Change your router password...and a brief word from Tom

Security...it's sexy.

Not completely sure how it was implemented, but a drive-by pharming attack observed in Mexico illustrates the severity of introducing some modicum of security for your home network.

A group of individuals (assuming it was a group) executed the attack in a 2-initiative approach: changing the DNS settings on unsecured (i.e. no security or default security) residential routers and spamming individuals with an phished email which looks normal, but the tricky-dickies changed an image tag reference in the HTML to direct the user's browser to a fake bank's site.

The 'drive-by' aspect refers to the way in which the routers were hacked: this group probably roamed residential neighborhoods scanning for networks and used the manufacturer's default admin credentials to see which hadn't had their password changed. Those that hadn't had their default DNS settings reconfigured were susceptible. If a person accessing the internet via the affected router also received and participated in the phished email, they could potentially have given the group access to their login information to their bank.

Just think, in a residential neighborhood someone sat in a car, and using a laptop or some other capable handheld broadband device silently made the reconfigurations to various routers in a given area.

Granted, there are a lot of conditions that need to be met to make this attack work, but all the group would've needed was 2 or 3 well-heeled individuals to fall for the ploy. Recently, I was on the road and needed to check email, and wasn't near a hotspot (ok, I didn't want to go into a Starbucks or MacDonald's) so I used my laptop to scan for unsecured networks in the area, found one, connected, initiated my VPN connection, checked email, then got off the system, and drove away.

I wonder how long it'll take before this becomes a serious issue, and how local law enforcement will deal with it. Will they have a special task force ('Police Operations: Residential Networks' what an awesome acronym!)? What kind of statutes and laws will need to be put in place? Or, will the marketplace come up with solutions to deal with this new criminal activity? Or, will people spend a little extra effort and change their password on their routers?

All of this applies to everyone...except Tom Cruise...because he can make people do what he wants just by furrowing his little brows, flexing his featherweight high school pugilist build, and dropping mad Scientology energy on yo' ass. I'm OT-7, bitch! Clear as a muthafuckin' bell! Whoo-hooo!!

Here he is now pontificating on his thoughts on how to eradicate anal warts while also buttressing your home network:

Tom Cruise: a walking, talking space opera...David Bowie is jealous

Ground control to Major Tom...

We've seen this coming for some time.

First, he was an unstoppable blockbuster force.

Then, he was a mysterious, androgynous (closet?) enigma.

Then, he erupted into bizarre career-deathing activities with Matt Lauer.

Then...damage control consisted of getting him a gig to appease the Germans who absolutely hate his culty ass.

Finally, or rather I should say, and most recently, his 9+ minute manical, self-serving, cryptic soapboxing of the 'church' of Scientology streaks across the internets.

Doesn't anyone with a high school degree...oh wait...Tom doesn't have one...or at least a modicum of intelligence and rationale thought (oooo...sorry Tom, looking a couple kids short of a Brady Bunch on that one, too) know that it isn't a religion, and really just a manifestation of

1. L. Ron Hubbard's failed sci-fi ramblings and
2. proof that there's a sucker born every minute and with Tom heading the propaganda at least some sheep appear to be flocking to the wolf?

Scientology persists because folks running the show realized that a religious institution benefits from wonderful tax breaks. The 'church' remains venemously litigious to maintain that shield because without it, the honeymoon is over. A recent example is how it responded to Gawker posting the video.

Well, even with his own studio (the recently defunct United Artists, which he 'got' after Paramount dumped his crazy ass), and a would-be Bryan Singer-helmed Hitler-killer movie to woo the Germans he still manages to come across like the person we always knew he was. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think he suffers from the malady known as 'crazier than a shithouse rat', which I thought was always a funny saying because the mental image of a rodent kickin' it in the outhouse gnawing on corn dogs just conjures the chuckles out of me.

I don't think I'll ever be able to pay to watch another film of his ever again. Did you see the video that's been making the rounds?

WTF? Why does some of that nonsense he's spewing sound like D&D talk? Apparently, this video was culled from a longer, more agonizing 3 hour version that was blasted in the face of 'parishioners' just before Tom went on stage to accept a humanitarian award: the 'Freedom Medal of Valour'. Ahem.

Where was Tom when I was in that car accident and needed to use a phone? He never flew out of the sky and helped me change a tire.

To me, he's just so glib. Yer glib Tom! YER GLIB!

Why does Tom Cruise have to ruin every film?

Seriously folks...name one film in the past 7 years starring Tom Cruise that you liked.

OK, "The Last Samurai" was good, but that's only because it starred Ken Watanabe...and Cruise didn't even commit hari-kari with his war buddy at the end? He was supposed to be the LAST samurai. White Tiger...pphhhht.

"War of the Worlds" you ask? I wouldn't waste a blank DVD burning that one...if I were so inclined to participate in that legally fuzzy area of "archival".

OK..."Collateral" was pretty good because he didn't do his typical character: cocky ill-founded upstart has life-changing moment and redeems himself and saves at least up to 1/2 the population of the world...or at least the Church of Scientology.

I think the last decent film he made in which he wasn't a total tool was "Jerry Maguire". You know the film in which his supporting actor, Cuba Gooding, Jr. won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, then spent the next 10 years doing Eddie Murphy Daddy Daycare rip offs? Where's the cosmic harmony in that? Cuba has the kwan, Tom...not you.

So when I heard that Bryan Singer and Award-winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie (the two worked on the amazing "The Usual Suspects") were doing another film, Valkyrie, together I was fired up. Stoked. Juiced. 'Nads pumped. I was excited. Then I heard Tom Cruise was going to play the protagonist in the film, which (in a nutshell) is about Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, a German officer within Hitler's circle, and who led an attempt to bring down the Nazi regime from within and end the war by planting a bomb in Hitler's bunker.
Sounds pretty good, eh? Well not when 'ol Xenu poster-boy is playing Stauffenberg! I swear he's doing this just so he can get in with the Germans, because they sooo detest his "religion". Why does he have to take a role that would be better left to anyone with real screen chops? Jake Gyllenhaal? Christian Bale? Shit, even Kiefer Sutherland makes more sense.

Anyway, I will probably see it because of the director and screenwriter, and because of the other cast members, and I actually feel ok about seeing Tom Cruise in it because I know his character dies. Don't get me wrong...I hate Nazis as much as the next sane person. They're the best enemy to have in a shooter game outside of hellish mutants, andI love taking them out with close-range headshots, and I wish that Stauffenberg succeeded. I just like it when Tom Cruise's characters die in the end. Call me petty, but I'm not the one who has to brainwash women to become his podling bride.

I'm responsible for AIDS and the Internet

I created, and disseminated the AIDS virus by injecting myself with an al-Qaeda engineered virus then vomited bodily fluids into the flesh wound of a green monkey, thus infecting it. I then took this monkey to the market place and let him bite children and their mothers.

A few years later I invented the Internet. Al Gore is full of horse manure and DARPA got all its good ideas from me.

Not to be outdone by my supremely planned maneuver of gassing Kurds, I seeded the skies with highly magnetized nanofibers and stimulated them with a device I invented in order to cause Hurricane Katrina.

I'm the real owner of Halliburton, and Dick takes his orders from me.

Karl Rove and I ate at the same MacDonald's as children. He was such a bully...always taking my barbecue sauce into which I loved to dip my McNuggets. May Allah cause his condiments to sour forever more. I also gave him his nickname that the Bush president claims to have originated. Slandering false-truth spouting infidel.
I cloned Thomas Edison using a fingernail snagged on the first light bulb, then forced the infidel to work for me in an underground lab in Afghanistan. His computer network is now a highly prized multi-racked farm of PS3s, which he uses to run my various terrorist-themed simulations.

I invented wide-necked t-shirts, which Armani now sells for over $250 a piece. How do you think I'll pay for the mercenaries to spring me from Gitmo? Royalties, baby. I invented them, too, then told the dirty Americans how to use them. Now I have them right where I want them. I will again cause a U.S. recession of unimagined magnitude. How? I positioned Ben S. Bernanke to replace Greenspan....muah-hah-hah-hah!I created Scientology by giving L. Ron Hubbard an overdose of LSD, from which he never fully recovered. His hallucinations came to fruition in his construction of the existence of Thetans. This being said, you must know that Tom Cruise is a walking timebomb, trained to kill should I decide to utter the keyword from my powerfully hairy voicebox. All that kung-fu mumbo-jumbo he learned in all those Mission Impossible films was merely a facade to cloak my sinister plot of using him to kill the Queen, as depicted in "The Naked Gun", which I also adapted for the silver screen.

Kenneth Eng is my crowning cybernetic achievement in the sublime art of nonsensical, pedantic and sophomoric interpretations of solipsism, superseded solely by me as he was merely endowed with a fraction of my engrams.

Lastly, I am the real father of Britney Spears' children. She could not resist my powerful hairy charms. K-Fed was a robot I constructed to make everything look appear normal. Now she is crazy because I am not available to shave her nether-regions The paparazzi, which I invented, ate up the lies I wove into my rich tapestry of invention and innovation.

Going where no Damon has gone before

What do Matt Damon, Adrien Brody and Gary Sinise have in common?

They are each being seriously considered for the key roles of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy, respectively.

Lt. Sulu is rumored to be played by Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Jin Kwon on the popular TV show, Lost.

Tom Cruise is said to be playing the main antagonist as himself: an alien bent on world domination. David Beckham and Posh Spice are his henchman, and the Cruise triumvirate share an uneasy alliance with John Travolta's mysterious OT-8 band of warriors.

OK, seriously, Tom is really just going to be starring in his tribute movie to L. Ron Hubbard.

Seriously. It's called The Thetan, and Posh Spice really is rumored to play the role of the alien bride. Apparently major studios rejected it (no surprise there), so Tom is financing it himself. Did he learn from Travolta's mistake with Battlefield Earth? One of my favorite movie reviewer quotes from that one:

The script, based on a novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, is deeply dumb, depressingly derivative (ripping off "Planet of the Apes" the most) and just plain nonsense.
[USA Today Andy Seiler]

666 You're the beast, Tom Cruise

That lovable and hyperlitigous group we all love...

put your hands together for...

SCIENTOLOGISTS [whoo-hoo!]...

...has just declared that Tom Cruise is Christ for the Church of Xenu! Apparently, David Miscavige, head pod-person for the church, likened Maverick to the big J.C. because he's such an amazing spokesperson for the "religion". Most likely, this claim is heavily supported by the fact that Tom Cruise is a deeply sane and un-glib person, and because he's bankrolling a film (because every other studio didn't want their fingerprints on that trainwreck) called "The Thetan", in which David Beckham's wife, aka Posh Spice, will be playing the alien bride.

Did the world just drop a large hit of acid and didn't Tom learn from Travolta's "Battlefield Earth"? Since when does a cult...er...religion based on the ramblings of a failed sci-fi writer grow big crazy balls big enough to support this kind of parallel?

You know what Scientology is? It's the WWE of religion. That's right. It's religion-lite for those people who can't find one of the other faiths rich in spiritual goodness fully satisfying. It's for those folks who find that spending gobs of money on "clearing" themselves in order to achieve spiritual bliss the more appealing option. It's the new AA for the 2000s: it's where anyone who's anyone goes to build their social network because the conspicuous consumption is so damn sexy.

Minor digression: doesn't it strike you as an odd co-inkydink that "scientology" sounds a lot like "strategery"? Doesn't seem strange to me....why?...it's because neither are real! Yay!

Do you know what tenets the "Church" is founded on? Get this [snicker]: many years ago (in a galaxy far, far away) Xenu, this overlord from another world, decided to send all these Thetans (aliens) to Earth. Then he detonated their ships near mountains with nuclear weapons, which caused all these volcanoes to erupt (which is why you see this imagery depicted in Dianetics) effectively killing all the Thetans (also called the Xenu Incident). The dead Thetans inhabit and comprise human bodies. Have you clicked away yet?

No...good. It's the ghosts of these Thetans, who now inhabit us, that make us unable to become the best that we can be, so the Church was set up to clear us of the Body Thetan salty ghost energy. Members pay for classes to become Operating Thetan (OT)-1, OT-2, etc. The higher up you are, the "clearer" you are. Make sense? No? No, it doesn't.

....?

Um.

Whatever, I have to go check out that new sushi roll that looks like one of the Virgin Mary's sexy curls. Man, could they whip up hair in Judea back in the day!

Xenu to land on J-Lo's ample backside

I knew it!! I knew there was something wrong about J-Lo.

Her dad's a Scientologist...this just in: don't give me any crap about being religiously intolerant - Scientology isn't a religion. L. Ron Hubbard set it up in order to take advantage of the tax breaks enjoyed by religious institutions.

She's a pod-person. I knew it. That means...oh no...Marc Anthony is a pod person by reception! And Diddy? Did he know? Ass-flack?! The horror...oh the horror.

Soon the armies of Cruise and Travolta will join forces with those of Lopez for a mind-numbing, crotch slamming, cheek-pinching assault on your Thetanic energy...and your wallet.

Jet Li To Punch Rosie O'Donnell In Her Drunken Irish Face

HAHAHAHA!!! What did I tell you? In this day and age of cell phone cameras, Tivos, 4GB jump drives, and cranial HDDs with optical feeds you need to behave yourself. First Michael Richards forgets his racial sensitivity training and drops multiple n-bombs, and now Rosie O'Donnell shows her love and respect for Asians.

I'm no big proponent of political correctness, I cross "that line" all the time, but there is something to be said about being sensitive to someone's culture, especially when you're on the *wink-wink* wholesome program "The View." Rosie apparently thought it'd be funny to imitate how a Chinese news anchor would report Danny DeVito's drunken bout on the program, and proceeded to act it out by eloquently articulating "...chong, ching chong chong, Danny DeVito, ching chong chong chong, drunk, The View, ching chong..."

AWESOME! Way to go Rosie.

Actually, maybe it's better that all of this behavior is so easily trapped and consumed by the populace. It lets us know our entertainers so much more intimately. I only wish I had been blogging when Tom Cruise berated Matt Lauer for being glib. Stupid Matt and his no knowing of Tom's ultra OT-7 ability to treat mental and/or behavioral conditions with a regiment of vitamins and engram auditing. Tom and Rosie should procreate. Just think of the wonderful things that could happen if those two mixed some genes. Whoo!