Kennyblog Redux

Ally and I designed and put together the invitations to the wedding. When I tell people this, I generally get two reactions.

1) That's awesome! Can I see?

2) Really? (invariably accompanied by a stare that makes clear the person I'm talking to is now convinced that I'm mentally deficient).

During the time we spent doing our invitations, I believe that we've realized that both reactions are completely reasonable. This is one of those things you want to get right, and look nice, and you'd be surprised just how very hard it is to get once piece of paper squarely mounted on another larger piece of paper (actually, like so many other things, doing it once isn't tough. It's the scaling up of doing it many times which is a little difficult. Not since I was 17, anyway).

In any case, to lighten the load a bit, Ally and I got my family to pitch in a bit, rubber cementing bits of paper together. As in any other industrial process, there were a number of invitations which just didn't make it passed the Quality Assurance process Ally and I did when reviewing the invitations. When I told my family this, they reacted with shock and alarm, agast that me and my beloved so callously tossed away their hard work (not really, but they pretended they did for comic effect).

Fast forward to last week (does that parse?). We mailed out the invitations two weeks ago or so), when I get a frantic email from Ally that it looks like I picked up her phone and she got mine. Not a major problem, we'll just be subjected to one anothers friends for the day (not a big deal for me. Probably a little more wearing for Allison, given the caliber and profound level of jackassery most of my friends put forth.

I bring this up, because halfway through the day, my brother sends me a text saying "Just got your invitations! Look great, but I think they are a little off-center." And since Allison has my phone, she is actually the one that receives the message. When I called my brother to tell him that, he thought it was really funny, so I pass it on to you.

Also, Ally sent her phone a message from my phone saying that she loved me, which was nice. Except a few days after it, I was looking through my text messages and saw this:

Outgoing: I love you

Outgoing: Hey Ben, it's Ally. I have kens phone. Meant to send that to him. I love you too though... but in a different way.

There have been a fair amount of texting shenanigans recently, actually. I just had this text exchange with Allison:

Me: You ate my best friend. Yay Allison!

Allison: er.....

Me: Ummmmm.... I meant you *are* my best friend.

Allison: I was going to say. it certainly wasn't me who ate your best friend. Maybe Alex, but not me

Stupid proximity of the "R" and "T" keys on a QWERTY keyboard!

I'm not really one for introspection. As such, there aren't so many times during the course of a week where I say to myself "Huh - that's something that's changed about me since the last time I paid attention to it." Well, I had such a moment today, when I realized that instead of sneaking Terry Prachett novels into the bathroom to read on the can, I was putting The Mythical Man-Month into my back pocket.

This past month, there's been a fair amount of discussion between my friends about spam (well, I call it discussion. Mostly it's a couple of nimrods who've decided to forward their spam to one another, and put me on a CC list for their 'conversation.' That, and dick jokes. Still, it's just about as high-level a conversation as you're likely to see in my inbox). So I've been thinking about spam a lot. And then I started to noticing a new phishing technique show up in my inbox. Here's one I just got:

Dear Member,

We are glad you joined Pet World.

Confirmation Number: 935727481659
Login ID: user1206
Temorary Password: qv339

Be Secure. Change your Login ID and Password.

Follow this Link: Pet World

Thank You,
Internet Support
Pet World

Now - this is brilliant. Why is this brilliant? Because people, by and large, are not security conscious (I first wrote "are idiots," which is unfair. Not untrue, perhaps, but I'm certainly not prepared to defend that statement in a blog post). As an admin for a once-popular site with a login feature that is as insecure as it is useless, I learned that people will use the SAME EXACT password and login for everything. I have an entire database chock full of people who have given me their primary email address, most used login name, and common password. Which brings us to the above spam.

I've seen a couple of different types - Pet World, Car Magazine, Alpaca Herder, etc etc. You get this message that you've got a login that's been setup and say to yourself "Hey - I'm interested in Alpaca Herding! I must have signed up for this site and forgot about it!" You go to the provided address (which, by the way, is just an IP address, no domain name), and change the login and password to the one you use for everything else. And then you're owned.

This isn't *too* much different than other techniques, but there are a couple of subtleties that I think are brilliant, and quite worth mentioning. First of all, they are not misrepresenting themselves. Phishing techniques that send you to a replica of your banks website are definitely illegal, no question. But this is a little hazier. It's not like they are pretending to be a bank, so is the act of telling you to go this petworld website illegal? Clearly the action they intend to take with your information is, but even after you've given them your information, the only crime they've committed is that of spamming.

The other thing I like about it is that it blurs the line between phishing and spear phishing (which is targeted phishing - the generation of a phishing email specifically crafted to a particular person. This is a useful technique when you are trying to achieve a particular goal or hack: If you know information about the head of HR for a company, and can elicit a response that includes an excel sheet with SSNs for the employees, you've done much more with a single email than you possibly could with a single spammed phishing attack). The fact that you can spam address with these "Change your login!" emails from 'websites' with pertain to a range of interests means that eventually you are going to hit on something that your Aunt Edna (the Alpaca herder) is going to be interested in.

"Yup - skydivingwithmypig.com definitely sounds like a website I would have logged into."

Quite frankly, it's kind of brilliant. I'd want to shake the hand of the guy who thought if it, if I didn't want to kick him in the balls.

... because Andre's got a posse. This was a super neat video of some people on safari that I found linked to from The Volokh Conspiracy (which, if you're not interested in the intricacies of law and/or etymology, is a far less interesting website than you'd think from the name).

I just found the comic strip A Softer World.

It reminds me of something that I can't quite put my finger on. But whatever it reminds me of, I like that thing a lot.

In my day, I have had a number of interns working for me. Some were good, some were not so good, some were great, and some were just spectacular. These last, I generally lobby very hard to bring into the company permanently.

Also in my day, I have had a number of girlfriends who were kind enough to date me. Some were good, some were not so good, and I liked one of them so much that I decided it would be a very good idea to invite her to fill that role permantently.

Having had such experience in both spheres, I consider myself reasonably equipped to comment on the differences between girlfriends and interns. I don't intend to do a comprehensive study at this point, but I did want to take a moment to illustrate such a difference drawing from an experience I had today at the office.

A colleague called me over to discuss how to phrase something on the evaluation sheet he was filling out for an intern in the group. It just so happened that the intern was sitting right next to my colleague. So, in order to candidly discuss the issue with my colleague, I turned to the intern and said "Earmuffs," at which point the intern put his hands over his ears and started humming.

In all my years as an active woman-dater, I have never once said to a girlfriend "Earmuffs,' and had them do what I wanted them to do. And believe me, it's not for lack of trying. So there you go - a major difference between girlfriends and interns, along with anecdotal illustration.