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Security

Submission + - Newest Version of Storm Worm in "BETA Testing& (robertmcardle.com)

Submitted by
Robert McArdle
Robert McArdle writes: "There is a new wave of the now infamous Storm Worm doing the rounds. This time the mail attempts to convince users to download a program that is currently undergoing Beta Testing. In return the helpful victim receives their own Free Edition (lucky them) and from 5 years to a lifetime of free updates. Oh ... and their computer joins a massive P2P Botnet, and starts generating massive amounts of SPAM to help spread the worm...still no BETA software comes without the odd bug. Read More"
Privacy

Submission + - Going to Yosemite? Get your passport ready! (cnn.com)

Submitted by rev_media
rev_media writes: The Real ID acts mandates all states to begin issuing federal IDs to all citizens by 2008. Costs could be as much at $14 billion, but only 40 million are currently allocated. Several states have passed legislation expressly forbidding participation in the program, while others seem to be all for it. The IDs will be required for access to all federal areas including flights, state parks and federal buildings. People in states refusing to comply will need to show passports even for domestic flights.
Power

Submission + - Superefficient Solar Cell from Silicon Nanocrystal 1

Submitted by
chinmay7
chinmay7 writes: "Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), have shown that silicon nanocrystals can produce two or three electrons per photon of high-energy (blue and UV) sunlight. The small size of nanoscale crystals results in the conversion of this energy into electrons instead of heat. Solar cells made of silicon nanocrystals could theoretically reach more than 40% efficiency, compared to 20% efficiency of the best conventional silicon solar cells.
An article in the Tech Review goes into more detail."
Robotics

Submission + - Robots in Media - Keepon, the Dancing Bot (waziwazi.com)

Submitted by
itsbeavertime
itsbeavertime writes: "Keepon, a robot designed by Hideki Kozima, has appeared in its second music video — "Don't You Evah" by Spoon. The first video has garnered over 1.3 million hits on You Tube. The little bot is doing his part for a good cause too. Keepon will appear alongside Spoon for a Los Angeles concert in support of Creative Commons!. The concert is organized by Wired as part of its Nextfest kickoff in September. "About 1' tall, the cutesy witzy little bot bobs up and down, turns around and nods rhythmically in sync to groovy music! The robot is designed to 'interact with children by communicating attention and emotion'. It features two 'eye' cameras and a microphone in its nose and unfortunately, isn't for sale and used only for research purposes.""
America Online

Submission + - AOL engaged in polite comment spam? (botchthecrab.com)

Submitted by
Botch the Crab
Botch the Crab writes: "My blog gets the occasional unremarkable comment spam, but one I received yesterday is worth mentioning. First, it's so polite:
"hello , you have a very nice site, but Im hired to leave advertising comments on sites, sorry i hate to do it but i have to . If you dont like advertising comments please send me an email with your site address to tedirectory(at)yahoo(dot)com and I will not write on your site. Sorry for inconvenience."
What's really interesting is that the promotional link is to love.com, AOL's Personals site. I found this comment spam has been posted in over 300 places throughout the net and love.com is the only URL ever used. The IP [72.9.235.218] belongs to Global Net Access in Georgia, so it's not completely damning proof, but is AOL now engaged in (very polite) comment spam?"
Enlightenment

Submission + - Researchers create gravity in lab experiment

Submitted by jcgam69
jcgam69 writes: Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Mobile-Review attacked supposedly by Apple fanboys

Submitted by
Etinin
Etinin writes: "Over the last few days, the www.mobile-review.com website has been continually under a DDoS attack. The attack begun shortly after the site posted a negative review on the iPhone, and someone emailed them saying it's a revenge from Apple fans. It seems that some folks really need to learn to have some respect for other people's opinion. Below is an open letter by the editor-in-chief of the website who kindly requested me to publish it to the community.

Open letter by Mobile-Review.com Editor-in-Chief, Eldar Murtazin

Dear colleagues, friends and readers of Mobile-Review.com!

Over the last few days Mobile-Review.com has been under continuous DDOS attacks coming from unidentified individuals. Several tens of thousands of computers across the globe are supporting the attack — these are "infected" terminals, or, as they call it, bot-nets. Since the first wave, which disabled the site,as all the channels were being jammed, the algorithms of the attack have been altered numerous times — from individual computers to the entire subnetwork housing Mobile-Review.com in particular.

The attackers hope that by crushing Mobile-Review.com, they won't let our visitors get unbiased information on events in the mobile industry, read independent reviews and share their opinions on forums. In light of the fact that similar attacks can be performed by individuals or small groups of people, we regard this incident as an attempt to impose censorship in the Internet. More than 200.000 of our readers from all over the world, visiting Mobile-Review.com every day to find up-to-the-minute information or just talk to other users, have been robbed of this opportunity. These culprits oppose themselves to the society. There is only a small step separating censorship of undesirable resources and articles from an attempt to get hold of mass media, dictating own viewpoints for the sake of personal benefits or political goals. The threat of such scenario can't be underestimated. Since all tools required for a DDoS-attack are available for free, it can be carried out by individuals favoring some particular brand, or any company having sufficient resources to set an attack going. Regrettably, it is not possible to track attackers in this case, nor can they be proven guilty in a court of law. Earlier this year, in spring, similar attacks were aimed at other resources, specifically, "Echo of Moscow",site of the Kommersant.

When the first attack was unfolding, the Editor-in-Chief of Mobile-Review.com received an anonymous message on his Internet-pager, which read that fans of Apple were behind the attack, as this was a sort of revenge forthe iPhone and the treatment it got over at Mobile-Review.com. Possibly, it is true, however there is a chance that the message was sent in order to put us off the track. It is not a secret that we release "burning", critical articles that many don't like. There have been many of these of late — we think of this as our duty to notify the readers and subscribers not only of events and new offerings in the mobile industry, but also of certain facts marring usability of various gadgets, or capable of affecting consumers.

The attack aimed at Mobile-Review.com is unprecedented in scope and persistence. That is why we believe it is essential to attract attention of the community and our readers to the attempt of censoring unwanted points of view. If you don't express your opinion on what is currently taking place today, tomorrow you will be down to consume only the informationsomeone needs and sees appropriate to offer you. This statement might sound grotesque or made-up, but this is how it stands. Great deeds start with the first step. Today, it is Mobile-Review.com, and our readers, who can't get to us; tomorrow there will be more targets and so on. Only together can we stop this disaster from spreading further.

We don't have turnkey solutions that would make the Internet a better place, with readers and resources protected from this type of censorship. We will be more than happy if our colleagues, readers and other users express what they think of this problem — on his/her resource, forum or any other place on the Web they visit. It is worth defending yourself from this kind of censorship in future.

For the time being, the staff of Mobile-Review.com doesn't have a complete strategy for countering these threats in future. The technical side of our current activities is obvious, and we are doing everything possible to get the site back as soon as possible. We engage the site occasionally, and hope to get over this attack shortly. You can share your personal point of view here — http://eldarmurtazin.livejournal.com/37978.html.

Since it is a DDoS-attack and the attackers can't be tracked online, we offer 10.000 USD (ten thousand USD) to any individual or group of individuals who can provide documented information on the mastermind of this attack. You can send all reports to my email.

Editor-in-Chief,

Mobile-Review.com

Eldar Murtazin

eldar@mobile-review.com

August 17, 2007

Mobile-Review.com was founded on September 2, 2002. Mobile-Review.com has a daily audience of more than 200.000 visitors, viewing 500,000-700,000 pages.1. The daily traffic generated by Mobile-Review.com exceeds 500 Gb. Being the biggest resource on the mobile industry in Russia, the site also ranks first in the world among English sites.


1 Data taken from the log-files of mobile-review.com in July, 2007; independent statistics systems indicate 130,000-135,000 visitors a day.
"
Power

Submission + - Heat wave shuts down Alabama reactor (chron.com)

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "In a first for the US, one of three nuclear reactors at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama has been shut down because the Tennessee River is too hot to provide adequate cooling for the waste heat produced by the reactor. This is happening as the TVA faces it's highest demand for power ever reports the Houston Chronicle. This effect has been seen in Europe in the past forcing reduced generation, but the US has, until now, been immune to the problem. The TVA will buy power elsewhere and impose higher rates, owing to reduced river flow as a result of drought."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft ask for votes to support OOXML

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I live in Mexico and today received a call from a Microsoft representative to be part of the commission in my country to vote for the approval of Office Open XML (OOXML). After talked with this representative I found something interesting... if you tell them that you will support them you will receive the documentation to 'enroll' you in the 'committee' and make all the arrangements with the National Chamber for IT and Telecommunications (I don't know what they will do if you refuse to support them but I'm thinking about it ...). So here is my question. Is this happening in other countries? Have any other slashdotters received similar calls?
Unix

Submission + - First SCO pump and dump scam

Submitted by
BigBadBus
BigBadBus writes: "When SCO's shares crashed last week, Slashdot readers were jubilant, and some of us speculated that pump and dump scams would be imminent. After checking my gmail spam folder for false positives, I saw the following message. I wasn't surprised at the contents, but I was surprised it had taken so long (nearly a week) to appear. Have any other Slashdot readers seen a similar spam email? This looks a bit dubious, as I've only ever seen penny stocks advertised: SCO's prices is still "quite high" (ha ha)

SCOX SHARES GO SKY HIGH. WATCH OUT FOR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT MONDAY AUGUST 20 !!!!!

SCO SOFTWARE GROUP
Symbol: SCOX
Price: $0.38

SCOX THE RISING STAR, IS SET TO SKY ROCKET STATUS ON MONDAY!
CALL TO BROKER, paul, SOMEONE KNOWS SOMETHING!!!!!!"
Censorship

Submission + - Wikipedia Scanner nabs nefarious editors (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Can this really be a surprise? People using CIA and FBI computers as well as the Vatican, voting machine supplier Diebold have been editing entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia according to a new tracing program. The recently posted Wikipedia Scanner, is an application recently invented by graduate student Virgil Griffiths, outed the editors. The program lets users track the source of computers used to make changes to the popular Internet encyclopedia where anyone can submit and edit entries. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18498"
Privacy

Submission + - Hardware failure brings down RBS cash machines (pcadvisor.co.uk)

Submitted by
Liam Cromar
Liam Cromar writes: "An IT hardware problem brought down the Royal Bank of Scotland's online, telephone banking and cash machines at the weekend, RBS has confirmed. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, which includes the Nat West bank, has a UK customer base of more than 22 million. RBS has refused to give details of the hardware problem.

In other news, the RBS has warned that 62000 customers may be at risk of having their identity stolen, following the RBS losing a disc containing customer personal details in the postal service. Sounds like the RBoS has enjoyed better 24 hours."

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