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Entries in security (2)

Thursday
Dec102009

Banking with Facebook - Probably not the best idea ever

Mike Bailey at Skeptikal.org wrote up last week about a new Facebook app called MyMoney. MyMoney is an application that according to its creators allows you to:

Manage your finances right from your Facebook profile, simply and securely! MyMoney is an online home banking application that interacts with a variety of financial institutions, so you can view your account balances, transfer money between accounts, review histories, and much more.  

Sounds kind of cool? Hold your horses. In a post dripping with sarcasm (letting you know in case your detector is a bit off) he says:

I know you're thinking this is a bad idea, and are concerned about MyMoney's security. Don't worry, I checked it out. They have "multiple layers of security protecting...data and accounts." The application iframes you into their site (hosted on https://mm.galaxyplus.com). If you forget the URL, they left zone transfers enabled for you, so you can just select from a list of galaxyplus.com subdomains. The iframe's URL has a parameter called "fb_sig_user." If you manipulate this parameter, you get to see the contents of all your friends' accounts (presumably so you can borrow money without all that awkward asking). The only thing I don't like about this application is that they left error reporting on. I don't like seeing those ugly ASP stack traces every time I use an HTML tag as a form parameter. Lol!

Note to readers: online banking should be done in a virtual machine if at all possible, and that is all that you should do with VM, nothing else. If that is too much of a hassle, at least download and install a browser like Firefox or Chrome and use that browser exclusively for your banking.

If you'd like to read the entire (hilarious) post, click here. 

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Feb032009

How To Tell If Your Computer Has Been Hacked

Have I been hacked? Uh, yeah, I'd say so.

"Has my computer been hacked?" is a question that I hear relatively frequently in the IT support business. Unfortunately, most "hacks" are not nearly as ovbious as a web page stating that you have been hacked with some weird arabic text scrawled underneath. In fact, if you fear that a real hacker has compromised your system, you either need to go out and hire someone with a whole lot of experience in uncovering rootkits or re-install your operating system. However, the vast majority of people don't need to worry about a dedicated hacker trying to compromise their system, and if you are just an average Joe wondering if you can safely enter in that credit card on your computer, this article might just be of some help.

Click to read more ...