Meddling

It would’ve worked, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!

There are 614 posts filed in Meddling (this is page 32 of 62).

Why Do Obama Supporters Appear In Facebook Ads As Romney Fans? – Forbes


Forbes contributor Robert Hof wrote about the Romney Facebook Hacking phenomenon, though he was reluctant to contribute it to “skulduggery,” pointing instead to Facebook’s quickie diagnosis of fat-fingered mobile users. I’ve already shown that, in my case at least, it could not have happened from Facebook Mobile. I’ve also heard from other victims who don’t even own smartphones.

But what on Earth was the name of a friend, who I know is a vocal Obama supporter, doing on a Romney ad? The answer raises questions about how effective, or at least how accurate, these ads are–not necessarily due to a particular fault by Facebook but thanks to the byzantine rules and privacy features that have developed over years of user outrage and resulting Facebook accommodations.

via Why Do Obama Supporters Appear In Facebook Ads As Romney Fans? – Forbes.

More Dead People for Romney


An inspired wag created a Change.Org petition to have Mitt Romney’s Facebook account suspended. While there’s of course no chance of this actually happening, I did find the following comment from the petition to be interesting:

Terren Braen EASTHAMPTON, MA 1 day ago Liked 0

THEY MADE MY GREAT UNCLE LIKE MITT ROMNEY THE DAY HE DIED. THERE’S NO WAY HE SIGNED ONTO FACEBOOK AND LIKE MITT ROMNEY AS HE WAS DYING. THAT’S JUST SO SO SO RUDE AND ABUSIVE! WHO EVER IS RESPONSIBLE SHOULD PAY THE PRICE FOR THEIR LACK OF RESPECT.

Bank of America Alert: Important Message Alert!

Well, aren’t the folks at Bank of America so helpful to send me this poorly-written email, alerting me to “fraudulent purpose.”

Funny how this particular email wasn’t sent from a Bank of America server. Hmm.

Received: from www-data by famas.airsoftarms.com with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TTF2F-0008Qr-4q for me; Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:51:27 -0400
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:51:27 -0400
To: me
From: Bank of America < ealerts@bankofamerica.com >
Subject: Bank of America Alert: Important Message Alert !

Bank of America Online Banker

Our Valued Customer,
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Facebook stock soars but is it built on fraud?


Facebook’s stock soared today on news that its mobile advertising efforts are paying off. The stock is up 22% over its price yesterday. As VentureBeat says:

After investors jumped on Facebook stock in after-hours trading yesterday, following the company’s mobile-focused earnings report, it’s not a huge surprise to see the stock make another huge leap this morning.

Facebook’s stock is up 22 percent from yesterday, trading at $23.80, as of the time of this post. The stock reached a high of $24 this morning, and it was up almost 28 percent in pre-market trading. Facebook’s stock is still well below the $38 it opened at, but the rise is still a good sign for investors.

via Facebook stock on the rise: Up 22% after solid mobile earnings | VentureBeat.

What does Mitt Romney have to do with this rise in Facebook’s stock?
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Clickjacking the cause of Romney Facebook likes?


I decided to delve a bit into the hacking underworld yesterday, wanting to learn more about how Facebook users could be signed up for pages they didn’t like. It turns out that a Google search for “facebook clickjacking” returns a lot of results.

I downloaded one clickjacking kit from a site called zarabyte.com and took a look. It includes this line in a file called like.js:

var thehairs = “< iframe id='theiframe' scrolling='no' frameBorder='0' allowTransparency='true' src='http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=" + encodeURIComponent(fan_page_url) + "&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=53&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=80' style='position:absolute;width:53px;height:23px;overflow:hidden;border:0;opacity:" + opacity +";filter:alpha(opacity=" + opacity * 100+ ");' >< /iframe >“;

Basically, it sneaks in an iframe on the page and kicks off the like.php script to “like” the desired page. There doesn’t appear to be anything magic about what this does. If the user is logged into Facebook (in another browser window, for instance), this script should register a like. Futhermore, that like should be logged in the Activity Log as any other like would be.

Based on this behavior, I’m pretty confident that these mysterious Romney Facebook likes aren’t being generated through clickjacking.

Facebook Connect vulnerability

I just checked out my Apache logs and found this interesting entry:

95.76.161.199 – – [22/Oct/2012:13:21:25 -0400] “GET /?fbconnect_action=myhome&fbuserid=1+and+1=2+union+select+1,2,3,4,5,concat(0x6730306431),7,8,9,10,11,12– HTTP/1.1” 403 5043 “-” “Mozilla/3.0 (windows)”

It appears to be an exploit attempt against the Facebook Connect plugin.

Here’s a webpagethat shows how it works.

There are quite a few websites potentially vulnerable to this exploit. While it doesn’t appear to make Facebook itself vulnerable, it does compromise any WordPress blogs which use this plugin.

Outlawed by Amazon DRM « Martin Bekkelund

This is one of many reasons why I won’t buy an Amazon Kindle.

A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst.

Linn travels a lot and therefore has, or should I say had, a lot of books on her Kindle, purchased from Amazon. Suddenly, her Kindle was wiped and her account was closed. Being convinced that something wrong had happened, she sent an e-mail to Amazon, asking for help. This was the answer:

via Outlawed by Amazon DRM « Martin Bekkelund.

What’s up with Debra Goldman’s cash?

Debra Goldman


So after I’ve gotten over the initial shock of the extramarital hijinks allegedly going on between Wake school board members Debra Goldman and Chris Malone and the revelation that Goldman keeps six figures in cash in her home, I can’t help but be drawn again to the money.

Goldman gives a bizarre excuse for having so much cash:

Police asked Goldman why she kept so much money at home. According to the notes of Detective Joseph Lengel, who referred questions to Bazemore, Goldman said that she began to keep large amounts of cash at home in case of emergency because “she found it very difficult to get money from her bank in order to pay her bills” after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
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