An exclusive look at how the hackers called TITAN RAIN are stealing U.S. secrets

Titian Rain sounds like the name of an anime series.

This article tells the story of Shawn Carpenter, a computer security specialist at Sandia Labs, and his clandestine efforts to track the Titan Rain hackers. This shows some shortfalls of our strategy when it comes to tracking network based espionage.

TIME.com: The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies

Grammy-nominated music producer Christian Julian Irwin was found by police sitting naked in a creek after going missing several days ago.

The Sheriff's Department says Irwin told authorities he was afraid he was being chased by Nigerians who had contacted him in an Internet scam.

He was taken to a hospital for examination.

Now that's just damn funny. I think this guy had a little too much blow.

KESQ | Resident finds missing music producer in creek

An 18-year-old Moroccan national and a 21-year-old resident of Turkey have been arrested for creating and spreading computer worms that disrupted services on computer networks of major U.S news organizations and other institutions earlier this month, the FBI announced Friday.

Farid Essebar, a Moroccan who used the screen name "Diabl0," and Atilla Ekici of Turkey, who used the moniker "Coder," were arrested in their home countries by authorities who cooperated with U.S. investigators in tracking the origins of the Mytob worm; a damaging variant, Zotob; and a third worm, RBot.

Its nice to see the people who write worms caught quickly. Its usually the case that it will happen quickly, or never. Its safe to assume that most of the time involved with this had to do with the international aspect of it, rather than finding a trail pointing to the culprits.

Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith said even if strong anti-hacking statutes aren't in place, Morocco and Turkey have consumer fraud statutes and consumer protection laws that could apply.

It should be noted that Microsoft is (still) part of the problem, but not worth harping on (too much). Everyone should know it by now, Microsoft isn't the victim; the people using their products are. Just think what "anti-hacking statutes" would consist of if it was up to them to decide. Violation of property in the context of worms is very different from making modifications to your x-box, but I'm sure Microsoft would not see it that way. Remember, DRM is going to save you from worms. And if you believe that, I'll tell you another story. Maybe one with elves and magic, or something..

Good thing the FBI is going to take the lead in helping the Moroccans and the Turks with this.

Security experts say there are vast criminal networks with specialists in every aspect of a virus or worm attack.

"It's a lot like the movie industry: You have producers, you have the actors and you have the distribution network," said David Maynor of Internet Security Systems. "This network is much the same way. You have people who decide what they want to get done, they pass it to the producers who will actually make it happen, get someone to package it up and make sure it works, then the distributors whose only job is to distribute it to other people."

I'm not even going to touch that one. Just pretend I said something nasty about ISS and the movie industry.

Turkey, Moroccan residents arrested in computer worm probe

In a little over a year the amount of traffic flowing across Linx has risen from approximately 30 gigabits per second to more than 67 Gbit/s. In 2000 it was barely hitting 5 Gbit/s, the equivalent of a DVD film every 10 seconds.

MemeStreams user flynn23 pointed out in his post that this is in line with the net traffic growth estimates those of us in the ISP industry were making in the late 90's. The engineers were not the ones smoking crack.

It would be interesting to compare the statistics they are seeing at Linx with some of the other major exchanges. I'm sure its not that different. They mention in this article that there isn't much information about cross border traffic. That's the data I'd like to see. In my experience with asia-pac ISPs, the domestic versus international traffic statistics were interesting. Korea was almost entirely domestic (95/5), Taiwan was mostly domestic (80/20), Hong Kong was about half and half. I wonder what the situation in Europe is like.

BBC | Net growth slowing down

Wall Street shuddered yesterday after Alan Greenspan, the United States’ central banker, warned American homebuyers that they risk a crash if they continue to drive property prices higher.

Greenspan: You are on the way to destruction.
Greenspan: You have no chance to refinance, make your time.
Greenspan: All your house are belong to bank.
Consumer: Take off all interest-only loan!
Consumer: For great equity!

The meme that keeps on giving...

US heading for house price crash, Greenspan tells buyers

The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to join peace activist Cindy Sheehan, known as the Peace Mom, on Sunday near President Bush's Texas ranch.

Its time to put up the circus tent and hire the midgets.

Rev. Al Sharpton Plans to Join 'Peace Mom'

The schedule for the D*C space and science track, headed up by our own jonnyx, is available for your perusal.

You'll also find at least 4 MemeStreams regulars presenting both here and in the Electronic Frontiers Forum. The schedule does not appear to be updated yet, but Decius and I are confirmed to be speaking at the Hacking 101, 201, and 301 panels.

Dragon*Con Space and Science Track Schedule

The Beastie Boys have released vocal only versions of several tracks for remixing. There does not appear to be any information about licensing. It does not get any more specific than this:

These A Cappellas are for your own personal use to make your own remixes.

I'm happy to see this, but it would be nice if they included some specifics about the licensing of the tracks, similar to how Interscope did when they released the GarageBand version of "The Hand That Feeds" by Nine Inch Nails.

Its safe to assume that if you do anything beyond making a remix and posting it to their web board, you would need a license. It would probably not be a good idea to make a remix or use the samples in anything that finds its way into a commercial release. Given the Beastie Boys heavy usage of sampling, I'd expect reasonable licensing options.

Put your Root Down and open up GarageBand..

Beastie Boys Release Vocal Only Tracks

Picking the right corporate doo-dad is a tricky art. Years ago, Novell gave out Bowie knives at an analyst event, as a way to demonstrate they could cut through the competition. Most everyone who attended the one day meeting came with only carry on luggage and had to hand it over at the airport, said analyst Chris LeTocq.

Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research recalls one company giving away binoculars to underscore how it was looking into the future. Unfortunately, they proved impossible to focus, he recalled. Intel once gave me a set of coasters that looked like something Buddy Hackett may have owned to herald the coming of the Pentium II for notebooks.

This week, AMD sent out a gift box set celebrating 64-bit embedded processors and the man in black himself, Johnny Cash. It includes a DVD of Cash, a CD of his greatest hits, a poster from one of his early shows, and a cassette tape of "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison."

One might ask, what's the connection? AMD sells 64-bit processors. Did Johnny Cash spend 64 nights in the Memphis Memorial Rehabilitation Clinic? Did he kill 64 men in Reno just to watch them die? And who knew they still sold cassettes?

That is kind of strange. What are they thinking of? The Cash part perhaps...

Connection or no connection, I'd be happy as hell to receive Johnny Cash swag. Who wouldn't love that? ... Ok, who with musical taste wouldn't love that?

AMD and Johnny Cash: what's the connection? | News.blog | CNET News.com

Krick of Evol Intent offers a firsthand account of the events that took place at a party that he was scheduled to play August 20th in Utah. The event was fully licensed, fully legal, and non-violent. Halfway through the party, authorities arrived in full riot gear and ended the event like a full-scale riot (tear gas, attack dogs, and assault rifles). One attendee managed to escape with actual video footage of the shutdown. Another DJ at the event who goes by Syne offers her own account of the same event, and the Utah Raves forum is lit up like a switchboard. Lawsuits are pending...

(via Metafilter) This story is making the rounds today. This is pretty disturbing. The facts floating around don't appears to jive with each other. The various accounts state that the promoters did have a permit from the county, an insurance policy covering the event, and professional security guards confiscating any drugs found at the gates. These accounts also say that upon being shown the permit, the authorities on the scene simply ripped it up. They forced everyone to leave, including the person who owns the property. Other accounts say different, such as this one from Utah's Daily Herald:

The Utah County Sheriff's Office said in addition to all the illegal activity at the rave, the promoter failed to obtain a permit, bond and approval of the County Commission. The county's mass gathering ordinance -- created in recent years to control events like rave parties -- prohibits gatherings of 250 more people without county approval.

So did the promoters have the proper permits? In that article, there are all the other accounts you'd expect. They found drugs. They had a few young girls on hand who were sexually assaulted at prior events. The normal stuff.

Keep in mind, I don't think there has been any event entailing rock or electronic music that has not involved drugs, alcohol, and sexual misconduct. Its par for the course when you bring together 2,000 people for a party. It sounds like this crowd was pretty peaceful. Its not like they hired the Hell's Angels to do security or anything...

Straight to the obvious question.. What happened to the right to assemble? Is that limited to football games and church rallies now?

This link to the video being shot on the stage at the point the show was shutdown appears too be working.

More details about this are desired...

Post RAVE act, post PATRIOT act America | MetaFilter