8 Ways to Sunday

I use an antivirus program called BitDefender. It’s effective, and it doesn’t slow down my computer like Norton and McAfee. What I didn’t know until this afternoon is that you can upgrade from version 10 to version 11 (AKA “2008”) for free.

Hidden away in the BitDefender online knowledge base is an article that reveals this free upgrade option. You can find a download of the new version and upgrade instructions in this BitDefender forum thread. I’d also recommend downloading the bootable rescue CD image. You’ll need the registration key from your version 10 purchase to install upgrade.

I haven’t yet made the upgrade, so I can’t tell you anything about the new version. If you’d like to learn more, this CNet review might help. I’ll probably run a full backup of my computer tonight, and upgrade tomorrow.

Update: Back to Version 10

My attempted upgrade to BitDefender Antivirus 2008 didn’t go so well. After an hour or two of use my computer would slow to a crawl, eventually freezing completely. A search through the BitDefender forums confirmed my suspicion: the new version suffers form a memory leak.

The bug has been a topic of discussion on the user forum since at least February. BitDefender’s support staff has apparently been non-responsive, and some users are annoyed enough they’re abandoning the product altogether.

I’ll be checking up on this again before my update subscription expires. If the problem hasn’t been fixed by then, I’m going to be looking for another antivirus program. Any suggestions?

Yesterday’s episode of Boing Boing TV shows how to steal credit card information with a laptop and an $8 peripheral. Just walk up next to someone with an RFID-enabled card, and you’ve got it. As the hacker being interviewed points out, with a larger antenna you could set up in Starbucks and walk out with a dozen or more credit card numbers.

I first expressed my concern about this exact thing in a post four years ago:

It poses a grave privacy concern, exposing your [information] to anyone who can pick up a radio signal. I imagine high-tech identity thieves prowling the club with RFID receivers disguised as cell phones or pagers, culling ID info…

It’s amazing to me just how much I called it. An anonymous commenter on the BBTV post says that RFID-reading cell phones are already on the market:

You do not need to hack anything. Nokia and others are currently putting RFID readers in cell phones — you can already buy models with this feature in the open market (google for “6131nfc” for example).

So what can you do to protect yourself? There are a lot of recommendations out there, from drilling a hole through the chip to breaking it by striking your credit card with a hammer. On the less destructive side, this video from Popular Science magazine shows how to make an aluminum foil barrier in your wallet that blocks the radio signals from getting out.

Yes, aluminum foil. When the alien overlords come, you can turn it into a stylish hat to block their mind control rays.

I don’t have any RFID-enabled cards right now, but if I get one I’ll probably give it the tinfoil hat treatment. What about you?

(Props: Boing Boing TV)

Update: How to Destroy an RFID Chip

Added 5/6/2008 — How-to website Instructables has a run down of the various ways to destroy or completely disable RFID chips in passports, credit cards, and elsewhere. (via The Big Noob and Boing Boing)

I don’t remember how I first received the No Gas Day e-mail in 2004. According to Snopes.com, this call to action has been circulating in some form since 1999. This year, it’s more popular than ever. The problem with No Gas Day is that, good as it sounds, it won’t actually hurt the oil companies or drive down prices.

I understand the frustration people feel about high gas prices, and why an idea like No Gas Day is popular. Even when you adjust for inflation, gas prices are nearing an all-time high. Unfortunately, the concept behind No Gas Day is inherently flawed. Staging a one-day “gas out” just means that people will buy more gas the day before or after the protest. Since the supply and demand of the product (gasoline) isn’t actually affected, the price won’t change. No Gas Day might send a message, but it won’t make the dent in oil company profits that people believe it will. The only way to truly fix the problem is to make gasoline obsolete.

The sad fact is that our country’s economy is completely dependent on oil derivatives like gasoline and diesel. Without the oil industry’s products transportation in America would grind to a halt, crippling our economy. In a way, they have the ultimate product — we can’t not buy it. The oil companies know this, and price accordingly. They also know that the supply of their product is finite. I don’t doubt that the current high prices are part of a strategy to weather the shortages that are inevitably coming.

A single day of abstention won’t solve our problems with high gas prices, foreign oil dependency, or global warming. No single solution will. Electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells, and ethanol will not save us. Oil has given us a long and happy spell of relatively cheap, plentiful energy. That’s going away, and it won’t be easy to replace. There is no magic bullet.

What we need is magic buckshot: a variety of simultaneously-deployed solutions that work together to meet our country’s ravenous energy appetite. We need a dedicated, multi-faceted research and development effort to make this happen. We need investment from both the public and private sector. And we need it now.

The ongoing news of a massive North American pet food recall has panicked many dog and cat owners, but the news may have just gotten worse. Del Monte Foods recently added some of their pet food products to the recall list. In response to an e-mail query from The Huffington Post’s David Goldstein, a Del Monte representative confirmed that the melamine-contaminated wheat gluten to blame for the reported pet deaths is “food grade.” That means manufacturers are allowed to use it in human food products. (more…)

These men will not be visiting your house.

An e-mailed phishing scam that appeared in late December takes an extreme new approach to defrauding its recipients. Pay up, threatens the message, or you’ll be killed.

The “hitman spam” is part of a highly targeted con directed mainly at well-paid professionals in the United States — doctors and lawyers, for example.* It seems sure to gain traction and spread to other markets, however, so stay on your toes. Do not respond in any way to this message, as the threats are utterly baseless. The goal is for you to fork over bank account information, allowing the scammers to clean you out.

SophosLabs — a virus, spyware, and spam analysis company — was the first to report on the hitman phishers. Graham Cluley, a Sophos consultant, says the message is “surely one of the sickest phishes yet seen.” The online edition of The Times of London has more, including news about the scam’s impact so far.

Personally, I think the emergence of such extreme phishing tactics is a good sign; it shows that the criminals are getting desperate. As the general population becomes increasingly savvy about the dangers of phishing, the old methods aren’t working anymore. We’re winning, and the only way to keep winning is to continue deleting their messages without response. Keep up the good work, folks.

(Props: Windows X’s Shrine)