donkeyqong - Slashdot User

Conficker Worm Could Create World's Biggest Botnet 220

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @06:18AM from the holding-our-collective-breath dept.

nk497 writes "The worm that's supposedly infected almost nine million PCs running Windows, dubbed Cornficker or Downadup, could lead to a massive botnet, security researchers have said. The worm initially spread to systems unpatched against MS08-067, but has since 'evolved and is now able to spread to patched computers through portable USB drives through brute-force password-guessing.'"

Comment I don't think it matters (Score 0) 379

by donkeyqong on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @04:37PM (#26065421) Attached to: Should Apple Open Source the iPhone?

I read down through the comments to see if anyone was going to mention this, but surprisingly, no one did. As long as there is an open source alternative it doesn't matter. It seems to me there is a lot of blathering about this and that need to be open source when there are either already open source projects that exist to fill the niche. All the blathering is about is tearing down something that was built closed source. Basically, whining about what ISN'T available to fiddle with. Apple has chosen well a whole lot over the last decade. Even in cases where they got it wrong (DRM) they worked with the industry leaders until concession was made.

Comment Re:Just in time to be outclassed... (Score 1) 200

by donkeyqong on Thursday December 04, 2008 @06:54PM (#25995789) Attached to: Apple Hints At Future Liquid-Cooled Laptops

Still?

Comment Just in time to be outclassed... (Score 0, Troll) 200

by donkeyqong on Thursday December 04, 2008 @09:02AM (#25987635) Attached to: Apple Hints At Future Liquid-Cooled Laptops

...by a $399 Dell. When has Apple released a computer that performs better better than the competition? Sure there are quite a few people that like the OS for one reason or another, rave about the ipod, or stand by their iphone. But really, when has there been an Apple that hasn't been outclassed in RAM, Processor power, or storage options by a half price competitor. GOod thing they have great designers working there.

US Army To Use MMOs For Turing Tests 55

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 08, 2008 @07:31AM from the your-tax-dollars-at-play dept.

Massively points out an article about new research projects for the US Army. One of the projects will evidently involve testing their AI capabilities in popular MMOs, including World of Warcraft and EVE Online. "They're working on creating 'photorealistic looking and acting human beings' that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang. 'I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they're responding,' Parmentola said. To test out the computer generated humans' 'humanity,' Parmentola and his researchers want to unleash some of their cyber Soldiers into so-called 'massively multi-player online games' such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online — games frequented by thousands of super-competitive human players in teams of virtual characters fighting battles that can last for days. 'We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they're good enough to convince humans that they're actually human,' he said."

A Look At the CoreFlood Botnet 120

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 08, 2008 @06:03AM from the from-russia-with-love dept.

CNet is running a story about research from security expert Joe Stewart into the CoreFlood botnet, which has harvested at least "50 gigabytes of compressed data, searchable in a MySQL database," from a group of over 370,000 bot IDs. Stewart explains how the botnet operates and some of the things he's learned about the group that operates it. "Within the 50GB file, Stewart was able to discern how the thieves culled the data. He said they run a test script against that data that will log via a proxy into the bank using the credentials captured, say by a keylogging application. The CoreFlood script will then capture the HTML data on the post long-in page. In most cases, that page also contains the account's bank balance. They do that, he said, so that after running the test they have a picture of what are the highest dollar amounts. 'I don't know whether they steal from all of them. We don't have access to the accounts; the bank is not going to tell us how much was stolen out of any given account. We're not going to get that information, but we know they're actively logging and checking accounts to collect the balance data. The only reason (the script) can see that data is to target the biggest accounts first,' he said."

Ghostbusters Game Coming From Atari 48

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 08, 2008 @04:32AM from the who-you-gonna-call dept.

Variety reported last week that Atari secured the rights to a Ghostbusters video game from Activision Blizzard, intending to publish something next year to coincide with the first movie's 25th anniversary. "The Ghostbusters game, which features all four actors from the original movie and a new script by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, is a follow-up to Ghostbusters II." Now, Eurogamer confirms that the game is indeed in development for the PC, PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360 and DS.

The State of Electronic Voting In the 2008 US Elections 223

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 07, 2008 @08:40PM from the no-paper-trail-no-problem dept.

Geek Satire writes "Voting works only if you believe your vote gets counted accurately. The 2008 US elections have avoided many well-known problems of the 2004 and 2000 elections, but many problems remain. O'Reilly News interviewed Dr. Barbara Simons, advisor to the Federal Election Assistance Commission, to review electronic voting in the 2008 US elections, discussing the physical security of storing and maintaining election machines, the move from electronic back to paper ballots, and why open source voting machines don't necessarily solve problems of bugs, backdoors, and audits."

ODF Toolkit Announced 71

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 07, 2008 @07:44PM from the building-blocks dept.

Sweetshark writes "IBM and Sun joined at the 2008 OpenOffice.org conference in Beijing to announce the ODF Toolkit Union. The ODF Toolkit project will be independent of the development at OpenOffice.org, and will operate under the liberal Apache license. It goes from small tools that simplify using ODF in the software development process to large ODF Java and .NET libraries that can be used within other projects. 'The future of accessing and distributing software is here today,' said Michael Bemmer, senior director of Collaboration Engineering at Sun. 'It is no longer an acceptable business practice to have silos of office document data stored in proprietary formats. The industry has moved forward and is replacing the silos with business content, such as on-premise business applications, software solutions offered over the Internet and applications supported by mobile devices that are critical in Service Oriented Architectures.' Will this help ODF to make inroads in the business world after the successes on the desktops of users at home?"

How To Cut In Line and Not Get Caught 256

Posted by samzenpus on Friday November 07, 2008 @03:07PM from the no-cuts dept.

ewenc writes "A psychology study of hundreds of people waiting for front-row access to U2 concerts points to the best ways to cut in line and not get caught. 'Super-fans' are most irked by queue-jumpers. People were equally peeved whether someone cut in front or behind, and cutters who jumped beside a friend were less likely to attract scorn."

Feed Science Daily: Draining Away Brain's Toxic Protein To Stop Alzheimer's (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Sunday August 12, 2007 @06:12PM

Scientists have shown how the body's natural way of ridding the body of the toxic protein amyloid-beta is flawed in people with the disease. Then the team demonstrated an experimental method in mice to fix the process, dramatically reducing the levels of the toxic protein in the brain and halting symptoms.

Journal Journal: [avr] The cutest microcontroller of them all

Journal by Alioth on Monday August 06, 2007 @06:43PM

Today, I got five ATtiny13 AVR microcontrollers in the mail (along with a few other things, like an ABS box for my nixie tube display for the Z80 machine, and a handful of power MOSFETs).

This has to be the cutest little microcontroller of them all. A complete system in an 8 pin IC package that looks no different to a typical op-amp or 555. But you can program it!

Google Shows Off Ad-Supported Cell Phone 290

Posted by Zonk on Thursday August 02, 2007 @05:52PM from the gotta-love-freebies dept.

taoman1 writes "Today Google showed off a ad-supported cellphone that the company plans to offer for free to interested parties. The product could reach the marketplace within a year, and will offer Google search, email, and a web browser. 'The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider, Apple Inc.'s iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least US$499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T Inc. service plan. Negotiating the fairest way to split those advertising revenues with service providers could be a big hurdle for Google, one analyst said. Another problem is the potential that consumers could be scared off by the prospect of listening to advertisements before being able to make phone calls, said Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst in Atlanta.'"

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