What is phishing and what's the origin of this term?

The activity of gathering confidential informations is a process condemned by law and it has as target the theft of financial informations and access passwords in bank accounts (and not only there). This activity is based on the ignorance of the fact that the official organizations do never send emails by means of soliciting confidential informations.

Examples of messages subjects are “Update Your Paypal Account” or “Your eBay User Account has been suspended!”, but they diversify according to regarded services supplier and targeted country. The requested informations usually are the number of the credit/debit card, PIN code for ATM's, informations about the bank account, personal numeric code/assurance account, access passwords, other personal data.

The pages used by the phishing authors are usually active only for a few hours or a few days.Technics of retrieving confidential dataExamples of messages (romanian language only):

„The link of the example: http://krumel.seo-point.com/bcr-noi-masuri-de-securitate-pentru-protectia-dumneavoastra/

„http://raiffeisenonline.ro/eBankingWeb/login

______________________________

The link of the example: http://krumel.seo-point.com/raiffeisen-bank-pishing-comision-de-intretinere/

„Incepand cu data de 16 - aprilie - 2008 serviciul Fastbanking de la Banca Transilvania va fi obligatoriu pentru toti clientii care poseda cardul maestro Banca Transilvania Direct.

Va multumim pentru intelegere

The link of the example: http://krumel.seo-point.com/pishing-banca-transilvania-fastbanking/- Social engineering: the URL is very much alike the real one, that can not be detected at first sight. For example, the address http://www.volksbank.com can be replaced with http://www.voIksbank.com – they seems identical but they are not: the letter “l” from the first link was replaced with the capital letter “i”.

- Pop-up: the connection in the email gets to the real web page, but another browser window (a pop-up) is showed first. Usually this pop-up windows doesn't have an addresses bar that can identify them as phoney pages.

Pharming”, or “domain spoofing”, redirect the user to a phoney web page even if the correct address is filled in. The correct URL remains showed in the access path of the browser, unchanged. To realize the redirecting process the name resolution must be modified by changing the settings for the TCP/IP protocol or by an entry in the “host” file.

“The phoney web page can use tricks like false tooltip or making not accessible the right click.

The consequences of the being entraped by such an attack varies from the inability to access an email to important financial loses, the delinquents can empty bank accounts, can create new accounts, can sign contracts (for utilities, for loans, etc) in victim's name, can commit crimes under false identity.

- Do not fill in electronic forms with confidential data, especially when they are send in emails. Any competent services suplier use secured web pages and digital certificates.

- Assure that you use a secured internet page (it contains https:// at the beginning of the link) and check the digital certificates.

- Constantly update your operating system and the softwares you usually work with for the newest patches as they appear.

The browser developers (Microsoft, Mozilla, etc) realized for their products methods to fight against the theft of personal informations, but the education of the users is the most important one. It's easier to prevent than repair. Be sceptic with unsolicited emails that you receive, no matter who (apparently) send them. Seek to confirm the identity of the sender through other methods.

You can realize that you are Internet dependent when:

• You kiss your girlfriend web page and / or Facebook profile;
• You need 15 minutes to reach at the other end of your bookmarks;
• You have a web page and Facebook logo stuck on retina;
• The first thing you do after you wake up is to grab the smartphone and / or the tablet;
• You access Facebook more than 10 hours a day;
• It doesn't pass a day you don't get at least 20 de pokemons;
• You acces a search engine and you are thinking what to search;
• You refuse to go on vacantion in a place without electricity and phones;
• You finally go in the trip, but only after you get a cell phone and a laptop;
• You dream only faster connextions: 28.8...ISDN...cable modem...T1...T3...;
• During the night you dream in HTML;
• In Word or Open Office, after every dot you add „com”;
• When you turn your modem off you have the feeling you've killed a friend;
• When you go to the bathroom you say that you are downloading from Internet;
• Your hearth start beating faster and faster when you see a www at tv, even you are not a cardiac;
• You are getting out from the room, realise that your parents moved away and you have no idea when this happened;
• You open the interfon when you get out from the room to hear when you get an e-mail;
• Your wife puts a blond wig on the monitor to remind you how she looks;
• All your friends have a @ in their name;
• If you try anyone links you observe that they are all coloured in lavender;
• Your dog have it's own Internet site / Facebook page / Facebook profile;
• You have finished accesing all the Lycos links and half of Yahoo links;
• You don't call your mother becuase she does not have a modem;
• You realise that there is no noise in the house and you don't know where the kids are;
• You think that there is nothing hotter that a guy in pants lighted by a monitor SVGA by 17";
• You check the email account and you have no new email so you check it again;
• When somebody asks you how old are you, you say that you are 3.x;
• You get your Romtelecom detailed invoice into a refrigerator box;
• A full month after you died you are stiil logged on to your mirc channel because you have made the neccessary arrangements (BNC);
• You do your homework in HTML and you get your teacher the URL;
• Your kid's names are Fedora, Mozilla and SuSe;
• Your husband tells you that he have a 2 months stubble;
• You wife is 6 months pregnant and you haven't noticed it. You can't recall impregnating her because you were whatching that hot babes on Instagram;
• You start to search HTML tags in bus stations;
• You get waken at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and when you get back you check your email address;
• You tell the cab driver to get you to http://victory.street/red.block;
• You tell the kids that they are not allowed at the computer because „daddy have work to do” when you are unemployed;
• Your friends don't get emails anymore, they just enter your mirc channel;
• You buy a Star Trek kind of chair with built-in keyboard and mouse;
• Your wife has a new rule: „The computer is no allowed in bed”;
• You know the Internet so well that you don't need search engines anymore;
• The last girl you've accosted was only a jpeg;
• You ask a plumber how much would cost you to install a toilet chair instead your computer chair;
• Your forget in what year and in what town or country your are – thay have no meaning anymore;
• Turn your head aside to smile;
• You ask the doctor to implant a terra of memory in your head;
• You let the modem speaker on because it remainds you about the sound of the ocean, the perfect song to browse the Internet;
• You turn on your computer and turn off your wife;
• When your car falls into abyss your first reaction is to push the button „back”.

Known as „spam” or „junk emails”, the unsolicited mails usually have a commercial or irrelevant content and they are sent in large quantities to a lot of recipients. The unsolicited mails are a controversial subject to the Courts of Justice, it is rather a problem of consent then content: they are called „unsolicited mails (spam)” for the simple reason their recipient had not solicited them.

Besides emails there were developed new ways of atac: instant messaging („spim”), forum messages, Short Messaging Service (sms) or the pretence to offer optimising services to the search metods on Internet (spamdexing).

In general the sender of unsolicited mails hide or mask his identity, but it is not a rule. In past the main reason of the messages was to bomb the newsgroups or discussion lists with useless or inadequate mails, meanwhile they diversified to many forms, but the most known form is the comercial communications. The intention of the mesages is to convince the persons from the list to by products and services more or less legitimate.

The most known types of unsolicited mails are:

• The promotion and sell of products and services;
• The gathering of confidential informations as passwords, bank accounts, etc.
• Through online lotteries, bank frauds or humanitarian messages;
• The promotion of concepts and ideologies;
• Steal of identity and fraud.

Usually the spam authors offer their services to the companies or persons that search a cheaper way to promote their products: they sell the databases with lists of email addresses (hundreds or thounsands of addresses) or the complete service (data collecting, the projection of the dispatch channel of the messages to avoid the detection of the source, sending the messages).

The email addresses are being gathered through various ways:

• Harvesting (the use of search software for email addresses in public zones, on web pages or on unprotected mail servers);
• Flooding or dictionary spamming (automatic generation of accounts of some domains);
• e-pending (the search of valid emails for some persons or criterias);
• Usenet posting (trimiterea cãtre newsgroup-uri);
• Subscribing discussion lists to get acces to the list of all available addresses;
• The access of users' contact agendas or personal data using „malware” software;
• Spying the net traffic;
• The circumvention of databases with informations;
• Using the viruses that record the data filled in by the users in the forms online.

Efects of sending spam:

Usually there are several system passed over by the spam until they reach their destination to hide the real sender. Starting from this there are the following negative efects (there are, actually, a huge number of unsolicited emails sent daily all overt the world).

• Internet Service Providers (ISP) confronts with serious problems of cots and opeation, as processing time and speed, costs for bandwidth;
• The companies and the users must apply lists or schemes to filter the messages that incease the volume of informations in the system by processing and storing larger quantities of data;
• Delivering the messages and surfing the internet are slowed down considerably;
• The viral spam are spreading „malware” and evade confidentail data;
• A busy email address is a stress factor for any user, emptying it consuming time and resource that can be used productive.

Ways to avoid spam:

• Use antivirus and antispam software always updated;
• Update regularly the operating system and the most recent applications to corect the errors (the patches), especially when it is about Windows operating systems;
• Always check the autenticity of the sender of the mail and use digital signature;
• Apply content filters, heuristic rules, baysian filters, graylists;
• Do not open suspect messages;
• Do not answer and do not send further spam;
• Do not use unsubscribe instructions from this kind of messages;
• Ignore the messages that claim „you have solicited” something or that you have tried to send a message and you have got a „send error”;
• Use different email addresses and different names when you are subscribing to newsgroups or discussion lists or chat rooms;
• Mask the email address (for example using a string to the name of the domain.

Legal frame

The European Comittee created a juridic frame to ensure the free traffic of information technology services between the member states, and the legislative measures are limited to the minimum necessary to reach the objective of good operation of internal market. Until now the European Comittee did not choose one of the systems described earlier, the member states being free to chose. However it is being studied the adoption of the opt-in system as unic system at european level for the delivering through emails for comercial communications.

The National Autority for Settlement in Comunication and Information Technology (NASCIT) got specific prerogatives in information technology area, including about the application of the disposition of the Law no. 365/2002 with the article 3 paragraph 3, point 2 from the Rule of organization and operation of The National Autority for Settlement in Comunication and Information Technology, approved in the Decision of the Goverment no. 415/2007, regulations consentaneous to NASCIT „supervises and controls the observances of the legal purviews in the area of e-commerce, exercised as autority of settlement conformability with the purviews of the Law no. 365/2002 about the e-commerce, republished” (http://www.anrcti.ro/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=3034).

It is said that it does not get spring with one flower. This days NASCIT got us as a present an entire bouquet enforcing another eight penalties for unsolicited commercial communications throught electronic mail and a penalty of not providing informatins (http://www.anrcti.ro/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=3183). There were penalized, chronologically by enforcing penalties: S.C. Managementproiect S.R.L. from Tîrgu-Jiu, S.C. Curtea Veche Publishing S.R.L. from Bucharest, S.C. Elitech Mit S.R.L. from Olteniþa, S.C. E-Student Consult S.R.L. from Bucharest, S.C. Chris&Chris Solutions Co S.R.L. from Bucharest, S.C. Ghizbi S.R.L. from Bucharest and two persons from Bucharest. Also, because it did not provide the solicited informations by NASCIT, S.C. Westfloor Profesional S.R.L. from Bucharest was sanctioned with a penalty of 1.000 lei.

The term spam appeared first in the discussion grups USENET mentioning EMP (Excessive Multi Posting) and ECP (Excessive Cross Posting). Today it is used to describe UBE (Unsolicited Bulk E-mail) and UCE (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail). The name spam is derived from a humoristic sketch of British grup Monty Python, there all the food in a menu from a coffee house included „spam”, a snack of pig meat. At some point a client asks the waiter if he has something that does not contain „spam”, the waiter lists him again the menu full of „spam”. At final a vikings chorus join singing „spam, spam, wondeful spam, glorious spam”, covering all conversation.

What it will be next remains to be seen. For an informative article about unsolicited mails what I have written until now is enough.

The chain letters and hoaxes are incressing every year, and they will not probably stop very soon (or not at all). So we consider necessary to repeat informations told in many places on the net, but ignored by lots of people - it's almost incredible how many people trust into a humanitarian message (for instance) and they send it further without pass it first through the filter of reason and/or do a routine check. There are enough informations on this large Internet.

Known as „chain letter” or „hoax”, it is the trial to deceive, to trick, to make the people believe an unusual idea or to get to their sympathy or their pitty using real cases of accidents, dramas, catastrophes, diseases, shocking in some ways or another.

A way of manifestation are the warning messages sent through emails to various recipients that usually refer to a new and very dangerous virus. In the end of the message there is the sugestion to send the warning farther to friends, colleagues, people they know from the address book. The result is a very long message that can contains dozens or hundreds of email addresses, such lists of addresses are sold on good money to the ones that generate spam. The message may convince the users to delete some important files in the sistem (operating sistem and the softwares used by the reader) for the reason of annihilating the virus causing real damages.

Letters that bring good luck – they promis to bring good luck to the ones that continues the chain (it's the oldest type of chain letter, it has been circulating for a long time and take advantage of the electronic form since it's apearance);

- Charity letters;

- Trick of any kind;

- Pointless demands;

Our advise is to be a little sceptics when you get something like this. Try to verify the informations and send the farther only when confirmed. By the way... consider it a joke, or not. It's your decision. But it's the best chain letter we've got lately.

To all my friends and family who have sent me best 'wishes', chain letters, 'angel' letters or other promises of good luck if I forwarded something,  NONE OF THAT SHIT WORKED! Could you please just sendcash, Vodka, chocolate or airline tickets instead?Thank you!

Bastion publishing house started on tuesday, 29th of april 2008, with a demonstation of force (as the public attendance also as the span of the announced editorial program). Leaded by the well knownd cultural animator Cornel Secu, it presented to the reader public with six brand new volumes, and the event from the lobby at the first floor of the Philharmonic orchestra of Banat was typical and atypical in the same measure.

It was typical because the book release („The antiquity in the Nietzsche's philosophy” by Gilda Valca, „The time of renunciation” by Marian Truta, „SF one” by Cristian Teodorescu, „The bold magnificent Java” by Brain d. Eubanks, „Flatland” by S.A. Abbot and „Lego – the constructor's unofficial guide” by Allan Bedford) attracted a lot of public and good words.

Atypical for an event of releasing books were the two artistic moments set by the director Mircea Puia in that evolved the actors Lavinia Oprescu and Adi Corec from the National Theatre Mihai Eminescu.

Among the ones on the release were Ioan Talpoş, the rector of the Universitatea de Vest, and Mircea Mihăieş, the vicepresident of the Romanian Cultural Institute, that noticed that „a very good strategy makes that the Bastion to pull out the town some value imposing local authors national wide while until now it was covered only the opposite route.”

Cornel Secu declared that he has as target the placing of the new publishing house in the top ten publishing houses in the country by the end of this decade. For the beginning the Bastion publishing house appeared with six titles, with 2 romanian SF-s („The time of renunciations” and „SF one”), but also „Flatland” by Edwin Abbot. About other 30 titles are already in the portofolio of the new publishing house, portfolio that annouces no less than 23 specialised collections as:

- Contor (coordinator Florin Dănilă – intended for marginal genres SF, F and A)

- Excentric (coordinator Ciprian Valcan – intended for frontier texts)

- Helion (coordinator Cornel Secu – intended to the SF)

- Insolit (coordinator Lucian V. Szabo – intended to the fantasy, horror, etc)

- John Clute presents (coordinator the literature critic John Clute, UK – intended for the foreign SF authors).

In the next period there are annouced to be released the books of authors like Ovidiu Pecican, Sergiu Farcaşan, George Anania, Ion Hobana, Cotizo Draia, Romulus Bărbulescu, Dănuţ Ungureanu, Costel Baboş, Lucian Merişcă, Lucian Szabo and Silviu Genescu.

The year 1919, Oradea, Bihor county, Romania. The city was mentioned about 900 years ago, and this movie is about the beauty of a city, to which contributed through the centuries many nations that together lived here, cherished peace, and made a sacrifice of creation: Romanians, Hungarians, Gipsies, Italians, Jews, Germans, and many more.

For the experienced web developer the marquee tag is a non-standard HTML markup element type which causes text to scroll up, down, left or right. The tag was first introduced in early versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and was compared to Netscape's blink element, as a proprietary non-standard extension to the HTML standard with usability problems.

Because text within a marquee is not always visible, it violates the basic nature of web pages, which are eminently skimmable. Users typically glance over a page and decide what, if anything, to read (using headlines, bold text, bullets, etc.), but marquees, like the blink element, hide text at certain points, meaning at any given time, scanning the page may fail (or take longer).

Links within marquees are notoriously difficult to click, and users only get one chance every time it scrolls past. This can easily annoy users.

Well, there are solutions to this and I want to present you one of them. You only need CSS and having javascript enabled.

just some text...

You can continue adding text and images, but remember not to change „overflow: hidden;” in the „no_marquee” div. That's important.

 Second thing you need is a javascript function you must add in the head element of the webpage.

function moving_div_up(value)

{

value--;

if (value<-10300) value = 0;

document.getElementById('moving_div').style.top = value+'px';

setTimeout("moving_div_up("+value+")", 20);

}

That will scroll the text and the images from the „moving_div” from bottom to the top. The speed of the scroll can be changed by modifing the value „20” inside the „setTimeout” with any value you desire.

To scroll the text and the images down you only need to change the decrease of the value and to add it up. Something like this:

function moving_div_down(value)

{

value++;

if (value>10300) value = 0;

document.getElementById('moving_div').style.top = value+'px';

setTimeout("moving_div_down("+value+")", 20);

}

You can scroll the content to the left or to the right. It's simple. Very simple.

function moving_div_left(value)

{

value--;

if (value<-10300) value = 0;

document.getElementById('moving_div').style.left = value+'px';

setTimeout("moving_div_down("+value+")", 20);

}

function moving_div_right(value)

{

value++;

if (value>10300) value = 0;

document.getElementById('moving_div').style.left = value+'px';

setTimeout("moving_div_down("+value+")", 20);

}

The last thing for this to work is adding the „onLoad” attribute.

A very common perspective, with more and more people sharing it for the last few years: the Microsoft operating systems are cute, nice, it catches you eye but at safety, the ratio performance / resources they are far to optimal.