Spearphishing: The dirty email trick favored by the nastiest hackers

If you consider yourself a proficient internet user, you probably know to watch out for phishing attempts — massive email efforts to get you to hand over personal financial information like a credit card number or to click on a website link that could allow malware to steal information from your computer.  They usually come in e-mail messages riddled with spelling errors and terrible formatting.

Now comes a new, more subtle and more dangerous threat: spearphishing.  Spearphishing is often aimed at tricking specific individuals into opening a malicious file.  It could be, for instance, a boobytrapped PDF file or Word document which, when opened, secretly and silently installs spyware onto your computer.

Spearphishing is increasingly being used by totalitarian governments seeking to spy on individuals and to infiltrate computers belonging to government agencies in other countries.  Sophisticated criminal organizations have also started using the technique to obtain valuable financial information.   

Once installed, the malicious spyware code opens a backdoor, giving hackers remote access to all the files on your computer, as well as the ability to capture every keystroke, to steal passwords, and to read everything on your screen.

But why would an anyone be fooled into opening such an email?  The information in the email is crafted to look and sound just right enough so that it can dupe someone into clicking on a link or opening an attachment in an email and for their computer to become compromised. 

For instance, imagine you were a reporter covering human rights abuses in China.  I simply send you an email (with a boobytrapped attachment), forge my 'from' address so you believe that the email has come from a human rights group, and in the body of the email tell you that attached you'll find shocking details of human rights abuses in China.  If you click on the link or the attachment, I can then read all the information on your computer, including the identities of dissidents who may be supplying you with information.

Similarly, if you were a military supplier, I might make my email appear as though it came from a sister company or another supplier and use the access to your computer to gain vital military intelligence.

Some experts say that company employees and individuals who use cloud-based, shared document apps like Google Docs can be sitting ducks for spearphishing attempts.  In the first place, Google Docs is a very convenient way to fool end users into divulging passwords, because it is such a trusted source.  Also, Google Docs connections are HTTPS encrypted, and cannot be filtered by Web-filtering gateways to scan for malicious content.

While spearphishing may currently be used by governments and sophisticated criminal organizations against specific targets, we can expect large-scale hackers to begin using this technique to harvest financial data and other sensitive information from members of the general public.  The best precaution is to examine messages--especially those carrying attachments or containing links--very closely, to make sure you are viewing the entire file name of an attachment before clicking on it, to make certain that messages from people you know are genuine, and to be especially careful of messages from people you do not know. 

Apple, Inc. akin to religion? Studies suggest yes

From here:

For years, observers have noted the similarities between Apple, Inc. and religious cults.  Origin myth?  Check.  Faithful masses?  Just walk by an Apple store when the iPad Mini goes on sale later this week.

“A stranger observing one of the launches could probably be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled into a religious revival meeting,” anthropologist Kirsten Bell, told Tech News Daily this past week.  Bell reviewed several Apple product launch videos for Tech News prior to the iPad Mini launch event last week.

[...]

A BBC documentary series that aired last year cited a scientific study that seems to confirm this link.  In the study, neuroscientists analyzed the brain activity of an Apple devotee and discovered that Apple stimulates “the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith.”

Read it all.

Poll Finds Lackluster Demand for Windows 8

PC Magazine is reporting a poll that shows people aren't exactly rushing to jump on the Windows 8 bandwagon: 

In a new poll of 1,200 U.S. adults conducted by the Associated Press and GfK, about 52 percent of people had not heard of Windows 8.  Of those who had heard about the OS, 61 percent were not interested in buying a new laptop or desktop with Windows 8.  Only 35 percent said they thought Windows 8 was an improvement over Windows 7.

This is as I have predicted in several previous posts.   The problem is that, having run out of original ideas, all of Microsoft's "innovations" for the past ten years has been increasingly bent on simply making things look different.  Take the ribbon interface in Microsoft Office.  It isn't an improvement.  In fact, a lot of people think it is confusing and, overall, a worse user interface.  But it is different!  And that is supposed to justify Microsoft's huge customer base laying out hundreds of dollars per PC to get the new thing!

Now, for fear no one would buy a new version of Windows unless it had a substantially different look and feel, Microsoft has taken the most used operating system on the planet and given it an interface like a Las Vegas slot machine or an airport kiosk.  Did they really bother to test this interface among the computer literate public?

Microsoft says they want to have the same user interface across all their devices, including the Windows 8 phone.  There are two problems with that:  (1) In a world already dominated by the iPhone and Android (with which people are perfectly happy), the Windows 8 phone will never (I repeat, never) gain a significant enough user base for most people to experience the same interface on their phone and their PC.  (2) People really don't care if their phone has the same interface as their PC.  What they want is for their phone to have the interface that works best for doing what a phone does and their PC to have the interface that works best for doing what a PC does.  

While there may be an overlap, in that phones, tablets, and PC's can do a number of the same things, people use them differently.  People will get e-mail, browse the web, and (occasionally) open Office documents on their phones.  But no one does serious word processing or creates spreadsheets on their phones, not to mention graphic design or publishing.

Every time my antivirus software does a scan, I watch as it runs through over 600,000 files.  That is not surprising--my whole digital life is on my PC.  I need a powerful file system that will allow me to find and manage those files and an operating system that will allow me to do this as efficiently and quickly as possible.

All those 600,000 files will never be on my phone, and I don't want them to be.  All I need on my phone is an interface that allows me to quickly find the relatively few photos, or songs, or e-mails, or documents I choose to carry with me. 

Having the same user interface on my phone, tablet, and PC does not help.  In fact, it makes the experience worse on each device, since compromises and trade-offs inevitably have to be made for the same OS and user interface to span all three types of devices.

And, finally, I DO NOT WANT TO TOUCH THE SCREEN ON MY DESKTOP OR LAPTOP!  The idiots at Microsoft and various PC manufacturers need to get this through their heads.  I may be content to wipe my tablet off with a clean cloth every other day, but I do not want to have to take a bottle of Windex to my desktop or laptop that often--in fact, not ever.

Microsoft just isn't getting it.  They have run out of original ideas, and under the pressure to come up with something new, they are turning out products that are actually making things worse for their customers.  Given the size of their company and their user base, the results will take time to show up.  But this isn't going to end well for Microsoft.  In five years, I expect to look back at this column and say (sadly), I told you so.

The Serious Flaw with Windows 8 and Metro

John C. Dvorak comments that "The fault is so simple that you didn't even recognize it" by which he means that the new "tiles" interface in Windows 8 actually makes it difficult to recognize what you are looking for on the screen.

Let me pose a simple question:  When you look at  your desktop screen, how do you find the program you are looking for?  You look for distinctive icons using your human ability to recognize  patterns.  It’s what we do best.  You ignore the words beneath the icon.   For example, you scan your desktop for a red flat cat, locate it, and  click, knowing the program is Irfanview.  We are so good at this that we  can identify an upside down icon.

How is it a step forward to create a tile inscribed with the name of  the program?  An old alphabetized DOS listing is easier to navigate than a  wall of tiles, on which nothing is immediately familiar.  Our innate  pattern recognition is short-circuited by similar tiles.  You have to  read text rather than react to an iconic image.  And while colored tiles  help a little, it's still problematic.

In another column entitled, "Microsoft Screws Up Windows 8," Dvorak continues the theme, with which I agree wholeheartedly, that Microsoft has screwed up royally with the design of Windows 8.  He compares Microsoft Zune to Apple's iTunes, which he also sees as flawed, by delivering one of the best descriptions of Microsoft's predicament that I have ever read:  "If Apple jumped off a cliff, Microsoft would jump shortly thereafter, only with less elegance."

My advice:  Buy Apple stock.  If Microsoft keeps plugging this kind of klunky, poorly designed user interface, people will gladly pay twice the price to move to a Mac.

The Pirate Bay Offers Downloads of Physical Objects

I have blogged about 3-D printing before, the ability to "print" actual physical objects using a special type of printer.  For science fiction fans, think of the "replicators" on the Star Trek series—that's actually where this kind of invention is heading.

Now, you can download "physibles," or data files that deliver real, physical objects to anyone with a 3D printer from, of all places, The Pirate Bay.  Yes, The Pirate Bay—the torrent site known to most people as the bane of the recording and motion picture industries for the vast amounts of illegally shared material that some users make available via that medium.  The site currently has a dozen physibles available for download, including a 3-dimensional model of a 1970 Chevelle Hot Rod, a whistle, and a "tabletop wargaming robot model." 


As this Pirate Bay blog post makes clear, "We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare parts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years."

Of course sites like The Pirate Bay continue to face legal problems, including legislation in the US and Europe aimed at making file sharing illegal and blocking access to file sharing sites.  But the potential for the digital exchange of ideas, intellectual property, and, now, even physical objects is a compelling reason why sites such as The Pirate Bay should be protected and not hounded out of existence.  My recommendation is that you check the Electronic Frontier Foundation website frequently for ways in which all of us can help protect the freedom of the internet.

Why Verizon Doesn't Want You to Buy an iPhone

A pretty hot story is going around, stoked by CNNMoney, that Verizon Wireless sales reps are steering customers away from Apple's iPhones in favor of 4G LTE-enabled Android devices. I absolutely believe this, Verizon's official denials notwithstanding.

 [...]

Here's the problem: Verizon has spent millions of dollars rolling out its massive LTE network to cover 200 million people so far. You could call it billions, if you include the $5 billion spent on the C Block 700-Mhz spectrum licenses. But according to its first-quarter earnings presentation it's only been able to convert 9.1 percent of its 93 million users to LTE.

[...]

There's only one problem. The iPhone isn't a 4G phone. And according to Verizon CFO Fran Shammo, the carrier sold more iPhones over the last quarter (3.2 million) than it did LTE devices (2.9 million). That means more than half of Verizon's smartphone buyers are crowding onto the already busy 3G network, while the 4G network has plenty of space.

 Read it all.

So, Dad, how do you like the new iPad we got you?

This may be in German, but it needs no translation: