More animals wearing costumes

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/31/halloween-costumes-for-do_n_139841.html

Happy Hallowe'en! Trick or Treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!

Happy Hallowe'en! Click on the pic for MORE

Yahoo! Phishing Exploit

Netcraft reports:


Ongoing Phishing Attack Exposes Yahoo Accounts

The Netcraft toolbar community has detected a vulnerability on a Yahoo website, which is currently being used to steal authentication cookies from Yahoo users — transmitting them to a website under the control of a remote attacker. With these stolen details, the attacker can gain access to his victims' Yahoo accounts, such as Yahoo Mail.

The attack exploits a cross-site scripting vulnerability on Yahoo's HotJobs site at hotjobs.yahoo.com, which currently allows the attacker to inject obfuscated JavaScript into the affected page. The script steals the authentication cookies that are sent for the yahoo.com domain and passes them to a different website in the United States, where the attacker is harvesting stolen authentication details.


I have pointed out on this very blog that access to gmail and Yahoo! accounts is extra-valuable since they potentially have 'wallet' functions appended to them.

StrongMail Lays Off 25% of Staff

Oct 21, 2008 1:38 PM, By Ken Magill

According to a well-placed source who asked to remain anonymous, the cuts were across the board, including in sales, customer support and engineering.

News of StrongMail’s cuts comes as reports circulate the Internet that high-tech investment firm Sequoia Capital called an all-hands meeting of its CEOs recently to tell them the country is in for a long recession and they must slash spending and get cash-flow positive if they want to survive.

Yahoo firing 1,500 workers; 3Q profit falls 64 pct (AP)

Posted on Tue Oct 21, 2008 6:56PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. will fire at least 1,500 workers to cope with a crumbling economy that dented its third-quarter profit and turned up the heat on the slumping Internet company's management as investors stew over a missed opportunity to sell to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion.

The purge outlined Tuesday represents a 10 percent reduction in Yahoo's payroll of about 15,000 employees. It's the second time in nine months that Yahoo has resorted to mass layoffs in what so far has been an ineffectual effort to rebound from a financial funk that has left its stock price near a 5 1/2-year low.

Yahoo's housecleaning, to be completed by the end of the year, provides the latest example of how a credit crisis that has already rocked banks and retailers is starting to rattle Silicon Valley, the nation's high-tech heartland.

Videotron: Choke Point

I have Videotron for T.V., Internet & Telephony.

They have some flakey equipment somewhere between them and me, so everything has been down down down today. Including my doorbell, which rings on my home phone line.

It has been a rather quiet day, spent reading and listening to the radio.

Radio snippets

I was just channel surfing and heard a great snippet 'It literally blew my mind'. Wow.

This reminded me: A while back when I was in Colorado, and I heard a radio announcer who went into his bona fides, having interviewed Ringo, and Yoko Ono, following him having played Imagine. He then went on a rant talking about Mark David Chapman, whom he asserted was 'walking around' and whom he thought should be put to death.

I had to wonder how he rationalized capital punishment with Lennon's political leanings. Quite the logical leap.

Just for the record, the only place MDC is walking around is the Attica pennitentiary exercise yard.

Me, @ the APWG Conference

Nigerian Spammer/scammers sporting a shiny new pair of brass ones

Someone I knew some years ago was in the boiler-room scam business. They'd fleece someone (over-priced office supplies coupled with the promise of a fantastic gift or chance to win something huge, but non-existent), then call back a while later impersonating an FBI agent following up on the scam, to con even more money out of them.

So anyway, I've heard that the Nigerians adopted a similar tactic, but don't recall having received as explicit an offer such as this one:

SCAM COMPENSATION OFFICE DEPARTMENT

FIDELITY BANK NIGERIA PLC SCAM COMPENSATION OFFICE DEPARTMENT
ECOWAS NATIONS STATE/UNITED NATIONS
2008 SCAM VICTIMS COMPENSATIONS PAYMENTS.

YOUR REF/PAYMENTS CODE: FDB/06654 FOR $150,000 USD ONLY.

This is to bring to your notice that our bank (FIDELITY BANK PLC ) is delegated by the ECOWAS/UNITED NATIONS in Central Bank to pay victims of scam $150,000 (One Hundred And Fifty Thousand Dollars Only). You are listed/approved for this payment as one of the scammed victims to be paid this amount.

On this faithful recommendations, want you to alert you that during the last U.N. meetings held last week Thursday at ABUJA (WEST AFRICA),it was accessed/accumulated of reported cases of fraud that the money lost by various individuals to Africans scam artists operating in syndicates all over the world today is over $239 Million United States Dollars in year 2007 to fraud in USA alone.

http://www.techspot.com/news/29644-US-Citizens-lost-239-million-from-Internet-

fraud-in-2007.html

In other to compensate victims, the ECOWAS/UNITED NATIONS is now paying victims of such scam $150,000(One Hundred And Fifty THOUSAND DOLLARS EACH) in accordance with the UNITED NATIONS recommendations.

The payments are to be remitted by FIDELITY BANK PLC NIGERIA as corresponding paying bank under funding assistance by CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA. Benefactor of this compensation award will have to be first cleared by FIDELITY BANK and confirmed as a victim from Africa Scam before scam payment can be effected. We shall feed you with further modalities as soon as we get response from you on how you can receive your compensation payment award.

Send a copy of your response via email or call your remittance officer quoting your PAYMENT CODE NUMBER(FDB//06654).

NAME: MR.FRANK EDOBOR
SCAMMED VICTIM/REF/PAYMENTS CODE:
FDB//06654 $150,000 USD.
TEL :+234 80850 95605
+234 80633 62884
Email: scam_victimpayment2008@yahoo.com.hk

Yours Faithfully,
Mrs. Doris Udoh
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER

Michael Moore's New Wankfest 'Slacker Uprising'

Wow. I've been a Mike fan for almost 15 years, starting back in the Roger & Me and T.V. Nation Days. I even went to the taping of the pilot fo The Awful Truth, in New York city. That was pretty cool.

But one thing always rankled. The Cult of Mike undercurrent that played out in a lot of his work. Now with 'Captain Mike Across America' aka 'Slacker Uprising', Moore has dispensed with any pretense of this being anything but him.

A film about his failed 2004 campaign to get young people to register to vote show whistle stops on his 60-city tour to small-and-big-town America. Actually what it shows is a lot of Michael Moore walking onto a number of stages to loud cheers, sometimes sycophantically introduced by a rockstar or other luminary of some sort.

Moore has done a great job of calling bullshit on what is wrong in American society for years, but this is unwatchable. Moore lumbers onto stages, the only differentiating factor being his occasional change of baseball cap, and exhorts young slackers to register to vote in exchange for gifts of free underwear and Ramen noodles. One thing I also got from the bit of the film I was able to stomach is 'George Bush is bad' Check. Got that, thanks.

I couldn't get more than 35 minutes into this self-congratulatory clap-trap before losing all interest - perhaps you can last longer, if so, it is a free* download off've iTunes for the next couple of weeks.

I'm sure there are those on "Downsize This" the Moore fanboy board who will be find this wankfest laudible, but bottom line I think he's gone over the edge; his laudible work from Columbine and days prior is long gone, all we are left with is Moore big-upping himself. Yawn.

* Free, that is, for Americans and Canadians, don't try sharing this with anyone who isn't incontinent (sic), he'll sue your ass.