Part-Time Pundit

Web Attacks Using Blog Traffic Exchanges

This is a theoretical, but something I just thought about.

There are a few attacks of late that can infect your machine (or outright own your machine) by getting you to go to a webpage that installs “evil” code on your machine. Some of these will use images that can have this “evil” code in it, some just silently installs when you go to a wrong webpage.

The problem with those kind of things is how to get people to go to the malicious webpage. Enter blog traffic exchanges (or any traffic exchange for that matter). Here you have people surf random sites which can include bad images or bad code imbedded (or the bad image could be a banner ad).

Think what would happen if you did this to say, blogexplosion and their memberships… lots’o'infections… assuming your bad code worked to begin with…

June 22nd, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | Information Security | no comments

Student Loans and “Mortgaging Your Future”

I’ve heard this quite a few times, on how student loans are oppressive and mortgaging your future. I’ve had student loans for my time here, and my wife had loans for her undergrad. (As an aside irritation, I funded all of my undergrad on my own, and when married paid for the last 2.5 years of my wife’s. Not once did I get subsidized. However, now that I just started grad school in theology, NOW I get subsidized loans. GRRRRR).

Since my wife graduated in May, we consolidated her loans at 1.6%!!! For the uninitiated, that interest is about half of INFLATION. If that’s mortgaging my future, I’ll be doing that all day long. I’ll refinance my house with those loans.

June 22nd, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | Education | no comments

The Case Against DeLay: Case Studies in Falling Apart

You’ve heard the story. DeLay (along with 2 other Democrat congressman, but you wouldn’t know that from the press) took trips that were paid for on Abramoff’s (a lobbyist) credit card. The newest problem is that the FEC and lawyers for the House of Representatives OK’s the setup.

So not only is DeLay being singled out for something that Democrats were on the same trip and did, but for taking a trip that the FEC and the lawyers for the House also OK’d as legit.

Now over 200 Representatives are running around getting their travel docs straight over a made up scandal. If you want the ethics committee to investigate something, maybe they should start with why they are giving apparently bad advice.

June 22nd, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | National | no comments