Gone Phishing

Hopefully we all know what phishing is. For those who don't, wikipedia states that it "is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication." Basically people try to send you authentic looking emails to try to trick you in to giving up your bank user name and password. Phishing attacks have become extremely prevalent in the last few years. But today I realized that these attacks have reached a new level.

What made me realize this? Well I have received phishing emails in the past, but they were always for the large banking institutions and, for some reason, they all seemed to be obvious forgeries. But today I received convincing email from a local credit union, UCCU, linking to a website that was asking me to log in to my account. I quickly realized that this was a phishing attack. While I still realized this was fraudulent, it was the first time I received such an attack from a local bank. This means that those who who facilitate these attacks (are they called phishers?) are getting smarter. They are targeting members of a small bank in a small community.

This means that we need to be educating everyone about these attacks. Everyone needs to know that their bank will never ask for their login information. I would even suggest that they do not even click on links in their emails. Type the internet addresses on your own. As phishers are getting smarter, we need to further educate the internet population about this problem.

Internet Protection

Right now I am working a lot on my senior project, which will be finished and presented next April. The project is essentially a parental control solution for those who want to limit their computer usage. Additionally I am fighting with spyware that has infiltrated my parents work computers. Their employees have been given unrestricted access to the systems, and that was a bad idea. Because of these two events in my life I have been thinking a lot about how to keep people safe from the internet.

There are a lot of solutions that can be applied to a system to help protect users from the muck that wants to hurt them and their computers. One that I just started to use is OpenDNS. OpenDNS provides filtered DNS servers that don't resolve common sites that contain pornography, spyware or are phishing sites. You also get detailed logs of internet activity. A secure way to implement this is to change the DNS settings in your router.

It is also important to have anti-spyware and anti-virus software installed and up to date. There are lots of free solutions including adaware and AVG. This helps keep your system clean.

Finally a big problem is letting the users have full administrative access. This is one thing that I am changing on the computers I support. Administrator accounts now have passwords and user accounts don't have admin rights. This helps prevent system settings from being changed and keeps unwanted software from being installed.

While this is not a comprehensive list, if these guidelines are followed you and your computer will be much more protected from the internet mucky muck.

My Good Ideas are Making Others Rich

I have had some good ideas in my time. The biggest problems with my ideas is that they are too technical for me. They are ideas that I don't have the skills to implement but I know that they are good ideas and would be really successful. Let take, for example, a new product by Google. Google recently announced a service called My Location that can locate mobile users of Google Maps without GPS. This is done by using information gathered from the cell tower in which our mobile device is communicating with to calculate your approximate location. This is ingenious and it was an idea that I had years ago.

I thought that I could implement this type of solution on BYU campus and create a person/item/inventory/whatever you want to keep track of locater. I just didn't have the skills to implement it and Google did. So they get all the glory. This has made me contemplate what I can do about the situation. I see two options. One is to try to patent these good ideas and sell them to people who can actually do them. The other option is to do nothing and just enjoy these innovations when they come out. Either way, I feel a little sense of gratification when I see that Google had the same idea I had.

How My World Was Flattened

A few weeks ago I was in the Denver airport with a handful of people that I had never met. They were college students from all over the country who, for the next two and a half days, had the same goal: to impress our hosts enough that they would want to hire us as employees for their company. As we were meeting new people, mingling, and trying to look like we had adequate social skills I was asked an interesting question after announcing that my major was IT. This student asked how I felt that all of my jobs were being sent out to China and India and how I expected to keep a job. I was shocked by the question. The goal of my education was to create myself in to such a desirable product that some great company would invest heavily in harvesting and honing my skills. But this student suggested that all I had done up to that point might be worth less than I expected, perhaps it was cheaper to entrust my job with someone in India or China.

I didn't quite know how to answer so I snickered while trying to hide a sudden concern for my career and said hey, I'm not worried, it's not like I'm going for a call center job or something. But deep down I wondered if he might be right. Is my job in danger of being outsourced or offshored?

Fortunately I was not doomed to wear such bleakly tinted glasses for long. I did not know much about offshoring and outsourcing but as I read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman I began to learn more and more of what it means to me. So armed with much more knowledge I can answer that question I was asked in Denver.

No, I am not afraid of my job being given to the highly skilled Indian or Chinese worker. It is true that these international workers can do many jobs that we do, but cheaper. Companies are seeing this and they are investing in this workforce. But that doesn't mean that they will fire me. On the contrary, they will need me even more. That is because those extra workers are increasing our productivity, output and changing the market. As they do that work from a distance there is so much more for us to do here at the home front. They are creating more work for me to do.

But this is not all. You might still wonder why a company would keep me around to do what the cheap labor is doing. The thing is I wont be doing what they can do anymore. As they pump out all of this work, I will be growing and adapting to the change they are making in the market. I will no longer be doing the same thing that they are doing. I feel that one of my biggest strengths is that I am able to learn. I have used my time in college to learn how to learn. I am very good at learning new things as obstacles are placed in my way. I am adaptable and can shift in this dynamic market.

As the world flattens and markets shift, new opportunities arise. Industries exist now that never would have been imagined ten or fifteen years ago. I will be in the middle of this continual change and growth and will have all of the benefits of the flat world at my disposal. I am not afraid of my job being given to cheap laborers in 3rd world countries. I am eager to take the reins of these new markets. So as we outsource, my opportunities will only grow, as long as I grow with them.

That is what Thomas Friedman taught me about my job. This is what I look forward to as a graduate with a degree in Information Technology. This is why I am not afraid of my career being outsourced.

A New Business Model for Watching TV

For some reason the media industry is always resistant to change. When radio stations began broadcasting music the industry feared people would no longer go to concerts. When VCRs and video tapes were released the movie industry thought that it would kill the movie theater business and ruin the industry. When music became digitalized and people were sharing their music with their long distance neighbors the recording industry thought that soon, no one would purchase music. But their fears were unfounded. Radio brought music to everyone, VCRs made classics out of blockbusters and paved a new road for revenue and digitalized music opened new paths for distribution and helped the new and independent artists find a presence.

Now there is new change. Media is continuing to digitize and people are turning to the internet to watch their favorite TV shows. Initially people began to share TV shows that had been downloaded, commercial free and crystal clear. TV studios feared lost revenue. But this change, like the previous, is here to stay. The TV industry simply needs to find their business model. Already we are seeing networks trying to build this new model. Everyone needs to follow suit and embrace this channel. Instead of driving people to download commercial free versions of their TV shows offer them an easy and high quality avenue. A place with ads that you can not skip, and perhaps even require you to click to acknowledge. Networks, the digital revolution is not going away. Embrace it and mold it in to the model that works for all of us. Otherwise you will simply be blowing off a lot of hot air and not making any money from it.

Is iTunes losing its foundation?

Every week I read of another video or music industry bigwig complaining about iTunes and its business model. There are constant rumblings of unhappy companies deciding against renewing contracts or deciding to terminate partnerships with Apple. Universal didn't renew their contract. Warner and Sony are rumored to do the same. The chief executive of NBC, another company not renewing an iTunes contract, recently flamed Apple saying "that Apple has destroyed the music business - in terms of pricing - and if we don't take control, they'll do the same thing on the video side."

iTunes, the supreme source for digital video and music, is losing industry support. The business model that was so successful the past 5 years is becoming unattractive to some and Apple has shown it is unwilling to budge. Companies are transitioning from offering paid downloads to ad funded online videos. Just this week one such download service backed by NBC, Universal and Fox was launched and is gaining praise. Apple is unwilling to change so the media guys are looking to cut out the middleman. Apple really needs to be careful. If they keep driving their content creators away, their library will dwindle and customers will look elsewhere. Online and on demand video is poised to do what digital music downloads have done in the past decade. Apple better figure it out or watch the market shift to the next guy.

Enforcing Title IX in Computer Science

A certain senator suggested using Title IX on math, science and technology fields to do what the law has done to collegiate sports. Let's explore what may happen if Title IX was enforced by legislation on these majors, seeing what has happened to collegiate sports since the 70s. Title IX found that the many universities were spending too much on mens sports and not enough on womens. Many were forced to cut back the funding of some mens sports while they had to pump money in to womens sports. Some results: over 100 mens gymnastics programs have been dropped as well as 170 wrestling teams.

How would this affect technology majors? Would the IT and ISYS majors be cut so that the university could even things out? Would CS be required to accept as many women as men? Would scholarships for women in tech majors be handed out like hot dogs at a BUYSA activity while men would be better off panning for gold in the Provo river? I'm not really sure but I don't think legislation is the answer to getting women in technology. People would find it absurd if you required the nursing program to accept as many men as women. Schools of technology simply need to do all they can to entice both men and women to study their disciplines and then accept the dice how they fall.

Rejecting or Accepting Change

Glancing through the technology headlines you notice a common thread. A lot of news is about change. New things. When there is change we have two options, accept it or reject it. I have been wondering what drives us to either accept or reject certain changes. Let's take two examples of major change and how people are receiving the change. Exhibit A is Microsoft Windows Vista. Exhibit B is Mac OS X Leopard. Vista has been out for nearly a year while Leopard is about to come out in a few days. I have noticed that these two OS upgrades have been met with two opposing attitudes toward change. The prevalent attitude about Vista is "wait and see." On the other hand, everyone I have talked to is anticipating Leopard, they can hardly wait for the release.

Both upgrades offer radical changes but why such varied receptions? It is because of perceived changes. Vista was so glaringly different that it may have scared people away from change. On the other hand, changes in Leopard are subtle yet it is easy to see how they are worthwhile. The changes aren't scary but inviting.

We learn that changing something drastically might scare away new adopters. Make the change subtle and try not to rock the boat. This will help people accept change.

All I really need to know I learned from Cliff Stoll

Ok, so there is a lot more to learn that what I learned from Cliff Stoll, the author of The Cuckoo's Egg, but I did learn a lot of things while I was reading his book. Some of it is computer stuff and some is life stuff. There are a lot of personal insights that I gathered from the book so I am going to cover a few.

Paradigm Shifts Happen
In the beginning of The Cuckoo's Egg Cliff is a self proclaimed right wing, peace loving, long haired, uncommitted, secret government agency hating, bachelor of Berkeley California. As he tracked a hacker for over a year many of his paradigms began to shift. He saw that this hacker was evading privacy and trying to access sensitive information. Additionally the hacker could have easily destroyed the work of many people. Cliff would have originally thought of him as a harmless prankster, but he realized that this guy was breaking the trust that all these networks were built upon. He was exploiting the faith of the users.

When he first got in contact with the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government or military organizations he could hardly believe that he was fraternizing with those "spooks." But as he met and interacted with them he realized they were just people too. They had the same interests, skills, hobbies and hopes that he had. They were just like him, decent people trying to do the right thing.

On a more personal note, we saw the transformation from somewhat uncommitted boyfriend to committed happy husband. As I read Cliffs stories and saw how his ideas changed I realized that sometimes paradigm shifts happen. Maybe you begin to realize that you are not as liberal or conservative as you thought, your idea of commitment is not what it used to be, or maybe "those people" are not who you thought they were. This is also dependent on how much you are willing to learn. Are you open minded enough to accept things that are different than you believe?

Keeping a Record is Important
Throughout the pursuit of his hacker Cliff took extensive notes. Everything that the hacker typed was recorded. Every call cliff made was written down. He was meticulous. Finally, when he asked someone why his case was so important he was told that his was the first account that was so well documented. Additionally he was able to reconstruct all that happened during the chase. This was due to the fact that he kept great records.

This has made me realize how important it is to keep good records. There are a lot of experiences in my life that I don't want forgotten when I die (or even a few years down the road). Thus it is so important that I keep a detailed journal of the important things that happen in my life so that I, as well as others, can remember significant events of my life. This reminds me of a time I was reading my dad's journal and he wrote the following: "Today I had the most incredible experience of my life and I will never forget it." That was it. I asked him what the experience was and he couldn't remember.

You Are More Than You Think You Are
Cliff Stoll is first and foremost an astronomer. He often stated that throughout the book. But he was put in a situation where he had to track a computer hacker. His specialty was not computers, operating systems, networks or security. No, it was stars, galaxies, telescopes and other celestial things. But he found himself tracking this spy throughout systems and networks, staying a step ahead of the attacker, doing things that he never thought he would have to do. Doing much more than an astronomer should be able to do. But that is just life. Sometimes we are put in positions that require more than we think we have or can give. We each have experiences that are atypical for us but our abilities and skill sets are such that we may be the only one who can resolve the issues. Sometimes we are more than we think we are.

Information Needs to be Stored, Organized, Shared and Available
While tracking the hacker Cliff discovered some interesting and easily exposable computer security exploits. Many times he would share them with the authorities and would be shocked by the response that they knew about the problem, it was a common issue, and they had noted it. Why wasn't this information publicly available, why don't other people know about this? Then they could try to protect themselves.

There is so much information that could help people. So many people are falling in to the same old traps, doing the same dumb things that people before them did, all because of ignorance. Thank goodness for the internet as it is now and the wealth of information that we can gather from it. This needs to continue and improve. Let's continue to index and record information, share it and make it available. Additionally, we need to seek it out. When we do so, we will experience fewer problems because of our ignorance.

So as I reflect on the insights gathered and lessons learned from The Cuckoo's Nest I realize there is a lot to learn from Cliff Stoll. Fortunately for us he was an excellent record keeper an engaging story teller. Reading this book taught me that paradigm shifts happen, record keeping is important, I am more than I think I am and information should be stored, organized, shared and available.

Geni-wiki?

Currently many thousands of people are extracting hand written data from census records for genealogical purposes. This is a major effort and there are lots of man hours being poured in to this project. It reminds me of the extensive work done in Wikipedia. Millions of man hours have been spent entering information in to Wikipedia and countless other wikis. Could the wiki idea be adapted to genealogy? Wikis are designed to easily add links between entries.

Your geni-wiki page would have some sort of a table that showed you and links to your siblings and parents. The data in your wiki would contain relevant information including birth date, cities you lived in, schools attended, awards received and, of course, a blurb about your life and accomplishments. People would come to find out about you and end up following the trail of user generated information that would lead them to your ancestors and relatives.

Of course this would have to be regulated to assure some degree of accuracy, but we'll leave that for another post.

1957: Sputnik Changes the World

Fifty years ago today Sputnik launched as the first man-made satellite. Americans noticed and most thought our enemies, the Soviets, were winning, were advancing at a rate that we could not match. In retrospect I offer this to the Soviets. Thank you. Thanks for jump starting the space race. Your satellite led the way. Because of what you began we now enjoy the benefits of GPS, satellite TV, cell phones, worldwide broadcasts, Google Earth, and so much more. Let's continue innovating. Thanks Soviet Union.

The Evolving Attitude Toward Computer Crimes

As I have been reading The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, written by Cliff Stoll, the indifference of the authorities towards the hacker has been shocking. In the story Cliff tracked a hacker as he exploited the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and from there attempted or succeeded in hacking networks operated by the FBI, NSA, and several military operations. When Cliff informed these agencies and tried to solicit help he got the cold shoulder, time after time. They constantly said that nothing significant had been stolen or destroyed so they wouldn't worry about it.

Now we contrast that to today. There are numerous agencies and groups that are spending all day, every day, tracking down and busting hackers. There have been a myriad of laws and legislation in preventing many kinds of hacking. Digital Terrorism is quickly becoming one of the largest threats of our national security.

As systems get larger and more people are getting smarter it is becoming increasingly difficult to combat these issues. I think that there needs to be more organization in preparing people who can fight this war. Just like members of the army or navy are given duties and trained to combat threats, there should be an organization to combat different digital threats. We must take more action in protecting our nation from digital terrorism.

Digital Privacy in the US

I was reading a few articles today about Google and privacy rights. One article was about Google Street View, a technology that shows street level images of buildings, cars and even people, and the privacy issues of doing such a thing in Canada. Apparently the privacy laws in Canada restrict showing faces or license plates on the internet.

After reading this article I wondered why the US is lagging behind in the issue of digital privacy. Another point of view could say that others are overprotective. I don't know which is right but in a world of identity theft and crazy stalkers I would tend to lean towards the lagging behind camp. This article shows us that the US does not protect the right not to be identified online while Canadian laws purely protect that right. The US needs to learn from the Canadian laws of privacy and help protect the privacy and dignity of its citizens.

Embracing Technology: A Paradigm Shift

In this era of technology it is hard to imagine any significant group or organization that wouldn't embrace technology. We all see how technology improves our lives and makes things easier. Can you imagine engineers not using computer aided drafting software or accountants not using spreadsheets? It would be silly not to.

Although somewhat different I wondered why Galileo's ideas were so readily rejected by the religious leaders of the time. Many modern day scientists develop other radical ideas that are easily embraced by the masses. I think technology has helped people to accept new ideas. There has been a colossal paradigm shift that technology has introduced to us. In a world where changes in technology crawled along, people couldn't accept change as easily. Now you can spend hours a day learning about new technologies, and this where our paradigm shift has come from.

Global Village and All-at-Onceness

But there is less and less surprise in the "global village" . . .. When the news is constant and continuous and always with us, when we are saturated with news, there is no real news. Real news is from elsewhere. When everyone is in the same room (or the same global village), there is no real news, because everyone can see what everyone else is doing. Surprise is impossible. News is impossible. The people in the room don't need information about what's going on there.

From Movable Type to Data Deluge. By: Gehl, John, Douglas, Suzanne, World & I, 08879346, Jan99, Vol. 14, Issue 1

In this quote the author is stating that as technology brings us closer together, we are less surprised by the happenings of the world. While I agree that this is true, there are so many things in the world that continue to surprise me, despite how easy it is to gather information about these things. As I read this quote I thought about when I was planning on going to Thailand. I had never been there so I didn't know what to expect. Excitedly I gathered information about the country, read books, viewed videos and pictures, talked to people who had been there, and tried to grasp what this country was like. I still remember the shock of arriving, everything was so different than what I had imagined, from the smells to the buildings to the abundance of stray dogs, not to mention a different language and culture. Regardless of all of the available information I was shocked at what I found. I have had similar experiences traveling to other countries. Despite the global village created by high availability of information, some things will always surprise us.