MeanMF - Slashdot User

Understanding How CAPTCHA Is Broken 148

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday May 17, 2008 @11:10AM from the stuff-to-think-about dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Websense Security Labs explains the spammer Anti-CAPTCHA operations and mass-mailing strategies. Apparently spammers are using combination of different tactics — proper email accounts, visual social engineering, and fast-flux — representing a strategy, explains their resident CAPTCHA expert. It is evident that spammers are working towards defeating anti-spam filters with their tactics."

Submission + - Why blurring sensitive information is a bad idea

Submitted by

Rub3X

on Sunday January 07, 2007 @03:18AM

Rub3X writes: "For the most part this is all fine with peoples' faces as there isn't a convenient way to reverse the blur back into a photo so detailed that you can recognize the photo. So that's good if that is what you intended. However, many people also resort to blurring sensitive numbers and text. I'll illustrate why that is a BAD idea."

YouTube Blocked in Brazil 387

Posted by Zonk on Saturday January 06, 2007 @11:47PM from the down-with-love dept.

keeboo writes "The popular video sharing site YouTube is now blocked in Brazil due to a local court decision last Thursday. The site was ordered to block the uploaded sex videos of Brazilian media starlet Daniela Cicarelli and, although it complied, many users kept re-uploading it to the site. After the failure of YouTube to keep the video off of the site, the domain was blocked nationwide at a DNS level. Predictably, many Brazilians are annoyed and I've started to receive even SPAMs protesting on this blocking. From the article: 'The case now goes automatically to a three-member panel of judges who will decide whether to make the order permanent and whether to fine YouTube as much as US$119,000 (euro91,000) for each day the video was viewable, said Rubens Decousseau Tilkian.'"

Submission + - Wii suspectible to Opera vulnerability

Submitted by Thor Larholm on Saturday January 06, 2007 @09:01PM

Thor Larholm writes: Opera 9.10 was released in December, silently fixing a critical security vulnerability. Now it appears that the Nintendo Wii version of Opera is also suspectible to the same SVG createSVGTransformFromMatrix vulnerability.

Unlike Opera for the Windows and Linux platform, Opera for Devices has not seen a security update for this issue. The vulnerability, originally discovered by iDefense Labs, allows you to control a pointer that is used for virtual function calls, and could spark renewed interest in the Wii for homebrew and media center applications, much as security vulnerabilities in games for other consoles have enabled users to install unsigned software.

Opera Security Patched In Secret 88

Posted by Zonk on Saturday January 06, 2007 @03:41PM from the on-the-downlow dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Opera 9.10 released in December seemed to be a rather cosmetic update. But as heise Security reports, behind the scenes Opera patched two remote code execution holes — neither of them mentioned in the changelog. In addition, Opera rates an exploitable heap overflow as 'moderate' because it is 'not trivial to exploit it reliably'. From the article: 'JPEG images can be specially prepared to cause a buffer overflow on the heap. Even though Opera suggests in the heading to its security notice that this problem only causes the browser to crash, the flaw can nonetheless be exploited to inject and execute code. Security service provider iDefense, which reported the hole to Opera, has confirmed this. The same holds true for a flawed type conversion in the JavaScript support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Attackers can specially call the function createSVGTransformFromMatrix to have the browser execute code with the user's rights.'"

Submission + - Why blurring sensitive information is a bad idea

Submitted by

dheera

on Saturday January 06, 2007 @03:20PM

dheera writes: "Many of us have seen images of credit cards or statements online where information is blurred to hide sensitive information. I describe in an article why this is a bad idea and how it can be attacked in a method similar to a dictionary attack on a Unix password file."

Submission + - Satellites unveil 2,000-year-old trails

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Saturday January 06, 2007 @02:27PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) and at NASA have used satellites to track the movements of people living in the Arenal region of Costa Rica more than 2,000 years ago. They've also used video-game software to virtually 'fly' above the footpaths taken by Central Americans between small villages and cemeteries. It's a fascinating story because Arenal Volcano is still very active and that the people who lived there didn't disappear as highly structured societies like the Maya and Aztec. And people living today in the Arenal region are certainly friendlier than your neighbors. Read more for additional references about this project and several pictures of beautiful Arenal Volcano, when it's quiet and when it erupts."

Submission + - The Inventor of Ramen Noodles Dies

Submitted by

Hawthorne01

on Saturday January 06, 2007 @01:27PM

Hawthorne01 writes: "The man responsible for getting more people through college than the inventor of Cliff's Notes has passed on. Let's all raise our waterproof polystyrene containers in memory of this great, great man and all that he did to keep us alive and glued to our keyboards."

Submission + - Ethanol Fuel Cosumption Comparison

Submitted by

blue234

on Saturday January 06, 2007 @01:17PM

blue234 writes: "Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius said the choice of a grand prize is a good one. "By offering an E85 vehicle as a grand prize, the Lottery and its partners are helping promote an industry that is increasingly important to Kansas," said the Governor. "Demand for ethanol is creating a growing market for Kansas grain." Good for the ethanol industry, perhaps, but of questionable value as a way to reduce gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. According to official EPA fuel-economy ratings, a 2007 GMC Sierra Classic 1500 4WD (Crew Cab) gets 15 mpg in city driving and 19 mpg in highway driving when operating on straight, unleaded gasoline. Operating on E85, those numbers drop to 11 mpg and 14 mpg, respectively. That is about the same as a Hummer H2 (flex-fuel versions of which will become available starting with the 2008-year models) full story"

Submission + - Inventor Of Instant Noodles Dies

Submitted by

SilentOneNCW

on Saturday January 06, 2007 @12:54PM

SilentOneNCW writes: "The inventor of instant noodles, Momofuku Ando, has died in Japan, aged 96, of a heart attack, the BBC reports. It is truly a sad time for geeks everywhere, but let us celebrate by enjoying some instant noodles — a staple of the geek diet like pizza, Bawls, or Mountain Dew."

Water Cooling Computers With A Swimming Pool 241

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday January 06, 2007 @11:27AM from the take-your-pc-for-a-dip dept.

guzugi writes "This is a project I have been working for several months and been hypothesizing for much longer. The basic idea is to shortcut the need for an air conditioner when cooling multiple computers. Swimming pool water is pumped into the house and through several waterblocks to effectively cool these hot machines. This greatly reduces noise cooling requirements."

Submission + - Finally: Dual-Tuner CableCard Receiver for Vista

Submitted by MCEFan on Saturday January 06, 2007 @08:53AM

MCEFan writes: One year after Cable Labs OK'd CableCards for Media Center PCs, we're starting to see a little action. Microsoft announced with much fanfare in late 2005 that it had come to terms with the bullies at Cable Television Laboratories (Microsoft didn't use those words), and that HD over cable would indeed be accessible through Media Center Edition PCs. Finally, at CES 2007, Niveus Media, purveyor of high-end Media Center PCs, will show an external CableCard receiver that accommodates two CableCards for use with Vista PCs. The Niveus Digital Cable Receiver has two CableCard slots, allowing users to tune into and/or record two channels simultaneously — including HD premium content from cable providers. Sounds silly to get so worked up about such a thing, but it is indeed a milestone in the tedious battle to get cable to participate in the modern digital era.

The Birth of vi 459

Posted by Zonk on Saturday January 06, 2007 @07:13AM from the please-keep-emacs-trolling-to-a-minimum dept.

lanc writes "Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun, tells the story of how he wrote the vi editor. The article at The Register delves into his motives, who instigated the project, and some of the quirks of leaving a 'gift to mankind'. From the piece: '9600 baud is faster than you can read. 1200 baud is way slower. So the editor was optimized so that you could edit and feel productive when it was painting slower than you could think. Now that computers are so much faster than you can think, nobody understands this anymore. The people doing Emacs were sitting in labs at MIT with what were essentially fibre-channel links to the host, in contemporary terms. They were working on a PDP-10, which was a huge machine by comparison, with infinitely fast screens. So they could have funny commands with the screen shimmering and all that, and meanwhile, I'm sitting at home in sort of World War II surplus housing at Berkeley with a modem and a terminal that can just barely get the cursor off the bottom line.'"

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