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FEATURED POST: Depression Is Not Beautiful

Written by marjramos– I get sucked under the waves of varying ferocity with no sense of direction. I don’t want help and I refuse to get better. Every waking day, it occurs to me that I don’t want to leave. My damaged body fights a long battle against my mind, both telling me different things.

My friends and family see the problem, but I don’t. I look at the endless empty boxes of takeout, or I clean up after purging, or bandage bleeding wounds, but I see this as normal – I’ve never known anything else. It eludes from the change I desire to have; I’m doing fine on my own, ain’t I?

I hit a solid wall when I try to get a clear understanding of anything, so I stop trying. I am reminded daily of my flaws, reciting them to myself under my breath, hiding the words with half-hearted laughs. I’m nothing but a piece of crap and my life is a big joke. My skin is sliced open. Razor blades are bloody. There are band aids in the trash by the sink of the cold, lonely bathroom.

I must take a step back and inspect the damage. I sift through what remains of my life, never seeing the broken shards of the sanity I once had and not knowing I need to put them back together to form what it had been once before. Deep down, I know, there will always be lines to remind me of the fractures where I shakily repaired myself, so why bother?

I am forced to get some help and I am grateful for this. No longer do I hide away, make excuses, and cover my scars with long sleeves. I feel connected to the outside world for the first time in a very long time and it is an extremely liberating feeling.

I laugh, I cry, I make memories, and I finally enjoy life. I am no longer alone, hopeless, scared, or misunderstood. Every encounter is a small touch of warmth that never leaves, only burns brighter and brighter until I shine with a light I’ve never known. I want to cry, but out of happiness instead of sadness.

In a moment of clarity, I realize how alike I am to a flower. I grow in beauty, wither in sickness, and am carried by the seeds I left behind. This is my life.

This post was originally featured on Thought Catalog

Dope Flix: Human Chess Game

1924– A human game of chess

Photo: History In Pics

Cyber Thieves Target Retailers With Latest Credit Card Stealing Malware

Ahhhh! Retail data breaches—just in time for the holidays.

Personally, I don’t plan to be anywhere near the malls on ‘Black Friday’ or Black Saturday or Sunday. The savings just aren’t worth the hassle & the deals are not really “big deals” from the retailer’s standpoint –considering their markups. Honestly, most retailers run the exact same sales or better ones online.

That being said, millions of consumers will pound the pavement come 12:01 a.m. looking for those big “steal of a deals”..

If you’re using your debit or credit cards just keep a close eye on your accounts come Saturday, apparently there’s a new sophisticated gang of cyber thugs ready to “steal your deals” & help you spend your money by stealing your credit card numbers!

Tis the season! If you do shop online, you might want to sign up for a PayPal account.

Happy Holidays!

Join the discussion.

According to Fortune– Hackers are targeting U.S. retailers with a new wave of malware intended to steal credit card and debit card information from payment terminals, according to a cybersecurity firm.

News of the attacks arrive just ahead of holiday shopping season, a particularly busy time of year for the retailers, health care providers, payment card processors, and hospitality companies that may be affected.

“This is by far most the most sophisticated point of sale malware we’ve seen to date,” said Maria Noboa, technical analyst at iSight Partners, whose team discovered the difficult-to-detect malware. “They have such great in-depth understanding of operational security measures, evading detection and the mitigation techniques used,” she said about the coders’ expertise.

The malware in question involves separate modules that run close to computers’ operating systems, making them harder to analyze. These “rootkit” modules—tools that enable the hackers to remain hidden and in control—also use advanced encryption that prevents traditional anti-virus and other monitoring software from detecting them.

“We have found three right now, and we are sure there are more out there,” said Stephen Ward, marketing director at iSight, about the modules. First, there’s a “keylogger,” that records and stores keyboard strokes. Second, there’s an “uploader-downloader” that connects compromised machines with the hackers’ command and control infrastructure, or remote servers that can send and receive data or instructions to and from infected devices. And third, the iSight researchers identified a “POS scraper” that steals payment card information from the memory of retailers’ computers.

Pieces of the malware seem to have been in development as early as 2012, according to iSight. Attacks based on the malware began targeting U.S. retailers a year later, and the assaults are likely ongoing, Noboa said.

iSight named the malware “ModPOS” after its characteristic modules. The firm said it has found no discussion of it on online crime forums, which suggests that a single professional-level hacking group is behind the scam. Although firm evidence is lacking, some indicators suggest that the malware might be Eastern European in origin.

iSight said it began notifying clients of the threat in October, and other retailers more recently in order to give them time to track down and remove the malware from their machines before the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping sprees.

Wendy Nather, research director at the Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center, an industry group that shares cybersecurity information, told Fortune that members of the organization have been hunting for the malware on their systems since learning of it. “I don’t know if anyone has been effective in kicking it off their system, or what measures need to be taken to remove it,” she said. “It’s bigger in functionality, has more sophisticated coding, and it’s trickier about hiding,” compared to other recent [point of sale] malware attacks, she said.

Read the rest of this article on Fortune.