Meddling

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

There are 614 posts filed in Meddling (this is page 48 of 62).

Misleading photo of I-95 bridge

I saw a story in Sunday’s News and Observer about the state potentially adding tolls to I-95. The story was illustrated by a photograph taken by Chris Seward of trucks driving under an I-95 bridge. It included this caption:

At exit 75 on I-95 southbound in Harnett County, tractor-trailers have a tight squeeze at this bridge, one of the interstate’s dangerously low overpasses. If a truck hits one, it can close the highway for hours.

First off, let me say I’m sure Seward is an honest, ethical, upstanding photojournalist and I am not questioning his motives here at all. I don’t think he was trying to mislead anyone with this shot. That said, this photograph gives the viewer the impression that the truck in the center of the frame just barely made it under this bridge. This is obviously not the case as any truck approaching a bridge that low would have to slow down to a crawl. By studying the shadows you can see that the bridge is in fact behind the truck in question and therefore is quite a bit taller than it appears in this picture.

This is the due to the way a telephoto lens distorts the depth of field, making it appear shallower. Again, I don’t think it was intentional but the photograph makes the bridge look a lot lower than it actually is.

(By the way, I support putting tolls on I-95. That highway needs all the help it can get.)

Eastshopcn: Your source for electornic products

This spam infiltrated a neighborhood email list and I couldn’t help but post it. Bless the spammer’s Chinglish-speaking heart.

Subject: New shopping new life!
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2010 19:44:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: [Innocent victim’s name removed]

Dear friend,
how were you going? I would like to introduce you a really good space, there are mainly run various kinds of famous electornic products, it’s true eastshopcn. Now the company is under promotion, all of the products are sold nearly as the same as their cost. Eastshopcn renders the best service to customers, and provides you with original products which are very cheap, but good-quality. It is really a good opportunity for taking action, let’s go, just do it, we are sure that you must be surprised.
The web address: (www.)eastshopcn.com

Wow! Two in one day!

Looks like the money mule job market is picking up. That’s two job offers in one day! Who could believe it? And I’ve always wanted to work for a guy named Inaptitude! Where do I sign up?!?!?

From: inaptitude Dobson inaptitudebxwdobson@hotmail.com
To: sgarrid1@gmail.com
Subject: Job Opportunity. id 396VQ
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 08:13:27 -0500

Hello,

Please, read this letter.
Gold Investments Incorporated company is looking for an individual for the courier clerk position. It is a remote/part-time/full-time position and it is home-based.

GII inc was founded by several Polish businessmen and is functioning since 2004 with its head branch based in Warsaw,the capital of Poland .

GII inc provides the dispatching service of a middleman among sellers and customers from all over the World. You will need to have a personal computer and internet access including printer/scanner to work with us.
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New position. (id – 52ZC)

Looks like I’ve got another great job opportunity sent my way. I’m going to be rich!!1!!!1!1!!111!!

From: trek Stanley trekstanleyqnu@hotmail.com
To: riverad@consultant.com
Subject: New position. (id – 52ZC)
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 05:06:38 -0500

Good dayHow are you? I am a Dealcom LTD staff manager and I’m responsible for headhunting among the candidates for the open positions with our company. We have read with interest your resume detailing your qualifications and relevant work experience and want to offer you a well-paid part-time vacancy. We believe you can be considered as a successful candidate for the position. If you are interested in our company as well as in more information concerning this opportunity please e-mail the recruitment at Recruitment@dealcomltd.com. Thank you for your consideration and have a nice day.Take care.

Of course, I’d have to risk going to jail as it’s simply a money mule scam, but what the hey.

Lybian jet crashes

An Afriqiyah Airlines jet from Johannesburg crashed during landing at the Tripoli airport today, killing 92 people and leaving an 11-year-old boy as the sole survivor. While it’s early in the investigation, with an 8-month-old plane, an otherwise-sterling safety record, and clear conditions at the time of the crash, I’m betting the pilots simply forgot to check their fuel.

The compelled certificate creation attack

My friend Jeff has alerted me to a large hole in the SSL encryption problem: that of the compelled certificate creation attack.

Here’s how it works: your web browser comes pre-programmed to trust a number of certificate authorities. A certificate authority is an organization which vouches for an SSL-certificate being presented by a website. An SSL-certificate is designed to positively identify that a website you’re connecting to is who it says it is.

A national government intent on spying could compel one of these certificate authorities (call it ABC Certificates) to create an imposter SSL certificate (for, say, bankofamerica.com) and bless it with ABC Certificates’s stamp of approval. Because your browser trusts ABC Certificates, it will happily trust this fake certificate from bankofamerica.com. The evil national government could then surreptitiously intercept all traffic bound for the real bankofamerica.com and point it to its fake website so as to collect information. Or, it could surreptitiously insert a proxy into the SSL data stream and capture packets, with you or your browser being none the wiser.

You can read the findings of the two Indiana University researchers, Christopher Soghoian and Sid Stamm, here [PDF] on Cryptome.Org. You can also read the discussion of the vulnerability here (scroll to lower 2/3rds of the transcript).

Army spy plane tracked Times Square bomber?

Wired is speculating that a secret Army spy plane tracked alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. According to the story, Shahzad called and reserved his plane ticket on his way to the airport.

What I don’t understand is why a plane was needed to track him. His cellphone was being tracked by the cellphone company, potentially within 50 feet of his location. Why put a plane up to suck down all electronic signals if you can already pinpoint his location easily?

And I was wondering how Shahzad got on a plane with the No Fly List supposedly protecting us from harm. Fortunately, CNN covered this part – saying that the list doesn’t get updated in real time but every 24 hours. Airlines are now being urged to refresh their databases within 2 hours.

Curbside parking at airports

RDU Airport

My usual way home from work, Interstate 40, was backed up this afternoon so I took a detour through RDU Airport. As I drove past the terminal, I watched as an airport police officer stridently whistled away a car that was being parked at the curbside.

As I passed the terminal, I got to thinking at how ludicrous it is for officers to shoo people away from the curb. I mean, if a truck bomb parks there it doesn’t really matter if it’s for five hours or five tenths of a second: the result is the same. And if someone wants to create terror of that nature there are plenty of other places with large crowds.
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Google fights Gmail hackers

Yesterday I received a strange email sent to a neighborhood list by a neighbor. The subject was “Modesty Marquita” (which sounds like a stripper name, actually) and all that was in the body of the message was a URL to a webserver in Brazil. I searched the web for any references to either of these items and didn’t turn up anything unusual, so I wrote it off.

This evening made me change my mind, however. Another friend (Let’s call her Anne) sent out four similar emails. Same M.O.: a random person’s name in the subject line and a web URL in the body. That’s when I figured out something is not right in Gmail land.

The kicker was this message below (I’ve changed account data). This message was sent from one Gmail account to another one: in other words it never left Google’s network:
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