Swine Flu Info

 

Just like everyone else I going do a quick talk about Swine flu officially the Swine influenza A (H1N1) virus. Basically I want to let people know where they can find information.

A Google Maps mashup tracking confirmed cases, suspect cases, deaths and false alarms worldwide.

 

More Information:

1. The CDC’s official page on Swine Flu
2. WebMD’s Swine Flu FAQ, which includes more details about symptoms
3. A Q&A on CNN including history of previous Swine Flu outbreaks
4. The World Health Organization’s Swine Flu homepage, which is updated
5. 2009 Swine Flu Outbreak Wikipedia page, which may be updated before news organizations
6. See all posts on Twitter tagged “#swineflu”
7. Google.org’s Flu Trends page Must give credit were credit is due. Most of the links were put together by ZDNET blog

Google celebrates Samuel Morse’s birthday

 

Google Samuel Morse logo

 

 

Google celebrates Samuel Morse’s birthday. How cool is that? Samuel F.B. Morse was born on April 27, 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He was a professional artist, inventor of the electric telegraph, and originator of Morse Code.

Finding time to write.

I am trying to get back into the swing of things with my blog and my website http://www.TheStateWorker.com , but I am finding it hard to get into the groove. I often see something I find interesting and think to myself, “I should write a blog post about that!”, but I never seem to get around to it.

Now that we have had Declan, our brand new baby boy, I think it is going to be much harder for me to find time get around town. It is the tradeoff of having a child and I will take that tradeoff every time. Since I will not be going out as much I am hoping that I we will have some time at the computer to spew my rubbish over the interwebs.  I hoping to bring back some of the thing I use to do in the past like List Wednesdays and Interview a Podcaster

So I am going to try to write about as much as I can, even if it is super short.

Government Scrambles to Fix an Unfixable Issue.

If you have been anywhere near a TV, Radio, or Internet news site you have probably heard the word ConFlicker. I’m not here to talk about this internet terror itself, but I am here to talk about the actions that people are taking. As the title of this post says, the state is scrambling to fix an issue that cannot be fixed. What I mean bythat statement is that although ConFlicker can be stopped technically, it was built to thrive on societal ineptitude of internet culture by means of social engineering. 

The infections scheme is based on Social Engineering concepts. A time honored tradition of thieves, rouges, and conartists. Social engineering has the power to make people accept totally believable, yet factious, stories which gain information and confidence of victims to further the personal greed of criminals. I would like to say that this rare, but with AIG, Madoff, Enron, and Katrina scandals in the news I believe it is more common place now than ever before. Here in America, our society is built on the fact that you’re innocent until proven guilty. I believe that is the correct way to view the world, but this leads us to trust the good in people and hinders our skepticism. This innate idea to trust sometimes blinds us to the reality that there are harmful people, whose only intentions are to steal our identities and money.
Enter Conflicker, a computer worm that infects your unpatched computer through visiting bogus websites setup by hackers. Most people who visit these malicious websites are steered there through cleverly disguised social engineering techniques such as spam emails, hacked accounts social network accounts, and variety of other unassuming methods. 60 Minutes recently did an episode that showed how a hacked Facebook account was used to direct friends of that account to infect websites. As soon as I saw that computer generated Facebook message from the hacked account it sent warning signals off to me, but probably 90% of people would have clicked the link. This type deception is the true danger of Conflicker and other virus like it. The major way the virus is effective is if your unpatched computer is tricked in to visiting an infected site.  
You might be wondering what all this has to do with government. As much as the government tries to patch all their machines and cut internet usage to their workers this will not be enough. Conflicker, while nasty, is not the issue, it’s the methods that spread Conflicker that need to me addressed. Until we start teaching internet users to be savvier or law enforcement can eliminate the threats at the source, Conflicker is just the means of this attack and not the solution for stopping the problem.

So what are we to do about this threat???  It is a two pronged solution, education and punishment. I will not go into punishment here, but I’ll only say that most of these cyber attacks come from Russia and China which we have few options for recourse even if we know who is the criminal. Education, Conflicker is not a technical issue; it is a computer/internet education issue. Patched computers with updated antivirus software are at little to no risk. The systems that are at risk are the ones that do not patch the OS or the Anti Virus protection is outdated. This is why we need to better instruct people why they need to keep their Antivirus up to date. We need to show computers users how to keep their operating systems patched. We need to educate people on what to be suspicious of when they receive emails, IM’s, text messages, tweets, etc…. The power these hacker are given is because overall society of internet users are oblivious to simple, but crucial steps to deter criminals. This is not saying that by teaching the mass how to be safer on the internet will end all problems. There have been and will always be people that prey on the uneducated, the less fortunate, and trusting. 
For> more information on Conflicker or a means of scanning your computer to see if you are infected 

For more information on Conflicker or a means of scanning your computer to see if you are infected read Adrian Kingsley-Hughes – “The ‘no bull’ guide to Conficker”