The Look

I had an issue with my server this evening. Actually its been going on for a few days. There was a big surge in traffic, so I started investigating. Most of the traffic was email, I did some digging.

Found a rouge php file, its hashed so not exactly sure how it works, but simply it appeared to allow mail to be sent via a call to the rouge page. Quite clever really it show how increasingly intelligent these attacks have become. In the past it used to be script kiddies automatically scouring using penetration tools. Now they are targeting hole in exiting websites and injecting in rouge code.

I guess that a sysadmins life never gets any easier.

Ghosts 'n' Stuff

Saw Andy chief for the first time over a year last night. A year ago we were having a leaving party for him at the deaf institute. Ian picked me up and we drove to Woodford to get the 157 to Didsbury. Rachel and Ian were telling me about about their endeavours on the new house.It sounded like they have worked hard on it, was easy for me to identify with that.

We joined Andy, Dave Claire and Will at the Feltcher Moss. Having a drink and a catch up Ian told us about his antics at the Phonix Woodford War Memorial Community Centre, his story about the Sunday night salsa was simply hilarious. Andy was quiet, he seems to be enjoying himself in Hong Kong. I'm afraid I mocked him terribly about his form for getting locked in his bathroom. So he told us that he also managed to  locked out of his apartment. On one of the hottest nights of the year, after a night out, he had to use sign language to communicate with the concierge and the locksmith. The locksmith took 3 hours to crack the lock after the key snapped off in the lock. Andy increasingly frustrated trying to communicate, towards the end simply trying to find out how much he owed the guy. In the end in perfect English he replied "three hundred dollars". Nonplussed, Andy left him in the flat while he went to the cash machine to cash, returning to find him supping a cup of tea.

We hadn't eaten so we went to Casa Tapas for dinner. I had a choose of Choritzo, Patas Brasvas, Chicken skewers, and spiced lamb, it was all very tasty.

After that we had another couple of drinks and a chat in the dog and partridge. The others went off into town, but like the old git I am I decided to get a taxi home so as not to be too trashed for work.

I am writing this post on my new Mac Book. My 7 year old Powerbook finally bit the dust so I managed to get a 13inch Mac Pro off ebay for a reasonable price. I was really impressed with how well Time Machine recovered my files. Add the to the fact the Virgin is about to double my broadband speed its been a good day in Tech for me.