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January 13, 2010

National Television Control / National TV Control – Scam

I just received a weird telephone call from someone claiming to be from the National Television Control centre. The caller ID had been blocked so I couldn’t verify the number from which the call originated, but from his accent, I would guess they could be based in India.
He stated by saying “Good day, I’m calling from the National Television Control Centre and we have had reports of bad reception in your area. Can you confirm if your reception is working?”.
When I challenged him he became defensive and would not reveal any other details and eventually hung up.
(When I asked for details about the National Television Control Centre, i.e. who owned it, who run it, where it was based, he just became flustered and didn’t answer).

I have heard of a similar scam to do with Sky customers, but the caller never mentioned Sky, merely if my reception was fine.
Sky have put some information about a similar ‘scam’ on their own website (Sky Protect)

In my case, it appears that they are cold calling UK numbers rather than targeting Sky customers with the aim of finding any customers who are currently experiencing problems.
The scammers then apparently try to “help you resolve” the problem by offering to contact Sky support on your behalf. At no time however do they mention that you will be billed by them for this support.

Just be warned that there is no such organisation as the National Television Control Centre, at least not in the UK. If you receive such a call, do not reveal any personal information.
If they do claim to be from Sky, or working on behalf of Sky, ask them for your contact number, account number, or the type of receiver you have been supplied. I can assure you that they won’t be able to answer and will give you some waffle as to why they can’t supply that information. 

Category: Around the Home, General, UK

Posted by Chris Wright at 12:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 15, 2009

Lotus F1 back in 2010

Lotus are to return to Formula 1 for the first time since 1994 after being granted the 13th slot on the grid from next season.

They will line up as one of four new teams for 2010 - alongside Campos Grand Prix, Manor and US F1.

Great news for us F1 fans, especially those who remember the good old days when Lotus were last involved. Admittedly, it’s been a fair few years since they could be classed as one of the successful teams, but I’m just glad to have the badge back amongst the starting grid. I was born in 67, so not quite old enough to remember their best years between the 60’s and 70’s. Not a lot of people realise that despite withdrawing from F1 back in 94, they are still the fourth most successful F1 team ever.

In its new incarnation the team is a partnership between the Malaysian Government and a consortium of Malaysian entrepreneurs and is being led by team principal Tony Fernandes, the founder and CEO of the Malaysian-based Tune Group which owns Air Asia airline.

Mike Gascoyne - who has 20 years experience in the sport after working with Jordan, Renault, Toyota, and most recently Force India - returns to F1 as the team's technical director.

For more information see the original BBC Sport Article: Lotus will return to F1 in 2010

Category: F1, General

Posted by Chris Wright at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 1, 2009

Basingstoke Tweetup

Category: General

Posted by Chris Wright at 8:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 31, 2009

BLISS - for babies born too soon, too small, too sick

Just a quick post to highlight a worthwhile cause and to ask you to help in anyway you can.
A friend of mine had reason to make use of BLISS some time ago, and I was recently reminded of the charity by a tweet by Tess Morris.
Tess and her husband (Lee Morris) will both be running 10miles in the Great South Run, and sponsoring them both is a great way to help the charity.
Even if you can't afford a few pennies at the moment, please donate 5mins of your time and forward this event on to your friends, family and work colleagues.

From the JustGiving page set up by Tess Morris.

Our little girl Eden Summer was born at 29 wks, 11 wks, early by emergency caesarean at Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital, miles away from our local hospital which didn't have the facillities to look after a baby so small . Eden's incubator was donated to the hospital by Bliss and the intensive care unit was also referred to as Bliss. I eventually held Eden for the first time after 4 days and quickly started kangaroo care which Bliss says helps pre-term babies and parents,it did,after 3 wks Eden was transferred to our local hospital where she stayed another 3 wks after which we were allowed to bring her home. It was the scariest time of our lives but the staff at both hospitals and Bliss were fantastic .The work Bliss does is amazing and my husband and me are trying to raise as much money as possible for them to continue their work. So thats why we will be running 10 miles in The Great South Run so please help us help babies like Eden.

For more information on BLISS, you visit their website at http://www.bliss.org.uk

Bliss, the special care baby charity, provides vital support and care to premature and sick babies across the UK. Founded 30 years ago this year, we offer guidance and information at a critical time in families' lives. We also fund ground-breaking research and campaign for babies to receive the best possible level of care regardless of when and where they are born

Remember, these babies are too small to be able to help themselves. Help BLISS give them the best start in life. As I say above, even if you can't afford to give a few pennies, then forward this post to everyone you know, or send them the link to the JustGiving page.

Category: Family, General

Posted by Chris Wright at 1:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 9, 2009

Hotmail Accounts Hacked: New Trojan doing the rounds.

New variant of Trojan via Hotmail Instant Message

Be warned and on the lookout for a new round of Hotmail accounts being hacked and suspicious links being sent to you from your contacts.
You might receive a message from a known contact that will contain a link to what initially appears to be a to a profile picture.
What it is actually doing is trying to get you to download a windows Trojan.
Hotmail Message from Hacked Account

The message you will receive could look something like the following:

The text will say something similar to the above: "ahha is this you?? hxxp://images-id.com/profile.php?=yahoo:shinerweb@yahoo.com"

How does the attack work?

If you receive the above message or similar, because it has come from a "trusted friend" in your Hotmail contact list, you are probably likely to believe the link to have come from them.
Most people will just click on the link, but don't worry, you haven't been hacked just yet. In this case of this attack it actually requires you to install it, but believe it not, many people will do just that.

In this instance, clicking on the link above will download a self-extracting zip file to your PC. (Yes, we are talking a Windows Trojan here).
But you still haven't infected your PC. You now have to actually run the self-extracting zip file by navigating to the location where it was downloaded and clicking on it. (Some chat programs allow you to open the downloaded file by simply clicking on it from within the chat program).
But you still haven't been infected if you do just that. All you have done is to extract the actual virus to your PC.
It still requires you to now navigate to where the file was extracted and open it.
Only now will you have infected your machine.

At the time of writing, only one anti-virus vendor was giving a warning, with two other vendors marking the file as suspicious.
It will take most of the leading Anti-virus companies up to another 6-12 hours before they release new definitions to catch this one.
It will probably be a few days before the rest of the bunch catch up with some taking up to a week.
So even if you have the most up-to-date virus definitions, you are not going to detect this trojan just yet.

Despite the number of manual steps involved in order to become infected, many hundreds of thousands of users around the globe will still do just that.
Some will do it primarily because the link and the files came from someone in their Hotmail contact list that they probably trust.

So why did my Hotmail contact send me this link?

Actually, your contact didn't. The bad guys have gained access to your contacts username and password and have control of their account.
There are a number of ways that the bad guys can gain access to these details.

Trojan: The payload in this instance is a trojan that installs other software to capture personal information from the infected machine. The user could already have been infected with this trojan or another similar and the Hotmail account details stolen (via a Keylogger for example).

Phishing: There have been a number of incidents already this year whereby legitimate sites have displayed adverts or malware inserted by the bad guys. This presents the visitor with a dialogue box very similar (almost an exact copy) of the Hotmail Login screen. The user then blindly enters their Hotmail Username and Password. The bad guys scripts will then usually display a failure message before redirecting the visitor the genuine Hotmail Login screen. But by this stage it is too late, they already have your Hotmail account details.

In this instance, this is what I suspect to have happened in that the user has fallen foul of a phishing attempt on a site they have recently visited.

The short answer is that your Hotmail contact did not send you the message. In fact, they probably have no knowledge what-so-ever of any messages being sent to you.
They will probably tell you that they didn't even have their computer switched on at the time so it could not have come from them.
The bad news is that it didn't need to be. The bad guys already have their username and password and they use a program of their own to login and send the messages from any computer they like.

At a later date, I will post an update on how to prevent or reduce the chances of falling foul of these types of attacks.
Some quick advice though is:

• Never to trust any files sent by friends no matter how much you trust them. It might not be them sending it in the first place.
• Always have your chat program configured to run an anti-virus scan of ALL downloaded and transferred files. (Though this would not have protected you in this instance).
• Any file you are not sure of, upload it to Virus Total and see what they have to say about it.
  

The information below is the technical information about how the virus works.

Continue reading "Hotmail Accounts Hacked: New Trojan doing the rounds. "

Category: General, Malware, Phishing/Spam

Posted by Chris Wright at 12:58 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)