A Halloween Fright
Now, I couldn’t leave off on Halloween without a good fright, now could I? And who better to scare ya than Bill?
…the horror, the horror. I just could’t resist. 
Archive for October, 2006
Airline Security Stupidity Scammer?
A New Zealand chef slipped into a coma after the good screeners for Qantas denied him his insulin. Um, at what point is all of this “war of everything” hysteria going to subside? The passenger Tui Peter Russell was in a coma for 2 weeks.
The 43-year-old Glen Innes chef said he had flown many times with Qantas and had never had problems taking his medicine on board.The medication was clearly labelled, he said.
“They thought I would hurt somebody, but I was only flying to Christchurch, not LA,” said Mr Russell.
Qantas, in an effort to avoid a lawsuit (I imagine) offered him a free return flight from Auckland to Christchurch. Borderline death and they offer him a flight?
Dig deeper guys.
UPDATE: Turns out that man that was allegedly denied his insulin has some explaining to do.
Qantas issued an apology to Peter Russell who says he was not allowed to take his insulin on board a flight on September 18.
Mr Russell claimed he had been admitted to hospital and had slipped into a coma but Herald inquiries yesterday failed to confirm he had been a patient at Christchurch Hospital. A spokeswoman at the hospital said there were no admission records showing Mr Russell was there during the period he had stated.
She said hospital pharmacy records also showed no sign of Mr Russell receiving any medication.
Is Qantas innocent after all?
Tags: Airline Security, Qantas, Insulin Shock, Diabetic Coma
Gov’t Unveils a Wikipedia For Spies
Here is a curious spin on the Wikipedia saga. So many people have had their kick at the cat saying disparaging things about this software. Now, we find that the US Intelligence community has adopted the same technology.
A “top secret” Intellipedia system, currently available to the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, has grown to more than 28,000 pages and 3,600 registered users since its introduction on April 17. Less restrictive versions exist for “secret” and “sensitive but unclassified” material.
Open source is winning more converts every day.
Tags: Wikipedia, Intelligence Community, Spies, Open Source
Your October 31st Morning Decaf (Scary, No?)
Happy Halloween folks! Be sure to keep your head on a swivel when you drive home tonight. The little ones will be out in force.
- Virus writers target web videos
- 1,200 Dutch e-voting machines vulnerable to hacking (oops)
- Wall Street seeks details on Check Point analysis
- Microsoft toughens anti-piracy actions
- China web control stirs controversy at Internet forum
- Tricky new malware challenges vendors
- Cybercrime High On FBI Priority List; Help Wanted
…and of course some Halloween links
- DIY Halloween - amazing costumes, scary tech… (via Make)
- HOW TO - Make an Oscar the grouch costume (via Make)
- Homemade Zoidberg costume from Futurama (via Make)
- Halloween party pics from Industrial Light and Magic (via Boing Boing)
Tags: News, Daily Links, Security Blog, Virus, FBI, Halloween, Malware, China, Dutch Voting Machines, Check Point
Web Terrorism Course Is Sellout with Security Pros
Interesting article over on eWeek on a new course offering from the University of St. Andrews.
“A lot of the training they undergo is very operational—which bag to open, and so on. What they would like deepened is their background understanding of what these (terrorist) movements are about—the modus operandi, the philosophy,” said Oliver Gadsby of publishing and training group Informa Plc, which launched the new course in collaboration with St Andrews.
Read on after the jump.
Tags: Terrorism, Training, Security Education
IE7 and Firefox 2.0 Resurrect Bugs
An old security bug provides a way to crash Firefox 2.0, security researchers have discovered. The memory corruption vulnerability involving the handling of JavaScript code has been known about since June 2006 and Firefox version 1.5.0.7 was supposed to fix the problem.
…and not to be outdone.
In other browser security news, security notification firm Secunia has published details of another bug involving IE7. In default configuration, IE7 is vulnerable to a Window Injection vulnerability that previously hit IE6.
It’s a shame that old bugs are new again.
Tags: IE7, Firefox 2.0, Browser Security, Web Security
Your October 30th Morning Death By Caffeine
Time for a life overhaul. I have to seriously sit down and figure out how I can move forward in life and be as happy as I can be. I have to shift to a positive attitude. I have been reading Steve Rubel’s blog a lot lately and I’m taking some of his suggestions to heart. Part of that will be offering less ranting going forward and more constructive material. What life tips work for you?
- Anatomy of a Phishing Scam
- Apple fixes random MacBook shutdowns (’bout damn time)
- World discusses internet future
- Remote DoS released targets Windows Firewall
- DHS report card
- Microsoft zeros in on Office fakers
- Six steps to ILM implementation
- Cell phone takes security to new heights
Tags: News, Daily Links, Security Blog, Morning Coffee, Cell Phones, ILM, Microsoft Firewall, Phishing, MacBook Shutdowns, Remote DoS
Time To Act My Age
This is long since overdue. I have been using my old handle “gattaca” for a very long time now. I recently turned 36 and I think it is high time that I start acting my age. So, in light of that I’m going to be using my matrix given name from now on. I’ll still hold onto my handle but, I think it is high time that I drop the charade and just be me. So, seeing as how I’m showing up in the media as myself I will phase out the handle.
So, World, I’m Dave. Pleased to meet you.
Tags: David C. Lewis, gattaca, Security Blog, Media
NMAP Perl Module 1.0 Released
Version 1.0 of the NMAP perl module was released yesterday. This “provides an object-oriented, programmatic interface to the nmap port scanning tool. It parses the output of nmap’s “XML” format (-oX). Nmap::Scanner provides both batch-mode and event-driven usage models.”
Please make sure that you have NMAP installed first.
Tags: NMAP::Scanner, NMAP Perl, Perl Module, NMAP, Scanner, Tools
Wordpress 2.0.5 Released
Hey folks. For all of you blogging types out there that use Wordpress, the latest has been released. Version 2.0.5 is now out. It’s full of security fixes and new features. Check it out!
* is_feed() status is preserved when handling 404s #3019 [4227]
* manually entering pages greater than the number of pages for a given post now shows the highest numbered page #3039 [4228]
* improved security in wp-db-backup plugin [4226]
* user description is no longer HTML-entity converted going into the database #3069 [4230]
* fix for rel=”nofollow nofollow” repetition #2995 [4233]
* default category is no longer checked by default #2938 [4310] (Saving this one for 2.1… won’t be in 2.0.5 final)
* plugins are sorted by plugin name, instead of filename #2412 [4323] [4324]
* multi-line options in /wp-admin/options.php are preserved #2456 [4331]
* the authors dropdown is now sorted by display_name #2370 [4365]
* the_meta() properly ignores keys that start with an underscore #2478 [4368]
* post meta keys and data are escaped properly on the post screen [4376]
* users are prevented from entering strings that will be interpreted as serialized data when coming out of the database #2591 [4384] [4395]
* make_clickable() no longer adds links within links #3228 [4385] [4387]
* error suppression #2331 [4341], #2745 [4328], #1999 [4315], #2759 [4287], #3179 [4280]
* i18n fixes #3109 [4239]This is not an exhaustive list… just the important ones, or the ones I thought people would care about.
If you are having problems after upgrade/installation check this post.
Tags: Wordpress, Blog, Blogging, Application Security, Weblog
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