FormSpy (aka FireSpy) is a new spyware program designed to integrate into the Mozilla browser environment. It is being spread by spam email spoofed to appear as a billing issue from Walmart. It was launched on July 24th. The attachment contains a downloader malware agent that can install FormSpy as a Firefox plugin. This new threat can be avoided easily by users avoiding spam email and attachments.
Link: http://msmvps.com/blogs/harrywaldron/archive/2006/07/25/105724.aspx

And so we see the a new item: some programmer made his program integrate into Firefox. Its not the first time malware has hooked into a web browser, but it is the rare that the targeted browser is Firefox. Usually the targeted browser is Internet Explorer

Why is it that the malware writers go after IE? Well, it ships with every computer that has Windows installed. When you look at how many more people use Windows as compared to Macs or Linux, it akes more sense to target a browser that will be found on more computers. And since IE is made by Microsoft, it will only be updated once a month, unless some really bad flaw is found.

So what does this mean for Firefox users? Not much, since it will be patched sooner, rather than later. That’s the good thing about open source programs, anyone can get the code, and patch vulnerabilities when flaws are discovered.

However, the best protection against becoming infected is smart browsing and smart computer use. As one of the GeekU moderators signiture tells us, security is a process, not a product.

There is bad news, good news, and better news.

The good news is that a name was finally decided - eQuad. This won’t alienate people as much as QUchat would, and it fits the site’s goal better.

The bad news is that for most tld (top level domains, i.e. .com, .org, .edu, etc) the name is already taken. The only thing left for equad was .info …which if ever the site is popular enough to justify buying a new domain name, will actually work OK. For now though, the site will be located as a subdomain of my site (it will be found at http://equad.rpmurphy.com … but don’t try to go there now, there is a password in place that will be taken down when I am ready to go live with the site).

And what would the better news be? How about that I’m about 75% done with the site. There are a few things left to do page wise that I would be doing, and that would be it…with the exception of the forum…

I need to work on the forum big time. I’m going to be replacing the default images…most likely with images from some other theme, but they will be different. I was debating adding more themes onto it, but the mods won’t work on all themes, and I don’t feel like trying to hack away to make them work. So there will be one theme, but it will be changed a little. Once the forum is ok on the test server ( i.e. my computer), it will only be about 15 minutes from the time I upload all the files to the live server to the time the forum can be used….of course, I have no idea what the categories are going to be or anything like that yet.

Most of what still has to be completed will be done on the train rides to NOAC. There is no way that I am rushing to complete this before I leave, since it wouldn’t be going live right before I leave for three weeks anyways,as that would make no sense. At the moment, I am looking to get this running be September 1, just in time for back to school time.

That’s it for now…there might be another post before I leave for NOAC, there might not be…I just don’t know. I’m bringing my computer with me, so if I can connect from there, I will for a post or two…possibly three. If there’s not connection…then it just means I make one big post when I get back.

So I was looking at a friend’s livejournal today, and got bored and went to visit one of her friend’s account. I had a good laugh at part of a post…I quote:

TODAY was my first day at Caron’s Corner.
Let’s just say, I am fantastic at being a cashier, and just basically everything Caron’s Corner :]

For those that don’t know, Caron’s Corner is a small family owned grocery store. It has six aisles, and fewer choices than a takeout store (well,maybe not, but you get the point). It’s ran by the former (maybe current) owner’s three daughters and his son.

I spent three years working there, and while I enjoyed it for the most part, it wasn’t a great job. You got paid close to minimum wage (raises given when the daughter that handled payroll went away on vacation and the others had access to her computer), had to deal with the annoying customers who couldn’t get the simpliest idea throught their heads, and the pain of having to smile and lie through your teeth to customers when all you wanted to tell them was to shut up.

The part that made me laugh was the fact that the blogger thinks she’s fantastic at it. Hello? You’re a cashier, it doesn’t take much to be good at that. Can you count to 100 and make change? That’s the most important thing you need to know. Hell, after three years working there, I didn’t need a manager there. I could have overseen the front end and not have to worry about the deli (the guys/girls back there know what they’re doing and they do it well).

A monkey can be fantastic at worker as a cashier. This girl says she is fantastic at being a cashier. Therefore, she is a monkey.

Ok, now that I have made the nonsensical proof that fantastic cashier are monkies, I’m going to end the mini-rant, and go get a life…ah, who am I kidding…back to IRC I go :/

Well, for the past few versions if iTunes, things would be going fine until I got to the QuickTime installation part…and then it would loop until I manually killed the process. I thought I had solved the problem by isntalling QuickTime by itself, but yesterday iTunes said I needed a newer version…so I downloaded the version that was on the iTunes homepage. After taking 10 minutes to download it, i started to install it. Everything was going fine…until it got to the QuickTime part, where it looped. I finally thought of putting the installer in C:\ and seeing what would happen. Well, it installed fine. Lesson here: Install iTunes from C:\ and it will work.

Well, as the previous entry says, I’m planning a new site. All I’m gonna add to that is that most of the hard stuff is done. The CSS is going to stay how it is now (unless something big comes up that forces me to change it). The toughtest page layout/design wise was the chat entry page. It has sections with titles and internal links and looks really nice. It has to be finished, and the forums done up…not sure if I’m going to host them or if I’m going to use InvisionFree. IF would make things easier…I wouldn’t have to worry about server load, bandwidth, all those boring things. Plus, if this site hits it off and I decide to buy a domain name for it, then I would probably cough up the money for a perpetual license…it also depends on whether I decide to use AdSense here. I’m thinking yes, because it will give me some additional money, but I also have to think about how they will look to the visitors. OK, enough about my semi-secret project

Got my stuff from newegg today. RIght now, I have 1049 MB of RAM free. I was using a virtual machine earlier, and it was nice having 650MB of RAM still free as opposed to the 247 before I got the new RAM. The Hard drive was easy to put in the case, got that up and running in about 3 minutes. Its pretty fast too; 1 GB in a little less than 2 minutes. The flash drive is smaller than the picture made it look. The reviewers that said the end the lanyard goes on is flimsy were close, but so far its holding. Sure I haven’t really tested it out, but as long as I don’t use the lanyard to pull it out of a USB port, I should be fine.

OK that’s enough for one day I think. I gotta work in the morning, so… I need to get to bed soon. Of course, last time I said I was going to bed, I ended up writing a blog post for 40 minutes :/

Now I don’t know how I came up with the idea, but I did. While at work, I thought that there should be a site where college students can talk with each other in a private forum. It would kind of be like facebook, but wouldn’t be as “busy” as facebook. Busy as in the amount of stuff you can do. Hopefully there would be a good amount of traffic; at least enough to use most of 2GB of bandwidth a month.

One of the things that I would like to do that would set this apart from facebook would be allow only the students to participate in the discussions; schools’ staff wouldn’t know what parties were being planned out and be ready to bust them because they won’t be able to see any of the discussions. Of course, this presents a problem: how the hell do I pull that off. The easiest way would seem to be chainging permissions so new members can’t see a thing, and have established members vouch for the new ones and then place them into a new group that has the right permissions set.

At first I thought about only having the site be a resource for college kids, but then I thought high school students could also use it as a place to get help in the college search. But then the question is do I make them a member of the same groups as college kids (and thus see the same things) or do I make them their own group and set it so they only see a limited part of the site?

I don’t even know what I’d call the new site yet; although I did have a few ideas… First there was quchat, but I think people from other schools would feel excluded. Then there was cyberquad…and then equad…but both of those are already registered.

Most of the site is already developed (redesign of mine), but some things would obviously need to be changed…colors, pages, links, etc., but the layout and css coding os already done for the most part (some css will have to be changed).

It’ll be interesting to see how this ends. I want to talk with some people about what they think of the idea, and of course I need to get a few people to help me run the forum. If I were to go through with this, I’d love to get it done in time for school to start again. The way the rest of my sumer is scheduled, that could definitely happen. Most of the coding could be done on the way to NOAC, along with talking the idea over with others. I also need to figure out a way to pay for the hosting (unless I use a subdomain instead of buying a new name). Hosting with geeks cost about $75 a year, and I really don’t want to spend $150 a year to pay for hosting. The site right now doesn’t use much bandwidth, so it would be possible for me to just use a subdomain.

Oh well, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens over the course of the next couple of months.

Leave comments about what your thoughts are. Is this a good idea? Would you be interesting in joining?

Well, everything’s been copied over, and I haven’t written anything in a while. Let’s see what’s been going on in my world lately…

Three weeks ago I started working for East Shore Pools in Branford. I basiacally clean and service pools from 7:00 until we’re done for the day. Which means I generally work 3 or 4 10+ hour days a week. Its easy work, pays better than my previous jobs, and 1 third of the time is just spent sitting in the van going from location to location and being in the shop getting ready to leave for the day. I was supposed to have a four day weekend this weekend, but something big came up and the boss called all of us to work tomorrow…not really looking forward to it, but it’ll be more money for me.
Umm…Sean’s graduation party was a week ago, and his Eagle board of review was a few days ago…he passed, as we were all expecting. (as an aside, I don’t think they’ve every not passed anyone that deserves it, or has done all the work for it. Sure, projects may get turned down, but usually its because of the wording, and if you change the writeup a little, it’ll be approved)

NOAC is in about three weeks, can’t wait for that; it should be a fun time this year, just like the other two times I’ve gone.

In the world of tech and IRC, things are going about as well as they could. The fight against malware is never ending, and things are getting more complicated month after month. One can only hope that eventually malware warriors will not be needed, unfortunately, that time is not now I finally got around to getting my vhost on WyldRyde; hopefully this will bring a little traffic to the site. I set up IIS and PHP on my computer, so now I can preview things without having to upload them to the server, that was getting annoying.

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to buy some things from the laptop…so since I have a source of income for the time being, I decided to look on newegg. I’m buying 2 GB of RAM, and 17″ LCD monitor, a 1 GB flash drive (only 30$), and a hard drive enclosure kit. Since the spare computer doesn’t really serve a purposr anymore, I figured that I might as well put some of the piece’s to use; the RAM is going into the computer upstairs, the hard drive is going into the kit for me to use (will have around 200GB of disk space total).

Well, I think that’s all i have to share for now…I’ll probably get one more post out prior to leaving for NOAC. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to connect and update from MSU, but I will be bringing the laptop with me…