Archive for Search
Author: Dave Lewis
May 15, 2008 at 10:46 pm · Filed under Search
Ah the growing pains of a new product. Imagine that, it labeled Google as a malicious site.
From eWeek:
A company says Yahoo’s new feature incorrectly flagged its Web site and was slow to respond.
The beta version of Yahoo’s SearchScan security feature has come under fire for false positives and other mistakes.
SearchScan is the result of a partnership between McAfee and Yahoo to improve the security of Web searches. The feature, powered by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor, alerts users when sites contain spam, spyware, adware or other malicious software that could damage a PC.
However, since the beta was unveiled May 6, there have been some cases of false positives. A URL mix-up by Yahoo seemed to label Google.com as a malicious site. In another case, AnyCoupons, a Web site operated by 77Blue, was classified as a spammer. Though both issues have been resolved, the latter left a bad taste in the mouth of 77Blue CEO David Lewis, who complained that Yahoo and McAfee were slow to fix the problem.
Could have been worse. Could have been anti competitive behaviour.
heh.
Article Link
Author: Dave Lewis
May 13, 2008 at 9:14 pm · Filed under Privacy, Search
After numerous attempts by folks to get Google to remove their faces from Street View, Google is now blurring faces. A quick and easy way to obscure people’s identity. Especially helpful if you’re, say, a prominent musician leaving a German brothel.
Nah, that wouldn’t have helped him. Damn you Roxanne.
From CNET:
The technology uses a computer algorithm to scour Google’s image database for faces, then blurs them, said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps, in an interview at the Where 2.0 conference here.
Google has begun testing the technology in Manhattan, the company announced on its LatLong blog. Ultimately, though, Hanke expects it to be used more broadly.
Dealing with privacy–both legal requirements and social norms–is hard but necessary, Hanke said.
“It’s a legitimate issue,” he said. He likened the issues some have with Street View to the ones that took place when Google introduced aerial views to Google Maps. It took time for the public, regulators, and Google to get comfortable with the feature, but, “It needs that debate. We see that and try to let it play out.”
So, is this an improvement? What do you think?
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Author: Dave Lewis
May 5, 2008 at 8:10 pm · Filed under Search
OK, so the date has ended. Microsoft didn’t get to second base. Yahoo was jilted for being too high maintenance and their stock dropped 15% today. So, what now for Yahoo?
From Internet News:
“With Microsoft’s withdrawal, we’ll be better able to focus our energy on growing our industry leadership and maximizing value for stockholders,” Yang said.
The problem that Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) now faces is the same one it’s had since Microsoft first announced its bid, only two dollars worse: How to find an alternative to selling outright that will bring equivalent value to the $33 per share price Microsoft had offered before talks broke down over the weekend.
Yahoo has already been the target of at least seven shareholder lawsuits charging that its board breached its fiduciary duty to investors in its response to the initial bid. Now that it has walked away from a higher bid, and its stock fell 15 percent to close at $24.37 today, more shareholders will likely bring a new wave of lawsuits, according to IDC analyst Karsten Weide.
Read on.
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Author: Dave Lewis
April 1, 2008 at 9:35 am · Filed under Search, Spy Game
From USA Today:
For 40 years, U.S. presidents have begun each day with a top-secret, personal briefing on security threats and global affairs obtained largely from covert spy missions, clandestine satellite surveillance and other highly classified intelligence sources.
Now, however, the President’s Daily Brief and other crucial intelligence reports often rely less on secrets from risky espionage missions than on material that’s available to just about anyone.
Intelligence officers have gleaned insights on Iran’s nuclear capabilities from photos on the Internet. They’ve scooped up documents, including a terrorist training manual, at international conferences and public forums. They’ve found information in foreign university libraries and newscasts.
Such material is known as “open-source intelligence” or, in the acronym-laden parlance of the 16 federal agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, OSINT. The explosion of information available via the Internet and other public sources has pushed the collection and analysis of that material to the top of the official priority list in the spy world, intelligence officials say.
Open source intel. My personal favourite spymaster tool.
Article Link
Tags: OSINT, Open Source Intelligence, Spy
Author: Dave Lewis
February 26, 2008 at 8:29 am · Filed under Search, Tools
Well, the cDc (Cult of the Dead Cow) has resurfaced. Not that they ever went anywhere. Just, in terms of the mainstream media it has been a while since Tod, Laird and company have been in the news. They first gained notoriety with the release of the back door application “Back Orifice”. Just this past week they released “Goolag“, a tool to make Google hacking even easier than it already was.
From GCN:
Goolag Scan runs with Windows, has a good graphical interface along with a library of about 1,500 carefully crafted searches that can reveal sensitive information about or from queried Web sites. The tool is neutral; it can be used for penetration-testing by administrators and application owners to identify weaknesses or by hackers to find vulnerabilities to exploit.
“Tools like this scanner are a wake-up call for application owners,” Shulman said. “And that is a good thing. The issue of data leakage into search engines is a big issue.”
The Cult of the Dead Cow has said much of its research in this area has been against government servers where it has been able to turn up sensitive information that has been unwittingly exposed.
“With a lot of script kiddies having this tool, I think the government can expect a rough period of headlines,” Shulman said.
From the cDc press release:
“It’s no big secret that the Web is the platform,” said cDc spokesmodel Oxblood Ruffin. “And this platform pretty much sucks from a security perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for web site owners to patch up their online properties. We’ve seen some pretty scary holes through random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large web site, I’d be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The vulnerabilities are that serious.”
Article Link
cDc Press Release
Tags: Goolag, Google Hacking, Cult of the Dead Cow
Author: Dave Lewis
December 28, 2007 at 8:26 am · Filed under Search, Spam/Phishing
Well, that didn’t take the spammers long at all. No shock there. On the heels of the Bhutto tragedy Websense as issued an alert for malicious sites trying to infect computers. They are by using the attack as a lure for less than cautious web surfers.
From Websense:
Websense Security Labs has discovered malicious Web sites attempting to capitalize on the breaking news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. These sites attempt to infect users seeking more information about the event. This activity is similar to past news events, where attackers used malicious sites containing information about the event to infect visitors.
In this case, the first infected site found by Websense Security Labs was the second result in a Google search using a generic and simple keyword. Therefore, the site likely to receive large amounts of traffic. Clicking on the link in the search results did not trigger a warning from Google that the site may be malicious.
Article Link
Tags: Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, Bhutto Scripting Attacks, Bhutto Phishing Lure
Author: Dave Lewis
November 29, 2007 at 10:04 am · Filed under Malware, Search
Google took a positive step this week and wiped clean the search results of malware sites that had been gumming up the results. Sadly as with anything on the internet that has anything to do with malware and spammers…wait five minutes. They’ll be back.
From Computer World:
“They look gone to us,” said Alex Eckelberry, the CEO of Sunbelt Software Distribution Inc., the company that broke the news Monday of a massive, coordinated campaign by attackers to spread malware through search results on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search and other sites.
“Google did confirm yesterday with us that they were working the case, and they are good about nailing this stuff,” Eckelberry added in an e-mail late Wednesday afternoon. Sunbelt had notified Google of its findings on Monday.
Earlier today, Sunbelt malware researcher Adam Thomas said his spot searches on Google the night before had come up sans malware URLs. “They appeared to be zapped,” Thomas had said.
Ironically, Google itself refused to confirm or deny that it had cleansed its index of the more than 40,000 malware hosting sites, or even that they had existed.
LA LA LA we can’t see them so, they weren’t really there.
Article Link
Tags: Malware, Malware Hosting, Google Malware Clean Up, Google Security
Author: Dave Lewis
October 24, 2007 at 8:05 am · Filed under Privacy, Search
The megalith that is Google continues to roll on unabated. This morning we get word that Google is looking to google gobble up Nielsen data.
Under an agreement to be announced Wednesday, Google will pay Nielsen an undisclosed amount to obtain detailed information about the kinds of people who watch specific TV shows.
The breakdown, drawn from Nielsen’s rating service, typically provides viewers’ ages, gender, marital status and other personal data that help advertisers choose the audience most likely to be interested in their product or service.
New York-based Nielsen has been selling demographic data to television stations and advertisers for years.
While this is a purchase to help Google target more TV advertising sales I can’t help but, think of a parallel. Last summer at a friend’s cottage I read the Robert Ludlum book, The Prometheus Deception (2000). I have to admit the more that Google buys the more I think of the fictitious company Systematix. I’m a Google fanboy but, I’m starting to get that uneasy feeling.
Article Link
Tags: Google To Buy Nielsen, Google M&A, Google Acquisitions
Author: Dave Lewis
September 6, 2007 at 7:31 pm · Filed under Geek, Search
I’m a big information junkie. So, I’m usually welded to my RSS reader.
Finally! One thing that I have found wanting with the Google Reader has been the absence of a search function. I know, weird huh?
Then this evening I logged in to my Google Reader to check the news from the day. Well, damn. There has been a nice quiet roll out of a search function
OK, so I had to give it a test.
Well, who didn’t see that one coming? Check it out.
Also I noticed that the number of unread items no longer says 100+ but rather will show the proper count until there is more than 1000 unread items.
Article Link
Tags: Google Reader, Google Reader Search, RSS, RSS Feed Reader
Author: Dave Lewis
June 2, 2007 at 8:38 am · Filed under Administravia, Search
OK, not sure how I feel about this one. Feedburner, the excellent provider of our feed and advertising program, has been purchased by Google. I am a fan of many things that Google does but, the Google Ads has not been among them. With the Feedburner service I have had the ability to pick and choose what content is selected and how it gets delivered. From the LA Times article:
Although FeedBurner is a small company with just 30 employees, the buzz about its service has been steadily building as it helped distribute ads through the rapidly expanding universe of bloggers, podcasters and other sites that send out headlines and links through Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, feeds.
I hope this doesn’t upset the apple cart. Congrats to the folks at Feedburner. I just hope that this works out for the bloggers as well. From the FeedBurner site on monetary models (CPM v CPC):
Q. Will the feed-based ads continue to be sold on a purely (cost per thousand) CPM basis, or will they be sold on a (cost per click) CPC basis like most AdWords ads?
A. As this is a recent acquisition, it is too early to say what the ads pricing will look like. We will explore a variety of options to determine what is best for our users, advertisers, and publishers.
And as for the integration with Google…
Q. What does this mean for FeedBurner’s partners, advertisers, and users?
A: We are excited to continue offering FeedBurner’s exceptional tools to content creators throughout the world, and our teams will work together to improve the experiences of feed users, advertisers, and publishers. Users can continue to sign up for FeedBurner’s services and take advantage of their feed tools and features immediately, and advertisers can continue to leverage FeedBurner’s media network to achieve their marketing objectives.
I’m feeling a little nervous. I sincerely hope that my worries here are unfounded.
Article Link
FeedBurner Release
Tags: Google M&A, Google, FeedBurner, Advertising, Google Buys FeedBurner
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