St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘security’ Category

Stop Form Spam - but how?

Form spam, everyone hates it.  That’s when some automated software finds the contact form on your web site and uses to tell you about cheesy offers you’d rather not hear, like how they can get to to #1 on Google for anything you’d like for $9.99!  The most common approach has been to use an image based CAPTCHA script to make sure that a human is filling out the form.  The problem is, they really irritate users and now they make programs for spammers that can read the image the Captcha produces so now image based captcha just doesn’t really work any more.

What’s a web Designer to do then?  We have the answer.  We needed a custom script that was secure, easy for users and easy for web designers.  Years ago we developed one for a client, but it was a bit too custom for general release.  So we simplified it so that even an entry level web designer could customize it and implement it.    We made it more secure and kept easy for the one filling out the form to use.  We liked it so much we use it on our own contact page.   So far it has blocked 100% of the form spam and also blocked everyone who has tried to access the form handler page directly (robots, pranksters and hackers, o my!)

Download the source code, see how it works and get support on our Stop Form Spam page.

This video helps explain what a firewall is. (By request)

A two way firewall is absolutely necessary.

Zonelabs has the best on in the business and it’s free.

In case you haven’t heard, The conficker worm/trojan/virus whatever, is one bad mama-jama! Most anti-virus software can’t detect it, none can actually do anything about it. they’ve been trying for months. They have learned lots about it. This article isn’t going to talk about that or the drama surrounding the Conficker. But we will tell you about a really easy way to find if it’s infected your computer.

The conficker blocks your computers access to many anti-virus software makers websites. Using that info, Joe Stewart made a handy little test to see if you have the Conficker. He calls it The Conficker Eye Chart.

Hope this helps, and I hope you pass the test!

Writing about the Coleman data leak is going to be tough to do without sounding like a paranoid extreme left winger or an extreme right winger. Let me assure I’ve alway been disappointed with both parties and I am a confirmed independent.

With that out of the way, lets get on with the paranoia:

The Main stream media is definitely reporting untruths about this story. They are saying that the data leak was the result of a hacker and that federal crime has been committed. This is entirely untrue. the only person that’s even saying this is Colemans attorney, well I’m sure some extreme supporters are saying this too.

What really happened.
The developers running colemans site asking for donations to his legal fund screwed up the site. It left the website down for an extended period of time.
While investigating Adria Richards stumbled across the websites database completley unsecured. she did this with a web browser and nothing else. This is not hacking. This is “surfing the internet”.

links:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19912.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=Adria+Richards&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

http://butyoureagirl.com/2009/01/28/did-norm-coleman-fake-his-own-website-death/

http://washingtonindependent.com/33674/norm-colemans-donor-database-exposed-campaign-claims-political-motives

Microsoft announced a big security hole in Microsoft Excel 2007.
(Update - the tech specs on this alert have broadened greatly, including almost all versions of MS Excel now)
There is also new info on this , I’ve add it to the bottom of this post.

If users download a malicious Excel file and open it, a Trojan Horse is installed on their computers which can allow the attacker who created the Excel file to completely take over the computer in question.

Most of the few remaining clients I have that haven’t went under yet use Excel on a daily basis and even send / receive them via e-mail or over a corporate network.

If this is you, please have your Network technicians promptly block e-mail delivery of all excel files via e-mail. I mean now. If one person on your corporate network receives one and opens it, it could quickly infect every computer on the network.

This is rapidly infecting corporate networks around the world.

There is NO patch for this as of yet.

Most anti-virus software won’t catch or do anything about this yet.

Microsoft probably will release something to fix this vulnerability in Excel, but it’ll be week in coming, not hours.

If you’re one of the smaller businesses and can’t get your network specialist to lock this down promptly, then call me and I’ll talk you through how to do it on your own.

Also tell your network technicians the symantec article on this subject is erroneous at the time of this writing.

Here’s a tech alert about this.

UPDATE:
The first trojan it installs is called:
Trojan.Mdropper.AC.
UPDATE 2
Not the old trojan with the same name from 2006 that effected MS Word.

03-01-2009:
Microsoft finally acknowledges it’s existence, but still doesn’t have a fix, here’s their tech bulletin.

We’ve learned the exploit won’t work on machines running Windows Vista.

Microsoft has also issued a “workaround”:

1 – Turn on MOICE. MOICE converts the XLS to XSLX before opening. Again, the new XML file format is not susceptible to this vulnerability.

2 – Turn on FileBlock. This option is a little more disruptive to most environments. With FileBlock enabled, Excel will only open the new XML-based file format that is safer. It will not open the legacy binary file format. If your organization has switched over to using the new file format exclusively, this might be a great option, even just long enough for us to get a security update out to address the vulnerability.

- Jonathan Ness and Bruce Dang, MSRC Engineering

So what is MOICE? It stands for “Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment.” It’s an update for MS Office. It’s hard to find, hard to use and converts your office files to MS Office’s “Open XML” format. what MS won’t tell you is that often destroys the file making it permanently unusable or only usable after an expert “fixes” all the info in it by hand.

I’ve got my own work around going:
Open it on a Vista Machine, convert the file to a simpler format, like .csv, and then send it back. This is only if your really need the file. If it’s a case of curiousity, as in I got this excel file in the e-mail and I don’t know what it is, then just don’t open it, the odds are it’s infected.

here’s more.

This time the Israeli’s are watching you at the mall, not just sporting events like the Superbowl.

Some of you locals may remember the last time the Superbowl was in Tampa. There was a widely publicized effort to digitally capture every single face that came into the Superbowl.
In the guise of protecting the nation from terrorists Tampa authorities went beyond the law and beyond the constitution. They hired a foreign company to set up camera’s use facial recognition software and run background checks on every single man (or persons?) that entered the super bowl. No approval from the voters and in fact, the program was kept secret until days before the SuperBowl. After it’s release it was touted as the end all to security. Maybe the common man felt safer, but those of us in the know, were worried. Really worried. Well we’re worried again, because they’re at it again.
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