] U.S. regulators will make sure Internet domain-name
] seller VeriSign Inc provides refunds or free
] service to consumers it signed up in a controversial
] marketing campaign last year, according to court
] documents filed late last week.

How ironic. This went over Reuters today.

For those who don't remember.. VeriSign had a scam going on awhile back where they were sending fake "renewal" notices to people who's domain's they didn't host. It was an effort to con people in to switching their domain's from other registrars.

] VeriSign agreed to provide refunds or a year of free
] service to thousands of customers under a class-action
] settlement reached earlier this year in a California court.
] Friday's FTC settlement, in which the company did not
] admit or deny guilt, means that it could face steep fines
] if it resorts to such marketing tactics again.

] VeriSign must also allow the FTC to monitor its marketing
] efforts for the next five years.

Good. I hope they are paying attention to today's events.

Reuters | Verisign already under FTC watch

] In response to widespread expressions of concern from the
] Internet community about the effects of the
] introduction of the wildcard, ICANN has requested
] advice from its Security and Stability Advisory
] Committee, and from the Internet Architecture
] Board, on the impact of the changes implemented
] by VeriSign. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory
] Committee is expected to release an objective
] expert report concerning the wildcard later today.
]
] Recognizing the concerns about the wildcard service,
] ICANN has called upon VeriSign to voluntarily
] suspend the service until the various reviews
] now underway are completed.

ICANN Speaks!

] I also have to admit that I was amused by the formal language
] of the KGB document. For example, it ends with a final
] paragraph which reads, "As a result of measures taken, the
] hostile plans of the adversary have been foiled." So now I
] and my friends are using that line in daily speech. Like if
] we go to a restaurant and argue about what to get on the menu,
] someone will call out, "The hostile plans of the adversary
] have been foiled!" :)

Elonka: Do you have the original Russian of this phrase? I would very much like to use this in normal speech, and I doubt I can translate it back and maintain the soviet flair.

RE: KGB Document in the Sanborn Files

As part of my research into Kryptos and the other works of its sculptor, James Sanborn, I have been having art galleries all over the country send me copies of their files, with information that I can add to my James Sanborn webpage (http://www.elonka.com/kryptos/sanborn.html).

A few weeks ago, I received a couple envelopes with a complete set of copies of the files from a section of the Smithsonian Archive. These were from a series of "Jim Sanborn" folders, which had been received from one of his prior agents, the Nancy Drysdale Art Gallery.

As I dug through the files, I found a lot of the usual stuff: price lists, articles, pictures, exhibition catalogs and whatnot, but then ran across something that I *wasn't* expecting to see: A classified KGB document!

It appears to be a document from 1982, about the Soviet dissident Sakharov. There was no explanation as to why the document was in those art gallery files. My speculation is that perhaps Sanborn received some KGB documents from the CIA when he was doing work there, and he gave them to his agent to have translated. Perhaps some extra copies of the document got lost in the paper shuffle somewhere, and when they resurfaced, they were identified as, "Oh yeah, that's for Sanborn, put it in his file" and then they were forgotten?

My favorite theory is that the cyrillic from the KGB document may give a clue to the plaintext of Sanborn's encrypted Cyrillic Projector. Especially because that ciphertext is also on Sanborn's Antipodes sculpture, and Sanborn was quoted as saying that the cyrillic side was about "KGB Operations".

I also have to admit that I was amused by the formal language of the KGB document. For example, it ends with a final paragraph which reads, "As a result of measures taken, the hostile plans of the adversary have been foiled." So now I and my friends are using that line in daily speech. Like if we go to a restaurant and argue about what to get on the menu, someone will call out, "The hostile plans of the adversary have been foiled!" :)

Enjoy,

Elonka :)

KGB Document in the Sanborn Files

] Utilities Solve Everything. Just Producing Some Easy
] EnKryption.

Nice little straightforward puzzle that uses steganography. Good for a quickie brain stretch.

Steganography Puzzle

I know this is lame, but after years of using unix machines this find exec syntax has never stuck in my brain. Recommending it to Memestreams will make it easy to find again.

Unix find - grep command

] Now the blocklisters are being overwhelmed by Internet
] saboteurs who harness large numbers of computers to
] bombard their victims with vast amounts of junk data.

For the last couple months, spam-blocker sites such as Osirusoft, monkeys.com, Spamhaus and Spamcop have been under Distributed Denial of Service attacks by up to 10,000 computers at once. Two days ago, Osirusoft imploded, and shut itself down by blacklisting the entire internet, meaning many businesses who relied on Osirusoft's service became unable to receive any email, even if legitimate.

I've been hearing a lot of speculation lately as to whether these DDoS attacks might be related to the Blaster or Sobig worms. Some people say no, they're unrelated. Others say yes, and think that spammers may be behind the coordinated attacks, by hiring blackhat hackers to generate the attacks and create the worms. So this school of thought says that along with the attacks on the spam-blockers, that the worms are intended to create an army of hundreds of thousands of zombie computers, which may eventually be used to send out even more spam.

Another school of thought proposes that yes, the attacks may be coordinated, but for a different reason -- that the attacks on the anti-spam sites have been to restrict their spam-blocking effect so that the Sobig worm (which requires spam email to propagate itself) could spread more effectively.

Regardless of whether the DDoS attacks are connected to Sobig, what *is* the ultimate purpose of the Sobig worm? Is its "raison d'etre" simply to breed and propagate itself as fast and as far and wide as it can? Or is it just a very efficient delivery mechanism, recruiting hundreds of thousands of computers for some other yet-to-be-defined purpose, be it spam or an even more destructive attack in the future?

Or, might the intent even be a benign one -- a worm created to be *so* pervasive and annoying that even the non-tech home users in the world hear about it, and are finally encouraged to secure their systems? In other words, could it have been created as a way of "vaccinating" the internet and building up its immunity to help it withstand a potentially even more malicious virus in the future?

Stay tuned, as the story unfolds . . .

Saboteurs hit spam's blockers -- Could it be related to the Sobig Worm?

Elonka Sanborn research update: Various photographers (some who wish to remain anonymous) have been sending me pictures of the Antipodes sculpture at the Hirshhorn.

For those who have been following the story in my blog, this sculpture was particularly intriguing because it appeared to have the complete text of the Kryptos sculpture upon it, *and* the complete text of the Cyrillic Projector, and an additional 20% or so of other ciphertext in both languages.

It was my hope that perhaps there was extra text on the English side which would shed a clue towards cracking Kryptos. As it turned out, there *is* some additional ciphertext on the Cyrillic side, which does not appear anywhere on the Cyrillic Projector. On the English side though, it is just a mix and repeat of the code sections that are already on the Kryptos sculpture.

It's still useful though, because it is reassuring to see that Part IV is exactly the same length on Antipodes, as it is on Kryptos. There'd been some speculation that Kryptos part IV might only be the first part of a lengthier code, with the rest of the ciphertext "sucked into the whirlpool", but Antipodes seems to show that this is not the case.

Pics are now online, along with some additional info about the sculpture. Big hugs and thanks to all you anonymous photographers out there! :)

Sanborn's Antipodes Sculpture

too bad she looks like Jenny Garth

by far the best case mod I've ever seen

This is the page that announces the winners from last weekend's Def Con "Wi-Fi Shootout", where the competition was to see what's the farthest distance that someone could pick up a wireless signal with a commercial or homemade antenna.

At Def Con closing ceremonies, we heard that the winner (with a homemade antenna) weighed in with an impressive 35.2 mile range. Unfortunately though, they didn't have pics of the antennas to show us. This URL, however, *does* have more details and pics of some of the various contraptions that were assembled in the Nevada desert.

Congrats to the winners!

Defcon Wireless Shootout