Author: Olly

  • Website owners beware – terrorist attacks on your websites too

    Its hard to ignore the current disputes between ISIS and the rest of the world. Every news program and social feed contains links to videos and articles about this horrible ordeal, and it looks like its now also spread to the digital world.

    I was messaged by a customer who said that their website had been hacked. When I visited the website I was greeted by the message;

    Hacked BY MuhmadEmad ./we are peshmarga

    MuhmadEmad seems to just be the persons name, but peshmarga (peshmerga) is a term used by Kurds to refer to “Armed Kurdish Fighters” which – as far as I can work out – should be people on our side, so im really confused as to why they would hack a little wordpress website that has nothing to do with this conflict.

    I’m still looking into exactly what happened but it seems to have been a Gravity Forms exploit of some description – some files within uploads/gravity_forms/tmp were VERY dodgy so they’ve been downloaded for closer inspection and removed from the site.

    Ive also updated all the plugins, themes and the wordpress core. Passwords for all wordpress user accounts, FTP and MySQL users changed too.

    If you’re having trouble with a hacked website then contact me through twitter or something and ill help as best I can.

  • Disturbing thoughts about 9/11

    Im sure by now we’ve all heard at least one conspiracy theory surrounding 9/11 and what actually happened on that day – even theories about why it actually happened – but until recently i’ve never really thought much into any of them as they are after all, just theories. However thanks to some research a couple of friends and I have been looking into I actually took a step back for once, and embraced one of those theories as truth – and I instantly felt sick to my stomach…

    Almost immediately after the event happened on September 11th 2001 people starting claiming it was a setup, or it was a controlled explosion etc and the general background story associated with all these theories was that it was linked to some kind of insurance claim or something – but it all sounded so ridiculous and personally I lost interest in them. I accepted that it was “terrorists” and they did it because they were crazy religion-orientated bastards.

    Zooming to the present day and as I mentioned earlier me and some friends have been obsessed by a number of theories that basically turn most of what we all know and believe on its head. Watch the Zeitgeist movie as that does a better job of explaining it all than I ever could.

    One of these theories suggests that 9/11 was simply an exercise to get the US people (and the rest of the world) to back a war in Afghanistan so that (in short) someone at the top of the ladder could get to the oil and other resources in Afghanistan and make a sh!t load of money.

    Again – watch the Zeitgeist movie first before you start calling me a complete nutjob.

    The reason this theory made me feel physically sick is the fact that this would mean the people that died in those planes, the buildings and then in the rescue attempts afterwards did not die as a result of a terrorist attack, they weren’t killed so someone could directly claim off their insurance (this would also be gross tbf) it meant that all those people were murdered by someone – probably arranged over email – who used their deaths as leverage in a business deal.

    The idea that it might not have been terrorists is actually more sickening than what we’ve been lead to believe is the truth.

    Whether it is true or not I guess we’ll never really know, and I don’t know if I believe it was all controlled explosions rather than planes being flown into the towers, but the actual reasons behind why it actually happened are something that has left me feeling intrigued and disturbed in equal measures.

  • Hacking the Verismo from Starbucks

    I’ve been wanting a home pod coffee machine for a while now, but everyone you speak to has a different opinion on which is better, and to be honest its all based on whichever one they’ve owned so ive taken most reviews with a pinch of salt.

    I had been eyeing up the Tassimo machines as they had Costa coffees and lots of hot chocolate flavours but they were very bulky and for anything that looked half decent you bloody paid for it! Then i kind of lost a bit of steam for the whole thing as I looked into it all more and more and there were lots more machines coming on to the market – it got swamped and I got bored!

    A few months later we were visiting a customer of ours who specialise in domestic appliances and noticed they had started selling the Verismo from Starbucks, a Pod coffee machine licensed by K-FEE and that boasted lots of different types of coffees which all looked great! We walked out with 3 machines – each with 90 delicious pods to use!

    $_12One of the Verismo machines took a spot in my kitchen at home and we very quickly used the initial 90 drinks we got with it so i started shopping around for more pods for it and found myself on eBay and was presented with some very interesting finds.

    I found some “Espresto” pods for sale, they are made by the same company behind the Verismo machine – K-FEE and from the encouraging description on the eBay listing it seemed like these pods may fit my machine and I may have just found a way of stocking it without breaking the bank!

    The pods arrived, I held one next to a Starbucks one – and guess what? They are identical! This means that things like milk pods can be sourced cheaper, and also you can get hot chocolate pods which are something Starbucks dont offer for the Verismo system – they taste great too!

    I instantly ordered loads of milk and chocolate and even one of their coffees to try and its all good quality stuff – the range of pods available to me had opened up!

    On one of the listings for the Espresto pods it also mentioned “PodPronto” which turns out to be a machine sold by Tesco and – again – licenced by K-FEE – so low and behold, the pods from that fit too!

    Tesco_Podpronto_Latte_Coffee_Pods_157.6G_8_Serving__76528_stdSo now, not only can i buy cheaper milk and coffee pods on eBay i can also walk down to my local Tesco and buy their pods – even cheaper!

    I’m investigating if any other machines have pods we can use, and i’ll keep this post updated – im sure they make other machines for other people so shouldn’t be hard to track down.

    [UPDATE] I have been informed that Tesco are discontinuing their PodPronto machine  – so get all the pods from your local store before its too late!

  • Chill the hell out about “Your Data”

    Every single day I hear a news report about how some new app is stealin your interwebz or how some new “thing” poses a danger to information stored about you on the web, and within offline systems like the NHS.

    This morning on the radio they were talking about a new scheme that the NHS are starting to roll out that allows the data from GP’s (your data! :P) to be used to improve healthcare and help improve medical research.

    Its worth noting at this point that your personal identity information IS NOT part of this data – only anonymous info about your medical history that is presented to them without being tied to you or any person.

    The radio presenter interviewed a few people who said that due to their “unusual” medical history, anyone looking at their data would be able to identify them without the need for it to have their name or anything next to it.

    I’m genuinely amazed people put up a fight with stuff like this. Why wouldn’t you want the info from your doctors being shared with the hospital? And shared with researchers that might be able to tell you you are going to get cancer at a certain age as they’ve been able to build amazing algorithms that analyze your family medical history, spot trends and report things before they happen?

    Its being able to harvest, analyse and utilise “data” that has brought us into the amazing technological age that we live in today. Google can assist you in your day-to-day life just because of the data you give them when you use their services. They’re not spying on you for sh!ts and grins, they are trying to make your experience of using their services mind blowing so you tell your friends and keep using them!

    It may just be me, but when I search Google on my laptop for a company that i’m going to visit – then get my phone out and Google Now has already loaded a tile up so that with one click, I can load navigation to the place I just searched for – my mind is blown every time. This is an example of Google “spying on you” and as you can see, its not scary at all 🙂

    Don’t get me wrong, there are bad guys out there that do want to trick you but if you stick to well known apps and websites and ensure you have virus protection and scan for malware on your PC – and only install apps on your phone from the Google Play store you should be OK.

    The next time you hear a news story about some big company stealing info, texting adverts to your mates behind your back or recording your private conversations without you even realising (Facebook messenger!) get in touch with someone who is in the know before you start ditching amazing services and products from awesome companies.

    PS Facebook Messenger is fine too – stop being dingbats!