Chrome Malware detection

I had clicked to go to http://www.gmail-backup.com/gmail-backup-0-105 to download a freeware for Gmail backup. Chrome threw this screen up warning against malware from site my-dom.info on this webpage

It provides one link to know more about my-dom.info. On clicking Google gives this information

Cool! I mean, I am impressed by the amount of useful information they are providing.

I tried the same site with Firefox and it took me straight to the webpage without any warning :)

Google insisted for secure Gmail & Docs

This piece of article from Security Watch on Google is intriguing. Google has been asked to secure the complete Gmail and GDocs sessions. Though Gmail already has a feature to optionally choose it but not defaulted, these security safeguarders and law makers felt it is not safe to leave it without HTTPS and have urged Google to secure it completely.

These people have not questioned Yahoo, Rediff or for that matter any other mail provider. Gmail was the first one to introduce HTTPS into free mailing environment and they only are questioned for not having it mandatorily put up throughout! Its ridiculous.

Surprisingly, Google is going to work on securing the whole session from next tuesday onwards, on a selected user's base

Password encryption: Salt & Nonce

Salt Cryptography and Cryptography Nonce (Nonce: number used once) are added layers of security while storing passwords (Salt) and transacting passwords to-&-fro between the client and server (Nonce). A good read at Wiki.

Google Language

Anyone around feeling like they can help Google in translating web pages from regional languages to English, then one can sign in here. (Google Language style guide)

Found this interesting listing of popular blogs, category-wise.

A knol on importing contacts from excel to Gmail / Hotmail Contacts

A security flaw in Google Apps discovered last year, now fixed.

Google's Privacy Policy

Google has recently updated its privacy policy:

Before (see Google Cache):
When you access Google services, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.

After (see current version)
When you access Google services, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. Also, in order to protect you from fraud, phishing, and other misconduct, we may collect information about your interaction with our services. Any such information we collect will only be used to detect and prevent fraud or other misconduct.

*The content in italics was added today [SOURCE]

• An interesting read on why Google does not want to put up 'Privacy Policy' link on their Google Homepage.
  
• This read is on how to not allow search engines gather the user's information and their online activity.
• Data privacy day celebrated on 28th of Jan 2009.
  

Hacking site

It happens...Yes, it really happens for all of us. We want to Hack! Hack! Hack! and Hack! But there are no easy resources or its too complex for us to understand. But at the same time, we will never leave the fanciness to believe in ourselves in becoming a hacker one day!. So, here is one site, which under the pretext of 'Education and Knowledge sharing' concept to protect one's system, reveals some of the classic and, in some cases, advanced stuff. Sure, it would be interesting...once you start reading, you will be hooked. Enjoy.

http://www.hungry-hackers.com/

UnChrome

All of us have heard about this and this is one of the reasons why Chrome is not popularly used by many - it does not guarantee anonymity. It is known that Chrome collects lot of information from the user system and stores it. But now with the use of a software called UnChrome, this can be avoided. Apparently, Google Chrome identifies its users by their IDs. This is a unique ID generated with every installation of Google Chrome.  UnChrome 'Nulls' this value, effectively removing this link. It has to be used only once. Steps are as below:

 

1. First, click here to download UnChrome (make sure Google Chrome is closed first).

2. Next, click Run (Internet Explorer) or click Save File and run the application by double clicking on it (Firefox).

3. This screen will then pop up:

4. Click Remove Unique ID Now and then click OK to confirm you’ve already closed out the Chrome browser.

5. Success! The screen will then change to look like this:

Get rid of alert messages from Taskbar

1.) Go to your Start menu, Control Panel and look for the Security Center icon. Click on that

Also, keep in mind that you need to be in the category view of your Control Panel for this to work. To get there, open up your Control Panel and at the upper left hand corner, click on "Switch to Category View" (if you're not already there).

2.) After opening the security center, look under the title Resources on the left hand side of the page. Click on "Change the way Security Center alerts me."

3.) From this screen, you can choose which things you want to change under the Alert Settings. Uncheck any that you don't want activated anymore. You probably will only want to change the Automatic Updates setting though, because the others deal with your antivirus and firewall and you should always have those running. When you're done, click OK.

You may want to restart your computer when you're finished just to make sure the changes take effect. Then there won't be any more annoying and frustrating messages!

Threat Expert

Many a times, we have files on our system, which are genuine yet get black-listed by our favourite Anti-viruses. At the same time, there are files which though infected by viruses do not get detected by our anti-viruses. A simple solution is to update the Anti-virus, and most probably it will work properly.

Yet, there is a online utility called Threat Expert which will detect any virus in a particular file. Can submit a file and get the report! One can even submit the file using a standalone applet in the PC itself!

Facebook loses data!

Three days back I got a mail from Facebook which read as follows:

Unfortunately, the settings that control which email notifications get sent to you were lost. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

To reset your email notification settings, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Facebook loosing data?!?!? Surprising... 

How can your Gmail get hacked!

Here is an interesting finding on how a person without knowing your password can hack into your Gmail account and create filters. Creating filters will imply least, deleting mails and forwarding mails to his/her personal accounts.

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/3754807.cms

Google is investigating into the matter.

Hyperlinks in composed (g)mail

Long back, when I had just started using Internet, i.e. 4yrs back, I did not know its A-B-C-D. Was worse than a six grader who knew how to e-mail & chat. In these initial stages, for the access provided we could not create any mail id. Thanks to my friends, they gave me one from their many existing ids, Yahoo! being my first. Thats how my journey into this world of internet began.

I got the usual stuff of forwards. I used to get excited and also shocked at the kind of stuff that was coming in e-mails, high quality yet so easily. There it began the stream of forwarding mails to all my friends. One thing I never liked was the history of the mail sent across while forwarding, clearly tracing to its remotest possible source, which was never deleted by the one who was forwarding. It adds to nuisance and takes time to reach the actual content and purpose of the mail. I never wanted that feeling to appear among people whom I was sending these mails. Thus Ctrl+H was deleted. At the same time, I never wanted any of my friends to know from where these mails were coming to me. If they come to know of it, then I become redundant, right? :) So, deleting history added an extra share towards this cause.

Yet there was one more thing that could let others know about the root of a mail, hyperlinks on the images. But, there was nothing one could do to get rid of it. We could not see the html* part of a mail to remove href on a image. We lived through it. Then came the upgradation of gmail to newer version from the older version. In that version, when we clicked on an image or text having an hyperlink, one could

• Go to that link
• Change that link
• Remove that link

Finally, there was someone who felt the same need as me. But apart from this, there was one more addition in this newer version. If it was an image, it provided options to resize the image to Small, Medium, Large, leave Original or Remove it. When clicked on image with hyperlink, this image bar alone appeared instead of hyperlink bar. But to the comfort to some piece of mind, there was another way around to achieve removal of hyperlink from images, inspite of non appearance of hyperlink bar; 'Link' image in the RTF. One could remove hyperlink by clicking on it, since if there was an hyperlink, it would be in active stage and re-clicking it, removed any hyperlink attached. That eased the process of cleaning up hyperlinks as well, thus subsequent forwards from me, leaved out all the trace of its origin*.

But from last few days, this feature is not working. Clicking on hyperlink image, is bringing up a box to add a link, even to an already hyperlinked image. Disappointment. In last few days, this is the second bug in Gmail [FIRST POSTED HERE]. Gmail, what has happened to you!!!

* Show Original option in gmail gives us the html part of the mail. GMail does not show the client-ip, though in some mails I did find there existed a client-ip from where a particular mail was sent but those ips could not be linked to any location. Yahoo! and Rediff give this information, in their headers which when entered into some sites like this, searches for a client-ip mentioned in its header and traces it to the possible location .

Passwords or Passfaces?

Instead of entering Passwords (characters), one enters password through faces ('characters' ;-) )
Details here...

Increased security on mail ids in Google Groups

Today I happened to go to Google Groups to see if there was a possibility of uploading videos or photos. It does give an option on uploading files, but need to find out if explicitly there is a way to upload photos and/or videos.

What in the process was observed is that Google Groups has added increased security in not letting anyone see mail id of any member. In Yahoo Groups, one can see the mail id of a member directly. Whereas in Google Groups, it shows first few characters, then replaces the rest with elipsis '...' appended with @domain name.com. If one has to see the mail id completely, a screen to enter CAPTCHA appears [WHAT IS A CAPTCHA] [HOW STRONG IS GOOGLE'S CAPTCHA]. After the verification here, complete mail id is shown.

Impressed with added security implying extra work for spammers...

Spammers blast Social Networking Sites

An article on how bots are being used to create fake accounts on Social Networking Sites, starting with AOL in mid 1990s, and then phishing with user's data. A fair article here

Security Jargons: Bots, Zombies, Virus, Worms, Trojan Horse & Phishing

Bots: A bot is a type of malware which allows an attacker to gain complete control over the affected computer. [SOURCE]

Zombie: Computers that are infected with a bot are generally referred to as zombies. [SOURCE]

Virus: A computer virus is a small program written to alter the way a computer operates, without the permission or knowledge of the user. A virus must meet two criteria:

• It must execute itself. It often places its own code in the path of execution of another program.
• It must replicate itself. For example, it may replace other executable files with a copy of the virus infected file. Viruses can infect desktop computers and network servers alike.

Five recognized types: File infector viruses, Boot sector viruses, Master boot record viruses, Multipartite viruses, Macro viruses [SOURCE]


Trojan Horse:
Trojan horses are impostors—files that claim to be something desirable but, in fact, are malicious. A very important distinction between Trojan horse programs and true viruses is that they do not replicate themselves. Trojan horses contain malicious code that when triggered cause loss, or even theft, of data. For a Trojan horse to spread, you must invite these programs onto your computers; for example, by opening an email attachment or downloading and running a file from the Internet. Trojan.Vundo is a Trojan horse. [SOURCE]

Worm:
Worms are programs that replicate themselves from system to system without the use of a host file. This is in contrast to viruses, which requires the spreading of an infected host file. Although worms generally exist inside of other files, often Word or Excel documents, there is a difference between how worms and viruses use the host file. Usually the worm will release a document that already has the "worm" macro inside the document. The entire document will travel from computer to computer, so the entire document should be considered the worm W32.Mydoom.AX@mm is an example of a worm [SOURCE]

Virus Hoax:
Virus hoaxes are messages, almost always sent by email, that amount to little more than chain letters. Following are some of the common phrases that are used in these hoaxes:

• If you receive an email titled [email virus hoax name here], do not open it!
• Delete it immediately!
• It contains the [hoax name] virus.
• It will delete everything on your hard drive and [extreme and improbable danger specified here].
• This virus was announced today by [reputable organization name here].
• Forward this warning to everyone you know! [SOURCE]

Phishing:
Phishing is attacks using “spoofed” e-mails and fraudulent websites with the attempt to trick unsuspecting Internet users into divulging confidential personal information such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. [SOURCE]

Update-1

Vhishing:
In a vishing scam, people are sent spam mail, as in Phishing, but instead of being directed to a Web site, they are given a phone number to call. If one calls the number, it will seem like one is calling the company that sent you the e-mail. They have all of the automated messages, hold music and even long wait times. When one finally reaches a representative, they will ask one for ones' account information.

CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart".

Official CAPTCHA site is http://www.captcha.net/

In simple words, CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and grade tests that:

• Most humans can pass, BUT


• Current computer programs can't pass

Quite sometime back, I had read a general article on how people broke of Yahoo Security by creating automated bots to read these captachas and create innumerable mail ids. Today found some very good site with analysis, where Gmail has got hit. All the articles and links below.



Gmail CAPTCHA busted: Very informative article, completely describes the CAPTCHA hacking process, their discovery of the host machine, use of two bots than one since Gmail CAPTCHAs are tougher than others, etc. etc. (implies spam coming from Google's IP addresses!) Spammers are able to create still only with 20% success rate (I realize its quite huge, but compared to Hotmail at about 60%, this is better)

An article on Breaking Gmails' Audio CAPTCHA



Yahoo CAPTCHA security broken. Another article on Yahoo security broken. One more here.



Hotmail CAPTCHA cracked. Another good article: Hotmail CAPTCHA broken in 60 secs



Accidentally, found this site: WebSense which has its SecurityLabs. In its own words:

"Websense Security Labs discovers, investigates, and reports on advanced Internet threats that traditional security research methods miss."

This seems to be a site which needs frequent revisits from now on. Especially after observing their analysis on Breaking GMail Captcha.