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Botnet

Submission + - Researchers Tracking Emerging 'Darkness' Botnet (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers are tracking a new botnet that has become one of the more active DDoS networks on the Internet since its emergence early last month. The botnet, dubbed "Darkness," is being controlled by several domains hosted in Russia and its operators are boasting that it can take down large sites with as few as 1,000 bots. The Darkness botnet is seen as something of a successor to the older Black Energy and Illusion botnets and researchers at the Shadowserver Foundation took a look at the network's operation and found that it is capable of generating large volumes of attack traffic.

"Upon testing, it was observed that the throughput of the attack traffic directed simultaneously at multiple sites was quite impressive," Shadowserver's analysts wrote in a report on the Darkness botnet. "It now appears that 'Darkness' is overtaking Black Energy as the DDoS bot of choice. There are many ads and offers for DDoS services using 'Darkness'. It is regularly updated and improved and of this writing is up to version 7. There also appear to be no shortage of buyers looking to add 'Darkness' to their botnet arsenal."

Submission + - Explosive-laden Calif. Home to be Destroyed (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Neighbors gasped when authorities showed them photos of the inside of the Southern California ranch-style home: Crates of grenades, mason jars of white, explosive powder and jugs of volatile chemicals that are normally the domain of suicide bombers.

Now authorities face the risky task of getting rid of the explosives. The property is so dangerous and volatile that that they have no choice but to burn the home to the ground this week in a highly controlled operation involving dozens of firefighters, scientists and hazardous material and pollution experts.

Submission + - In a CDN’d world, OpenDNS is the enemy (sajalkayan.com) 2

Submitted by
The_PHP_Jedi
The_PHP_Jedi writes: "Alternative DNS services, such as OpenDNS and Google Public DNS, are used to bypass the sluggishness often associated with local ISP DNS servers. However, as more Web sites, particularly smaller ones, use Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) via embedded ads, widgets and other assets, the effectiveness of non-ISP DNS servers may be undermined. Why? Because CDNs rely on the location of a user's DNS server to determine the closest server with the hosted content. Sajal Kayan published a series of test results which demonstrates the difference, and also provided the Python script used so you can test which is the most effective DNS service for your own Internet connection."

Comment Re:Oh i get it. (Score 1) 318

by __aatdha9242 (#32267970) Attached to: Germany Demands Google Forfeit Citizens' Wi-Fi Data

Would they have failed to notice them filling dozens of HDDs a week when they should've only needed a small number for a country?

From TFA:

Google last week said it had collected 600 gigabytes of data from unsecured wireless area networks, or WLANS, from around the world as its roving cars compiled a photo archive for Street View.

600GB for the entire world? Compared to the amount of image data they must have collected that's barely a drop in the ocean, hardly as glaringly obvious as you make it out to be.

Spam

Submission + - Court rules WHOIS privacy illegal for spammers (sedo.com)

Submitted by Unequivocal
Unequivocal writes: Spammers hiding behind a WHOIS privacy service have been found in violation of CAN-SPAM. It probably won't stop other spammers from hiding (what can?) but at least it adds another arrow in the legal quiver for skewering the bottom feeders:

'A recent decision by the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has determined that using WHOIS privacy on domains may be considered "material falsification" under federal law... Although the ruling does not make use of WHOIS privacy illegal, it does serve as a clear message from the court that coupling the use of privacy services with intentional spamming will likely result in a violation of the CAN-SPAM act. This is an important decision that members of the domain community should refer to prior to utilizing a privacy shield.'
Biotech

Scientists To Breed the Auroch From Extinction 277

Posted by samzenpus from the back-by-popular-demand dept.
ImNotARealPerson writes "Scientists in Italy are hoping to breed back from extinction the mighty auroch, a bovine species which has been extinct since 1627. The auroch weighed 2,200 pounds (1000kg) and its shoulders stood at 6'6". The beasts once roamed most of Asia and northern Africa. The animal was depicted in cave paintings and Julius Caesar described it as being a little less in size than an elephant. A member of the Consortium for Experimental Biotechnology suggests that 99% of the auroch's DNA can be recreated from genetic material found in surviving bone material. Wikipedia mentions that researchers in Poland are working on the same problem."

Comment Re:Tesla Coil recipe using an old CRT (Score 1) 82

by __aatdha9242 (#30313382) Attached to: Musical Tesla Coils Perform Zelda
Actually, most high voltage power supplies now contain bleeder resistors, which are large value (many megaohm) resistors connected in parallel across all high voltage capacitors, slowly discharging them when the power is disconnected at a rate unlikely to affect normal operation, hence discharging them to a safe level within a few hours.

The rest of it really isn't that dangerous either, as the high voltage output is AC at a high frequency, and hence because of the skin effect only flows over the surface of the skin and does not penetrate to a depth where it may affect the heart or other sensitive organs, which is why the GP describes the high voltage produced as "painless".

Comment Re:Some Advice (Score 1) 312

by __aatdha9242 (#30264734) Attached to: Network Security While Traveling?

If you are worried about viruses on your machine, only let Virtual Machine snapshots connect to a network

Buy a USB-based wireless device (they're only $20 or so). Disable the wireless device on your Notebook's OS. Before you leave, build a Virtual Machine running an OS of your choice (Linux works nicely). Install the OS from scratch, boot it, update it, and then open up a browser instance. Configure it so that the USB wireless device is forwarded directly to the VM, and install its drivers in the VM. Snapshot the Virtual Machine's state. When you're travelling, turn off your Notebook's wireless signal the entire time. If you want to use the Internet, plug in the USB wireless device, start your VM, and use the Internet through it. When you're done, shut down the VM and revert its state to the saved snapshot state that you made before you started your trip. This should help ensure that any viruses you are hit with only survive the duration of that single VM session.

This would be excellent advice, but unfortunately, he's using a netbook. This normally means an Intel Atom processor, which is sadly devoid of any hardware visualization support whatsoever, therefore stopping the otherwise excellent virtualbox from working. Some very good points otherwise though.
Data Storage

MS Says All Sidekick Data Recovered, But Damage Done 279

Posted by timothy from the small-favors dept.
nandemoari writes "T-Mobile is taking a huge financial hit in the fallout over the Sidekick data loss. But Microsoft, which bears at least part of the responsibility for the mistake, is paying the price with its reputation. As reported earlier this week, the phone network had to admit that some users' data had been permanently lost due to a problem with a server run by Microsoft-owned company Danger. The handset works by storing data such as contacts and appointments on a remote computer rather than on the phone itself. BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data, but a minority are still affected (out of 1 million subscribers). Amidst this, Microsoft appears not to have suffered any financial damage. However, it seems certain that its relationship with T-Mobile will have taken a major knock. The software giant is also the target of some very bad publicity as critics question how on earth it failed to put in place adequate back-ups of the data. That could seriously damage the potential success of the firm's other 'cloud computing' plans, such as web-only editions of Office."
Censorship

Submission + - China Strangles Tor Ahead of National Day (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by TechReviewAl
TechReviewAl writes: Technology Review reports that the Chinese government has for the first time targeted the Tor anonymity network. In the run up to in China's "national day" celebrations, the government started targeting the sites used to distribute Tor addresses and the number of users inside China dropped from tens of thousands to near zero. The move is part of a broader trend that involves government's launching sensorship crackdowns around key dates. The good news is that many Tor users quickly found a way around the attack, distributing "bridge" addresses via IM and twitter.
Medicine

Submission + - You Too Can Learn Echolocation

Submitted by
The Narrative Fallacy
The Narrative Fallacy writes: "Wired reports that with just a few weeks of training, you can learn to "see" objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do. Acoustic expert Juan Antonio Martinez at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain has developed a system to teach people how to use echolocation, a skill that could be particularly useful for the blind and for people who work under dark or smoky conditions, like firefighters — or cat burglars. "Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you," says Martinez. "Within another couple weeks you can tell the difference between trees and pavement." To master the art of echolocation, you can begin by making the typical "sh" sound used to make someone be quiet. Moving a pen in front of the mouth can be noticed right away similar to the phenomenon when traveling in a car with the windows down, which makes it possible to "hear" gaps in the verge of the road. The next level is to learn how to master "palate clicks," special clicks with your tongue and palate that are better than other sounds because they can be made in a uniform way, work at a lower intensity, and don't get drowned out by ambient noise. With the palate click you can learn to recognize slight changes in the way the clicks sound depending on what objects are nearby. "For all of us in general, this would be a new way of perceiving the world," says Martinez."

Comment Actually, No (Score 1) 154

by __aatdha9242 (#28468365) Attached to: Reporters Find US Gov't Data In Ghana Market
What the GP appears to be refering to is an ATA password. This does not encrypt any data on the disk, but it does lock the drive, and store a hash of the password on the disk itself. Replacing the circuit board will not fix this, as the new circuit board will detect the password, and keep the drive locked.

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