The Dark Visitor

Just reading through the Chinese news and found this article on pandadog. A guy named Mr. Zhang in China dyed the fur of a Chow Chow to look like a panda.

I guess this wasn’t a new thing but it was to me.

Hey, that is one cute puppy.

This report on large increase in hacker attempts during the holiday season comes from SecureWorks via Market Watch:

The abnormally high attack levels in July, August and September are a result of the rash of SQL Injection attacks we saw this year from a Chinese SQL injection tool and the Asprox trojan, said Jackson.

In July, August and September, hackers used the Chinese SQL Injection tool and the Asprox trojan to launch thousands of SQL Injection attacks so as to build up their botnets,” said Jackson. “With these attacks, they sought out websites that utilized active server pages linked to a Microsoft SQL Server backend and unfortunately a lot of retailers use this platform, thus they became a big target. Of course, this boded well for the hackers because if they could infect high trafficked sites then their chances of infecting large numbers of computers and turning them into bots would be much greater. The bots were then used to send phishing e-mails and launch additional SQL Injection attacks. For retailers, the danger of a SQL Injection attack is that if it is successful then the hacker can potentially gain administrator access to the affected server, thus opening up the entire customer database to the hacker, complete with the customers’ account information which could include credit card data, bank account information, name, address, etc. Even worse, under some circumstances, once the hacker has successfully infiltrated the database server they can use it as a jumping off point to access the rest of the company’s network,” continued Jackson.

H/T: Thomas

Some very interesting news coming from Radio Free Asia on regulations forcing Chinese internet cafes to switch from Microsoft XP to Red Flag Linux (a Chinese produced system).  Officials promoted this as an effort to crack down on pirated software but the move has angered cafe owners who were not happy with the 5,000 yuan licensing fee.

My thoughts:

1. A response to the recent Black Screen of Death incident.  However, if this is only required for internet cafes, it won’t make a dent in the problem. Just doesn’t make much sense.
2. Trying to force internet cafes to close down.  Chinese officials aren’t very fond of the cafes and the extremely high licensing fee could be a way to force them out of business.
3. As per the article, better monitoring.
4. Forced on China by our good friend Eastwood, who owns massive shares in Ubuntu.

Not every industry is suffering during these tough economic times. One of my favorite Chinese hacker websites is expanding operations and doing a little hiring. In fact, business is so good, they are expanding into the US, Hong Kong, South Korea and the UK.

The salary range is from 30,000-100,000 yuan (USD 4,300 to 14,500 approx) and they are inviting computer and network security personnel from all over the country and the world to join their organization. However, the applicants must work at the Beijing headquarters for a trial-period of three months.

If you make it past the trial period you get to enjoy the same perks as the rest of the staff such as dining together, birthday cakes, free travel, paid holiday, training and end-of-year red envelope (these contain money).

For those who show exceptional skill at their post, arrangements can be made to go to Hong Kong, South Korea, the US and the UK.

They are trying to fill four positions:

1) Training department manager

2) Training department computer lecturer

3) Training department network lecturer

4) Training department security lecturer

The advertisement list all the qualifications for the positions to include education and ages. I will supply these details for anyone who is interested. The applicants will have an online test and need to report for a two day interview.

They also list three different online applications for graduates, non-graduates and interns.

Mine is already filled and let’s hope I snag one of these sweet positions. Hell, they won’t even have to pay reloc