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Websites Conducting Port Scans : Security researcher Charlie Belmer is reporting that commercial websites such as eBay are conducting port scans of their visitors. Looking at the list of ports they are scanning, they are looking for VNC services being run on the host, which is the same thing that was reported for bank sites. I marked out the ports and what they are known for (with a few blanks for ones I am unfamiliar with): 5900: VNC 5901: VNC port 2 5902: VNC port 3 5903: VNC port 4 5279: 3389: Windows remote desktop / RDP 5931: Ammy Admin remote desktop 5939: 5944: 5950: WinVNC 6039: X window system 6040: X window system 63333: TrippLite power alert UPS 7070: RealAudio No one seems to know why : I could not believe my eyes, but it was quickly reproduced by me (see below for my observation). I surfed around to several sites, and found one more that does this (the citibank site, see below for my observation) I further see, at least across ebay.com and citi...

Learn Chess Opening Principles : How should you start out a chess game? In this lesson and video series for beginners, NM Dane Mattson demonstrates the key principles that will help you get a good position early in each game! Not what you're looking for?  Go back to the video guide . Control The Center:  Put your pieces in the ideal position to control the most important part of the board—the center. Try to attack those squares, e4, d4, e5 and d5 early in the game. If you can control those squares, your opponent won't be able to find good squares for his or her pieces. Develop Your Pieces:  Take control of the game by developing your pieces rapidly to squares where they control the center. You want to develop your knights and bishops and castle quickly. Once you've done that, it's time to move the queen and connect the rooks. This is a great goal for the opening. Protect Your King: King safety is the most important positional factor in chess. Usually, the best way...

Comic for May 18, 2020 : Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.

Bluetooth Vulnerability: BIAS : This is new research on a Bluetooth vulnerability (called BIAS) that allows someone to impersonate a trusted device: Abstract: Bluetooth (BR/EDR) is a pervasive technology for wireless communication used by billions of devices. The Bluetooth standard includes a legacy authentication procedure and a secure authentication procedure, allowing devices to authenticate to each other using a long term key. Those procedures are used during pairing and secure connection establishment to prevent impersonation attacks. In this paper, we show that the Bluetooth specification contains vulnerabilities enabling to perform impersonation attacks during secure connection establishment. Such vulnerabilities include the lack of mandatory mutual authentication, overly permissive role switching, and an authentication procedure downgrade. We describe each vulnerability in detail, and we exploit them to design, implement, and evaluate master and slave impersonation attacks o...

I Just listened to this talk (see below), and I have actually found this to be true. On my own I figured this out a few years ago. My wife and I had slowly drifted apart. I am happy watching sports, going on hikes, being outdoors. She is happy watching TV. I read the book on love languages and figured that I had better change to try and get our marriage on the right track. It took some time for me to figure out that I was just as much of the problem as I had blamed her for. It was not easy, I spent time trying to work out what was her love language. I figured if I could speak her love language, then she would be filled with love and start speaking mine back to me. I was wrong. First off my wife is complicated and it took way to long for me to figure that out as well as her love language is a multiple of things and they change in priority at different times. Good grief. The most disheartening thing I learned was that one of her top love languages was gift giving (or receiving ...

2020 Google Trends : Image caption: As the 'exotic animals in homemade aprons hosting baking shows' YouTube craze reached its peak in March 2020, Andrew Cuomo announced he was replacing the Statue of Liberty with a bronze pangolin in a chef's hat.

I am one of the worst bloggers! I own that, am not overly concerned with it. I do enjoy the sharing part of it. I don't enjoy the grammar or the writing, rewriting, start writing over again. and final copy. I was explaining this to someone once and that person said, stop doing that and just start writing. So this blog is me doing just that. I trying and write an original post once in a while, but most of the time I end up doing some copy of another blog that I found really interesting. What I am not sure about is how to add those. I want to be fair to the original blogger, and so I will always link to the original post. I hope that is suffice. I fully expect someone to come along and ask me to remove a post, which I will gladly do if I did not create it. In other words if I offend someone by sharing the post they wrote,  I will remove that portion of the post, with explanation.

Finishing a project : A comic about cheetahs and tricycles. All content is Copyright © 2020 Matthew Inman. Please don't steal.

Comic for April 26, 2020 : Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.

Look Up Together : Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2020 April 24 Around the World at Night Video Credit & Copyright : Jeff Dai ( TWAN , IDA ), Music: Peter Jeremias Explanation: Watch this video. In only a minute or so you can explore the night skies around planet Earth through a compilation of stunning timelapse sequences. The presentation will take you to sites in the United States, Germany, Russia, Iran, Nepal, Thailand, Laos and China. You might even catch the view from a small island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. But remember that while you're home tonight, the night sky will come to you . Look up and celebrate the night during this International Dark Sky Week . Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend < | Archive | Submissions | Index | Search | Calendar | RSS | Education | About APOD ...

Global Surveillance in the Wake of COVID-19 : OneZero is tracking thirty countries around the world who are implementing surveillance programs in the wake of COVID-19: The most common form of surveillance implemented to battle the pandemic is the use of smartphone location data, which can track population-level movement down to enforcing individual quarantines. Some governments are making apps that offer coronavirus health information, while also sharing location information with authorities for a period of time. For instance, in early March, the Iranian government released an app that it pitched as a self-diagnostic tool. While the tool's efficacy was likely low, given reports of asymptomatic carriers of the virus, the app saved location data of millions of Iranians, according to a Vice report. One of the most alarming measures being implemented is in Argentina, where those who are caught breaking quarantine are being forced to download an app that tracks their location. ...