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Bug

Windows DLL Vulnerability Exploit In the Wild 178

WrongSizeGlass writes "Exploit code for the DLL loading issue that reportedly affects hundreds of Windows applications made its appearance on Monday. HD Moore, the creator of the Metasploit open-source hacking toolkit, released the exploit code along with an auditing tool that records which applications are vulnerable. 'Once it makes it into Metasploit, it doesn't take much more to execute an attack,' said Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle Security. 'The hard part has already been done for [hackers].'"
Music

VideoLAN Announces libaacs 105

supersloshy writes "VideoLAN, makers of the well-known media player VLC, have just announced a new project called libaacs. The libaacs library's intention is to provide a free software library to implement the AACS specification, the copy-protection found on things such as Blu-ray discs. Note that this isn't meant to actually be a decoding library. It includes no AACS keys and is solely developed for research purposes."
Government

Tor Developer Detained At US Border, Pressed On Wikileaks 637

suraj.sun writes with this news from CNET: "A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site — Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor — was detained by US agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project. Appelbaum, a US citizen, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland Thursday morning, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched. Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said." Appelbaum told me that he just spoke at length with The New York Times, and quipped that his Defcon talk about Tor was "just fine, until the FBI showed up"; this post will likely be updated with more details. Update: 08/02 03:59 GMT by T : Here's the NYT's coverage.
Businesses

Comcast Awarded the Golden Poo Award 286

ISoldat53 writes "The Consumerist has awarded Comcast the Golden Poo award for the worst company in America. From the article: 'After four rounds of bloody battle against some of the most publicly reviled businesses in America, Comcast can now run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and hold its hands high in victory — it has bested everyone else to earn the title of Worst Company In America for 2010.'"
X

After 2 Years of Development, LTSP 5.2 Is Out 79

The Linux Terminal Server Project has for years been simplifying the task of time-sharing a Linux system by means of X terminals (including repurposed low-end PCs). Now, stgraber writes "After almost two years or work and 994 commits later made by only 14 contributors, the LTSP team is proud to announce that the Linux Terminal Server Project released LTSP 5.2 on Wednesday the 17th of February. As the LTSP team wanted this release to be some kind of a reference point in LTSP's history, LDM (LTSP Display Manager) 2.1 and LTSPfs 0.6 were released on the same day. Packages for LTSP 5.2, LDM 2.1 and LTSPfs 0.6 are already in Ubuntu Lucid and a backport for Karmic is available. For other distributions, packages should be available very soon. And the upstream code is, as always, available on Launchpad."

Comment Open-sourced already? (Score 1) 557

SuperBanana said:

It'd be really refreshing to see scientists develop a bit of altruism. It's the ultimate Open Source, and they'd be guaranteed decades, if not centuries, of good will and fame. That's worth a lot more than a few *possible* royalty checks.

Heard this on NPR on my way home from work yesterday:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/07/31/solar_storage/

"MIT has patented the process and is forming a company to develop the technology for market. Nocera also published his discovery in today's issue of the journal "Science."

        Nocera: I open-sourced it right away. Because it's easy to do, you'll have the entire community across the world begin working on this."

Sounds like he did "open-source" it, or so he says. But where is the "source" ? Published in "Science" ? Can someone who subscribes to that magazine take a look? Does it seem like it contains all the details necessary to reproduce the technology?

Software

Submission + - Microsoft settlement funds free FOSS computers (archive.org)

christian.einfeldt writes: "The State of California sued Microsoft for Anti-trust violations, and now the proceeds of the settlement of that case are being used to fund the acquisition of computers for any school district in California. The terms of the settlement allow every school district in California to be reimbursed a set dollar amount for the purchase of computers with the software of their choice. It is clear from the way that the settlement was structured that Microsoft anticipated that school districts would mainly use the settlement to fund the acquisition of more Microsoft products, with a few Apple purchases sprinkled in here and there. But now that Free Open Source Software is being commercialized by hardware vendors such as Dell, System76, EmperorLinux, Zareason.com, and TechCollective.com, acquiring computers powered by Free Open Source Software is straightforward. In his Slashdot journal, Christian Einfeldt, a volunteer sys admin at a northern California public charter school details the step-by-step process for using Microsoft's money to pay for the Linux purchases of your school's choice."

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