How to Keep Your Kids Safe Online

Talk to them. It’s that simple, tell them there are bad people in the world who are looking to take advantage of them, tell them you can’t really be 100% safe unless they are at home, let them know they have to watch out for themselves and their friends. Talk to them. Why do I post this now? After reading the umpteenth story on someone being raped after they met someone on MySpace, that’s why.

Girl Accuses MySpace Acquaintances Of Rape Three Teens Formally Charged, One Still Being Sought.

At least three assailants, including a current and former Senn High School student, raped a 14-year-old girl they met through the MySpace.com Web site, then left her passed out in an alley, prosecutors said Monday.

It’s not just MySpace, anywhere they go online and they interact with people, they can get into trouble if they don’t know what to do. Girls, never put yourself in a similar situation, this girl went to one of their houses and drank a lot and passed out. Big mistake. Of course, this doesn’t give anyone the right to take advantage of her, but the big mistake was being there with people she didn’t know to start with.

Talk to your kids, you won’t regret it.

If you need extra protection, install Teen Minder on their computer and you’ll be able to see everything they do online. Talk about making you feel a little safer, if you could play a video of what happened on their computer, wouldn’t that make you feel better? Try it now, it’s some of the best child monitoring software around.

Added: Just spell checked this and realized that the article from the NBC site misspelled acquaintances, it was spelled with an e acquaintences instead of an a acquaintances.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Attacks, Mistakes, MySpace, Social Networks No Comments » August 2006

SQL Injection Attacks on the Rise

According to Secureworks, the number of SQL injection attacks, where the attacker adds Structured Query Language (SQL) code to a Web form input box to gain access to an organization’s resources or to make changes to data, are on the rise. These type of attacks can be used against many different types of web applications and using it, they can determine the structure and location of databases so they can either download the database or compromise the server. From January to March they block from 100 to 200 attacks a day, as of April that number has jumped to 1,000 to 8,000 attacks per day.

“The majority of the attacks are coming from overseas,” said Ramsey. “And although we certainly see a higher volume with other types of attacks, what makes the SQL Injection exploits so worrisome is that they are often indicative of a targeted attack.” This is a type of attack where the hacker has targeted a particular organization, versus a worm which spreads indiscriminately.

“Depending on the sophistication of the attacker, the online criminal can potentially gain access to a bank or utility company’s key customer databases containing social security numbers, account numbers, credit card numbers, email addresses, etc,” continued Ramsey.

Always secure your servers, and if you don’t know how, contract with someone who does, you’ll sleep better because of it.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Attacks, SQL, Security No Comments » July 2006