A security analyst (and a Black Hat USA speaker this year) created a phony profile (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) on the internet and proceeded to social-engineered as many poor victims to accept “her” as a friend. The project ran for a month and it was completely published for research purposes only.

Among its many victims were

She scored connections with people in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIO of the NSA, an intelligence director for the U.S. Marines, a chief of staff for the U.S. House of Representatives, and several Pentagon and DoD employees. The profiles also attracted defense contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Booz Allen Hamilton.

If that’s not impressive enough, I don’t know what is.

Full article here:  Dark Reading

Well after a month-long void, I apologize with no posts. It’s been a crazy month with new job AND new home. But glad to know everything’s going well now. Just need to tie a few loose ends

Several articles I found interesting the late few days (no Kotaku/Facebook from work )

Software to detect gender based on what you browse? Men, go try this out: Browsing-determines-gender

The biggest stir-up in the crypto community! US’ newly founded Cyber Command has a new logo, and it has crypted code on it! And according to Wired magazine they’re actually challenging people to solve it. The only hint? It’s their mission statement. Wired Article – Cyber Command Code

The last isn’t really techno, I know, but it’s interesting what you can find in the Internet isn’t it? A comprehensive list of what is *assumed* to be the cause and/or prevention of cancer: Kill or Cure?

Great article in Kotaku: Video Game Piracy, Another View

Here’s a warmup of my return to the blog. Facebook’s email notification is sending the user’s IP address in it. Meaning, if somebody commented on your status and you get a notification email, that email will have the IP address of that person.

As seen here: Binary Intelligence

In summary, from the email, open the header source file and look for the x-facebook line. Copy and paste that line to an email tracer (such as this) and it can track the IP.

So much for privacy, Facebook…………

ps: Speaking of Facebook trend, here’s an interesting article on Wired: Facebook’s Gone Rogue

But I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait. The original game had so much content, customization, action, and multipath storyline that it was truly a satisfying gaming experience. There are other lore-heavy RPG out there (Elder’s Scrolls, Dragon Age) but few (if any) manage to find the perfect balance of it all. The combat gameplay was superbly fluid and beautiful, while the content was rich enough (even has some slight nudity in favour of going true to the original book) to have at least 5 possible endings; add to that are the gorgeous graphic and various landscapes.

The Witcher 2, however, seems to aim even higher than that… shown in the following trailer. Enjoy!

And to think they can still top that off by adding a secret message just for the faithful fans… Kotaku Article: Secret Message - just by this reason alone I would spend the money on this game to support these great developers. Kudos to CD Projekt!

Update:
Gamespot has a slightly longer trailer and an exclusive preview found here: GameSpot Watcher2 Preview
The trailer is embedded below. (Note: The trailer is rendered with ingame engine)

Link: BBC Wildlife Masterclasses

Victorinox apparently just announced that they will be launching a hacking event of hacking their latest device… an encrypted USB key in a Victorinox army knife – the Victorinox Secure Penknife. The winner will win £100,000 if they manage to crack it, and still get a free penknife if they failed anyway. The contest, unfortunately, will be limited to 24 very lucky people, but anyone is free to apply.

The penknife itself is a mixture of the true-and-told tough (and original!) Swiss Army knife, but also embed an encrypted and secure USB drive, that will require a fingerprint scan to open – which, if you failed to provide the correct fingerprint, will automatically notify the owner by email. Which, by the way, should the owner never replies back to it, will cause the deletion of the file within the drive. Never mind the contest, tell me where can I buy that thing!

Bit-Tech Article

Samsung Swipe – On other news, Samsung released an update to their Swipe-system for their mobile. For the unknown, this is a program that enables you to swipe around a touchscreen to type in your cellphone. But for more clarification, please feel free to watch the video of the device breaking a new world-record in the fastest text-message typing.

Gizmodo Article: Samsung Swipe

Real Science on Mass Effect 2. Last but certainly not least. Do you play Mass Effect 2? Do you also enjoy watching Discovery channel? Ever wondered how thin it is the separation between real science and science fiction in the game?

Well, Dr. Michio Kaku – a real nerdy (hey he pulls references to Star Trek and Star Wars, ok?) physicist who are also damn good at explaining complicated things into not-so-complicated brains – took a shot at explaining all of those. This is a seriously awesome short interview video if you’re into this stuff. Myself, for example,could not pause or stop watching this video mid-way at any point (except when the other dude is talking)

Source link: Kotaku Link

First off, how a game of counter-strike in China ended up with a knife stuck up in one of the player’s head. And how he survived it as well. Ironically, he was stabbed because he was accused of cheating in the game, while how he survives the actual knife stab was also seen as cheating (death)… haha.

Full article: Kotaku News

Going across the gulf, in Japan, apparently there is a real-size (18 meters!) Gundam statue erected in Tokyo last July. And this July they’re erecting yet another one – this one with saber sword that lights up during the night – at Shizuoka. They expect the statue to generate 40 billion yen and nearly a million visitor within its first 300 days.

Well, naturally, if such statue is erected within 24-hour driving distance from where I live, I’ll be there tomorrow. No, wait. Tonight.

Kotaku Article: Gundam

Next is Kane & Lynch. The infamous action game about 2 hard-hitting not-so-good guys (which I did thoroughly enjoyed in the past) are getting a silver screen treament. Best part of it? Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx. Oh yes.

Kotaku Article: Willis & Foxx

And to close, Penny-Arcade released another webcomic today and it was (unsurprisingly) hilarious as usual. Plus, this one felt a bit more personal…

Click the picture to go to their site

Extreme!!

So ASUS just released the news on their latest 1366 board (that’s for i7 CPUs, while i5/i3/few i7 are on 1156), and it has one of the nicest heatsink design I’ve ever seen.

Avira Anti-Virus
Free version is very robust. Paid version has numerous version, tailored neatly to your requirements. Fileserver? Mailserver? even Proxyserver-specific AV? No problem. Decent price too.

MalwareBytes
Ok, so not exactly an anti-virus, but an anti-malware. Yes, there is a small difference (Microsoft Security Essential is an anti-malware). Though for most home users, the difference shouldn’t be obvious, and either would work fine.
Malware Bytes is a small company, and the free version doesn’t have real-time scanning, but at what it does – removing nasty high-level malwares – it does it extremely well. Not to mention speedy scanning time.

That’s all for now, but I’ll probably update this list more later in the future.

Update:
Avast Antivirus
This one is pretty nifty to block and maintain a healthy system. I’ve used the business version back then and it was very comprehensive and customizable, yet not exactly towards the lite end of the resource meter.
Their free version however, are quite capable of cleaning and securing most home users.