Author: Sarah King

This is my website.

June 4, 2008 / Technical Discussions
May 21, 2008 / Other Stuff

I had reason the other day to ask Yahoo a question about it’s directory and someone who was acting as an agent for the directory. I used their “other abuse” option on the contact forms to ask if the reseller was legitimate.

After a couple of days I got a reply focussed on spam. I replied hoping that I might trigger a human to actually read what I had posted. Given the delay in sending and receiving then surely there was a human involved? Computers are much quicker than that!

May 8, 2008 / Technical Discussions

Thanks to the Black Hat community not keeping a lid on their activities I’ve been made aware of a spamming system targetted at the DigitalPoint forums. It can, however, be used on any vBulletin forum – I would assume. Some have implemented different rules around when you can send a private message, and some might even have captcha – but it’s all circumventable.

April 24, 2008 / PHP & Web Development

Microsoft’s .Net applications have failed to dominate the web world. Certainly there are alot of sites using it, and alot of very good applications built in it but the closed door, clip the ticket approach has blocked alot of interest. Add to that the lower hosting costs of PHP and you’re onto a winner with smaller enterprises.

Now Microsoft are announcing that their focus has moved away from the PC and onto the Web and that LiveMesh is their new baby. We’re yet to see what LiveMesh actually is but LiveSide define it as:

April 11, 2008 / Technical Discussions

I’ve just discovered the Goolag Scanner.

It’s a handy dandy tool for using Google queries to identify if there are any known holes in a website. Googlebot has already checked every crevice in the site, I just want to know what it knows!

Now Google, being all security conscious and that, gets a bit sensitive about you running these queries. They know that it’s possible you’re going to use the results to do bad things.

January 22, 2008 / Other Stuff

We are all used to the phishing emails that we get sent from “banks” and “auctions sites” – trying to steal your logins for financial gain. A new phase has started where phishing messages are sent via the private message (PM) facility at a forum.

The motive in this case is pure revenge, but with forums being used for trading, deals, and product promotion the trend is very dangerous – primarily because you believe you “know” the users, or atleast have some sort of respect and trust between you.

Lets walk through the steps.

December 17, 2007 / Technical Discussions

I check the whois records for domains reasonably often. Whoisguard type systems are commonly in place to protect the identity of the domain owner. No problems there.

What irks, though, is the people who give completely false information… like this one where the info is incomplete and gives an Australian address yet I know that the actual owner is in India. By saying he’s in Melbourne he aquires a western credibility he perceives as superior to his Indian identity.

December 3, 2007 / New Zealand