Chinese hackers were seeking economic data

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All those updates from the last 2 months get a slightly greater ‘public’ light today with some new information being released.

The Chinese government hackers who unsuccessfully attempted to break into the Canadian finance department’s computers were not after military secrets but economic secrets, says a prominent security expert.

CTV News learned Wednesday that Chinese government hackers had attempted to break into federal government network systems. Sources told CTV that Canadian Security Intelligence Service has advised government officials not to name China as the country where the attacks were launched.

Read the full article at CTV News though the video clip has the information you really want to hear.

Keep your machines as current as possible and your anti-virus upto date, beyond that call if something ‘odd’ is happening.

Geo-Tagging from your Phone

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When you take a picture from your cellphone you can tell people a lot more than the date stamp.

GPS information can be recorded as part of the Exif, or exchangeable image file format, that is has been the de facto digital photo standard since 1998. Among the other information it saves is what allows you to see a thumbnail of a photo you’ve taken or a photo’s date and time.  It can be found with a simple right click on the properties section of the picture, and it’s easily accessible in a number of places on the Internet, but not all, where people share their photos.

Some social networks don’t accept location information or Exif information at all. So when you upload it, even if it does have location information, it’s not going to show it to anybody.  Facebook strips the location information but other social networking sites are a different story.  Services like Flickr do allow location information, so does the popular Twitpic.  The good news is you can protect yourself. Most sites have some sort of privacy control, allowing you to manage the information that gets out there.

To avoid having your friends reveal your location on Facebook.

  1. Go to your Facebook account.
  2. Click Account in the top right corner.
  3. Click Privacy Settings.
  4. Click Customize settings in the Sharing on Facebook section, 
  5. Scroll to Things others share and make the option next to Friends can check me into Places read “Disabled.”

 To disable tagging on handhelds and phones:
– http://ICanStalkU.com provides step-by-step instructions for disabling geotagging on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Palm devices.

A New Website

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After the same website for nearly 5 years a facelift was in order.  Using WordPress this should make updates a little easier and possible get information to our customers in a more timely fashion, not to mention links to the latest and greatest.