RADIO SIGNALS WC4DC DEDICATED TO THE ART AND SCIENCE OF AMATEUR RADIO http://www.wc4dc.org Monitoring: 146.57, 145.01 (24/7) Repeaters: 147.375 + PL 146.2 White Bluff 442.225 + PL 123.0 White Bluff 145.330 – PL 114.8 Cumberland Furnace Issue 71 January 2017 Dickson, TN Editor NA4C Dickson County ARC Monthly Meetings Second Monday Each Month 7:00 p.m. at Dickson County EOC Dickson County ARC Monthly Meeting Programs January Program DXpedition All programs subject to change The December and May meeting are replaced by picnics! Volunteer Examination Schedule January 19th, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, CaVEc March 16th, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, CaVEc May 18th, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, CaVEc July 20th, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, CaVEc September 21st, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, CaVEc October 26th, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, ARRL The new location for the test sessions will be Colton’s Steak House & Grill, 2431 Highway 46 South in their private meeting room. Looking Out for Number One in a Disaster Area All of us who have had even minimal experience at the scene of any form of disaster, man-made or natural, know just how rapidly things can change in that environment. We have our "go bags" ready for what we believe we will need to get us through the situa- tion/deployment. But have we given any thought about what would happen if, during our deployment, something were to happen to us, both on a minor scale and a larger scale? For the minor scale issues, I suggest what I call a personal comfort pack. This would in- clude items such as pain killers, cough drops, Antacid, lip balm, sun screen, any prescrip- tion drugs you may need, a few Band-Aids®, a few granola or power bars, and anything else you think may make your deployment a little easier and more comfortable for you, such as eye drops if you wear contact lenses. All of these items can fit into a small pouch: I use a nice weather proof camera case I found in a local thrift store! Many of the items listed can be found in small quantities in the travel section of some stores. These smaller versions are ideal for your kit. Of course your kit doesn't have to be small. If you want more comfort items than can fit into a small The author's medical flash drive. (N8QQN photo) pouch you could always go bigger. Popular now in some sporting goods stores are the plastic military style "ammo cans." These would also be a good choice for your personal comfort kit. They are inexpensive, light weight and have a rubber gasket around the lid to give it some degree of water resistance. These "cans" can even hold a bottle of water if you wanted one. Now that you have taken care of the little things, what can you do to help yourself if something more serious happened to you during your deployment and you were unable to communicate? Most Emergency Medical Technicians are used to looking at a person's wrist or neck for a medic alert bracelet or necklace, so I got a very small brightly colored flash drive and labeled it on both sides, "Mike B. MEDICAL." Since there are laptops everywhere now, from mobile data terminals (MDT's) in the squad emergency transport vehicles to the desks in the trauma center, you can communi- cate a great deal of information without being conscious by having it readily available on the little flash drive. On mine, I have the following: Page one has my name, address, home phone and date of birth. It also lists the names and cell phone numbers of my wife and daughters. At the bottom, in red and in all caps, I have listed no allergies and my blood type. The next few pages list my personal medical history to include the type of medical incident (broken bones, surgeries, etc.) the attending physician's name, the date and location of treatment. After that I have a sheet with a copy of the labels of all prescription medications I am cur- rently on. This gives the hospital the type of medication, dose, and the name of the physi- cian who prescribed it. Next I have a page that has a copy of all my doctor's business cards, from my family doc- tor to a specialist, my dentist and even my optometrist. I provide this so that if a trauma center or ER doctor has a specific question, he/she can contact my doctor directly. Lastly I provide a page of family medical history. Depending on what has happened to you, this information could be very important. You might say, well I have a card in my wallet with my spouse's contact information -- they can just call him/her and get the information needed, and you would be correct, they could. However, in some medical situations, time is of the essence and if they had any difficulty contacting your spouse, they are using up critical time. Conclusion: It takes very little effort to put together a personal comfort pack and personal medical information onto a flash drive. Do it for yourself and your family. -- Mike Burg, N8QQN, Emergency Medical Technician [Burg retired recently as Chief of Police. One of the first things he did after making Chief was to install a 2-meter radio and station in the department. Burg said, "Since the department is one of the three 9-1-1 centers in the county, we have a massive generator that runs the entire building in the event of a power outage. By putting the station there, my club was always able to get on the air."]v ARRL ARES-letter Spammers reverting to old tactic to bom- bard your inbox By Francis Navarro, Komando.com Photo courtesy of Shutterstock Are you noticing more junk and spam email in your inbox lately? This may be why. Spammers are reportedly reverting back to an old technique to defeat anti-spam and anti-malware filters. The technique, called hailstorm spamming, is the use of a large number of IP addresses for sending out a high volume of spam email over a short span of time. It is in contrast with another spamming method dubbed Snowshoe, which uses multiple IP addresses to send out a low volume of spam emails over an extended amount of time. Both techniques attempt to override and evade email reputation or volume-based filters and their campaigns typically end before spam filters have the time to update. “Hailstorm spam attacks end just around the time the fastest traditional anti-spam de- fenses can update in response,” wrote Cisco Talos researchers in a recent security blog. The researchers also noted that unlike a snowshoe spam attack, whose maximum query rate is only 35 queries per hour, a hailstorm attack can spike up to over 75,000 queries in an instant, then drops back down to nothing. A snowshoe attack (top) vs a hailstorm attack (bottom). Photo credit: Talos Additionally, the Cisco Talos team analyzed 500 hailstorm campaigns and the spammers mainly advertised sponsored links or redirects to "As Seen On TV" products like bath- room remodeling and dietary supplements. They also warn that some of the hailstorm campaigns distributed malware as shown in the screenshot below: The team wrote: “The message claims to be generated in response to a complaint filed with the United Kingdom’s Companies House and tries to lure the recipient into opening an attached word document. The From address of the message is [email protected] while the legitimate government agency has their web presence at compa- nieshouse.gov.uk. The attached Complaint.docS contains a macro that downloads and executes a Dyre/TheTrick Banking Trojan." The source of the hailstorm spam is reportedly from IP addresses located all around the globe. The addresses with the most spam volume sent were from the U.S., Germany, Netherlands, Great Britain and Russia The most common domains were .top, .bid, .us, .win and .stream. And finally, as spammers try a variety of different tactics, like hailstorm and snowshoe spamming, to rapidly deploy and circumvent anti-spam filters, it is important for users to remember these vital tips: Don't download unsolicited email attachments, especially from unknown sources. Don't click on links in suspicious emails. Install software security solutions like anti-virus and anti-spam on your computers. Update and apply patches to your systems regularly. Beware of pop-up ads on your web browser. What is Boxing Day? Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated the day after Christmas Day. It originated in the United Kingdom, and is celebrated in a number of countries that previously belonged to the British Empire, including Canada. Boxing Day is on 26 December, although the attached bank holiday or public holiday may take place either on that day or a day later. In the liturgical calendar of Western Christianity, Boxing Day is the second day of Christmastide,[1] and also St. Stephen's Day.[In some European countries, notably Germany, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, 26 December is celebrated as a Second Christmas Day. There are competing theories for the origins of the term, none of which is definitive. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the earliest attestations from Britain in the 1830s, defining it as "the first week-day after Christmas-day, observed as a holiday on which post-men, errand-boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas-box".