

(Published in The Star)

zanasser@gmail.com