September 19, 2003 Archives

There's a TV news oriented daily newsletter called ShopTalk which is published at the TVSPY.com website. It's been around forever... even before there was an Internet. It's the place to vent, if you want to be read by most everyone. And, today it was my turn to vent!

One last thing... After looking this posting over, I found one misspelled word "airborne" and one improperly punctuated word "harm's." How embarrassing.

My dad loves his computer. I think, like his son, he is obsessed with this unbelievable access to nearly anything. But, he is not a sophisticated user. And, in his defense, that puts him squarely in line with the vast majority of other computer users.

Earlier this evening, my dad received the official looking email on the right from Microsoft. With all the viruses and worms going around, Microsoft was proactively sending out a patch to fix yet another weakness. Except, the message wasn't from Microsoft.

I wouldn't know any of this, except, sometime after 10:00 PM Thursday, I received the very same email. But, to me, something looked fishy. Microsoft doesn't email software patches! In fact, though I've registered all my Microsoft products, I don't think I've ever received anything from Microsoft.

I 'opened' the email up and took a look at the code. I could see the path the message took to get to me. It originated somewhere on adelphia.net. Adelphia is a cable TV provider with high speed Internet service and my dad is a subscriber.

I looked closer.

The originator of the email was there... not in name, but in IP address. Though we type www.somethingcool.com or email to foo@bar.com, these 'people friendly' addresses are translated into the raw IP numbers (the equivalent of street addresses) before they're sent on their way.

The IP address was my dad's.

I said, "You know not to open unexpected attachments." He said, "It was from Microsoft." And, of course, to him that's what it seemed.

The writers of this worm, which I've since learned is Win32.Swen.A, knew no one would execute this program unless they were tricked. And, it's a damned good trick. The email message looks legit.

In the past I've gotten similar messages posing as security queries from PayPal. Send us your login name, password and credit card.

Enough is enough. It's time we changed our methods of email.

As it stands right now, this network of networks, designed when only those invited could get on, is too trusting. If you say you're someone, the Internet inherently believes that. But, it doesn't have to be that way.

It's time for a new mail protocol which will verify the sender is who he says he is. Maybe we can cut down on, or even eliminate, spam while we're at it.

It will be a painful transition, because the mail programs we now use aren't up to the task. But, we have gone beyond the point of hoping the Internet will cure itself.

It's not live on this site yet, but I do produce some hourly, weekly, monthly and yearly graphs showing temperature, dew point and wind speed.

I didn't set up in time to get the Carolinas, but I do have some interesting wind readings.

The times are CDT because my web host decided, when my machine was restored, to restore it to CDT instead of EDT. I will fix that later.

On these graphs, the lines from top-to bottom are: temperature, dew point and then wind.

I know a lot of sites are linking to this photo. As long as you're here, please feel free to visit the rest of my site - Thanks for stopping by.
Geoff Fox

What is it about the Internet that makes people so gullible? Already today there's been the swen worm from my dad and now yet another dubious photo. This time it's Hurricane Isabel as a ship approaches.

How many things are wrong with the photo? The water's calm. The skies are mainly blue. The 'hurricane' which took up a few hundred miles, fits nicely in the photo.

Hurricanes aren't all of a sudden events... they ease in a little at a time.

This photo will be filed away with the NE Blackout satellite image, the smiling tourist atop the World Trade Center Observatory as the first plane barreled in, and all manner of goofy, tearjerker e-mails about dying kids and picture postcards.

The Internet has made us all publishers. But most publishers understand there's an obligation to do some fact checking before you send something on its way.

On the Internet, lots of people want to break that big story. It's just not that easy.