Dan Mayer's Blog

I just got back from my good friends Dom and Nicole's wedding. It was a great time, and I was so happy to be a part of it. Congrats and best wishes for ever.

I love you both.

A fun little post someone made for friends who have just gotten married... or my other friends thinking of getting married...

12 Rules for Marriage

I know I haven't made a big post for awhile, but some much has been going on, and work has been keeping me to busy. So I have been trying to spend my free time wisely with people I care about, and sadly while I love my computer it doesn't love me back so it has been getting the short end of the stick.

I enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new friends in all the wedding related activities. I had a good Labor day, celebrated by sharing a single beer in bed, while watching a movie, which was about perfect.

Posts about dreams, goals, fears, future, and more will all slowly work their way out of my head, their are quite a few posts I have started in my head that I will get to shortly.

Yeah I know not a real post again...

Funny earth is old

Yippie for animals being smarter than we thought...

Smart birds

Just watch out for the dolphins, once they grow thumbs they will kill us all.

Some code on wastedbrains was exploited and used to spread malware, and trojan viruses. If you used IE to visit my site between 9 - 08 - 2006 and now you might have caught a virus. It is an IE bug so if you were on other browsers you are fine. They found a way to insert malicious code through iframes and redirect to any other sites javascript and other frames they wished. The site will be down for a few days while I fix the exploit and remove the code from all of the video and image pages.

Based on logs it looks like the max number of people exposed to this was 2,700 people between 9/08/2006 and 9/19/2006. (probably a far smaller number were hit)

So one more time if you use IE and visited the image or video sections during that time please run some virus scans. I highly recommend the free virus scan from AOL, as it is free and has the highest security ranking currently.

Free AOL virus scanner
Virus Scanner rankings, free AOL on top

Ok I removed all the exploits and took out the code that was attacked. I fixed the code that was exploited, and it can't be done again. I did how ever screw up while restoring the database and lost some images and moves that were added, which sucks, but I will have to add some new content again soon. So enjoy the oddities that are wastedbrains. I guess it means my sites are big enough to be worth attacking, hey it has happened to myspace like 3 times in the past year.

peace,
Dan "10 years, well over 5 million unique views, 1 exploit... not bad" Man

Dell, MSN, HP, Apple, Myspace, YouTube, and many other big sites... be careful.

From slashdot...

"Dark Reading and SC Magazine covered a story about hackers posting cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilies en mass on dozens of high profile websites including Dell, MSN, HP, Apple, Myspace, YouTube, MSN, Cingular, etc. The media coverage drew the hacker's attention to the publication's websites where they got a taste first-hand. On message board wall-of-shame is PC World, MacWorld, Fox News, the Independent, and ZDNet UK. "...not only did we get the "scoop" on the XSS site problems, but we also got the message loud and clear: Don't assume you're immune to XSS vulnerabilities. They're everywhere." The news comes shortly after Mitre (CVE) released statistics showing XSS has become the most popular exploit. Unfortunately new XSS attacks are growing increasingly severe and scanners are unable to find many of the issues on modern websites." -slashdot xss attacks

Firefox has the most known vulnerabilities right now, but they aren't being attacked near as often, also they have the fastest patch release time, so the fixes come before the major exploits normally. Things are getting nuts normal big sites I trust are being exploited. So I would recommend firefox, and I might avoid the large sites like myspace, youtube, and such for the next few weeks while people find ways to tighten up security a bit more. I might take my stuff down again while I check other possible exploits. Google ads was exploited once and if you can't trust google code who can you trust, I might have to begin pulling some ad sections until the browsers are fixed.

One of the best parts of being grown up is no one is constantly telling me to eat weird foods they know I don't like. I don't have to eat or make anything I don't want to, that is probably enough reason to live on your own... hehe

which sadly leads to the 25 signs you've grown up... I am sorry to say it looks like I am old on most accounts. On the plus side I think I am having some of the best times of my life right now, which is pretty nice. I am enjoying "playing house" as Erin calls it, which while a fairly large adjustment is pretty amazing overall. So while I am not ever going to fully be grown up, I will always enjoy being immature and a child sometimes, I guess some of the wild crazy days are past, while the quite nights of conversation by a fire will perhaps reign until I have children (but I have some other plans before I get to that).