Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on January 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

Geeks.com is a very popular shopping site for computer buffs to pick up parts. They have begun to send out emails to users because it was revealed that their database was hacked on December 5th, 2007. Not only do the hackers have in their possession the names and addresses of the people, but also credit card numbers with their expiration date and card verification number. Everything a hacker needs to have a day of “fun” on your behalf.

At the very bottom of the site there is also the “Hacker Safe, Tested Daily” logo that is supposed to reassure customers that things like this won’t happen. Guess we can see how much confidence you should place in services like that.

Here is a bulk of the email that they are sending out:

The purpose of this letter is to notify you that Genica dba Geeks.com (“Genica”) recently discovered on December 5, 2007 that customer information, including Visa credit card information, may have been compromised. In particular, it is possible that an unauthorized person may be in possession of your name, address, telephone number, email address, credit card number, expiration date, and card verification number. We are still investigating the details of this incident, but it appears that an unauthorized individual may have accessed this information by hacking our eCommerce website.

We take this breach of our data seriously, and we deeply regret that this incident has occurred. We immediately reported this crime to local law enforcement authorities, as well as the Secret Service and other federal authorities. We also reported the incident to Visa. We have engaged an outside, nationally recognized security firm to determine how this incident occurred and to confirm that information we obtain is protected to the fullest extent reasonably possible.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to review your Visa credit card account statements and to monitor your credit reports as provided below. To assist you, Genica has taken the following steps:

We have set up a toll-free, call-in number to assist you with questions or concerns you may have related to this incident. All questions should be directed to 1-888-529-6261 or 1-212-560-5108 for non-US recipients.
PLEASE NOTE: These numbers will be active beginning on Tuesday, January 9, 2008.

Hop on over to Consumerist if you want to read the rest of the email.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on February 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Free for all Friday

Internet security is a big issue these days, and there are a variety of elements that can help keep your important information and documents safe. There’s a lot of security measures out there like anti-viruses and firewalls that people are willing to pay money for, but yet they overlook one very important security measure… passwords.

There are several lists floating around the Internet with the top passwords that are most commonly used, and all of them are considered highly insecure.  Passwords like ’123456′ or ‘password’ won’t keep your important information safe. There are also a list of common insecure choices like using your name, a pet’s name, license plate number, or the name of a child or spouse.

One of the most common ways for someone to get your password is by a “dictionary attack.” As the name points out, a dictionary is used to exploit your password.  Many password cracking programs come with dictionaries or common word lists that can be used to crack your password.  Any password that could be looked up in the dictionary is considered insecure, and could very easily be figured out.

Another method to gain access to someone’s password is by brute force attack which tries every possible password. Because of that,  exploiting a password could take a long time to figure out depending on its’ strength. I came across this website which clearly points out safe and unsafe password examples. Below is a graph which shows how long it would take for your password to be exploited based upon how many different combinations are possible.  Most everybody will have a “Class D” computer.

Notice from the graph above that a password that’s simple, containing all lowercase letters and no numbers or other characters can be exploited with a typical Class D computer in 30 seconds. The most secure password uses a combination of both lower and upper case letters, along with numbers and a symbol, and with at least 8 characters. In this instance, it would take 23 years for your password to be exploited with over 7.2 Quadrillion possible combinations.

–SuperGenPass–

Armed with all of this information, now all you need is some help creating a secure password. There are a variety of different websites and extensions that will help you create secure passwords, however, I’ve come across a Bookmarklet called SuperGenPass which does more than just create you a secure password. SuperGenPass works by entering in a master password for the site you’re visiting. Using your master password and the domain of the site, it will generate what appears to be a “random” password. The trick is that it’s not really “random”, it’s actually your “real” password. Anytime you visit the site, all you have to do is enter in the master password and it will provide you with the original generated password.

(The image to the right shows what the setup process looks like the first time you create a master password, and the corresponding generated password that would appear every time you visited a certain domain)

Here’s step by step instructions for using SuperGenPass

1. Bookmark one of the following bookmarklets that correspond to your browser:
   • Firefox/Safari 2+/Opera 9+: SuperGenPass
   • Internet Explorer: SuperGenPass
2. When you’re ready to log into a site, type your master password in the website’s password field. Note: This is your master password, and SuperGenPass will retrieve the text from this field to generate the “real” password. If you don’t enter in the master password into the form field, SuperGenPass will prompt you for it.
3. Select SuperGenPass from your bookmarks.
4. SuperGenPass uses your master password to generate your “real” password.
5. Click populate, and your “real” password will be updated in the password field replacing the master password.
6. The password field turns green, letting you know that you can log in.

The entire process is just two extra clicks, and just a few extra seconds.  The ease of use, along with the extra protection it adds makes the extra seconds worth it. This page will show you screenshots that will guide you through each of the steps.

Now, you’re probably thinking that this wouldn’t work very good as far as the portability goes.  To solve that problem, there’s a mobile/backup version available so that you can load it onto a USB drive/portable device and take it with you wherever you go.

Another extra added benefit that you may not have thought about is Phishing protection.  Because SuperGenPass generates your password based upon the domain that you’re visiting, if you’re at a Phishing site, the password it generates and enters into the password field will be incorrect. This leaves phishing sites unable to gain access to your important information and accounts.

Lastly, there are a few options for customization that you’ll probably find useful.  First you can change the default length of your password for a little extra security. The default length is 10 characters. Another option is to make this a one click solution by hardcoding your master password into SuperGenPass.

This entire bookmarklet was developed by Chris Zarate over at labs.zarate.org … props to him for such an awesome, useful tool!

SuperGenPass Information and Bookmarklet

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on July 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

Need a way to waste some time today? Checkout Fichey. It just launched and it serves as a way for you to browse through sites that are currently popular. You can also browse through sites that were popular previously by selecting a date on their calendar. You’ll be served pages from sites like del.icio.us, Digg, Downfly, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

It’s flash based and definitely looks “nice,” but I don’t see it as a site I’d regularly go back to because it’s pretty limited. For example, I selected that I wanted to view popular sites from StumbleUpon yesterday and there were only four pages to browse through. Given all of the different categories on StumbleUpon, I’d think they could provide more than just four.

Where I do see this being beneficial is for Digg fans who just like to quickly browse through some of the popular content for the day. There were 42 different pages that I could flip through quickly. What’s also nice is that you can interact with the page that you’re viewing by double clicking on it, or you can drag the page around with a click, or use your scroll wheel. I found that dragging the page with my mouse, much like what you’d do with a PDF, was quick and easy.

If you read the list of included sites and saw Downfly and said huh? What is that? Here’s an explanation: Fichey was created by Bill Chasen who happens to own Downfly as well. Make sense now? So essentially, Fichey is a shameless way for him to promote Downfly.

Source: TechCrunch

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

Lately there have been all kinds of file storing and sharing services popping up. It was just several weeks ago that we wrote about Dropbox, and gave out 50 invites to readers (with many more still trying to get an invite) so that they too could checkout the service. Now yesterday, HP announced that they were getting into the online storage arena by launching a new service called Upline.  In our opinion, this is probably one of the more significant happenings in online storage because a big name like HP is backing it and will surely use their resources to promote it. Another reason it is significant is because while they charge a small fee per month, all subscribers are given unlimited storage.

When I say a small fee, it really is reasonable. Their plans are all unlimited, it just depends on how many users you want to be able to access and use the service.

• Home Plan – available to 1 user for $4.99 per month
• Family Plan – available to 3 users for $6.99 per month
• Professional Plan – available to 3-100 users for $8.99 per month

Because it’s unlimited, you can upload all you’d like whether it be documents or photos to share with friends and family. The other feature that is enticing is that because it’s online storage, users will have access to all of their files no matter where they are, as long as they have an Internet connection. It appears as though they’re not too concerned about bandwidth limitations because nowhere on their site could we find any information on it.

Features include:

• automatic backup
• 1-click restore
• access from anywhere
• share with friends
• management dashboard (Professional users only)
• priority support (Professional users only)

In the past we’ve seen services like DivShare come in and offer unlimited storage for free and then we’ve seen them scale back because it was too much to handle. We can’t see HP yanking away the unlimited storage from users for a couple of reasons. First of all, they are charging users for the service. Granted, it’s not a lot of money that they’re charging, but users are still paying. Secondly, HP is a big company and they’ve been around for a while. At the end of the day, they’ve got the resources needed to keep Upline going.

While reading the FAQ, I noticed a few interesting facts. The first is that if you have about 5GB of files you want backed-up, it will take almost a whole day to complete it.  They say that they backup at about 150-250 MB per hour so that one GB takes about 4-5 hours to complete. Another interesting fact is that if you make a small change to a file, Upline will only backup the changes that have been made and they call this differential backup.

Overall, we’d say that this is a rather promising backup and file sharing storage solution.  If you’d like to get started, just go here and you’ll see the different plans with the option to “Buy Now.”

Source: TechCrunch

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 16, 2006 by CyberNet.

If you have your own Website, when there’s down time, that means frustrated users and potentially lost revenue. There’s nothing more frustrating than going to a website to find that it’s down.  It happens whether you like it or not.  Several months ago, we looked into different options for monitoring CyberNet News.  One of the best sites that we have come across is Site24x7.com which is in beta.  We’ve been using it for several months now and have been very impressed.

Interestingly enough, they are part of AdventNet Inc. which also owns Zoho (online project management). It’s always nice to know how often our site goes down, and for how long! Site24x7.com sends out instant alerts via email (or SMS) when your website is down.  You can set limits, and if the response time crosses those limits, you’ll also get an email.  What’s also nice is that when the site goes back up, you’ll get another email letting you know everything is up and running. What’s even more impressive is that this service is free.

Not only does Site24x7.com monitor for down time, they can also notify you if a page is taking a while to load, or if there are content errors, etc. While we have it check Cybernet every 5 minutes, you can change the interval to a time that suites your needs .  You can view history data for the past 7 days all the way on up to the past 30 days.  They display convenient graphs that show you the availability and response time history.  The picture above shows the history data for the last 30 days.  It shows that on November 23, 2006, we were down for 9 minutes and 0 seconds.  This happened to be when we manually took the site down to switch over to the new design. Had we not manually taken the site down, it would have been nice to know that there was a problem with our server.

Because it’s a free service, they only allow one account per email address to monitor.  If you have scheduled maintenance time, you can disable the service, and then re-enable the service once your maintenance is completed. I noticed in their FAQ section that they mention the service is free during beta, and once out of beta, they will have both a paid and a free version.

Another option that we haven’t spent much time exploring with is mon.itor.us which is also in beta.  They have over 12,000 sites that they currently monitor, and it’s another free service. One of the major differences that I noticed is that they have widgets that you can get to see the monitoring results for your Personal Google, Yahoo!, Netvibes, or Microsoft Live homepages. They offer a demo so that you can learn all about the service. If anything, you could use two services and see how they compare.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com