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tech podcast 194 is now available

Tech podcast 194 is now available on the RSS feed. Phone decision made, article of interest, and an interesting talk dealing with the Internet of things. See you soon.

2014: The Year Extortion Went Mainstream

Hi folks,
I’ve been meaning to write about this. On the heals of my next podcast release, I want to talk about 2014: The Year Extortion Went Mainstream which will be segment 3 of our next upcoming podcast. I talk about this article because it effects all businesses whether you are disabled or not. I’m concerned about this because if you are disabled, you’ll have a hard time with reading the letters, and if you don’t have readers, you will want to find one. The reason is that this is real. The demands in the letters Brian found, give an August 1 due date, and what they will due may harm your business.

This may become a big problem, as the talk is very damaging such as reporting you to the BBB, bomb threats, and maybe other things not mentioned here. I can’t understand how people can get away with this. Now a days, you’ll find they will use a service called bit coin. We’ve talked about it, and GRC’s Security Now podcast also talked about it. We want to try and pass the word along, and thats what I’m going to do with this article. Thoughts are welcome.

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Security now podcast 461 is a question and answer and news cast

This link will let you download 461 of Security Now. On it, they cover the news, and they also cover some questions and answers. The program will last you two hours long. We hope you enjoy the podcast.

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Podcast 193 is now available

I just released on our RSS feed podcast 193 dealing with phones. On a related note, SN461 is q and a as well as news. Wonder if anything in there will be on our next podcast. Only time will tell. See you on another edtion of the podcast.

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Articles for this week

Hi.
decided to post my comments.
First the breech, thats bad you would have thought these people
learned how not to repeat the same mistakes especially with the
widely done thing with target and how it was broadcast.
2. the pandora thing I am undecided, if it was true that person will
be delt with though on another note, I know pandora for windows uses
adobe air and adobe air is not accessable.
So if they are stuck to adobe air its just possible that its
inaccessable because air is inaccessable.
Cyber bullying is still a bad thing it continues to be people have
killed themselves over it!
The swatting thing.
Good on the caughts on putting this rat bag in jail won’t stop
hackers though just like the current wars won’t stop exteremists.
What I find bad is this guy is blind.
He is in jail but now we have the added stigama and stereo type of
being poor, helpless, stupid, now bad and should be aborted at birth
or put in jail.
I personally am concerned of what people will now think of us after
this article.
Never mind that this guy is in jail.
I once was fixing a school system well teaching someone how to use it
when I mistakenly accessed an secure system with no access.
I was promptly accused of hacking and fired.
To be honest the system was so restricted bar one part i couldn’t
stand to work on things, but to be honest I am worried now.
Its hard enough for us to get a job now.
And while we are not poor blind stupid and helpless anymore or at
least thats in the back ground people are going to get the wrong
impression of us off the bat.
We will just have to do what we are told and hopefully act helpless
enough so they don’t notice us.
I may be over exagerating but I am lagitimitly scared at this point.
Its hard enough to be blind but to have this bad guy heaped on us as
a minority really does not help.
Next is the fire phone from amazon.
Its all for shopping

Amazon's Fire Phone might be the biggest privacy invasion ever (and no one's noticed)

that link says amazon will use all personal info stored on its system
for its own use.
They tried to back track a bit, not that its going to be accessable,
sertainly not buying it.

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We’ve got an update on P.F. Chang’s breach, it doesn’t look good

Yesterday, June 18, 2014: I read an article P.F. Chang’s Breach Likely Began in Sept. 2013 and it does not look good. We can’t fault them for not knowing about the breach, but another set of millions of cards needing to be watched because of it. I’m curious on whether this breach was similar to target, where someone, somewhere infiltrated the network with a worm or som=e type of software which captured the data and stored it off site in another country. I could see why they didn’t know about it for this long, unless, they didn’t have good security to begin with, and we’ll never know. Only time will tell. I’ll be watching this develope.

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podcast 192 is now available of tech

Well, in the better late than never department, our RSS feed The 19-Year-Old Blind “Little Hacker” Gets 135 Months in Federal Prison For “Swatting” talks about a case and links to an article as well as text from a book that I read. This is great news in my opinion. download the tech podcast 62 (157mb) for original coverage of the case I’m talking about in this podcast. In other news on this podcast, pandora being rude to the blind looks to be a hoax, but we are not sure how it got started, or what actually took place. Contact information is made available at the end, including for those who may listen to this podcast via a line that has other podcasts on it and may include this one. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the cast!

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Adobe, Microsoft Push Critical Security Fixes

Adobe, Microsoft Push Critical Security Fixes is the latest in the security patching posts from Brian. Haven’t done one of these in awhile, been neglecting the blog. You should read this one.

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More security breaches again, this time from a restaurant chain

Updated at 9 PM to fix some broken code. Woopse.

Within the last several days, Krebs on Security has posted a couple of articles dealing with a huge breach at a restaurant chain. Banks: Credit Card Breach at P.F. Chang’s is the first article, and P.F. Chang’s Confirms Credit Card Breach Confirms Credit Card Breach updates with the fact they confirmed a breach. There is one on Oxonard street just past a movie theater and mall nearby. There’s also one on Ventura just east of where I live. They have several other locations in Los Angeles according to Google. I walked in there not knowing what it was, and told them I was curious on what it was. I always like looking for new places to eat when I go bowling, and Oxonard is all right by me. It is close by, and I can always get a bus home. They mention something I find of interest. They say they’re doing manual billing of credit cards. How do they do manual billing of credit cards? Is it like when I dialed a phone number back in the day and entered the credit card number and associated info and waited for the approval code? From what I read, it is a bit similar,, but it is sad they have to use dialup now to process everything. Hopefully it is temporary. Sounds like they have a lot of locations across the U.S., and it also sounds like California wasn’t hit. We don’t know this for sure. I’m sure we’re going to hear more about this in the coming days. Thoughts? The blog awaits you.

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pandora being rude to the blind

Update: 8:38 PM PT:

I just saw a tweet with the following.

just received email from pandora: Re: Response to accessibility related queries from a Pandora employee
__________________________________
Dawn | Pandora
JUN 15, 2014 | 08:20PM PDT
Hi Shawn,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We can assure you this is not an email from our Listener Support department. The email you read was fabricated
and falsely attributed to Pandora. We’ve reviewed this internally and have verified that this is a hoax. I’m sorry for any confusion in this matter.

If this is so, this is great news! Twitter is flooded with retweets of the gbelow content, but below is my thoughts on what is up in regards to this subject.

Original post as of 3:48 PM:
The following is a tweet that was sent as a retweet. The Jared Rimer Network assumes no responsibility to this info we’re about to share.

by far the rudest thing I’ve seen in a long time. I tried posting this earlier, but I don’t think it made it. This was a reply from Pandora tech support to a blind user. I happen to know that the original message that was sent enquiring about the latest accessibility issues in the Pandora IOS app were not insulting in any way. So, this reply is totally unacceptable. I no longer have Pandora, and will never recommend it to anyone, blind or sighted. The reply follows.

Yeah yeah, we know we know. You’re not the first blind dude who’s written us. rest totally assure we’re aware of the problem. We can’t tell you when or if this problem will be fixed. The truth is, we really don’t support blind people. Perhaps you should go find another app that is more let speech hold your hand while you cross the street friendly. Maybe our app is too hard for you non-seeing beings. Just shows what a disaster it is to be born blind, hum?

Anyway, tell your little friends to stop writing us, ok? We’ll get to it when we get to it.

Warren | Pandora
Listener Advocate
PANDORA® internet radio

Lets see here. I’ve not used Pandora, and I know it has potential for giving us new artists to listen to based on what we like. I think thats pretty cool. The message above which was taken in full from one of my followers who retweeted their follower saying the above within the ruler tag is very rude. All we want to do is let the company know of access issues, and I personally think people should write them if they use Pandora’s applications. I don’t use them, so I have no comment about this. If someone has been treated this way, I wouldn’t be doing business with that company, as they seem as they don’t care. I don’t know if Pandora is listed at the Better Business Bureau but if the person who had this representative could find them there, I’d file a complaint. That is bad customer service in my book, and I think everyone should write them about whatever issues they have. Its sad that whomever got this complaint isn’t going to be using a useful service like Pandora, but I probably wouldn’t either. How sad.

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Security now for this week

Hi folks,
Security now for this week runs 2 hours 2 minutes. News, notes, questions, answers, and more. download the file via sendspace right here.

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Security Now for this week, WTF is up with true crypt?

Hi folks, WTF is up with True Crypt? is the name of todays show. We start with news, notes, etc. as usual. download the 48mb file right here. Enjoy!

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Technology podcast 191

on this edition, we talk about privacy, a book review, and self driving cars. Go to our RSS feed for a copy and enjoy!

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Thieves Planted Malware to Hack ATMs

Well, I’ve been trying to be selective on what I post, but I’ve been thinking about this more, and Thieves Planted Malware to Hack ATMs should be the one. I think this is the biggest security article we should go after. A lot of people, including blind people, have used ATM’s. I’ve never used one, but I know they’re becoming accessible for us. Be careful out there.

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The 19-Year-Old Blind “Little Hacker” Gets 135 Months in Federal Prison For “Swatting”

Hi folks,
I was reading a book entitled Teen cyberbullying investigated: where do your rights end and consequences begin? and in chapter 15, it talked about a case that deeply effected me. On podcast 62 which was released on May 24, 2008 goes in to details including other articles. While the blog itself doesn’t have the articles anymore, this podcast may still be of use. The 19-Year-Old Blind “Little Hacker” Gets 135 Months in Federal Prison For “Swatting” is the article which is the latest in this case. This is great news! Swatting from Wikipedia may be of help. You can also search wired and other sites for the articles in this podcast. I never knew that there were guilty pleas, and I can’t seem to find my logs of Matt calling me as I had kept them for the longest time. I publically want to thank all the investigators who were able to convict this guy, and as I’ve said, it doesn’t matter whether you are blind or not, the law will catch up with you. The book says he got 11 years in jail, and that may not be enough for what he is capable of.

Other things of interest:

Matthew Weigman (wikipedia)
download the 157mb podcast 62 which is the reference after we were given permission to talk about it.

The investigator made it clear to this network to not talk about what is happening until the purp is arrested. We did just that. This podcast was taped and released after the arrest. Once again, I want to thank everyone for their hard work in this case, and I’m glad I read this book. It was enlightening, and eye opening. I was not surprised to hear about Matthew Weigman in this book, to be honest.

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