In David’s case (And I would assume most cases…), the domain was stolen by first hijacking the email address associated with the domain name registrar.  Once the email address is hijacked and the domain name transfered, the hijacker will use the domain name for their own purposes or attempt to extort money from the victim for return of the domain name.  If you read David Airey’s post, you may have noticed that the hijacker has posted requests for an extortion payment in the comments. 

Domain hijackers are the epitome of sleaze indeed…  

Better-Whois.com has a good list of tips for preventing domain name hijacking.  Below are a couple of the most important tips:

• Use an email address that you own for domain name registration.  Don’t use GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.  These addresses are more easily compromised than an address that you own, and may expire without any notice.  When I refer to an email address you own, I’m referring to an address that you have purchased from your ISP or hosting provider.
• Make sure that your contact information is up to date with domain name registrars, so that you are notified of any changes or upcoming expirations of your domains.
• Consolidate your domain name registrations so that all of your domains are registered by the same registrar.  This makes it easier to manage your domains.  Most registrars will provide you with a management console for your domains, so that you can see their status easily.

The entire article can be read here –  Better-Whois.com – SPECIAL REPORT: How to protect your domain name from hijackers, porn pirates, and your registrar

David Airey :: Graphic and Logo Designer – I’ve provided a link to David’s new site to aid in rebuilding his lost links and search rankings.

Now when you highlight an entry and press CTRL + U, it will open a new Firefox window or tab.

Via KeePassX forum post “Open URL in Firefox“

AOL’s Password Puzzler – Via Reddit

To ensure that you are always using the HTTPS version of a site, install the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox and then install the HTTP-to-HTTPS redirector script. The script supports many common sites by default, and allows you to add sites if you like.

Top 10 Big Brother Companies: Ranking the Worst Consumer Privacy Infringers

Via EFFector 20.07

Via EFFector 20.05

RoboForm is a fantastic program, but the fact that it doesn’t run on Linux is a major problem for me. KeePass seems like the best alternative, but it does not currently support a direct import from RoboForm. I have almost 140 passwords, many of which consist of 10-30 random characters. Typing these in manually would be a major headache, so here’s the best hack that I found.

• Download the trial version of PassCrypt
• Import your RoboForm data to PassCrypt
• Export your newly imported data from PassCrypt to a CSV file. You don’t need the headings.
• Download a CSV file editor – I recommend CSVed
• Once you’ve installed CSVed – go to Tools, Options, Double Quotes. Click the box next to “Save CSV File With Double Quotes”. If you don’t select this, your import will fail. KeePass requires that the data is between double quotes. If you try to use Excel it will strip the quotes from the file and the import will fail. Believe me on this one – I’m saving you a lot of time and trouble.
• Open the CSV file you exported from PassCrypt in CSVed to modify the file.
• Put your columns in the following order: “Account”,”Login Name”,”Password”,”Web Site”,”Comments”. You don’t need these column headings in your CSV file – you just need the columns in this order.
• If you have any ampersands (&) in you passwords – do a find and replace in CSVed to replace all instances of & with &. It appears as if PassCrypt did this during the export to CSV.
  • Update 8/6/2007: At some point the WordPress WYSIWYG mangled my post in regards to HTML special characters. The bullet point above may have problems with the display of ampersands. The idea is that during the process of moving passwords from one program to another, the ampersands in your passwords may be replaced by the html character code. This will obviously cause your passwords to not work. Thanks to skibum mark for the heads-up.
• You may notice that many of your usernames or passwords are missing from the exported file. This is because RoboForm captures these values from websites that use different terms to identify them. One may be “username” while one may be “logonid”. You’ll have to manually enter these missing values in CSVed or wait until the file is imported into KeePass.

I told you it was a hack. Someone needs to write a plugin to import passwords directly from RoboForm into KeePass. Until then – use the steps above. If there is enough interest I’ll put together a better tutorial with screenshots.

Kudos to Alana Post for the article RoboForm to KeePass – which outlines the basic steps.

Why should I upgrade my firmware?

• Bug fixes – software is notoriously buggy. Something as important as a router demands the most up-to-date, clean software. Think about the data that flows through your wireless network…email, credit card numbers, etc.
• Security – firmware upgrades may give you access to new security features such as WPA, MAC address filtering, etc…
• Performance – can your router be too fast? Performance increases are a possibility when upgrading the firmware.

The process to upgrade firmware may vary among the different manufacturers. In the case of Dlink, they offer the firmware as a download from the product support page. Once you’ve downloaded the update, you log into the router itself to install it.

If you need more incentive to upgrade your router and implement better security, read the article by David Pogue of the NY Times – How Secure is Your Wi-Fi Connection. His article is geared more toward Wi-Fi hotspots, but your wireless router at home works the same way.

Update – 1/11/2006: GetNetWise has videos on how to setup the various security features of wireless routers. Check out their page Activate your Base Station Wireless Security Settings.

“it would not surprise me if this was the most complex cipher the FBI has seen since World War II.”

The irony is that Kaczynski was against technology and targeted computer experts. These same computer experts would likely be very impressed by Kaczynski’s cipher. Ciphers are critical to secure storage and transmission of electronic data, and the fact that the NSA couldn’t break Kaczynski’s cipher is quite impressive.

More on the Unabomber’s code – Bruce Schneier