Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Well, that's one way. Another might be to donate them to a Computer Security program that might invent a cheap method of decontamination.
"German IT magazine Heise reports (original in German) that the Ministry of Education in Schwerin had a Conficker virus infection on 170 machines, that was dealt with by simply throwing them on the trash. Other German authorities have now decided that 'the approach taken is not up to the principle of efficiency and economy' and that the 187,300 Euro invested in this radical form of virus removal were inappropriate. The ministry had earlier estimated the cost of cleaning their desktops and servers by more conventional means to 130,000 Euro."


For my Ethical Hackers and my Computer Forensics students
"ESET researchers, together with web security firm Sucuri, have been analyzing a new threat affecting Apache webservers. The threat is a highly advanced and stealthy backdoor being used to drive traffic to malicious websites carrying Blackhole exploit packs. Researchers have named the backdoor Linux/Cdorked.A, and it is the most sophisticated Apache backdoor seen so far. The Linux/Cdorked.A backdoor does not leave traces on the hard-disk other than a modified 'httpd' file, the daemon (or service) used by Apache. All information related to the backdoor is stored in shared memory on the server, making detection difficult and hampering analysis."


Yes, we do.
April 29, 2013
Article - The Dangers of Surveillance
The Dangers of Surveillance, Neil M. Richards, Washington University in Saint Louis - School of Law. March 25, 2013, Harvard Law Review, 2013 [Via SSRN]
  • "From the Fourth Amendment to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, our culture is full of warnings about state scrutiny of our lives. These warnings are commonplace, but they are rarely very specific. Other than the vague threat of an Orwellian dystopia, as a society we don’t really know why surveillance is bad, and why we should be wary of it. To the extent the answer has something to do with “privacy,” we lack an understanding of what “privacy” means in this context, and why it matters. Developments in government and corporate practices have made this problem more urgent. Although we have laws that protect us against government surveillance, secret government programs cannot be challenged until they are discovered. And even when they are, courts frequently dismiss challenges to such programs for lack of standing, under the theory that mere surveillance creates no tangible harms, as the Supreme Court did recently in the case of Clapper v. Amnesty International. We need a better account of the dangers of surveillance."


You are either a servent of the state or you are an enemy of the state.
Government Seeks to Fine Companies for Not Complying With Wiretap Orders
It isn’t often that communications companies push back against government requests to monitor customers and hand over information about them, but a government task force is seeking to make it even harder for companies to say no.
The task force is pushing for legislation that would penalize companies like Google, Facebook and Skype that fail to comply with court orders for wiretapping, according to the Washington Post. The cost of non-complying would be an escalating series of fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars. Fines that remained unpaid after 90 days would double daily.
Unlike telecommunications companies that are required under the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to have systems that are wiretap-enabled, some internet communication methods — such as social networking sites and online gaming sites — aren’t easily wiretapped and are not required to enable the capability under CALEA. Companies that argue that they don’t have the means to enable wiretapping have avoided complying with court orders seeking real-time surveillance, the paper notes. The legislation is intended to force these companies into finding technology solutions that would enable real-time surveillance.


Perspective
Facebook Says It’s Now as Big as Windows (Literally)
… The massive collection of software code needed to create that Facebook page inside your web browser, he says, has now expanded to the point where it’s about the same size as the code that underpins the Windows operating system.
… In January of 2011, in a post to question-and-answer site Quora, Facebook engineer Evan Priestly said that Facebook spanned 9.2 million lines of code — a figure that didn’t include various services used to support the main Facebook application. Jason Evans says that this post was spot on, but then he points out that it happened two years ago — an eternity in the life of Facebook — and he confirms that the figure only applies to a portion of the site as we know it.


...but is it accurate?
Provocative Pro-Gun Billboard Called “Offensive”
Colorado ad bought by local residents has upset Native Americans.


My weekly amusement (a bit late)
… The state of Washington has passed and signed into law HB1472, a bill that creates initiatives to “improve and expand computer science education” in the state. In part, the legislation will allow CS to count as a math or science requirement towards high school graduation.
Mozilla has released the draft version of its Web Literacy standards. Feedback is welcome.
… Universities from 11 European countries have joined forces to launch the MOOC initiative OpenupEd. It will offer 40 classes, taught in 12 different launches.
… Bravo to Mozilla for remixing the meaning of the MOOC acronym — a “Mozilla Open Online Collaboration.” You can join the organization’s MOOC “Teach the Web,” which will help folks learn how to teach digital literacy and webmaking skills and starts May 2.

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