As we head into shopping season, customers aren’t the only ones getting excited. More online shopping means more opportunities for cybercriminals to grab their share using scams and data theft.

One particular threat we’re following closely and expect to increase over the next several weeks is credit card skimming. Online stores are not always as secure as you might think they are, and yet you need to hand over your valuable credit card information in order to buy anything.

When a merchant website is hacked, any purchase made has the potential of being intercepted by bad actors. Often, the malicious code is right underneath the surface and yet completely invisible to shoppers.

One particular skimming campaign we have been following picked up the pace drastically in October after a lull during the summer. With hundreds of stores compromised, you may come across it if you shop online on a regular basis.

The Kritec campaign

First discovered this credit card skimming operation back in March 2023, as it stood out from the rest due to its large volume. The threat actors were also taking the time to customize their skimmer for each victim site with very convincing templates that were even localized in several languages.

The experience was so smooth and seamless that it made it practically impossible for online shoppers to even realize that their credit card information had just been stolen.

Threat actors ramp up their activity just in time for the holiday season

In April this skimming campaign reached a peak and then slowed down during the summer. However it came back, increasing to its highest volume in October. We measured this activity based on the number of newly registered domain names attributed to this threat actor.

The infrastructure is located on the IT WEB LTD network (ASN200313) registered in the British Virgin Islands.

   

How to shop safely online

If you are shopping online, and especially via smaller merchants (i.e. not Amazon, Walmart, etc), you absolutely need to be extra careful. Unless you are able to perform a full website audit yourself, you simply can’t be sure that the platform hasn’t been compromised.

Having said that, if the website looks like it hasn’t been maintained in a while (for example it is displaying outdated information, such as ”Copyright 2018′) you probably should stay away from it. Most compromises happen because a website’s content management system (CMS) and its plugins are outdated and vulnerable.

There are tools that can also detect malicious code embedded into websites. Most antivirus products offer some kind of web protection that detects malicious domains and IP addresses. But because threat actors are constantly swapping their infrastructure, it is also a good idea to have some kind of heuristic detection for things like malicious JavaScript snippets.

Are you looking to create tables in your web page? Consider using div tags instead. Why? Personally I find tables a little bit messy, there can be issues with the table cells & rows. If you are experiencing problems with your table, why not try this alternative solution.
 
Add the follow CSS code to your main CCS file.

div.table {border: 1px solid black; display: table; }
div.tr {border: 1px solid black; display: table-row; }
div.td {border: 1px solid black; display: table-cell; }


Here are 3 different versions of using the div tags. Try No.1 first.
1.

<div class="table">
  <div class="tr">
    <div class="td">Row 1, Cell 1</div>
    <div class="td">Row 1, Cell 2</div>
    <div class="td">Row 1, Cell 3</div>
  </div>
  <div class="tr">
    <div class="td">Row 2, Cell 1</div>
    <div class="td">Row 2, Cell 2</div>
    <div class="td">Row 2, Cell 3</div>
  </div>
</div>


2.

<div class="table">
  <div class="tr">
    <span class="td">Row 1, Cell 1</span>
    <span class="td">Row 1, Cell 2</span>
    <span class="td">Row 1, Cell 3</span>
  </div>
  <div class="tr">
    <span class="td">Row 2, Cell 1</span>
    <span class="td">Row 2, Cell 2</span>
    <span class="td">Row 2, Cell 3</span>
  </div>
</div>

3.
  <div style="display: table;">
        <div style="display: table-row;">
            <div style="display: table-cell;">Row 1, Cell 1</div>
            <div style="display: table-cell;">Row 1, Cell 1</div>
            <div style="display: table-cell;">Row 1, Cell 1</div>
        </div>
        <div style="display: table-row;">
            <div style="display: table-cell;">Row 2, Cell 1</div>
            <div style="display: table-cell;">Row 2, Cell 1</div>
            <div style="display: table-cell;">Row 2, Cell 1</div>
        </div>
    </div>

Let me know how it goes!

Windows 10 and Windows 11 computers with a legal license key are suddenly deactivated.

   

What an amazing source of graphic templates to create posters, social media banners, or anything else involving high quality beautiful graphical presentations. I'm just blown away by; the editor which allows you to make an object your own. The fact that you can download your creations and use them online in any way you see fit and all 100% legal. They also allow you to save a library of your creations so you can modify and reprint at any time.
These guys thought of everything, the site is just incredible (IMO). I'm a musician with upcoming Gigs, so creating promotional posters, flyers, etc. has just become as easy as can be, and look 100% professionally done. Can you tell I'm impressed? 
The only gotcha is that IF you want posters, larger canvases, banners created, you must save in very high resolutions. They do charge a fee for such a download... $11, if I'm not mistaken. The fact is, they know you just saved hundreds of dollars on design work and printing prep, so I think 11 for a print shop quality download in more than reasonable. 

Check it out, they're really fantastic!

https://www.postermywall.com/

A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a security appliance that processes network traffic and applies rules to block potentially dangerous traffic. NGFWs evolve and expand upon the capabilities of traditional firewalls. They do all that firewalls do, but more powerfully and with additional features.

Consider two airport security agencies. One checks to make sure passengers are not on any no-fly lists, that their identities match what is listed on their tickets, and that they are going to destinations the airport actually serves. The second one, in addition to checking no-fly lists and so on, inspects what the passengers are carrying, making sure they do not have dangerous or disallowed items. The first agency keeps airports secure from obvious threats; the second also identifies threats that may be less obvious.

An ordinary firewall is like the first security agency: it blocks or allows data (passengers) based on where it is going, whether or not it is part of a legitimate network connection, and where it comes from. An NGFW is more like the second security agency: it inspects data on a deeper level to identify and block threats that may be hidden in normal-seeming traffic.
What capabilities does an NGFW have?

NGFWs can do everything that regular firewalls can do. This includes:

    Packet filtering: Inspecting each individual packet of data and blocking dangerous or unexpected packets. Packet filtering is explained more below.
    Stateful inspection: Looking at packets in context to make sure they are part of a legitimate network connection.
    VPN awareness: Firewalls are able to identify encrypted VPN traffic and allow it through.

Traditional firewall lacks next generation firewall NGFW capabilities, lets packets through

NGFWs also add several capabilities that older firewalls do not have. NGFWs use deep packet inspection (DPI) in addition to packet filtering. And according to Gartner, a global research and advisory firm, an NGFW includes:

    Application awareness and control
    Intrusion prevention
    Threat intelligence
    Paths for upgrading in order to add future information feeds
    Techniques to address evolving security threats

Next-generation firewall NGFW blocks malicious packets

These capabilities are explained in detail below.

Most of these features are possible because, unlike regular firewalls, NGFWs can process traffic at several layers in the OSI model, not just layers 3 (the network layer) and 4 (the transport layer). NGFWs can look at layer 7 HTTP traffic and identify which applications are in use, for instance. This is an important capability because layer 7 (the application layer) is increasingly used for attacks to get around the security policies applied at layers 3 and 4 by traditional firewalls.

(To learn more about the OSI layers, see What is the OSI model?)
What are packet filtering and deep packet inspection (DPI)?

Packet filtering

All data that traverses a network or the Internet is broken down into smaller pieces called packets. Because these packets contain the content that enters a network, firewalls inspect them and block or allow them to prevent malicious content (such as a malware attack) from getting through. All firewalls have this packet filtering capability.

Packet filtering works by inspecting the source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols associated with each packet — in other words, where each packet comes from, where it is going, and how it will get there. Firewalls allow or block packets based on this assessment, filtering out the disallowed packets.

As an example, attackers sometimes try to exploit vulnerabilities associated with the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) by sending specially crafted packets to the port used by this protocol, port 3389. However, a firewall can inspect a packet, see which port it is going to, and block all packets directed at that port — unless they are from a specifically allowed IP address. This involves inspecting network traffic at layers 3 (to see source and destination IP addresses) and 4 (to see the port).
Deep packet inspection (DPI)

NGFWs improve upon packet filtering by instead performing deep packet inspection (DPI). Like packet filtering, DPI involves inspecting every individual packet to see source and destination IP address, source and destination port, and so on. This information is all contained in the layer 3 and layer 4 headers of a packet.

But DPI also inspects the body of each packet, not just the header. Specifically, DPI checks packet bodies for malware signatures and other potential threats. It compares the contents of each packet to the contents of known malicious attacks.
What is application awareness and control?

NGFWs block or allow packets based on which application they are going to. They do so by analyzing traffic at layer 7, the application layer. Traditional firewalls do not have this capability because they only analyze traffic at layers 3 and 4.

Application awareness allows administrators to block potentially risky applications. If an application's data cannot get past the firewall, then it cannot introduce threats into the network.

According to Gartner's definitions of the terms, both this capability and intrusion prevention (described below) are elements of DPI.
What is intrusion prevention?

Intrusion prevention analyzes incoming traffic, identifies known threats and potential threats, and blocks those threats. Such a feature is often called an intrusion prevention system (IPS). NGFWs include IPSes as part of their DPI capabilities.

IPSes can use several methods to detect threats, including:

    Signature detection: Scanning the information within incoming packets and comparing it to known threats
    Statistical anomaly detection: Scanning traffic to detect unusual changes in behavior, as compared to a baseline
    Stateful protocol analysis detection: Similar to statistical anomaly detection, but focused on the network protocols in use and comparing them to typical protocol usage

What is threat intelligence?

Threat intelligence is information about potential attacks. Because attack techniques and malware strains are continually changing, up-to-date threat intelligence is crucial for blocking those attacks. NGFWs are able to receive and act on threat intelligence feeds from external sources.

Threat intelligence keeps IPS signature detection effective by providing the latest malware signatures.

Threat intelligence can also supply IP reputation information. "IP reputation" identifies IP addresses where attacks (especially bot attacks) often come from. A feed of IP reputation threat intelligence provides the latest known bad IP addresses, which an NGFW can then block.

From ensuring cyber compliance to preventing copyright infringement, knowing what content is human-created and what was generated by AI is crucial. With 99.1% accuracy and full model coverage that includes GPT-4 and Bard, Copyleaks AI Content Detector is the market’s most comprehensive solution.


The only platform that:

Detects AI-generated source code from GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and more.
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Detects AI content that has been plagiarized as well as paraphrased.
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Artificial intelligence is poised to forever change how we use computers, or at least Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates thinks so.

In a blog post, Gates shares some of his predictions for the future, now that AI is becoming more and more prevalent. According to Gates, within the next five years, we won’t be using different apps for different tasks. Instead, you’ll simply tell your phone or computer what you want to do in everyday language, and it will be able to handle your request.

“In the near future, anyone who’s online will be able to have a personal assistant powered by artificial intelligence that’s far beyond today’s technology,” Gates says.

Gates calls the software that would be able to accomplish tasks based on its knowledge of you as a person an "agent."

“Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers. They’re also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons,” Gates says.

The key for agents to work is for them to be able to learn about you as a person. The more they know about you, the more they’ll be able to anticipate your needs and help you.

“They’re proactive—capable of making suggestions before you ask for them. They accomplish tasks across applications,” Gates says. “They improve over time because they remember your activities and recognize intent and patterns in your behaviour. Based on this information, they offer to provide what they think you need, although you will always make the final decisions.”

I find that 99% of instructions to create simple page section links are convoluted and confusing to say the least. They are written by coders
who forget that the general public does not work in web development & are not up to speed on all the terminology and are simply written badly.

Here is my version of how to do it the easy way.

1. Think of and note the sections you want to create.These would be the areas within the web page. Here is my example section notes.

sections to create

exclusive
ratings
gallery
upcoming
carousel

2. Using my example, create the following HTML links within the web page you want to section off.  This code goes after the <body> in HTML preferably at the top of the page. It makes for a navigation section at the top of the page.

<a href="#exclusive">Access our exclusive content</a><br>
<a href="#ratings">Review our ratings & rate us yourself</a><br>
<a href="#gallery1">pictures and videos </a><br>
<a href="#upcoming">Our upcoming shows and events Agenda</a><br>
<a href="#carousel">A carousel of misc. images</a><br>


3. Define or create the actual sections. Place these at the beginning of each the sections you wish to create.

<a id="exclusive"></a>

<a id="ratings"></a>

<a id="gallery1"></a>

<a id="upcoming"></a>

<a id="carousel"></a>


From the same web page you should now be able to jump around to the different sections. Test them for programmatic errors.


4. Linking to a section, starting from a different web page.

Create the following at the top of <body> in HTML on the "other web page".

<id="exclusive">
<a href="https://examplesite.com/pics.html#exclusive"></a>
<id="ratings">
<a href="https://examplesite.com/pics.html#ratings"></a>
<id="gallery1">
<a href="https://examplesite.com/pics.html#gallery1"></a>
<id="upcoming">
<a href="https://examplesite.com/pics.html#upcoming"></a>
<id="carousel">
<a href="https://examplesite.com/pics.html#carousel"></a>

5. Create your links from the different pages to including the #anchor
example= <a href="https://examplesite.com/pics.html#exclusive">Our Exclusive Content</a>

As promised, anchors the easy way. Enjoy!

Some times no matter how hard you try, you cannot get french characters to appear properly in HTML. Is it the Unicode setup in the page? 98% of the time <meta charset="utf-8"/> is not declared in HTML head and does solve the problem. Some times the page itself is not saved in UTF8, so saving it to the correct format fixes the problem. But what about the times that this does not solve the issue? I've encountered a couple of cases where it just didn't make any sense and no solution could be found besides redoing the coding on the page.. In most cases this requires a special skill set and time, neither of which is always available to you.

Because time is often a factor, a couple of times I had to temporarily rely on character codes to provide a quick fix and move on. Lets face it, you cannot spend hours debugging HTML pages and formats on someone else's dime. If you can only afford minutes and not hours to finding a solution, here is a temporary fix.  Apply the character codes directly to the HTML source. Here is a list of character codes to provide a quick/easy fix to the problem.  I use the Friendly codes, they work without any issue.
Review your raw html coding, look for characters that will not appear in HTML and replace the letter or symbol with the friendly chasrachter code.

Display   Friendly   Code Numerical   Code Hex   Code Description
À          &Agrave;   À              &#xC0;      Capital A-grave
à          &agrave;    à              &#xE0;      Lowercase a-grave
          &Acirc;                     &#xC2;     Capital A-circumflex
â          &acirc;       â              &#xE2;      Lowercase a-circumflex
Æ        &AElig;       Æ               &#xC6;     Capital AE ligature
æ        &aelig;       æ               &#xE6;      Lowercase AE ligature
Ç         &Ccedil;     Ç               &#xC7;     Capital C-cedilla
ç         &ccedil;      ç              &#xE7;      Lowercase c-cedilla
È         &Egrave;    È             &#xC8;      Capital E-grave
è         &egrave;    è             &#xE8;       Lowercase e-grave
É         &Eacute;    É             &#xC9;      Capital E-acute
é         &eacute;    é             &#xE9;        Lowercase e-acute
Ê         &Ecirc;      Ê             &#xCA;        Capital E-circumflex
ê          &ecirc;     ê               &#xEA;       Lowercase e-circumflex
Ë        &Euml;      Ë              &#xCB;       Capital E-umlaut
ë         &euml;      ë              &#xEB;       Lowercase e-umlaut
Π        &Icirc;       Π             &#xCE;       Capital I-circumflex
î         &icirc;        î              &#xEE;       Lowercase i-circumflex
Ï         &Iuml;      Ï              &#xCF;       Capital I-umlaut
ï         &iuml;       ï              &#xEF;         Lowercase i-umlaut
Ô       &Ocirc;      Ô             &#xD4;       Capital O-circumflex
ô        &ocirc;      ô             &#xF4;        Lowercase o-circumflex
Œ      &OElig;       Œ            &#x152;      Capital OE ligature
œ      &oelig;        œ            &#x153;      Lowercase oe ligature
Ù       &Ugrave;    Ù           &#xD9;       Capital U-grave
ù       &ugrave;     ù          &#xF9;        Lowercase u-grave
Û      &Ucirc;      Û             &#xDB;       Capital U-circumflex
û      &ucirc;      û             &#xFB;        Lowercase U-circumflex
Ü      &Uuml;      Ü            &#xDC;       Capital U-umlaut
ü      &uuml;      ü            &#xFC;        Lowercase U-umlaut
«      &laquo;      «           &#xAB;        Left angle quotes
»      &raquo;     »            &#xBB;       Right angle quotes
€      &euro;       €            &#x80;       Euro
₣      ₣   &#x20A3;                           Franc

*The French character appears twice because the codes are being translated by My_BB & display on the right side of the code.

This post is meant to be an initial introduction to the subject of VLANs (Virtual LANs). It will touch lightly on subjects such as what is the benefit of using VLANs, some usage scenarios, as well as types of VLAN tagging.

Introduction to Virtual LANs (VLANs) and Tagging

Virtual LANs (VLANs) allow network administrators to subdivide a physical network into separate logical broadcast domains. On a standard Layer 2 network, all hosts connected to a switch are members of the same broadcast domain; and broadcast domains can only be physically separated across different switches by routers.

As networks scale, it becomes necessary to introduce multiple broadcast domains in order to segment traffic for performance, security or logistics reasons. Without the use of VLANs, this would typically require each network segment to have its own separate switch infrastructure, with one or more routers managing communication between each switch segment.

A VLAN represents a broadcast domain. VLANs are identified by a VLAN ID (a number between 0 – 4095), with the default VLAN on any network being VLAN 1. Each port on a switch or router can be assigned to be a member of a VLAN (i.e., to allow receiving and sending traffic on that VLAN). For example: on a switch, traffic that is sent to a port that is a member of VLAN 100, may be forwarded to any other VLAN 100 port on the switch, and it can also travel across a trunk port (connections between switches) to another switch and forwarded to all VLAN 100 ports on that switch. Traffic won't, however, be forwarded to ports that are on a different VLAN ID.


Typical Usage Situations

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A few examples of what VLANs can be used for:

    To separate network management traffic from end-user or server traffic.
    To isolate sensitive infrastructure, services, and hosts such as corporate users from guest users.
    To prioritize or implement Quality of Service (QoS) rules for specific services, such as VoIP Phones.
    To provide network services for different clients in an ISP, Datacenter or Office Building using the same switch and router infrastructure.
    To separate groups of hosts logically, irrespective of physical location—for example, allowing Human Resources employees to share the same network subnet and access the same network resources, regardless of their location within the building.
This effectively allows a network administrator to logically split up a switch, allowing multiple broadcast domains to coexist on the same hardware, but maintaining the isolation, security, and performance benefits of using completely separate switches.

As VLANs are a Layer 2 protocol, Layer 3 routing is required to allow communication between VLANs, in the same way a router would segment and manage traffic between two subnets on different switches. In addition, some Layer 3 switches support routing between VLANs, allowing traffic exchange to occur at the core switches, increasing performance by avoiding sending traffic through the router.

In order to implement VLANs, the routers and switches must support VLANs. Although there are several proprietary protocols in existence, the most commonly used protocol for configuring VLANs is IEEE 802.1Q.  Switches that support VLANs are often called "Managed" switches, but it is important to know this can be a misused marketing term and doesn't guarantee VLAN support. All of Ubiquiti’s routers, wireless solutions and most switches support the 802.1Q VLAN protocol, and are interoperable with third-party hardware using the same protocol.

VLAN Tagging

The definition and usage of the term VLAN Tagging varies greatly depending on what hardware vendor is used. In order for 802.1Q compatible hardware to identify what VLAN a data packet belongs to, an 802.1Q Header is added to the Ethernet frame which specifies the VLAN ID.
This VLAN ID tag may be added or removed by a host, a router, or a switch. Within the network, physical ports are configured as untagged or tagged for a specific VLAN—determining whether to accept and forward traffic belonging to each VLAN ID. Let's take a closer look at each one.

Untagged: a VLAN that is untagged is also sometimes referred to as the "Native VLAN".  Any traffic that is sent from a host to a switch port that doesn't have a VLAN ID specified, will be assigned to the untagged VLAN.
This option is typically used when connecting hosts such as workstations or devices like IP cameras that don't tag their own traffic, and only need to communicate on one specific VLAN.  A port can only have one Untagged VLAN configured at a time.

Tagged: Assigning a tagged VLAN to a port adds that port to the VLAN, but all ingress and egress traffic must be tagged with the VLAN ID in order to be forwarded. The host connected to the switch port must be capable of tagging its own traffic, and be configured to do so with the same VLAN ID.
Tagged VLANs (as opposed to Untagged) on a port are typically used when connecting to a host that needs access to several networks at once using the same interface, such as a server providing services to more than one department in an office. It can also be used when connecting two switches, in order to restrict access to a VLAN to hosts connected to a downlink switch for security purposes.

Trunk: A trunk port is typically considered a member of all VLANs—it will accept and forward traffic on any VLAN ID and is typically configured for the uplink and downlink ports between switches and routers.

Although each Ubiquiti product family uses a different approach to configuring VLANs, they all follow the same Untagged, Tagged, Trunked method of managing traffic and are interoperable.