Category: Internet

Live Cyber Attacks Map

A live cyber attacks map from various companies may give you a different outlook on Internet security.

No longer available

The explanation from Norse Security’s website:
“Every second, Norse collects and analyzes live threat intelligence from darknets in hundreds of locations in over 40 countries. The attacks shown are based on a small subset of live flows against the Norse honeypot infrastructure, representing actual worldwide cyber attacks by bad actors. At a glance, one can see which countries are aggressors or targets at the moment, using which type of attacks (services-ports).”

~~Click on the image below to see live cyber security attacks right now. At this point, the live map only supports Chrome browser.~~

Heartbleed Bug, What You Need to Do

For the past two years (since March 2012), millions of websites may have been leaking sensitive data due to a major flaw in the OpenSSL software that are used to encrypt and transmit Internet data.

The Heartbleed bug as called by the researchers who discovered it, would enable hackers to obtain a compromised site’s encryption keys, which makes all passing data basically available for them to see. What makes it worse is that this type of attack would leave no trace. Considering so many websites used the affected versions of OpenSSL, the potential damage could be serious.

The good news is as this security flaw was discovered, many major companies are already patching their websites.

Affected Sites

Yahoo
Google
Facebook
Dropbox
Amazon
Intuit (TurboTax)
Many others…

For any other sites not listed, check their vulnerabilities by using this LastPass Heartbleed checker.

What You Need to Do

Until the affected websites fixed the vulnerabilities, you can’t do much because you could very well be handing over your new password to an undetected hacker. But once they patched their OpenSSL, you need to change your password right away. At this point the sites mentioned above have already patched their sites, so it’s safe to change your password.

If you have a habit to use the same password for all your online accounts, then you need to change your password even for all sites, because your password is already compromised from the affected services. Hackers can still use that same password to gain entry to your account for the unaffected websites.

Don’t Use the Same Password for Multiple Websites

It bears repeating with this latest discovery that it’s never a good idea to use the same password for multiple accounts. Even if you didn’t want to use a unique password for each online account you own, at the very least do so in a group. So use one password for critical sites such as your online banking and tax, another one for emails, a different one for other less important sites. Make sure you also follow these safety tips for social media.

How to Make Google AdSense Responsive

With many people accessing websites from non-traditional desktop nowadays, it’s important to incorporate responsive design into your website. In the same way, Google AdSense can also be tweaked to adjust to the screen size of your visitors.

There are many approaches of how to make Google AdSense responsive without violating Google AdSense policies. The easiest thing to do is to let Google do everything by creating a new Responsive ad unit, however this is still in beta.

Google AdSense Responsive Ad Unit (BETA)

I like to use a different approach that’s based on JavaScript modification demonstrated by Amit Agarwal of Labnol.org. It’s confirmed that this modification was approved by Google so it does not violate AdSense policies.

If you review Amit’s alternative approach, the slight difference here is I’m using two ad units and whichever ad unit is picked is based on the set width (in this example it’s 530px) of a div container (“content”), not from the whole body.


<script type="text/javascript">

     <!-- CHECK DIV ID/CLASS NAME -->

     ad = document.getElementById('content');

     <!-- END CHECK DIV ID/CLASS NAME -->

     adWidth = ad.getBoundingClientRect().width ? ad.getBoundingClientRect().width : ad.offsetWidth;

     <!-- START EDIT HERE -->

     google_ad_client = "##your-google-ad-id##";
     adWidth < 530 ? google_ad_types = ["250", "250", "##ad-slot-1##"] : google_ad_types = ["300", "250", "##ad-slot-2##"];
     
     <!-- END EDIT HERE -->
    
     document.write('<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="width:'
          + google_ad_types[0] + 'px;height:' 
          + google_ad_types[1] + 'px" data-ad-client="'
          + google_ad_client + '" data-ad-slot="'
          + google_ad_types[2] + '"></ins>'
          );

     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

</script>

<script async 
     src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js">
</script>

This snippet was created to use ad unit with the size of 300×250 and 250×250. You need to change the parameters on the highlighted line. At the very least, you need to use your Ad Sense publisher id, and the slot id of both ad units.

The “content” ID attribute is based on Genesis Framework (with Genesis 2, this is true only if you still use the XHTML markup. If you use HTML5, refer to the post on how to add back the ID attribute). You can leave it unchanged if you use Genesis Themes, but it’s always safe to double check your element id name and change it accordingly.

Caveat

This solution does not auto-refresh. So if you access load the page on a tablet and rotate the orientation, the Google ads that’s served the first time the page load will stay until the next page refresh. But I don’t find this to be a major problem as visitors will still see the ads except maybe not with the correct sizing just for that page.

Free and Paid Stock Photos Sites

One sure way to enhance your blog is to put images on its pages. However, we can’t just take any pictures on the web and add it to our website due to copyright infringement issue. Fortunately, there are many stock exchange photos sites that we can use to get copyright free images. But if you’re not careful, using stock images can also get expensive especially if your blog generates little or no income.

So here is a list of some websites that offer even free images for commercial use (as long as you follow their terms of use) and a few of reasonably priced premium sites.

Certainly there are more sites than what’s listed here, but the criteria at this time are all sites that are either free or the least expensive (for the paid ones).

If anyone has any suggestions on other free and/or economical paid sites for stock photos, please let us know and we’ll include them here.

Free Stock Photos

FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Their free photos and illustrations are ideal for business, personal and educational use. Every image is free, with an option to buy larger images at reasonable prices.

Morgue File
These images come with free usage right with attribution. However, you are responsible for contacting the photographer to make sure any model or property releases have been obtained.

Pexels
Pexels is a free stock photo and video website and app that helps designers, bloggers, and everyone who is looking for visuals to find great photos and videos that can be downloaded and used for free. If you see a photo or video you like, simply download it for free (no strings attached!).

Pixabay
Over 300,000 high quality photos, illustrations, and vector graphics. All images are free – even for commercial use! No attributions required.

Unsplash
Carefully selected high resolution images can be found on this site. Its collections grow gradually by 10 new photos for every 10 days. Unsplash adopts Creative Commons Zero license which means you have the freedom to copy, modify, distribute and use the photos without permission, whether it’s for a personal blog or for commercial purposes.

Paid Stock Photos

Big Stock Photo
Reasonably priced and the site gives away “Free Image of the Week” for subscribers. You can either buy a pack of credits (which lasts for one year) or a subscription for greater savings.

Deposit Photos
Very reasonably priced for regular blog sites that don’t generate much income.

Dollar Photo Club
New site from Fotolia.com with a membership pricing model. Depending on your use, this might be a very economic alternative as each high-quality image costs only $1. The pricing model is a bit unique in a way that you are charged a membership fee for $99/year which entitled you to download 99 stock photos. This credit doesn’t expire though so the following year, as you’re billed another $99 for 99 downloads plus the remainder of your download credits.

Update: Sad news. Unfortunately, DollarPhotoClub is now closed for new members and instead referring people to join Adobe Stock which has higher cost per image.

Pond5
Very cost-effective stock photos site. They not only have royalty-free photos, but also video, music tracks, sound effects and customizable After Effects projects. It’s worth checking out.

Waterfox: Firefox on Steroid

Update: As of 15 December 2015, Firefox 64-bit for Windows is also available and it can be downloaded here.

If you like Firefox on Windows system but have been waiting for the 64-bit version, check this one browser out, Waterfox, the fastest 64-bit variant of Firefox. As stated on its website, waterfoxproject.org, the browser is based on Mozilla Firefox source code, but compiled in Intel’s C++ Compiler for 64-bit systems.

Waterfox can be installed side-by-side with Firefox, however only one browser can run at a time as Waterfox accesses Firefox bookmark and pretty much your whole Firefox profile data. For me that is a good thing as I have nothing to copy over or modify and I can start using it as my default browser, but you may want to be careful if this is not really what you want.

All Firefox add-ons will also work, as long as they are 64-bit.

There are many advantages of using a 64-bit, among them are speed, multi-tasking and improved stress handling.

Caveats

Unlike Firefox, there’s no auto-update feature yet, so you have to keep checking Waterfox project’s website for the latest version. The other one is that the latest version of Waterfox is not necessarily in synced with Firefox. UPDATE: Waterfox does auto-update now and the version gap between Firefox and Waterfox, while it still exists it’s very close and with auto-update it’s almost negligible. Many Firefox’s 32-bit plugins may not run correctly on Waterfox. Other than that, this browser seems to deliver what it’s promised. It is FAST!

Download

Waterfox

Live Cyber Attacks Map

No longer available

Heartbleed Bug, What You Need to Do

Affected Sites

What You Need to Do

Don’t Use the Same Password for Multiple Websites

Further Reading

Free and Paid Stock Photos Sites

Free Stock Photos

Paid Stock Photos

Waterfox: Firefox on Steroid

Caveats

Download

Recent Posts

No longer available

Affected Sites

What You Need to Do

Don’t Use the Same Password for Multiple Websites

Further Reading

Caveat

Further Reading

Free Stock Photos

Paid Stock Photos

Caveats

Download

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