Thursday - October 16, 2008

FAKE MICROSOFT PATCH TUESDAY.

I get the Tuesday Patch on Wed here, and this arrived in Thurs. email.

While tech things not usually my forte (but I’m in there trying to learn. Slowly. ) I simply wondered how many have seen this and are aware.

My guess is that most BMEWSers would be aware of something in email anyway.  Even I know about that. BUT ..
hey.  Just on the off chance that even one hasn’t caught this and might get nailed, I thought I should post the article and the link.

October 14th, 2008
Fake Microsoft Patch Tuesday malware campaign spreading

Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 3:00 pm

Malicious attackers are once again taking advantage of event-based social engineering attacks, and are currently mass mailing fake notifications for Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday, attaching a copy of Trojan.Backdoor.Haxdoor, next to a legitimately looking PGP signature which is, of course, fake too :

“We received some questions from customers about an e-mail that’s circulating that claims to be a security e-mail from Microsoft. The e-mail comes with an attached executable, which it claims is the latest security update, and encourages the recipient to run the attached executable so they can be safe. While malicious e-mails posing as Microsoft security notifications with attached malware aren’t new (we’ve seen this problem for several years) this particular one is a bit different in that it claims to be signed by our own Steve Lipner and has what appears to be a PGP signature block attached to it. While those are clever attempts to increase the credibility of the mail, I can tell you categorically that this is not a legitimate e-mail: it is a piece of malicious spam and the attachment is malware. Specifically, it contains Backdoor:Win32/Haxdoor.”

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2027

Posted by Drew458     on 10/16/2008 at 10:32 AM   
Filed Under: • Computers • Cyberspace-Internet •  
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   Monday - October 06, 2008

ANTIQUITY FOR US HISTORY BUFFS … FOUND IN A COMPUTER MAGAZINE.

As everyone who knows me also knows by now, I’m blown away by things like this.  Even though I read this short piece, I still can not grasp exactly how they can know for sure how an ancient Greek instrument sounded.  I understand what they are telling me here. No problem there.
I guess I don’t have the imagination to quite figure out how they can be so sure they have it right.

Bottom line though is, I do believe em and think this is a great find.

For our BMEWS readers who are bored by this kind of thing, take heart and please be patient.
I’m sure I can find blood and gore and politics to post. Especially the first two as there’s so damn much of it here.

The link below is an audio only, no photos.

http://www.astraproject.org/examples/dufay.mp3

Posted by Drew458     on 10/06/2008 at 08:56 AM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Computers •  
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   Tuesday - September 02, 2008

Google takes fight to Microsoft with Chrome browser launch.

Right ... Maybe you folks already know about this but I only just this minute found it.
Being GREEN (not the envirmnt) when it comes to thing tech, I get all kinds of excited over stuff like this.  That’s mostly cause I understand so little of it and think it’s a new magic trick.  And we almost all like magic, don’t we?

I’m lookin forward to this.  Some of you might be going, yawn.  And Drew knows how to build his own, most likely. Macker too. But the rest of us who still think of our kitchen toasters as hi-tech, we’re goin’ WOW. Huh?

By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 2:01pm BST 02/09/2008

Google has opened up a new front in its increasingly bitter battle with Microsoft by releasing its own web browser.

Read the full web comic introducing Google Chrome
Shane Richmond: Google’s Chrome browser is an attack on Microsoft
The search giant hopes Google Chrome will challenge the dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which is currently used by 75 per cent of surfers.

Google’s browser will be available for free download in 100 countries later on Tuesday, a week after the updated Internet Explorer 8 hit the market.

Google claims Chrome will be “clean and fast” and come with technical improvements that will make it more stable and allow it to “run today’s complex web applications much better” than its rivals.

It will also offer more web privacy functions, allowing users to withhold information from the sites they visit, including the Google search engine.

Initially Google Chrome will only work on computers with Microsoft’s Windows operating system, a clear sign that it intends to take on Microsoft on its own territory. Mac and Linux versions will follow later, Google says.

Google has long dominated the search market with nearly two-thirds of all queries, leaving Microsoft’s MSN Search trailing in third place behind Yahoo with around 10 per cent of searches. But the San Francisco firm is now launching an assault on the markets in which Microsoft is strongest.

It has already released free word processing and spreadsheet software, to rival Microsoft’s popular but expensive Word and Excel programmes, and Google Chrome marks the start of its campaign to rule how people navigate the web.

Mozilla’s Firefox, currently Internet Explorer’s largest rival, has managed to claw its way to around 20 per cent of the browser market thanks in part to co-operation with Google, but has never looked like claiming the No 1 spot.

Analysts believe Chrome, backed by the Google brand and supported by other Google services, could quickly become the strongest ever challenger to Internet Explorer’s crown.

“As the starting point for nearly every user’s Internet experience, the browser is important online real estate. The market share gains by Firefox in a short period of time show to us that users are looking for better browser experiences,” said Mark May of Needham & Co.

Other analysts have suggested that Chrome could help protect and promote Google’s other services, such as search and email.

“This gives Google another opportunity to protect its flank and to create a new branding position,’’ said Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Other browsers – including Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and Opera - could also be threatened by Chrome, although the chief executive of Mozilla said it would continue to co-operate with Google over Firefox.

“On the financial front… we’ve just renewed our economic arrangement with them through November 2011, which means a lot for our ability to continue to invest in Firefox and in new things like mobile and services,” John Lilly wrote on his blog.

Chrome is designed to make it easier to browse the web, in part by making more use of tabs

In response to the Chrome launch, Microsoft released a statement identifying the improved privacy functions of the latest Internet Explorer.

“The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips ... and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online,” said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer.

Chrome is designed to make it easier and faster to browse the web, by offering enhanced address-bar features and other elements which differ from those on other rival browsers.

The launch announcement was made on Google’s official blog site last night, after a comic introducing some of Chrome’s functions emerged on the internet.

“We believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web,” the statement said.

“The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.”

http://tinyurl.com/5setqo

Posted by Drew458     on 09/02/2008 at 09:24 AM   
Filed Under: • Computers •  
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   Friday - August 01, 2008

I hate banks

I get a ton of junk mail. So do you. Most of the ads go right into the recycle bin. Letters that arrive with only a return address and no company name I don’t even bother to open. Guaranteed to be crap. Straight into the bins. Who has time to read through all this mess? I swear, the stupidest thing the Post Office ever did was come up with Bulk Mailing discount rates. But complaining about the Post Office is Peiper’s job, and he may have it with my blessings.

I do almost all of my banking and bill paying online. When I have a job that allows it, I’ll always sign up for direct deposit. It’s just so much easier. But there can be problems with banks, and when that happens ... good luck finding a real human being at the other end of the phone line. But I’ve kept this account forever. The bank I got it from is long gone. They were swallowed up by another bank, who was devoured by another bank, who was bought up by the bank I didn’t want to use because they had a lousy customer service reputation, and then that bank was bought up by the current bank. I think my money is in Hong Kong. I’m not sure. My bank doesn’t even have a name any more, just some initials. Whatever. Welcome to the 21st Century.

So I was scrolling through my bank account online the other month when I noticed that they were charging me $1 service fee for having a credit card with them. What? I have thinned my credit cards down to the bare minimum these days, and I know darn well that I have no such card. So it was dig throuhg the website to find the Contact Us telephone number, then I began my journey through Voice Menu Hell. Press 1 for English. Press 2 for personal banking. Press 1 for checking ... and on and on. Somehow I managed to find that magic combination of key presses that got me to a human being. Of course I got the recorded “Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes” messages, followed by another recording “All of our customer service people are currently assisting other customers. Please stand by” followed by some awful canned music usually used to get confessions from Al Qaeda terrorists in Gitmo. Finally the phone rings, and a person answers. “dabba dabba ubba dabba la? Sir?” Naturally the call center is in India. Grrr. So I patiently explained that I didn’t have this card, never requested this card, and had never used the card, so why were they charging me a buck? She ( I think ) credited me my dollar and said the problem was taken care of. Gosh, swell. And it only took me 45 minutes.

Next month the statement has another $1 charge for the same thing. Oh hell no, I’m not going through that process again. So I sat down at the computer and wrote, printed, and mailed them an actual letter. So I spent more time, and probably 50¢ to solve a $1 problem. Or so I thought.

Two weeks later there is a message on my answering machine. It’s the bank. Please call us back. I did. They had gone home for the weekend. So I called them back Monday and actually got a human to talk to. I explained the whole situation over again. “But sir, everyone at our bank has one of these cards. Our records show you were sent one.” Lady, no credit card ever arrived in an envelope from your bank. “No, it wouldn’t. For security purposes we send them in plain envelopes with just a PO Box return address.” You mean like every other piece of junk mail? Then I must have thrown it out. “Ok, then I’ll put down that you destroyed it, because if I mark that it was lost there’s a whole other process you have to go through”. Whatever. Why did you send me a credit card anyway, since I never applied for one? “Well, it’s not really a credit card even though it says MasterCard on it. It’s a debit card.” A debit card? What’s that? I already have an ATM card. Why do I need another card? “Well I see in your records that you use your ATM card at a number of stores, and each time you do you pay a 25¢ service fee. With the debit card there is no service fee. Just swipe the card and press the button marked Credit Card. And instead of paying a quarter each time, it’s only $1 per month.” So this debit card isn’t a credit card, it’s a direct account access card, just like my ATM card, but when I use it I pretend it’s a credit card? And the money comes straight out of my account, only without the transaction fee? “That’s right sir, we’ll have another one delivered to you in a few days. And I’ll waive the $1 fee.” What, forever, or just for this month? “Oh, forever. There will be no monthly fee for you. I can do that.” Well, great. Thanks.

The card arrived yesterday. I’ve spent the last week getting a callous on my thumb opening every piece of junk mail making sure it wasn’t the magic envelope. So I have the card. Can I run right out and use it? Heck no. First I have to call in to some number to activate it. I call, and I get this pimply voice. I was expecting a machine; it’s usually a 5 second process. You have to call from your home phone, they read the incoming phone number, and they know it’s me, and it’s done. No, this time I get young Mr. Acne. I have to read off the card number, provide my name and address and last 4 digits of my SSN. Ok fine. Are we done? “Not yet sir.” And then he tries to sell me a bunch of crap. Credit card protection, identity protection, white wall tires, magazine subscriptions ... whatever. Grrr. So I say no to all of them, and my card is activated. Whoo hoo! Now I can go shopping and save myself a quarter.

Not quite.

I get to the store, buy my stuff, and swipe the brand new card. “Please enter your PIN number” reads the card swiper. My what? There was no PIN number on any of the papers that came with the card. I know, because I read them all. Twice. So I put in my PIN from my ATM card ... same bank account, same essential card function, maybe it’s the same number, right? Wrong. The cashier gives me the dead eye when the transaction gets rejected, and I have to go and use my ATM again. Son of a bleach. So back home I go, twenty five cents poorer, and try and call the bank again.

Well, one of the most annoying things about voice menu systems is that they are always being changed. This time there’s a new menu, and I have to play Button, Button, Who Has The Button all over again ... and it doesn’t seem that any of the options has a human being at the other end. I even tried the extended silence thing, the pressing 0 thing, and the pressing several buttons at once thing. No good. Finally I tried the “To report your card Lost or Stolen” key press, and eventually got hold of a human being again. “dabba dabba ubba laba da? Sir?” Awww shit.

Look Benji, I just want to get a PIN for this card you guys sent me. It’s already authorized, but it didn’t come with a PIN. “umbalal dumba ladda bah, I transfer you” and it’s back to Gitmo for some more torture music. The phone rings. It answers. I hear the same old voice menu in the background. But Benji is riding the call with me! Boop-deep-deep-bah-bip! he enters some secret code, and the phone rings again. And I get “All of our customer service people are busy helping other customers. Please stay on the line” .... and I’m back getting ear torture again. But not for too long. Ring. Ring. “Hello? This is ----, how may I help you?” Horry Clap, a genuine American! So I explain things once again. “When did you get the card?” It came in the mail yesterday and I authorized it today. “PIN numbers are sent in a separate envelope for security purposes. You should receive it in 3 to 5 business days.” But it didn’t say that anywhere in the papers that came with the card. All it said was Dial This Number To Change Your PIN. “3 to 5 business days sir. And if you don’t have it in a week please call us back. Thank you have a nice day.”

So now I have to go back to opening all the junk mail again. Great.



I had a bunch of checks to put in the bank. Instead, I walked down the street to the nearest local no-name bank and opened a new checking account. I dealt with a nice young woman who spoke perfect English even though she is from the Middle East somewhere. Very pretty too. She filled out all the paperwork for me; all I had to do was sign my name once. Processed it all right there on the spot, even gave me my new debit card with my name on it. Which also works as an ATM card. And the first box of checks will arrive in under a week and they’re free. And that branch office is open 7 days a week, stop by any time. Here, have one of our pens. Here’s my card, here’s our web page address, and please come see me if there’s anything I can ever help you with. Thank you for your business!

Maybe I just hate that other bank. This one seems Ok. Of course, they’re in the process of being bought out by another bank right now. That’s how it goes. I figure I can get 3 to 5 good years out of them until they’re owned by my old bank. Then I’ll have to start the whole thing over again. Press 1 for Aggravation.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/01/2008 at 02:31 PM   
Filed Under: • Big Business • Computers •  
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   Saturday - July 19, 2008

new CCleaner version available

Go get the latest version of CCleaner for your PC. v2.09.600. Use it at least weekly. It’s a great tool, it’s easy to use, and it’s free. Cleans up most of the junk on your PC, even junk in the Registry.

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system, allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!

Get your copy from (just click the pic)

Posted by Drew458     on 07/19/2008 at 04:38 PM   
Filed Under: • Computers •  
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   Friday - June 13, 2008

PC Prices Dropping Again?

Even though the dollar may not be worth much right now, and I’ve heard rumors we might be in a recession, the prices of PCs seem to have come down again. I got a flyer in the mail from Dell, and they’re pushing a basic machine for $499. No monitor, but hey, if you’re reading this you don’t really need another one do you?

My PC is a Dell Dimension XPS 733r which dates from 1999. It has a 733Mhz Pentium, a 27Gb HD, and a 19” hi-rez CRT. I’ve got the memory maxxed out at 384Mb; that’s all it will hold. I’ve added a DVD burner/32X CD drive that replaced the 4X CD reader. It still has the original Sound Blaster card and the speaker system. This thing cost $2200 nine years ago.

Today, for less than one quarter of that price, you can buy a machine that runs 14 times faster, has 10 times the RAM (3Gb), 20 times the HD capacity - half a freakin Terabyte!!, and has a data bus that runs at least twice as fast. For $499. Amazing. Oh, and free shipping too.

Of course, to ramp things up a bit, you’ll want to spend $100 to upgrade to the next level of CPU, but that upgrade gets you a 1333Mhz data bus, a full third faster than standard. And another $60 gets you 4Gb of RAM that runs at a higher speed. And a decent stand-alone video card adds another $60. Which gives you a new bottom line of $729. For a smoking fast PC. All of this for $22 a month for 3 years. Hey, I’m still pretty impressed, even though this may not be the ultimate bang-for-the-buck deal out there.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/13/2008 at 11:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Computers •  
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   Thursday - May 01, 2008

Geek heaven

Charles Babbage’s Diffference Engine #2 built, and it works just fine.

Computer geeks rejoice, the very first computers have actually been built. 160 years after they were designed. Charles Babbage designed mechanical computers, well super calculators actually, that could do fairly advanced mathematics. He is considered the father of computers, and is one of those misty figures from techno pre-history like Henri Jacquard (who invented the punchcard) Ada Lovelace (who invented the loop and the If-Then statement that no programming language would work without) and Herman Hollerith (who modified Jacquard’s idea into the 80 column punchcard that was used from the 1890 US Census up until the early 1980s. He also started the company that would one day become IBM) Babbage’s engines are massive piles of gleaming steel and brass gears and rods, true works of mechanical art.

Engine #2 stands 11 feet long and weighs 5 tons. It has a mere 8000 precisely machined moving parts, less than a third of the nearly 25,000 parts count of Engine #1. Which shows you that something like Moore’s law existed even back then. Engine #2 can solve systems of simultaneous equations up to the seventh order.

Read all about it over at The Computer History Museum where you can watch a neat video. Or you can read about it at Gizmodo, and watch the same video in a slightly larger format. 

Posted by Drew458     on 05/01/2008 at 10:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Computers •  
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   Thursday - April 03, 2008

Firefox 3 Beta 5 is available for download

Those hard working code monkeys at Mozilla have been testing and tweaking, and the latest version of the Firefox browser is available for download. This is still a Beta edition, which means it has some bugs, but only one of them is a “Sev 1” fatal error in a Windows environment. And that one only happens in a rare circumstantial combination. The other bugs are just minor annoyances, and are few in number. So, you can be impatient and get it now, or you can wait another month perhaps until the final release version comes out.

This version of Firefox is said to be much faster, more secure, and more stable than earlier versions. You can find it here.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/03/2008 at 10:59 AM   
Filed Under: • Computers • Cyberspace-Internet •  
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   Monday - March 24, 2008

Network Solutions: Chicken Littles or Secret Islamists?

American Internet Service Provider giant Network Solutions takes down fitna.com webiste scheduled to run anti-izzy Dutch film. Network Solutions then proceeds to load up the now unused domain with lots of islam oriented advertisements. 8 of the 10 ads that are listed there. Think they’re trying to send a message?

An American internet provider has moved to ban a website on which a Dutch MP was planning to host an anti-Islam film portraying the Koran as a “fascist” book.  Website host Network Solutions suspended http://www.fitna com, the online venue that Geert Wilders, an anti-immigrant Dutch MP, has planned to show a short film condemning the tents of the Mulism faith. {DrewNote: I also condemn their tents. Stinky piles of musty camel hair, crusted with sand, loaded with fleas. Considering what Coleman, Kelty, and The North Face have for sale these days, there just is no excuse. Oh wait, did they mean to write “tenets”? Oh. Never mind.} Mr Wilders had planned to broadcast a 10 minute movie comparing the Koran to Mein Kampf on the internet site following the refusal of broadcasters to screen the film amid fears of a violent international backlash across the Islamic world.

“Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation,” said a statement by the internet provider.

The decision by the US website host to bar material deemed as harassing, hate propaganda, threatening, harmful or “otherwise objectionable” follows calls across Europe for the anti-Islam film to be banned.
...
Mr Wilders has promised to find another outlet to put his film “on the internet quickly” this week

Posted by Drew458     on 03/24/2008 at 08:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Computers • RoPMA •  
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   Friday - January 25, 2008

IOW - Idiot of the Week … contender 2

Angry Employee Deletes All Of Company’s Data
Call it a tale of revenge gone wrong.

When Marie Lupe Cooley, 41, of Jacksonville, Fla., saw a help-wanted ad in the newspaper for a position that looked suspiciously like her current job — and with her boss’s phone number listed — she assumed she was about to be fired.

So, police say, she went to the architectural office where she works late Sunday night and erased 7 years’ worth of drawings and blueprints, estimated to be worth $2.5 million.

“She decided to mess up everything for everybody,” Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ken Jefferson told reporters. “She just sabotaged the entire business, thinking she was going to get axed.”

It didn’t take Steven Hutchins, owner of the architectural firm that bears his name, much time to figure out who’d done it — Cooley was the only other person who had full access to the files.

Police arrested Cooley Monday evening and charged her with causing greater than $1,000 damage to computer files, a felony. She was bailed out the following afternoon.

Hutchins told one TV station he’d managed to recover all the files using an expensive data-recovery service.

As for the job, Cooley originally wasn’t in danger of losing it. The ad was for Hutchins’ wife’s company.

The firm told FOXNews.com that Cooley no longer is employed there.

I can’t add anything to this story. Sometimes posts just write themselves!

Posted by Drew458     on 01/25/2008 at 09:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Computers • Stoopid-People •  
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   Friday - December 07, 2007

Iran Claims to Have Built Supercomputer

ComputerWorld is reporting today that Iran is claiming to have built a reletively lightweight supercomputer based on Advanced Micro Devices’ Opteron Processor.  Problem is: AMD says it didn’t sell Iran any of these.  If they, in fact, have them, it is a violation of trade sanctions we have against Iran.

Iranians claim to have built Opteron-based supercomputer
Use of processors by research center would run afoul of U.S. trade sanctions; AMD says it hasn’t authorized any shipments to Iran, ‘directly or indirectly’

December 06, 2007 (Computerworld)—Despite federal antiterrorism trade sanctions that bar the sale of U.S.-made computer technology to Iran, a computing research center in Tehran claims to have used Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s Opteron processor to build the Middle Eastern country’s most powerful supercomputer.

The Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center (IHPCRC), which is located at Tehran’s Amirkabir University of Technology, said in an undated announcement on its Web site that it has assembled a Linux-based system with 216 Opteron processing cores. That’s a relatively small supercomputer, with a claimed peak performance level of 860 billion floating-point operations per second, or gigaflops. But the research center said that the system, which will be used for weather forecasting and meteorological research, is the fastest built in Iran to date.

This isn’t the first time that the Iranians have used U.S.-developed processor technology to build high-performance systems, according to a history posted on the research center’s Web site. For instance, the history says that in 2001, prior to the formation of the IHPCRC, researchers at Amirkabir University built a 32-node PC cluster based on Pentium III processors from Intel Corp. A year later, they used Pentium IV chips in another cluster, this one with eight nodes.

But how did the IHPCRC get Opteron processors for the new supercomputer if U.S. technology can’t be sold in or shipped to Iran? The research center may have provided a clue, though perhaps inadvertently, in a photo gallery that also can be found on its Web site.

The gallery includes a series of photos dated this year, showing workers assembling what the research center describes as the “cluster of IRIMO.” That acronym refers to an Iranian meteorological organization, which would be a perfect fit for the planned uses of the Opteron-based supercomputer.

The first picture in that series of photos shows a staffer using a screwdriver on what appears to be the components of a server. Behind him, on a table, is a stack of similarly sized boxes, all of which appear to have the word “Thacker” and the initials “U.A.E.” written in hand on their sides.

Thacker FZE is an authorized distributor of AMD products that is based in the United Arab Emirates, in the state of Dubai. The company is also listed under the name Sky Electronics on AMD’s Web site. Sky Electronics, whose managing director is named Manoj Thacker, says on its Web site that it is a business partner of Intel, Microsoft Corp., Nvidia Corp. and several other technology vendors in addition to AMD.

Maybe that’s why they need all of that enriched uranium...to predict the weather. 

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 12/07/2007 at 08:47 AM   
Filed Under: • Computers • Iran •  
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   Friday - August 31, 2007

Cleaning Used Hard Drives…

Sure you can drill through the old Hard Drives and that usually makes the data unrecoverable.. But leave it to the Military to make sure the data is never Recovered...and a lot faster when dealing with 300 Hard drives.. now I know it’s dated April 1st.. but I’m sure that is just a coincidence.. with Explosive Ordinance Disposal Units this result is Definitely obtainable..

Posted by Infinity     on 08/31/2007 at 12:47 AM   
Filed Under: • Computers • Fun-Stuff • Military •  
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   Tuesday - July 17, 2007

Unhappy. Birthday Computer Viruses turn 25 this Month

Go ahead and Guess what the first computer a virus infected?

The first computer virus wasn’t much of a threat. Created by a mischievous Pittsburgh high school student, Elk Cloner annoyed unwitting Apple II users with a brief poem extolling its power to proliferate:

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes it’s Cloner! …

The year was 1982. The IBM personal computer had only been born the year before (its first virus would not crop up until 1986), the worlds of science and business had yet to adopt computer technology on a wide scale and computer users were primarily a gaggle of tech-savvy hobbyists who swapped files by floppy disk.

In the 25 years since the irksome but relatively benign Cloner, the growing World Wide Web of computer networks and high-speed Internet connections has left just about everyone with a PC or laptop vulnerable to malware (malicious software). In the process, malware has evolved from a minor irritant into big business.

The costs of malware are hard to quantify, but estimates range from tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in lost profits and fraudulently acquired gains annually, says computer security expert Eugene Spafford, a professor of computer science in the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security at Purdue University.

Like viruses and similar programs called worms, modern malware copies itself onto unsuspecting computers via e-mail attachments, Web pages or more direct attacks. But instead of causing those machines to crash, it may monitor keystrokes to detect social security numbers or deliver spam peddling bogus get-rich-quick schemes. So-called bots even allow attackers to remotely control infected systems.

Old-style malware, seemingly written for bragging rights, made headlines for knocking out swaths of the World Wide Web. The SQL Slammer worm briefly slowed Internet traffic to a crawl in early 2003. Financial motives often drive newer malware, which is subtler, more like a parasite, Spafford says. It sticks around inflicting damage but “it doesn’t want to kill the host because that kills it,” too, he says.

In a commentary published online this week in Science, Spafford and computer scientist Richard Ford of the Florida Institute of Technology warn that the problem will widen in scope as cell phones and other household electronics become increasingly sophisticated and connected (think iPhone). Proof-of-concept viruses could in principle hop between cell phones via the Bluetooth wireless standard. “Virulent cell-to-cell malware is not far off,” the researchers caution.

Malware has no single cause or solution, and is likely to get worse before it improves, Spafford says. “A lot of the problems have to do with human nature,” he says. Consumers demand more and fancier computer functions, creating more spaces for viruses and bots to hide. Software and machines could include tools to make them more resistant to malware, but people would probably switch them off to play games, he says.

A National Research Council report published in late June called for more research to improve cybersecurity technologies and policies. Spafford says a concerted effort by governments and industry could rein in the growth of malware in the coming decade—if the subject received sustained attention.

“We don’t see malware going away,” he says. “The question is, how much is it with us?”

Source
Yep while not very malicious and more of a joke program.. the first computer in the wild was unleashed on an Apple.. isn’t there a warning against patronizing Apple in the bible as well? and Apple potentially getting us into a big mess?

Posted by Infinity     on 07/17/2007 at 05:47 PM   
Filed Under: • Computers •  
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   Thursday - July 05, 2007

TED - Hans Rosling

If you are not familiar with the TED conference, it is a gathering of real thinkers (and some loons) to give short, 18 minute talks about what is important in their worlds.  It started as a conference about Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED), but has expanded to cover much more.  To be sure, there is a plethora of liberal thought spread thickly throughout this community, but amongst the chaff, there is some good wheat.

This talk is by Dr. Hans Rosen.  He makes some claims about CO2 emissions and climate change that you will most likely take issue with, but don’t let that keep you from missing some very interesting points he is making.  Also, the software he is using is absolutely amazing in terms of statistical Visualization (my pet project for the past couple of years).  Finally, his conclusions about the means and goals of helping the developing countries is fascinating to me.

What do you think?

Posted by Mr. Christian     on 07/05/2007 at 10:54 AM   
Filed Under: • Africa • Climate-Weather • Colleges-Professors • Computers • Health-Medicine • International •  
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