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Direct Response monitored alarms fail to show

Not to an alarm call out, but they had an appointment at 9am today to talk about their monitoring service. At 9:30 they called to say they weren’t coming with the excuse that they’d tried to call to confirm the appointment but couldn’t get through. Except they confirmed it yesterday afternoon and there’s someone on the hot-line number they claim to have used since 6am today.

Okay, they double booked slots and got caught with their pants down and this is the best they could come up with, but a company trying to sell an ARC service, not showing for an appointment has to be the biggest no-no going. LOL!

They’re actually possibly worth talking to, because they use the rather interesting Risco panels. Risco is an Israeli company, and they’re upping the game by integrating CCTV and IDS in one system with PIR detectors that will take a snapshot of what triggered them and sending to the ARC. The lady on the phone said they just wanted to demonstrate this, and I couldn’t resist even though we’re happy with the British-made Texecom kit (although we use Risco beam sensors already).

However, this is the same Direct Response that got hauled before the OFT and clobbered in 2009 for telling porky pies about their monitored alarms getting a priority response from the police. The caller also claimed the alarms were made in Iran (“or somewhere like that”). And they’re still using the same old sales tactics (“We are calling as part of an awareness campaign, and four people in your area will be selected at random for a free alarm worth £999”, without mentioning the £400 installation fee up front and claiming a £5/week monitoring fee – I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this bit is true).

The appointment’s been re-made for 9am on Monday. Let’s see. In fairness, I did warn the first and second callers that they hadn’t called a normal householder. All they gotta do is Google me.

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BBC pulls Queen’s Christmas message

The BBC iPlayer is supposed to “make the unmissable, unmissable”, according to the BBC itself. That only applies if the BBC itself wants you (the license payers) to see something.

Even before Christmas was over, the Queen’s Christmas Message was removed from the playlist. What’s the excuse? I’m still waiting for a reply to that one (and ITV don’t feature it either). It was produced by the BBC this year, and there doesn’t seem to me to be any technical reason why they can’t keep it there for the duration of Christmas, if not the whole year. it’s not just iPlayer; it’s been dropped from the BBC web site too.

The BBC is, of course, embroiled in allegations of left-wing political and social bias, and this seems a likely explanation. At the very least, lefty decision makers will have regarded the Queens Message as unimportant and dropped it quickly.

The BBC once had a monopoly on the Royal Christmas Message, but this was ended in 1997 when it was announced that ITN would alternate with it (and Sky joined the rotation in 2011). At the time it was speculated that this decision reflected the Palace’s displeasure with the low-brow coverage of Royal matters within BBC News and Current Affairs. You can’t argue with that, although it was denied by Buckingham Palace. Subsequent revelations tend to back this up, and show it was the right decision.

It comes to something when the state broadcaster, funded by the nation, fails in its duty to make the Queen’s message available, forcing everyone on to YouTube to watch it. Perhaps its time to drop the BBC from the production rota and replace them with Google.

 

 

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Botnet shows itself with New Year spam :)

The crims have been at it again this Christmas season (more elsewhere). The latest interesting activity has been a flood of emails with :) as the subject and “Happy new year !” as the text-only payload. Don’t feel left out if you didn’t get one, as they’re only being sent to email addresses made of random numbers at various domains I monitor.

What are the crims up to? Probably testing out mail servers to see if they’ll accept things to random addresses. Every domain should, and deliver them to a human postmaster (not that many net newbies are even aware of this rule). However, there’s nothing to say they can’t also go to analysis tools.

What makes this latest caper interesting is that the botnet they’re coming from doesn’t show up on the usual lists of such things – it’s either new or extended rapidly from an old one. New botnets popping up after Christmas aren’t uncommon as the seasonal fake greeting cards and amazon purchase confirmation trojans are relentless in the days before, together with the lack of staff available over the holiday to deal with them. However, I find this one unusual as most of the IP addresses used to send out the probes are from Europe (Germany and Spain in particular).

 

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Faulty screen on Lenovo S10-3 10″ laptop

My trusty and very portable S10-3 – one of the best laptops ever made in my opinion – died a couple of months ago. Well its screen went black. Or it went all-white, to be precise. And I mean black OR white; every pixel was either full-on or full off.

The rest of the machine appeared to be fine – it could be heard booting and it appeared on the network – you just couldn’t use the screen.

Today I fixed it. There was a loose connection where the LCD panel cable joins the motherboard. Unfortunately, it’s been lying in a pile waiting to go to Lenovo’s service centre in Germany all this time because I couldn’t figure out how to check for loose connections. Like most laptops, dissassembly isn’t obvious. Fortunately, like most Lenovo (nee IBM) laptops, it’s actually built with servicing in mind. So here’s the trick:

Remove the battery and undo all obvious screws on the back cover. There four captive screws on the cover plate, behind which lurk the winchester, DIMM and cellular modem (if fitted). Don’t be fooled; they don’t come out! You can remove the winchester if you wish, but watch out – it has two of its own retaining screws and two more screws that are part of the cover you’ve just removed. You could go mad looking for them if you miss this point.

There are then six black M2 screws to remove to the case, and three very small screws under where the battery fits. Remove them all, and it will look like nothing’s changed.

Next you have to lever the keyboard off. It’s actually very easy if you lever in the right place, which is along the top edge. It ‘snaps in’ at the corners; gentle levering with a small flat screwdriver and finger nails pops it off easily.

To disconnect the ribbon cable connector, pull the black bit of the PCB socket clip forward and up. (Good luck getting the cable back in, from underneath, and closing the clip again with adult sized-hands!) You can then put the keyboard aside, and undo three further black M2 screws, which are found at either edge and the centre of the silver plate thing you’re looking at. Then you need to prise the top of the case off – the sliver bit comes with it. Again, this is much easier than it sounds if you lever with a small screwdriver and get your fingernails underneath.

The planar (motherboard if you’re younger than a certain age), is now laid before you. The LCD cable is obvious at the top left; they’ve even labelled it. Although it looks like it’s taped down, it just pulls in and out; reseating it did the trick for me.

If you need to dismantle the screen/lid assembly (or if you’re curious, like me), you can detach the power cables that come in on the right hinge and undo a couple of screws at each side to remove it completely. To open it you need to remove the screws hidden under the self-adhesive rubber pads in the corners. Then you need to flex the screen frame quite dramatically, working around the edge, until it un-snaps (if you see what I mean). Let’s just say it’s easier to replace the lid as one unit if you’re breaking for spares.

Anyway, my little friend is back and I’m happy. It’s just a shame the manufactures are pandering to the craze for fondleslabs and had dropped the 10″ form factor for truly portable “proper” computers, able to run software other than games, Facebook and surfing the web. Now that ASUS has dropped the Eee book you’re looking at something like the ThinkPad E145, which I was about to buy in spite of its extra bulk, weight and cost.

Unfortunately, the S10-3 and closely related models in the field  are currently not replaceable until fashion swings back.

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Google shoots own foot in war on child abuse images

If you believe the Daily Mail and the BBC, Google and Microsoft have buckled under pressure from the Government to block images of child abuse on the Internet. What they’ve actually done is block around 100,000 search terms that are used by peodphiles looking for material, whether such search terms could be used to locate other content or not. Great.

Actually, this is rubbish. Google (about which I know more) has not even been indexing such sites, so search terms won’t have found any that it knew about anyway. I’m sure the other search engines have similar programmes in place. This is a public relations exercise, with a piece by Eric Schmidt in the Mail today. It’s a desperate PR stunt that will back-fire on Google.

Eric Schmidt of Google, seeming desperate (from Wikipedia)
Eric Schmidt of Google, seeming desperate

The fact is that household names like Google don’t have a case to answer here. They’re not ISPs, they’re not providing hosting space for illegal material and they’re not actually responsible for it in any way. The only thing they can do is spend their money researching such sites, dropping them from there indices and alerting the relevant authorities to their research. This they already do. So when the likes of Mr Cameron criticize them, as an easy target, the correct response is “Don’t be silly, it’s not us, and it’s the job of your Police to catch the criminals whether they’re using the Internet or not”. What Google has done with this move is give legitimacy to the original false accusation.

As anyone concerned with cybercrime will tell you, the major criminal activity takes place in areas outside the World Wide Web – areas not indexed by Google or any legitimate company. It travels around the Internet, encrypted and anonymous; and the peodophiles seem to be able to find it anyway. All this move will achieve is pushing the final remnants underground, where they’ll be much harder to track.

Looking at the comments that have appeared on the Daily Mail site since it was published is depressing. They’re mostly from people who have been taken in by this line (originally spun by the Daily Mail, after all), and they clearly don’t understand the technical issues behind any of this. I can’t say I blame them, however, as the majority of the population has little or no understanding of what the Internet is or how it works. They simply see a web browser, normally with Google as a home-page, and conflate the Internet with Google. The Prime Ministers advisors are either just as simple-minded, or are cynically exploiting the situation.

 

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Skype under investigation for NSA links

According to today’s Guardian, Skype is being tackled by the data protection commissioner in Luxembourg over concerns it has secret links with the US National Security Agency, and its Prism communications intercept programme. Like many “interesting” companies such as eBay, Amazon and even Starbucks, Skype chose to be be based in the Luxembourg  in the hope it would be left alone. However, the infamous tax haven’s constitutionally enshrined right to privacy might turn around and bite Skype.

Skype Login PageMicrosoft bought Skype a couple of years ago; it had once been owned by eBay and, as a separate division, Microsoft has presumably decided to keep it in Luxembourg for the tax advantages. However, while Microsoft was allegedly one of the first large technology group to be pulled in to Prism, Skype has been widely thought of as a secure communications channel. If Luxembourg-based Skype has been passing intercepts to the NSA, its users and the local authorities will not be pleased.

I understand that the local law does allow this kind of thing, and for it to remain secret, if it’s specially negotiated by the government. And as such the data commissioner may not have been in the loop.

But, you may wonder, how does an encrypted peer-to-peer system like Skype get intercepted anyway? The protocol was designed to pirate media files in such a way that lawful authorities were unable to track or disrupt it (which is why no network administrators would ever want it on their LANs). If it has weaknesses, they must have been there from the start. And I believe they were.

A few years back I was talking to someone from Facetime, a manufacturer of firewalls. They’ve since found that flogging their domain to Apple for an iPhone product is also lucrative, and now they’re called Actiance. But I digress.

Facetime had struck a deal with eBay to get details of the secret protocol so that they could manage Skype on local networks. As it’s obfuscated and designed to avoid firewalls, this is a neat trick, and they were the only people able to do it at the time. As an example, they were able to determine which versions of Skype were in use and block those that didn’t fit with company policy. In other words, they could positively recognise the obfuscated protocol and make sense of it.

According to the files the Guardian claims to have seen, Skype was ordered to cooperate with the NSA in February 2011, and it only took them a few months to have call intercepts in place. I’m not that surprised; given the Facetime firewall’s abilities I suspected that payload decryption was going to be possible if you asked the right questions whilst brandishing a big enough stick.

Making this information public, as is now the case, is simply going to push the people that should be intercepted on to systems not under the influence of the USA. How about a Chinese Skype-alike instead? Perhaps not, as it’s widely believed that the Chinese version has a back-door for the local authorities to plunder. But there are plenty of anarchist outfits out there with the ability to write a VoIP system that isn’t compromised by big business’s need to cooperate with governments if they want to make a profit.

Meanwhile, let’s see how Luxemburg’s data protection commissioner gets on.

 

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Spam from global switch

My spam traps pick up dodgy emails from all sorts, including large companies that ought to know better. But today one was hit with a marketing communication from Global Switch. Not from an errant client of the data centre, but from Global Switch themselves, marketing their rack space (half price for the first 12 months, apparently).

I’m not sure what to make of this, but if you’re thinking of starting up a spamming operation, Global Switch looks like the place to be. If they don’t care whether they’re using legitimate, opt-in lists, why should they hassle their customers. Needless to say I contacted them about it; needless to say there was no one available to comment. If anyone from Global Switch is out there, it’s still not too late.

Further:

I did get through to Global’s sales team. While they stopped short of condemning the practice, they said they’d investigate if I gave them enough information to identify the honeypot. I’m sure they’d wouldn’t have bought the list they used if they suspected it was dodgy, which just goes to show.

 

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Who needs a botnet when you can Yahoo?

Someone, somewhere is making full use of Yahoo webmail to send out  what could be millions of fake emails pretending to be Amazon order confirmations (extrapolating on the numbers received here). Needless to say, they really contain a ZIP file with a rather nasty looking Microsoft executable file inside.

My guess is they’re using accounts compromised earlier in the year, as reported here, which gets them through spam filters as most ISPs trust Yahoo. Actually, ISPs generally don’t trust Yahoo but their users don’t see it that way when their friends’ Yahoo email is blocked.

Is this Yahoo’s fault? Normally I’d blame the criminals, but in this case Yahoo could be doing a lot more to to help. This has been going on for three days, and there’s no legitimate reason why any of its users should be sending out with addresses @amazon.co.uk. Even if they can’t scan to detect the latest malware, recognising these fake emails is easy enough.

It’s hardly a new tactic by the criminals, of course. amazon.co.uk’s name was abused back in May to deliver similar Trojan malware.

It’s about time Yahoo (and other freemail services) took responsibility for the damage caused by their business model.

 

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Chauvet Obey 40 blacks out when you change fixture

I needed to test some DMX controlled lighting figures recently, and after looking around I decided to get an Chauvet Obey 40 controller. It’s not the cheapest, but it won’t break the bank, and it supports more channels than the entry level models – and does scenes and sequences (chases).

The design looks fairly straightforward. If you want simply use it to control light fixtures manually you need only press the button for the fixture in question on the left and then use the faders corresponding to the channels you want to adjust until you get just the right shade of puce. You can toggle multiple fixtures on and off, and control them in batches. So far so good.

Having got this set up, I was horrified to discover that when you de-select a fixture the Obey 40 turns it off! This means you can’t go through adjusting all your lights in turn. Apparently the unit was designed to work in programmed mode, where you set up scenes and sequences of scenes and cycle through them. It can do that, okay. If that’s all you want.

After tearing my hair out for several hours I discovered, by accident, that if you press the Auto/Del button to toggle the “Auto Trigger” light on the LED display to “on”, the desk works the way you might hope – select the fixture(s) you want, adjust it and then select another fixture. This is, apparently, the “Auto Bank Playback” mode, which suggests it may not work so well if you have things programmed in a bank but this hardly seems to matter for manual control. Just make sure it’s sequencing through an empty bank.

This appears to be an undocumented feature, and was news to the helpful people at Chauvet in Nottingham. I get the feeling this was something that irritated them about the design, too.

So – if you’re stuck in the same position, trying to get manual control, the non-intuitive answer is to turn it in to “auto” mode. My unit was manufactured in April 2013; this may not apply to other units, which may have different firmware.

Additional: If you don’t mind the “programming” light blinking away like mad, you can also control it manually in programming mode – just don’t bother saving the scene.