technical

Spammers and Hackers, and Bots oh my! It’s like the land of Oz.

~ Ron Walker ~ 12 Comments

I picture some millennial in a basement 

It took long enough, for a bit I was starting to worry. Since I moved from my other hosting account to here, the spammers ceased for a while. I imagined bits and bytes of spammer data, reaching the old address and coming up empty. Of course its human master has no idea I’m gone, unless the mindless machine reaches a predetermined failure point, and alerts him that he can use the CPU cycles better harassing someone else. I picture some millennial in a basement of his parents home, computers humming, raking in some spending money for the weekend, by making others miserable spamming their sites or inboxes.

 

Strangely, I’ve never studied the actual business model of spam. It must pay something, or there are just some twisted individuals behind the keyboards. They get paid by click. They send something stupid, many times just gibberish, then someone somewhere clicks on a link in it, and they get paid for that click. Anyway, I’m no longer lonely, I have a couple every 3-4 days drop in past the Askimet filter. Such is life.

Frustrated Spammer

I’ve watched for months, as some automated bot tries tons of different names in an attempt to login as a current member on my forum site. Every couple hours, it submits a login 4 times, then has to wait as it was auto locked out for 15 minutes. Then it returns later for another round. It always appeared to come from random countries, making it impossible to block by IP. The crazy thing? It’s a really stupid bot. Of course, it was set up by some human of equal intelligence. It tries to login with Jnosedkl or tnir*com#f!. It appears to be trying random passwords (probably from a list), in the name box. Now that, is some backwards logic.  Mindlessly, for the last 5 months, every few hours. Anyway, I’m getting too deep into all that. Very boring to most people. 

How much spam are you suffering from, these days.

Comments always welcome,

My first SSD drive, Incorrect temperature reading.

~ Ron Walker ~ 8 Comments

This is a post of a technical nature. I had difficulty finding information on the extremely high temperature being reported from the drive. So I wanted to post this, in case anyone else were to run into the same problem. This is my first SSD drive. Purchased from New Egg, it was $30 total. I didn’t get a mounting adapter for it, so I used Velcro to hold it in a place where it gets excellent air-flow. Much better than if it was in a bay adapter.

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60GB Patriot Flare 2.5 inch SSD 7mm thick.

I don’t think I will ever go back to HDD for my OS drive. It does load so much faster on boot up, 50% faster than before. Loading programs? Can we say, “Click, BANG!”? Loading of Chrome has gone from about 15 seconds, to 2 seconds. All of my programs load fast. This is a FLARE 60GB SSD this drive, to be used  only for running my main OS.

Freak Out Time!!

I like for things to run smoothly, if possible. So, I decided to check the operating temp of the drive, using a software utility in Linux. Most computer techs go by Celsius, I still think in Fahrenheit. When my eyes stopped on the temperature reading, I noticed 99 C, heart got a bit faster, still thinking in Fahrenheit. Then gazing to the next temp (in Fahrenheit) it read 210 F. At that moment, I thought the drive may try to live up to it’s name. (Flare)

We all know, once you let the smoke out of those components, they tend to stop working.

I nearly killed myself trying to shut down the computer, and unplug the power at the same time. Cautiously touching the drive, it was cool to the touch. At this point, I’m doing my best impression of a police K-9 frantically searching for drugs, only I was expecting the stink of smoldering components. We all know, once you let the smoke out of those components, they tend to stop working. It then struck me, if Michelle had walked in at that moment, she would assume I needed to be committed. After not detecting smoke, or a burning odor, I tried other temperature detection software, it reported a proper 32 C. Just like the other drives in the case.

Not much rattles me, except maybe electronics, running at nearly the temperature of boiling water! I found it humorous also, that the software was reporting “Disk is OK”. Now, that was funny. Perhaps, it should have read, “Please put flames out, hit Enter when ready”.

Selection_001.png

The REAL temperature of the drive displayed below. Apparently, the sensor in the Flare SSD doesn’t jive with the program I have, to read the disks temps.Selection_002.png

 

It’s over and finished now, I can put away the defibrillator paddles! :)

Spammers on your Blog.

~ Ron Walker ~ 14 Comments

Spammers, the bane of the Internet. Spam helps spread malware and viruses. It is said that the first spam mail was sent in 1978. Gary Thuerk, an employee of Digital Equipment Corporation, figured out a way to send mass emails, and fired off a mass email to 398 others, to notify them of a product demonstration. From there it mutated into the monster of today.

I thought I would share a few tips that I have used or learned for those of you that are not sure what Spam mail really is. Spam mail is, in a word, unstoppable. You can slow it down, you can stop the majority, some will still make it through. The filters that our ISP’s and even WordPress use just serves to slow it down some. Sometimes the filters even catch our subscribers to our blogs.

Most Spammers are automated, and just firing off an ugly response to one just goes back to a robot/computer that lists you as “alive” and then they share your email address among every spammer in the world. Most of the spammers get paid for every time they post a link for someone. That is why you get a nonsensical email or blog post in your spam folder. Among all the gibberish will be one or more links to a product. There are times that spammers just grab a chunk of test out of an e-book for filler.

There are two golden rules you should follow regarding Spam.

  • Never EVER click a link contained in spam email.
  • Never respond to spam in any way.

Spammers come from everywhere. Sometimes they hide behind faked IP addresses, to make them appear legit. Should you ever get curious, and not already know how to look up information on spammers etc. Here are a couple of sites that I use.

  • Stop Forum Spam: A free service that allows you to search by name, email, or IP.
  • CIPB (or Country IP Blocks): Free service to look up an IP and see what country it originates from.

Since this past March when I reset my spam counter, I have blocked 4,859 spam posts. I still get a few every couple of days.

This is how I feel, about spammers…

Comments welcome,

Have a little Pie with your Internet. Zero calories to boot!

~ Ron Walker ~ 23 Comments

I know many don’t care for technical type posts as a rule, but just in case someone happens to be searching for information on a RaspberryPi, they can see the set up I have made.

I thought I would try one of these small computers that were developed in the UK just a few years ago. They are very small, some can be had for as little as $29 bare bones. I wanted a better one so opted for the newer version. Raspberry Pi 3 B. This one has a quad core processor that runs about 1.2-1.6ghz. It has 1GB of on board memory you share with video. (4) 2.0 USB ports, Wireless, Bluetooth HDMI and Ethernet. A lot packed into a small computer slightly smaller than a playing card. Michelle ordered this for me as a late birthday present. She ordered the deluxe Kit, which is more at around $69 but comes with everything including a fan, and SD card 32GB, HDMI cable, power adapter.

  • 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU, 1 GB RAM
  • 802.11n Wireless LAN, 10/100Mbps LAN Speed
  • Bluetooth 4.1, Bluetooth Low Energy
  • 4 USB ports, 40 GPIO pins, Full HDMI port, Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video
  • Camera interface (CSI), Display interface (DSI), Micro SD card slot (now push-pull rather than push-push), VideoCore IV 3D graphics core.

You can get a kit with everything but the micro SD card, for around $49.

For something to play with it is fun and interesting. Much cheaper than a desktop. It runs  various Linux distributions which are free, the most popular being “Raspian” which is a mix of some Raspberry programs and Debian Linux. You can install Ubuntu or other Linux flavors. It has an HDMI port so you can hook it to a monitor, I don’t have a monitor with HDMI so I am using VNC to connect into it and use my computer monitor. Parts are cheap for the Pi, a simple case around $5-$6, power adapter $8 or cheaper, 32 GB SD card, if you want one that big. $14 at Walmart. The latest Pi with all the above listed features, just the board is $34. Webcam for it that plugs onto the board with short or long ribbon cable is only about $19 for a 5 mp or $26 for an 8 mp! I am going to save up and get me a 5 mp camera. Which brings me to the only shortcoming.

Shortcoming: The only thing I found wrong with it was limited webcams that work with it. It is hit-and-miss. Some super cheap USB cams work, some don’t. Unfortunately, none of my cheap ones work. But I can solve that with a Pi camera for what I pay for a cheap USB cam.

I have posted to the forum from it, after all it is a full Linux computer, just small and not super charged. You won’t do video editing I don’t think (but I bet I try). It has office software, mail, chromium or Firefox browser, just like larger computers. You can install what you want just like from a normal Linux computer.

I got this one to learn on, I wanted something that could run my weather station 24/7 and not use the main computer for that. So this tiny machine can sit on the desk off to itself and happily monitor the weather station and generate the pages and upload them to the website. I am still working on it, Trying out a simpler weather software. Anyway… here are some pictures of it’s size. This one is in a layered clear plastic case, with a tiny fan to cool the CPU. It currently is running wireless on the WiFi here in the house. The pictures and a video may show it with an Ethernet cable. I used that to set up the vnc and configure the wireless. The only cable running to it now is the weather station.

It’s small!! Just un-boxed it.

We have the case assembled and on it now. You can stack them one atop the other with some cases. Note the small, half-dollar size fan.

My car-keys look nearly bigger than the computer.

Future plans: Since it will run 24/7, I plan on

Running the weather station.Setting up a service on it to monitor my websites and alert me by email. Seems my “free” monitoring service, isn’t too reliable notifying me at times.A Time lapse, and picture upload program, for the forum, blog, and Wunderground weather service. It already uploads weather conditions to my Wunderground reporting station every 5 mins. Currently It updates the weather web page of my website every 10 minutes.

It seems to run very snappy for a 1.2-1.6ghz. It is running a server and SQL database, without noticeable lag. It is using about 400mb of the 1GB of memory when running the graphical interface through the monitor, but just running as a machine, it is using about 150mb of memory. Running cool as well. 36c

I scrounged around and found a Blue-tooth keyboard we aren’t using, and a wireless mouse. I stopped by the thrift store last week, there sat a 14 inch monitor for $10. I was pleased to see it worked being just $10.

Now I can say, I have Raspberry Pie (Pi) in my office. I just hope it doesn’t attract ants.

Comments welcome,

Note: I receive no compensation of any type, for mentioning, linking to, or posting about an item. All references are for informational consumption.