CyberWar Also suggests that the low volume countries (and North Korea) can't get as clear a picture of world opinion as the 'big tappers' can.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/21/2137258&from=rss
The Coming Censorship Wars
Posted by timothy on Saturday March 21, @05:42PM from the just-go-around dept. Censorship Privacy The Internet
KentuckyFC writes
"Many countries censor internet traffic using techniques such as blocking IP addresses, filtering traffic with certain URLs in the data packets and prefix hijacking. Others allow wiretapping of international traffic with few if any legal safeguards. There are growing fears that these practices could trigger a major international incident should international traffic routed through these countries fall victim, whether deliberately or by accident (witness the prefix hijacking of YouTube in Pakistan last year). So how to avoid these places? A group of computer scientists investigating this problem say it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to determine which countries traffic might pass through. But their initial assessment indicates that the countries with the most pervasive censorship policies — China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — pose a minimal threat because so little international traffic passes their way. The researchers instead point the finger at western countries that have active censorship policies and carry large amounts of international traffic. They highlight the roles of the two biggest carriers: Great Britain, which actively censors internet traffic, and the US, which allows warrantless wiretapping of international traffic (abstract)."
Think of this as a “proof of concept” exercise. With better stealth and a nasty payload you have an interesting weapon for you CyberWar arsenal.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/21/1518248&from=rss
Researchers Ponder Conficker's April Fool's Activation Date
Posted by Soulskill on Saturday March 21, @12:18PM from the rick-astley's-plans-come-to-fruition dept. Worms Security The Internet
The Narrative Fallacy writes
"John Markoff has a story at the NY Times speculating about what will happen on April 1 when the Conficker worm is scheduled to activate. Already on an estimated 12 million machines, conjectures about Conficker's purpose ranges from the benign — an April Fool's Day prank — to far darker notions. Some say the program will be used in the 'rent-a-computer-crook' business, something that has been tried previously by the computer underground. 'The most intriguing clue about the purpose of Conficker lies in the intricate design of the peer-to-peer logic of the latest version of the program, which security researchers are still trying to completely decode,' writes Markoff. According to a paper by researchers at SRI International, in the Conficker C version of the program, infected computers can act both as clients and servers and share files in both directions. With these capabilities, Conficker's authors could be planning to create a scheme like Freenet, the peer-to-peer system that was intended to make Internet censorship of documents impossible. [That would suggest the Berkman Center as authors? Bob] On a darker note, Stefan Savage, a computer scientist at the University of California at San Diego, has suggested the possibility of a 'Dark Google.' 'What if Conficker is intended to give the computer underworld the ability to search for data on all the infected computers around the globe and then sell the answers,' writes Markoff. 'That would be a dragnet — and a genuine horror story.'"
Related Or perhaps someone saw the $100,000 a week figure and yelled BONUSES!
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/21/1927200&from=rss
Major Rogue Anti-Virus Program Shut Down
Posted by timothy on Saturday March 21, @03:31PM from the now-stop-antivirus-people-from-spamming-slashdot dept. Security The Internet
krebsatwpost writes
"TrafficConverter.biz, one of the more notorious pay-per-install affiliate programs, was dismantled this week after media attention caused Visa and Mastercard to shut down the group's payment operations. The action comes just a few days after a report by The Washington Post that showed some affiliates were making more than $100,000 USD a week installing rogue anti-virus software. The credit card industry may have been spurred by the fact that the first version of the Conficker worm told infected systems to download a file from TrafficConverter, although the story posits that this could have been an attempted Joe Job rather than a blatant attempt to drum up more installs."
An archetypal strategy for new technology. See, promote and implement only the functions you wish existed in complete isolation. Unfortunately they don't, so eventually the need for security (governance) pops up – just as it does on every new technology.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10201651-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Report: Smart-grid hackers could cause blackouts
by Zoë Slocum March 21, 2009 12:03 PM PDT
Deployments of smart grids should be slowed [Not politically acceptable. Maybe if we sell it as a way to create jobs? Bob] until security vulnerabilities are addressed, according to some cybersecurity experts, citing tests showing that a hacker can cause a major blackout after breaking into a smart-grid system.
Related It is not only “new” projects or industries that fail to see the big picture...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090322065137896
AU: Police risk computer meltdown
Sunday, March 22 2009 @ 06:51 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Victoria's Police's information system is so overwhelmed, underfunded and underprotected it risks a massive loss of data that could paralyse the force's operations, confidential documents obtained by The Sunday Age reveal.
According to its own assessment, Victoria Police is served by an IT department that is overwhelmed by increasing technology demands. A leaked copy of the police's Risk Register, a catalogue of issues facing the force, reveals the failure of management to commit to "an appropriate standard of information security controls".
Source - The Age
[From the article:
Victoria Police has become critically dependent on the scandal-prone IT department because it runs 400 police software applications, its financial system, mobile computers (that allow police to check registrations and criminal records while on the road), the regional triple-zero service, the statewide radio network, the 11,000 computers and laptops across the state's local police stations, email and internal communications.
This is an interesting use of a Blog/web site. I suspect it would work well in any tech/geek field. Perhaps everyone seeking a PhD should start a blog?
http://teachingcollegemath.com/?p=738
Your Turn
… I’ve come across a few questions in my dissertation research that I could use your collective wisdom about. I’m figuring that some of you know the answers, or know someone who knows the answers, or know (definitively) that it is actually an unanswered question.
Please take a few minutes to visit my Help Me page. Maybe you know exactly where to find what I’m looking for (buried in some journal that is not easily available).
Is this a substantial improvement on search? Only if you are looking for pink elephants? No doubt my Web Site students will find it useful.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/020902.html
March 21, 2009
Google Images Searchable By Specific Colors
Google Blogoscoped: "Google Image search can now be restricted to return results of a specific color. While this isn’t available as option in the advanced settings, you can use e.g. “imgcolor=green” or “imgcolor=blue,red” as parameter right in the URL. Setting the option to “green”, for instance, shows images for your keyword which are mainly green."
Dilbert conclusively proves that “Free is Good!” (for the Free-cipient)
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