creative scamming

I found this interesting.  Some scammers are using trojans to inject bogus ads and articles into business sites praising their fake investment portals.

The trojan configuration also targeted sites such as Forbes and Yahoo Finance, injecting fake articles into pages suggesting the sites were partnered with "URS Investments" and were recommended by Forbes and Yahoo and offer links to sign up with the site. Other sites which are targeted by the trojan's configuration include AOL, Amazon, Apple, CNN, Citibank and ESPN

Next stop, injecting bogus stats into popular finance portals, rss feeds, and trading sites to aid pump and dump stock scams.  Sound far fetched?  Trojans that steal banking credentials and initiate fraudulent transfers have been hiding the rogue transactions from the victims browsers for years.

Some banking Trojans overwrites transactions sent by a user to the online banking website with the criminal’s own transactions. This overwrite happens behind the scenes so that the user does not see the revised transaction values. Similarly, many online banks will then communicate back to the user’s browser the transaction details that need to be confirmed by the user with an OTP entry, but the malware will change the values seen by the user back to what the user originally entered. This way, neither the user nor the bank realizes that the data sent to the bank has been altered.

usb powered hockey rat trophy

Yeah you read it right.

Yesterday my dad and I were making our tipsy way home after watching the Jays take a beating at my local bar.  On the way in we saw what I guess someone who'd been moving had left by the service entrance to my apartment, boxes and miscellaneous junk.  I saw a weird rat statue with a USB cable sticking out of it and thought, whoa, USB powered rat!

Hell yeah!

So I grabbed it and said to pop and incidentally to a neighbor who was waiting for the elevator; "Yo check it out, USB rat statue!"

Dad: "Um, cool?"

We step into the elevator.

Girl: "Er, are you sure that's not just a rat statue with a USB cable hanging on it?"

Me: Pulling a random USB cable free of rat statue, "Um, nope".

So now what do I do with a non USB powered rat hockey trophy?  Suggestions welcome.

ferrousy is so a word

A friend who studies psychology once told me a story about a lecture she attended on the topic of cognitive biases (if that's a new term for you, don't bother finishing this post, read the wikipedia entry right now). I don't recall the specifics, but I think they might have been discussing bias blindspots. The prof was describing how when presented with a generalization about people, an individual may agree that it applies to others but not themselves, using different mental evaluation processes for the two. A student piped up at that moment and said "Yes! My friends do that all the time, I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't!".

Those with an appreciation for irony enjoyed a laugh at her expense and the lecturer carried on.

Today I read this article on PhysOrg and found it interesting but not amusing, until I reached the comments section. The article discusses the research of a woman who "has worked with teens for more than 20 years, conducting hundreds of interviews with boys from 11 to 18" and in so doing reports that as young men become adults they "feel pressure to show their independence and emotional stoicism".

The very first comment which I am all but certain comes from a man reads: "I'll bet that this lady also writes the '100 ways to please your man' articles for those teen magazines. You know, the kind of articles that have no real idea of what they are actually talking about. I always laugh when I hear about a woman claiming to have unraveled the mystery that is man."

I wish I had a witty closer for this, but I'll have to let this Ferrousy speak for itself.

Extreme Ironingy