Computer Criminals could steal your Keystrokes

Posted Tuesday, October 22, 2008 10.32

Tech criminals could soon be eavesdropping on your typing by analysing the electromagnetic signals produced by your keyboard.

Swiss researchers have found by analysing the signals produced by keystrokes, criminals can find out what a target types.

Four attacks have been developed by security researchers that work on a wide variety of computer keyboards.

The results the researchers found has led them to declare that the keyboards were "not safe to transmit sensitive information".

The four attacks dreamed up by doctoral students Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL).

11 different keyboard models were tested by connecting them to a standard computer via either a USB or PS/2 socket.

All the attacks the students developed also worked with keyboards embedded into laptops.

The research students found that every keyboard that was tested was vulnerable to at least one of the 4 attacks, one attack was shown to work over a 20 m distance.

Radio antennas were used by the researchers to "fully or partially recover keystrokes" by spotting the electromagnetic radiation embedded in each key press.

In a web posting the students added: "no doubt that our attacks can be significantly improved, since we used relatively inexpensive equipments [sic]."

Videos showing the researchers early work shows them connecting keyboards to a laptop running on battery power, they avoided using a desktop computer or an LCD monitor to minimise the chance of picking up signals from other sources.

Details of the keyboard attacks are scant that the work is expected to be published in a peer-reviewed journal soon.

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Best Council Website Award from the HALC

Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 11.25

TLC Online are pleased to announce that work on the Ringwood Town Council web site http://www.ringwood.gov.uk, has resulted in a "Best Council Website" award in the Hampshire Association of Local Councils Communications Awards 2008.

Websites were judged according to a criteria, which included content; user friendliness and interactivity; visual design; structure; and navigation and functionality. On presenting the Award, the judges commented that the website was “extremely informative and innovative in communicating its message to the local community”.

Jo Stannard, Deputy Town Clerk said “We are delighted to have achieved this recognition for the work that we have put into developing our website.

I would like to thank Jaki and John at TLC Online, who manage our numerous updates and requests with good humour and the upmost professionalism.

The website, designed and maintained by Jaki and John Brown of TLC Online has also been shortlisted in the Hantsweb Awards 2008 in the category of Best Public Service Website, the results of which will be announced on 4th November.

The husband and wife web team is no stranger to Hantsweb Awards, being runners-up in 2003 & 2004 with the Fawley Parish Council website and in 2005, their work on Marchwood Parish Council website came up trumps and were awarded the coveted prize.

John said “Working with everybody at Ringwood Town Council, has been a pleasure. Jo Stannard, the Deputy Town Clerk, has ensured that residents and visitors to Ringwood are informed by providing content so that we are able to create pages on the web site which are easily accessible and good to look at.”

• HALC Website

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Hants Web Awards 2008

Posted Monday, September 8, 2008 11.25

Earlier this morning (Monday 8 September 2008) we had some great news.

Two of the websites we have designed and maintain have been shortlisted for this year's Hants Web Awards 2008.

Ringwood Town Council website has been shortlisted in the category for "Best Public Service Website" and The League of Venturers Search and Rescue Website in the category of "Best Young Person's Website".

This is great news on two counts:-

1. The hard work and dedication that people put into supplying us with information for their sites.
2. The hard work we carry out to create webpages that are easy on the eye and contain relevant information.

For further information about this year's Hants Web Awards, please visit their website.

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Browser Wars! New baby on the block.

Posted Saturday, September 6, 2008 9:31

This week saw a new browser "baby on the block" as Google released “Chrome”.

This new release is on the back of the latest “Beta” release version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 and an update for Apple’s Safari browser.

Both Google and Microsoft are claiming that their new browsers can download web content, much faster than previous browsers, especially in Microsoft's case.

But now that Google has officially entered the browser wars, will Microsoft see its grip on the browser market decrease significantly, that in a few years, it may go the way of Netscape?

Most people across the globe, don't search the Internet, they "Google the Internet", and "to Google" or "googling" has now entered into most dictionaries.

The Microsoft "live" search, on the other hand, has never really taken off, with most people, not bothering to use that search system in preference.

Microsoft, has over the last few years, played catch up to Google's software, which has slowly been progressing quietly, without any significant rival software from Microsoft.

We have tested both the new browsers and found that they are considerably faster at downloading content, but there is a factor that none of the browser software teams seem to put into the equation, that is, the quality of the broadband connection a user may have, whether wired or WiFi.

A poor quality connection will give you a very slow download speed, especially if you live in a very rural part of the UK where antiquated equipment is still being used at the telephone exchange.

It is exciting to think that the major browsers are taking into consideration the speed we need to access information quickly, whether at home, school or in business, but with the browsers claiming to download content at even faster speeds, if the infrastructure is not there to deliver this content, the browsers will never live up to their claims.

Now that Google has gone into the browser market, it is also interesting to read this week, that they will not stop their donations to the Mozilla Corporation who offer a rival browser, Firefox.

Where next for the big 5 browsers?

Downloads:

• Mozilla Firefox
  
• Google Chrome
  
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
  
• Apple Safari
  
• Opera
  

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Firefox goes USB

Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 9:31

Those of you who need Firefox 3 on the go can now get a portable USB Stick edition of the browser from PortableApps.com.

The download lets you launch Firefox from your USB stick and lets you take all your extensions and bookmarks with you while you are travelling,

The software also makes sure that the computer you're using at the time doesn't end up saving your info, the information is retained on the USB stick.

The browser is 8MB and free under the open source software licence though, as with all open source stuff, I'm sure the good people at PortableApps would love it if you threw them a few pounds for this very useful little bit of software.

• Portable Apps

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Keeping your browser up-to-date

Posted Thursday, October 23, 2008 9:39

This could be a potential problem for the surfer, browser versions are updated as companies and communities find potential vulnerability and these problems are fixed.

It is very easy for you to update your browser to the latest version, most browsers have a "check for updates" under the help menu on the browser.

This should be checked on a weekly/monthly basis to keep your machine protected while you are surfing on the Internet.

Here are a list of the most popular browsers available:-

• Firefox
• Internet Explorer
• Opera
• Safari

Most updates should only take a few minutes depending on your connection speed, along with your security updates this is the most important update you can do.

Discussions are going on at the moment amongst the developers to see if it would be possible to include a sell by date on the browser such as we currently find on food.

This is hoped to encourage surfers to update their browser on a more regular basis.

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