In this
issue:
Serious Computer
Security Issue
There is an extremely
serious vulnerability in the Domain Name
System or DNS, one of the key
technologies that underlies the Internet
(www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/800113).
DNS converts a human readable address
like
www.ih-online.com into a machine
readable set of numbers like
67.62.124.98 that computers use to
“dial” up web sites and e mail servers.
This vulnerability could enable an
attacker to change that dialed number to
anything they want. So, instead of going
to your bank web site or e mailing your
company, you go where they want you to
instead. Major manufacturers like
Microsoft, Apple, and the LINUX vendors
have scrambled to close this security
hole, but your server must apply the
patches they are producing.
As a side note, Iron
Horse has found that over 95% of the DNS
servers it examines have some sort of
error in their public DNS information or
processing, and many of these errors
have serious security and reliability
implications. Almost all of the
administrators we’ve talked to about
these issues have been unaware of the
problem, though a few (incorrectly)
assumed there were no issues. One major
government crime fighting agency had an
error in its DNS that we told it about.
They ignored the problem and shortly
thereafter got hit by a denial of
service attack that took it off the
Internet for some time.
How Safe Do You
Feel?
OK, that was scary,
but things like this can't happen to
you, right? Wrong. Even people who have
a lot of technical knowhow and large
financial resources can be successfully
attacked. With the following examples,
you will see why it pays to be a little
paranoid.
A Silly and Fun
Video About Disease Prevention
This video shows you
the right way to cough and sneeze to
avoid infecting others. We won't hit flu
season for another couple of months, but
you can start practicing now! (grin)
http://www.coughsafe.com/media.html
Public health agencies are promoting
this video in our schools to try to cut
down on infection rates. The 1918 flu
pandemic infected 20% of the world's
population and killed 20-40 million
people.
http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/ A
bird flu in today's environment with
much easier travel would and no change
in preventive measures would result in
much higher rates of infections and many
more deaths. A pandemic flu could
overwhelm the medical establishment and
ability of emergency personnel to
respond. There would also be a severe
negative impact on many businesses,
especially those without a business
continuity plan and the ability of
employees to telecommute. Is your
business ready for the flu? If not, call
us!
Digital Publishing
At Iron Horse, we are
constantly talking to different
manufacturers about their products.
Occasionally, we see a new product
class, like e mail archiving or
anti-spam appliances that break new
ground. The newest example of a ground
breaking (but by no means new)
technology came with a visit from Rimage.
Rimage is in the business of limited
run, on demand CD/DVD/Blu-Ray
publishing. In effect, they are optical
media “printers.” In the printing world,
you might print out a proposal, manual,
or set of marketing materials for
someone. Rimage allows you to do the
same thing, only with optical disks. You
can put a lot of information on optical
disks and save a whole forest of trees,
but there is a lot more to digital
publishing than that.
First of all, I’d
like to dispel the idea that a
technology like this is completely
unnecessary because you can just
download what you want on demand from
the Internet. You can download
information, but having information that
is packaged and customized for you is
difficult. That information may take
forever to download. Due to security or
licensing restrictions, it may not be
downloadable (think music, installable
software, books on CD). It isn’t
portable or “instant” delivery you can’t
just hand a download to someone and they
can’t instantly load it up on their
machine. You can’t print useful
identifying information on it.
While digitally
publishing optical media sounds boring,
the applications of it are anything but.
CDs were first produced by banks to
provide accounting information for
larger customers. Every disk was
individual, customized, and often
encrypted. It saved on paper and
production time and delivery costs and
allowed businesses to receive
information in a more easily manipulated
electronic format. Telephone companies
also started offering bills on CDs so
that hundreds of pages of bills could
instead be delivered on a single CD.
The financial industry has long used CDs
and DVDs to distributed datasets of
current and historical financial
information and prospectuses.
Since then, digital
publishing has entered a number of
different industries. These days,
x-rays, CAT scans, and MRIs are usually
delivered on optical media. The disks
are produced one at a time and patient
identification is printed right on top
of the disk. You can walk out of a
digitally capable imaging facility with
a disk that you can take to any doctor.
It eliminates very expensive and
delicate films that are often lost. If
you want a copy of your films, you just
make a copy of the disk. The images are
also easily manipulated. The doctor can
zoom in and out and perform other image
manipulations, making it much easier to
see what is going on that in films. And,
while films are black and white, digital
images can be in color, allowing the
doctors to more quickly and accurately
read them.
The photographic
industry has been publishing custom
labeled CDs for some time. Many stores
now have kiosks where you can get your
own custom CD with thumbnail images
showing what’s on the CD and a date
printed on top.
Now, if you order
software on line and want a disk, you
are likely to have a Rimage optical
publishing device produce a CD for you
with your name and address on the CD,
the serial number, a bar code (for
mailing) and custom graphics. The
advantages of doing this for a software
publisher are many fold. They don’t have
to stock already burned copies of the
media. They can produce copies when
needed. They can always give you a copy
of the latest software build
incorporating all of the latest
enhancements and bug fixes. Their cost
to publish a disk is always fixed,
versus a production run of disks which
isn’t. They can customize software and
disk labels for particular customers.
They don’t have to place an order with a
production house, so they don’t ever run
out of media or have to worry about back
orders.
There are many other
uses for a digital publisher. We’ve
received marketing material on disk with
product demonstrations, white papers,
specification sheets that have been
custom printed for us. Real estate and
vacation companies can produce
inexpensive disks on demand rather than
expensive paper brochures and provide a
multimedia experience rather than static
images. Airplane companies publish disks
containing all of the manuals, wiring
diagrams, and customization information
for a particular airplane cost
effectively. Many companies are now
archiving data to optical media and
labeling the disks at the same time with
dates and barcodes so that they can be
easily (and automatically) identified
later. In short, anyone who wants to
publish content on demand and have it
digitally available could be a candidate
for a digital publishing device.
The Rimage units use
thermal printing to fuse beautiful
prints onto a disk. These prints are
very durable and are laser quality black
and white or color. The Rimage units
also come with very capable software
that allows for customizations like
adding customer information or bar
coding. The units can write and also
read barcodes. You could have data
archived across many disks, for example,
and with barcodes the Rimage could find
the disk that contained the information
you needed automatically. Watermarks can
be written on a disk so that if a disk
is copied and given to someone else, you
can tell where it came from. This is
very useful in situations where security
is an issue, such as when a feature film
producer is pre-releasing a copy of a
movie to critics or a software
manufacturer is beta testing a new game.
Other security features involve the
ability to restrict the capability to
produce disks and the logging of disk
production. In some offices, a Rimage
printer might be used for centralized
reading and production of optical disks,
eliminating the need for a reader or
writer in each machine.
While the paperless
office may never appear, you now know of
a way to save a thousands of trees while
producing easily distributed, secure,
malleable, digital, on demand
information.
As you might have
guessed, Iron Horse is an authorized
dealer of Rimage products. If you have
any questions about on demand disk
production, please contact us.