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Did the Spamhaus DDoS Really Slow Down Global Internet Access? 70

Posted by samzenpus from the what's-to-blame dept.
CowboyRobot writes "Despite the headlines, the big denial of service attack may not have slowed the Internet after all. The argument against the original claim include the fact that reports of Internet users seeing slowdowns came not from service providers, but the DDoS mitigation service CloudFlare, which signed up Spamhaus as a customer last week. Also, multiple service providers and Internet watchers have now publicly stated that while the DDoS attacks against Spamhaus could theoretically have led to slowdowns, they've seen no evidence that this occurred for general Internet users. And while some users may have noticed a slowdown, the undersea cable cuts discovered by Egyptian sailors had more of an impact than the DDoS."
AI

A German Parking Garage Parks Your Car For You 131

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the free-dents-included dept.
moon_unit2 writes "Tech Review has a story about a garage in Ingolstadt, Germany, where the cars park themselves. The garage is an experiment set up by Audi to explore ways that autonomous technology might practically be introduced; most of the sensor technology is built into the garage and relayed to the cars rather than inside the cars themselves. It seems that carmakers see the technology progressing in a slightly different way to Google, with its fleet of self-driving Prius. From the piece: 'It's actually going to take a while before you get a really, fully autonomous car,' says Annie Lien, a senior engineer at the Electronics Research Lab, a shared facility for Audi, Volkswagen, and other Volkswagen Group brands in Belmont, California, near Silicon Valley. 'People are surprised when I tell them that you're not going to get a car that drives you from A to B, or door to door, in the next 10 years.'"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Slashdot Easter egg in the Opera browser

Submitted by patro
patro writes: Opera Watch mentions that the Opera browser has a Slashdot easter egg in it. Type a slash and a dot in the address bar, press Enter and look what happens. How cool is that?
Security

Submission + - WordPress download site cracked

Submitted by JavaRob
JavaRob writes: From the WordPress development blog: "If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately."

Fortunately, they got a tipoff, but it's not clear how long the altered download (the cracker altered a couple of files to add in remote execution capabilities) would have stayed up otherwise.

Note: the cracker did not sneak in code by posing as an OSS developer (the common FUD scare scenario...); they just managed to crack one of the site's servers, and altered the download directly.

Apparently, WordPress has taken steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. Personally, I'm wondering about ways browsers and/or operating systems might be improved to automate checksum validation for downloaded executables.
Democrats

Submission + - Who to thank for the Daylight Savings Time Change

Submitted by steverar
steverar writes: If you're in IT and having "fun" making sure everything's (OS, phone system, patient monitors, Blackberries, etc. ) updated/patched for the new Daylight Saving Time change coming March 11th, please thank Rep. Ed Markey. He sponsored and attached the amendment to the Energy Act of 2005. Read about him here http://markey.house.gov/index.php?option=com_conte nt&task=view&id=2624&Itemid=141

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