Comment Re:Good recruits? (Score 1) 154
Each attack leads to the creation of new terrorists
Actually, I'm pretty sure its SecuROM that makes new terrorists. They're all just angry about their copies of Spore, the Sims 2, and Fallout 3 not working.
Comment Re:None of them (Score 1) 116
Just wandering, (if you've seen any) what do you think of Canadian comedy and TV? As one of the very few people in Southern Ontario who actually knows what the term "Americanization" means, I'd like to hear the opinion of say Corner Gas of someone with taste living in the middle of the Televised hellhole. Its bad enough that a good 95% of what I get up here is Americanized, I'd like to know if what little distinction remains is actually good or if I'm just holding on to the last bit of non mainstream American TV here and convincing myself its good.
Comment A Homebrewer's best friend (Score 3, Funny) 53
Console game downloading services, giving hackers holes to load homebrew through since 1981
Comment Re:Start buying disk again? (Score 1) 275
I used to use the online multi-scanners, but the DSL Slam in my area can only handle 800kb/s up so large batches of files took FOREVER, with the exception of Kaspersky, which is on a seperate box and used to scan network SMB/SAMBA shares, they're all run locally on my XP install. As long as you make sure you only have one resident scanning at a time there's no conflict. The doenside is that it can get tiring manually scanning once with each utility, but it helps to kill false-positives and catches those few that slip through one or 2 of them.
Comment Re:Start buying disk again? (Score 1) 275
If you know what you're doing you're safe. Just never run anything that hasn't gotten good response from the community, doesn't show up as malicious by at least 5 Antimalware systems (I use Kaspersky, Avast!, ClamAV, Spybot: S&D, and Ad-Aware), and you haven't already tested in an isolated Virtual Machine. Besides, I only use my XP install for games so if it gets killed, no big deal.
Comment Re:Start buying disk again? (Score 1, Interesting) 275
Exactly! Most of the music/DVDs/software/games I buy physical copies of never leave their packaging, as soon as I own them I fire up BitTorrent/Gnutella/Warez forums and download myself a copy. I'm not exactly sure about the legality in the states under the DMCA but here in Canada it's 100% legal under the Private Copying section of the Copyright Act and the Computer Programs section if you want a rock-solid defense for backing up Software/Games to get "copies" by any methods you like as long as you actually own it.
Also, even if the House of Commons or the Supreme Court makes it illegal up here, I really don't care. For me morality is more important than legality when it comes to stupid laws, if I've purchased a copy I'll be damned if anyone is going to tell me that I can't grab myself a DRM-free version (besides, the RCMP hasn't and isn't going to be putting any effort into cracking down on piracy, and the ISPs up here don't seem to be doing anything beyond throttling). The day I give in to DRM is the day Microsoft goes open-source.
Comment Re:Here's my approach (Score 0, Offtopic) 83
Too true. Of course, the biggest difference is that the open shit doesn't try to sue you.
FTC Shuts Down Calif. ISP For Botnets, Child Porn 224
An anonymous reader writes "The Federal Trade Commission has convinced a federal judge to pull the plug on a 3FN.net, a.k.a. 'Pricewert LLC,' a Northern California based hosting provider. The FTC alleges that 3FN/Pricewert was directly involved in setting up spam-spewing botnets, among other illegal activities, the Washington Post's Security Fix Blog writes. From the story: 'Pricewert hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.' The story quotes a former Justice Dept. expert saying the FTC action may be a smoke screen for a larger criminal investigation by the federal government in 3FN's activities."
Was the Amazon De-Listing Situation a Glitch Or a Hack? 396
Miracle Jones writes "As Amazon struggles to re-list and re-rank gay, lesbian, and adult books on their website after massive public outcry against the secretive partitioning process, they are claiming that the entire situation was not the result of an intentional policy at all, are not apologizing, and are instead insisting that the situation was the result of 'a glitch' that they are now trying to fix. While some hackers are claiming credit for 'amazonfail,' and it is indeed possible that an outside party is responsible, most claims have already been debunked. How likely is it that Amazon was hacked versus the likelihood of an internal Easter weekend glitch? Or is the most obvious and likely scenario true, and Amazon simply got caught implementing a wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone?"
Comment Re:I wrote code in the Army (Score 1) 1127
You've worked for Microsoft?
Eavesdropping On Google Voice and Skype 62
Simmons writes with news of research that demonstrated vulnerabilities in Skype and Google Voice that would have allowed attackers to eavesdrop on calls or place unauthorized calls of their own. "The attacks on Google Voice and Skype use different techniques, but essentially they both work because neither service requires a password to access its voicemail system. For the Skype attack to work, the victim would have to be tricked into visiting a malicious Web site within 30 minutes of being logged into Skype. In the Google Voice attack (PDF), the hacker would first need to know the victim's phone number, but Secure Science has devised a way to figure this out using Google Voice's Short Message Service (SMS). Google patched the bugs that enabled Secure Science's attack last week and has now added a password requirement to its voicemail system, the company said in a statement. ... The Skype flaws have not yet been patched, according to James." Reader EricTheGreen contributes related news that eBay may sell Skype back to its original founders.
Twitter Gets Slammed By the StalkDaily XSS Worm 145
CurtMonash writes "Twitter was hit Saturday by a worm that caused victims' accounts to tweet favorably about the StalkDaily website. Infection occurred when one went to the profile page of a compromised account, and was largely spread by the kind of follower spam more commonly used by multi-level marketers. Apparently the worm was an XSS attack, exploiting a vulnerability created in a recent Twitter update that introduced support for OAuth, and it was created by the 17-year-old owner of the StalkDaily website. More information can be found in the comment thread to a Network World post I put up detailing the attack, or in the post itself. By evening, Twitter claimed to have closed the security hole."
In Defense of the Anonymous Commenter 198
Hugh Pickens writes "Doug Feaver has an interesting story in the Washington Post 'in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at the end of articles and blogs.' Feaver says that during his seven-year tenure as editor and executive editor of washingtonpost.com he kept un-moderated comments off the site, but now, four years after retiring, he says he has come to think that online comments are a terrific addition to the conversation, and that journalists need to take them seriously. 'The subjects that have generated the most vitriol during my tenure in this role are race and immigration,' writes Feaver. 'But I am heartened by the fact that such comments do not go unchallenged by readers. In fact, comment strings are often self-correcting and provide informative exchanges.' Feaver says that comments are also a pretty good political survey. 'The first day it became clear that a federal bailout of Wall Street was a real prospect, the comments on the main story were almost 100 percent negative. It was a great predictor of how folks feel, well out in front of the polls. We journalists need to pay attention to what our readers say, even if we don't like it. There are things to learn.'"
Sweden Sees Boom In Legal Downloading 121
Quantos writes with word that in Sweden, in addition to a drop in traffic following the introduction of the IPRED anti-file sharing law, the country also saw a doubling of legal downloads. "The sale of music via the Internet and mobile phones has increased by 100 percent since the Swedish anti-file sharing IPRED law entered into force last week, according to digital content provider InProdicon. '...I don't know if this is only because of IPRED, but it is definitely a sign of a major change,' said managing director Klas Brännström. InProdicon provides half of the downloaded tunes in Sweden via several online and mobile music services." Meanwhile The Pirate Bay's anticipated VPN service has seen over 113,000 requests for beta invitations since late last month; 80% are from Sweden. Traffic numbers may begin to rise again once the service goes live.
Hungary, Tatarstan Latest To Go FOSS 129
christian.einfeldt writes "It seems as if almost every other week there is news of another government migration toward Free Open Source Software. Two of the most recent such moves come from Hungary and the tiny independent former Russian republic of Tatarstan. On April 2, the Hungarian government announced that it will be modifying its procurement rules to mandate that open source procurement funding match expenditures for proprietary software, according to Ferenc Baja, deputy minister for information technology. In Tatarstan, a Republic of 3.8 million inhabitants, the Deputy Minister of Education announced that by the end of this school year, all 2,400 educational institutions in Tatarstan will have completed a transition to GNU/Linux, following a successful pilot program it rolled out in 2008."
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