This document is intended to assist organizations in installing, configuring, and maintaining secure servers. More specifically, this document describes, in detail, the following practices to apply:

* Securing, installing, and configuring the underlying operating system
* Securing, installing, and configuring server software
* Maintaining the secure configuration through application of appropriate patches and upgrades, security testing, monitoring of logs, and backups of data and operating system files.

NIST Guide to General Server Security

This research covers the discovery of a server controlled by hackers (Crimeserver) containing more than 1.4 Gigabyte of business and personal data stolen from infected PCs. The data consisted of 5,388 unique log files. Both email communications and web-related data were among them.

This analysis contains findings indicating that Crimeware has reached a new level of sophistication. We detected a Crimeserver which was used as a command and control for the Crimeware that was executed on infected PCs. This Crimeserver was also used as the “drop site” for private information being harvested by that Crimeware. The Command & Control applications on this Crimeserver enabled the hacker to manage the actions and performance of his Crimeware, giving him control over the uses of the Crimeware as well as its victims. Since the stolen data was left unprotected on the Crimeserver, without any access restrictions or encryption, the data were freely available for anyone on the web, including criminal elements.

Malicious Page of the Month

Fred Salvucci ponders the role of contingency in history, and in the evolution of Boston and its transportation system. He starts from the time the glaciers pulled back from Boston, leaving a soggy near-island and a river for the first white settlers to contend with. “The reason the city is here because of an accident of history,” he says. In the 1600s, “when the English first came, they made a mistake,” Salvucci reports. Thinking that the Charles would run deep and wide for a thousand miles inland, offering vital trade routes, the English hunkered down.

Once they realized their mistake (the Charles is about a foot deep in Watertown, MA, six miles away), the settlers built on the resources at hand, which included enormous stocks of cod and good ship-building lumber. The “poverty of a place forces skills, which in turn makes the place not poor,” says Salvucci. These Protestant settlers also set about, in near record time, establishing schools like Boston Latin and Harvard.

Boston’s rapid expansion and prosperity led to innovations such as filling land, which in turn led to unexpected transportation developments. The first commercial use of rail in the New World, Salvucci tells us, was to haul in granite for the Bunker Hill monument, and to bring dirt from the suburbs for Boston builders. When people realized they could use the new technology to transport farm products, the Boston & Worcester Railroad was born. But the idea of moving people around didn’t emerge until the 1800s, when the concept of living one place and working in another led to streetcars in Boston and elsewhere. Around 1900, Boston led the nation with the first subway (“a little dinky one”) running just two blocks. In two decades, the guts of the city’s subway system emerged, making Salvucci’s own Big Dig project appear modest in comparison (adjusting for inflation).

Salvucci remarks on the numerous cases of “indirect causality” through human history, how things “built in ways that are unanticipated and probably unanticipatable.” In 1865, there were no electric street cars. By 1900, U.S. East Coast cities were covered by them. In 1900, there were 2,000 autos in the U.S., and by 1920, there were so many cars that city rail networks began dying out. Don’t be fooled into thinking you can “predict tomorrow based on yesterday plus a small delta,” warns Salvucci.

History of Boston Transportation, 1630-1990

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1010data

Sir Francis Chichester, Robin Knox-Johnston, Dame Ellen McArthur and other great names from the history of sailing could be joined this year by Pinta the robot.

The unmanned boat is undergoing final preparations before setting sail in the hope of becoming the first robot to cross an ocean using the power of wind. By sailing non-stop and unassisted for an estimated three months it will prove the potential for robotic craft to undertake vital research in roles in dangerous and far-off waters.

Pinta has been designed by scientists at Aberystwyth University and will join seven other robotic craft in October in a race across the Atlantic. The race is intended to test the endurance and reliability of robots away from battery chargers and the predictable environment of a laboratory.

Pinta the robot sailing boat takes on Atlantic challenge

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. Coming of Age in Second Life is the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe.

Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group.

Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself.

Coming of Age in Second Life

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. Coming of Age in Second Life is the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe.

Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group.

Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself.

Coming of Age in Second Life

Núcleo is a toolkit for exploring new uses of video and new human-computer interaction techniques.

The núcleo toolkit

People don’t like being told what to do. We like to explore, change things around, and make a place our own. Hefty design challenges await the makers of websites where people feel free to engage; both with the system itself and with each other. Embrace the idea that people will warp and stretch your site in ways you can’t predict—they’ll surprise you with their creativity and make something wonderful with what you provide.

At Flickr, we’ve worked very hard to remain neutral while our members jostle and collide and talk and whisper to each other. Sharing photos is practically a side-effect. Our members have thrilled and challenged us—not just with their beautiful photography, but by showing us how to use our infrastructure in ways we could have never imagined.

It’s only in hindsight and with analysis that the strategies I share in this article have emerged.

Community: From Little Things, Big Things Grow

Technology can be sublime, but machines aren’t something that happens to us; they’re something we make. That is, they’re less like meteors that come crashing into our planet (actually, “billiard balls” appears to be the preferred metaphor) than like toddlers (O.K., that one’s mine): sure, they crash into you a lot, and change your life, but they didn’t come out of nowhere and, if you set your mind to it, you can teach them manners before they get to be bigger than you. “The story of the power revolution offers more than an interpretation of the origins of industrial America,” Klein writes. “It suggests another insight into the most elusive riddle of all: What is an American?” Klein’s answer to the question Crèvecoeur famously asked in 1782—“What then is this American, this new man?—is disheartening, to say the least. He is a man whose machines run roughshod. I don’t know about you, but I’d take the toddler over the meteor every time. Setting limits. They say it’s all about setting limits.

Our Own Devices