A researcher by the name of Dan Kaminsky will soon be unveiling an attack that could be used to hijack certain routers. This web-based attack can be used to gain complete access to your router and change settings within. By doing this, a hacker could change the DNS settings to hijack the user to an unknown location on the internet.

A DNS related attack could be used to make a user think they are going to a legitimate website, while actually redirecting the user to a malicious website that can be used to steal identity or track online activity. Both are a serious breach in online safety. The main problem is that the user would have no idea this is happening. The browser would still show that its directing to the correct address. Also, because this attack happens at the router and not on the computer, Antivirus and Anti-Malware solutions can not detect it.

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A question was asked recently that stopped me in my tracks. The question was,

“Why is grammar and spelling important on the Internet? I can understand if you’re writing a paper for school, but on forums and boards, I never bother”.

What? I thought one of the reasons we were taught grammar and spelling in school was so that every sentence we wrote, whether online, in a paper, or a letter to our grandmother, would be clear and understandable. This means not only correct spelling and grammar, but the ability to convey one’s idea or question so it can be understood. In my opinion, writing correctly when online is more important, not less so, and I can give several reasons why.

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All week long, these IT professionals are under constant pressure at work, troubleshooting downed networks, fixing dead hardware, patching security holes and updating buggy software.

So what do they do for fun and relaxation after work? They head home and spend hours doing the same thing — for free — by volunteering on tech support Web sites to help home and business users solve perplexing computer problems.

On sites like Protonic.com, Techguy.org, BleepingComputer.com and GeeksToGo.com, anguished computer users post messages seeking answers to problems with hardware and software from volunteers — many of whom are self-taught home computer users. But the group also includes IT pros who work in the corporate trenches every day and then give away their expertise at night and on weekends.

They say they gain far more from the effort than what they put in.

IT after hours [ComputerWorld]

Voice over IP service involves using the Internet to route your land line phone call instead of traditional telephone companies. It was once touted as the future of telecommunications, however clouds are on the horizon. Vonage has legal problems resulting from a patent dispute that if successful is likely to affect all VoIP providers. SunRocket apparently faces other challenges. They were the darling of many “hot deal” forums by offering two years of service for $199, including unlimited US long distance, and many other features. However, as of today calling their 800 customer service line (800) 786-0132 yields the following:

We are no longer taking customer service or sales calls… goodbye

SunRocket purportedly had 200,000 customers. As of this time they still have phone service, but odds are that may not last long (including 911 service).

VoIP companies have been hit hard by cable companies offering ‘bundled services’ and stealing market share. This is sure to hang another cloud over the industry.

Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of HDNet and the Dallas Mavericks recently blogged about the TV replacing the importance of the PC in US households. Among his claims are that in 18-24 months every HDTV will have a built-in web browser. That Web 2.0 content like YouTube is better geared toward the 10 foot from your TV experience, rather than 10 inches from your monitor. He’s not the only one, Arnie Berman, technology strategist for Cowen & Company wrote this:

In the past, consumers replaced their PC’s every 3 years and their televisions roughly every decade. Is this trend poised to reverse? Hint: Yes.

Interesting this talk is happening while network ratings are at their lowest point ever, especially among the 18-25 demographic. More people are tuning out their TV, and spending their prime time hours in front of PCs.

What do you think? Is the importance of the PC about to be replaced by the HDTV? Or, is it the other way around?

The Maturity of Web 2.0 and The HDTV is the PC [blog maverick]

No, it’s not a commercial for switching from dial-up to broadband. It’s the potential speed increase for existing cable Internet customers using a new standard DOCSIS 3.0. Download speeds of 160mps and upload speeds of 120mps are possible.

South Korea and Singapore are already deploying the new technology, and at least one US cable company (Comcast) plans to start next year. It will be rolled out first in areas where it competes with FiOS (fiber optic Internet). It’s estimated that by 2011 , DOCSIS 3.0 will be available to 40% of US cable customers.

160Mbps downloads move closer for US cable customers [ArsTechnia]

Joe Rogan’s character on Newsradio stated it well:

Dude, you can’t take something off the Internet… that’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.

A high-profile case has again proven that point. In February 2007 the AACS processing key was disclosed. This key allows copy protection to be broken on HD-DVD and BlueRay media produced before April 23. The AACS is backed by heavyweights like IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sony, Disney and WB. They took an aggressive stance to have the content containing the key removed from the Internet. They sent cease and desist notices, and shut down sites that didn’t comply.

Enter Digg. Their first reaction was not to wage battle with the AACS, and they removed the content as requested. Digg CEO Jay Adelson, “Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law.” That response only fueled the fire, and by late yesterday, the democratic Digg frontpage was filled with HD-DVD stories and comments that included the forbidden key. The site administrators couldn’t keep up, and the site was even unavailable for a time.

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MySpace is going into the news business with a service that will scour the internet for news stories and let users vote on which ones receive the most exposure.

This approach blends elements of Google News and sites such as Digg and Netscape, which rely on readers to submit stories and determine their prominence. It also marks the site’s ambitions to become a web portal like Yahoo!, providing its users with a front door to the internet.

MySpace, which is owned by News Corp, also the parent company of Times Online, will display headlines from external new sites, a practice that attracted legal challenges when Google used it for its news service.

View: Full Story @ TimesOnline

High-flying startup StumbleUpon has been rumored to be in acquisition discussions since at least last November. Recently we’ve heard that talks have heated up again, with Google, AOL and eBay as potential suitors. A source with knowledge of the deal now says the company has signed a term sheet with eBay to be acquired. The price is somewhere between $40 – $75 million. (update: GigaOm is now reporting the price at a $40 – $45 million).

StumbleUpon lets users rate websites via a browser toolbar. At any time a user can click “Stumble!” and will be taken to a website highly rated by other StumbleUpon users who tend to vote in a similar way as the person “stumbling.” More often than not, it’s something almost serendipitously interesting to the reader. The company expanded into video referrals in late 2006.

People who are passionate about StumbleUpon say they like it because of the surprise factor in what they see next, and the fact that the product has such a high hit rate in delivering interesting new content. The StumbleUpon site says they have 2.1 million users, up from 1.7 million in December 2006. 4+ million sites are “stumbled” daily.

View: Full Story @ techcrunch.com

There are all sorts of tools for sharing files without having to choke your email server or upload them to your own web host account. Pando supports emailing huge attachments by using a special version of BitTorrent to serve up the file in p2p fashion. Box.net, Xdrive, and eSnips provide easy upload and sharing with large amounts of cheap or free space. senduit offers a two-step process for uploading files and giving them a private URL. Titanize backs up your files to a secure online site and then allows you to share links to the backed up versions of the files.

Now there’s izimi, a download for Windows aimed at making it really easy to share anything directly from your computer to someone’s browser via the izimi website. izimi is similar to Avvenu, another Windows-only desktop install that turns your machine into a file server. These services remind me of Parakey, a web publishing tool for the masses under development by Blake Ross, one of the co-founders of the Mozilla Firefox project. They all aim at the mass market of nongeeks who want to share photos, videos, and other files on the web but aren’t necessarily interested in or aware of the latest online file storage service.

View: Full Story @ webworkerdaily.com