Elonka wrote:
] More info about the fastest-spreading worm of all time, which
] enters a new phase today, trying to download unknown code to
] 20 specific home computers:

Turns out they may have failed here. From a post on Interesting People:

"All the experts were totally faked out. While everyone was concentrating
on getting the "magic 20" machines shut down, no one realized that
different copies of Sobig.f had different lists of servers to contact.

We put a block of udp port 8998 on our firewall this morning. We had 3
previously undetected infected machines on our network, each of which
tried to contact a different list of 20 machines. One of the lists
corresponds to the one that Sophos and others have published. The other
two lists have no addresses in common with the published list, or with
each other.

I wonder how many different sets of servers there were, how many
different variants of Sobig.f there were, and how many infected machines
now have some additional trojan, worm, or ddos code waiting for a
command to do something."

RE: New Phase of Sobig.F Set for 3 p.m. EST Friday 8/22/2003

] Power engineers, IEEE members, and
] the Spectrum reporters and editors
] who cover power and energy have been sounding the alarm
] about grid problems and potential
] cascading failures for nearly a
] decade. What follows is a compendium of feature articles,
] news reports, and essays that have
] appeared in IEEE Spectrum magazine
] about previous power outages, grid reliability and
] security, and electric power policy.

If you are interested in the grid failure, everything you need to know is here.

Special Report: IEEE says I told you so (re: the grid)

] Recent election problems have sparked great interest in
] managing the election process through the use of
] electronic voting systems. While computer scientists, for
] the most part, have been warning of the perils of such
] action, vendors have forged ahead with their products,
] claiming increased security and reliability. Many
] municipalities have adopted electronic systems, and the
] number of deployed systems is rising. For these new
] computerized voting systems, neither source code nor the
] results of any third-party certification analyses have
] been available for the general population to study,
] because vendors claim that secrecy is a necessary
] requirement to keep their systems secure. Recently,
] however, the source code purporting to be the software
] for a voting system from a major manufacturer appeared on
] the Internet. This manufacturer's systems were used in
] Georgia's state-wide elections in 2002, and the company
] just announced that the state of Maryland awarded them an
] order valued at up to $55.6 million to deliver touch
] screen voting systems.

The press claims this paper is discredited because Avi Rubin was involved with an electronic voting company. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

Analysis of an Electronic Voting System

] Roxanne Jekot, a 51-year-old computer program developer from
] Cumming, said she and a few expert friends could crack Georgia's $54
] million touch-screen voting system in a matter of minutes.
]
] Bring it on, said state election officials.

Amazing... This is silly theatrics however. You don't want the actual voting machines. You want to paper that explains how they work.

ajc.com | Metro | Dare accepted on electronic voting machines

Saw these folks last night and enjoyed them. Instrumental Rock is the new pop.

Maserati: The Language of Cities

SF Instrumental rock. On the east coast these guys open up for people. On the west coast people open up for them. I got the impression, seeing them play last night, that it didn't make sense that they went on stage first.

From Monument To Masses.

] U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said the book "Lies
] and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced
] Look at the Right" is a parody protected by
] the First Amendment.
]
] "There are hard cases and there are easy cases," the
] judge said. "This is an easy case. This case is wholly
] without merit, both factually and legally."

Don't you ever wonder if this whole thing was engineered as a publicity stunt? Maybe Franken is in with fox news.

Judge Denies FOX's Injunction

] Napster's back, now with more FLASH in every serving!

Its hard to say how I feel about these animations. They are well done, sort of funny. If this was a webcomic I would be into it. But its not. Its a corporate logo. And the only reason they continue to pump its chest is because it is widely recognized. I have no idea what they plan to sell, exactly, other then that it will have little to do with free music. These web comics are the build up. Making you more eagerly anticipate their big sales pitch. There is something creepy about that.

Napsterbits

A summary of the latest SCO news, but the best part is the icon they use to classify the story... perfect!

A news icon for the SCO case...

] Internet Security Systems Inc. reported that one of the
] 20 was still online at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time but no new
] instructions had been placed on the machine by the virus
] writer, according to Dan Ingevaldson, engineering manager
] at ISS.
]
] The last Sobig server stopped responding shortly after
] 3:00 p.m., he said.
]
] With few or none of the 20 servers accessible, Sobig
] machines were unable to download any instructions,
] experts agreed.

They got 'em...

BTW, I can think of at least 50 ways to do this better.

Internet quiet as Sobig attack deadline passes - Computerworld