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Domain: dynamoo.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to dynamoo.com.
Stories · 20
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Charles Carreon Drops Case Against the Oatmeal
Dynamoo writes "Charles Carreon has reportedly dropped his lawsuit against the creator of The Oatmeal, Matthew Inman. This bizarre lawsuit (dubbed a SLAPP suit by the EFF) kicked off after a dispute between Inman and FunnyJunk.com which spun rapidly out of control. Perhaps Carreon has seen sense, but it turns out that there might be an even more bizarre twist in this tale." -
Shady Reshipping Centers Exposed
Dynamoo writes "Ever wondered how criminals can spirit away the products they buy with stolen credit cards? The answer is that they use surprisingly sophisticated but very shady reshipping centers to launder the goods on their way to Eastern Europe. The bad guys make the money, but it's the mules doing the reshipping who will eventually get caught." -
Microsoft To Offer Free Anti-Virus Software
Dynamoo writes "The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is ... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?" -
Geoffrey Perkins Is Dead At 55
Dynamoo writes "Legendary comedy writer and producer Geoffrey Perkins has died in a road accident in London. Perkins was until recently the head of comedy for BBC TV. Earlier in his career he produced the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, and was a writer, director, and producer of many comedy shows including Spitting Image, The Fast Show, and several others. He also invented the game of Mornington Crescent. The world will be a less joyful place without him." -
500 Thousand MS Web Servers Hacked
andrewd18 writes "According to F-Secure, over 500,000 webservers across the world, including some from the United Nations and UK government, have been victims of a SQL injection. The attack uses an SQL injection to reroute clients to a malicious javascript at nmidahena.com, aspder.com or nihaorr1.com, which use another set of exploits to install a Trojan on the client's computer. As per usual, Firefox users with NoScript should be safe from the client exploit, but server admins should be alert for the server-side injection. Brian Krebs has a decent writeup on his Washington Post Security Blog, Dynamoo has a list of some of the high-profile sites that have been hacked, and for fun you can watch some of the IIS admins run around in circles at one of the many IIS forums on the 'net." -
Google to Acquire Postini
Dynamoo writes "Google has announced that it is to acquire Postini, company best known for its corporate spam filtering and security service, but also active in Instant Messaging and compliance area. The deal is to purchase Postini for $625m in cash. The acquisition is slated to enhance Google's application portfolio, and Google will also acquire several very large Blue Chip customers that have previously eluded it." -
Google Warns Users About "Unsafe Sites"
Dynamoo writes "The BBC is reporting that Google will start to warn users about unsafe websites, in particular those that host spyware or have privacy implications. The technology to do this has been developed in partnership with StopBadware, and appears to be an alternative to the popular McAfee SiteAdvisor application. Perhaps this will help curtail slimeware ridden sites from peddling their wares. But it will be interesting to see how Google rates some of its own products, including the potentially risky Google Desktop." -
British Rail's Flying Saucer
Dynamoo writes "The Register is carrying a story about a patent for a fusion powered spacecraft filed by British Rail in the 1970s. While the concept may seem silly for a public railway, it seems that the British Rail Research Division employed a large number of aircraft engineers who presumably had some spare time between projects such as the Advanced Passenger Train." -
Scaremongering over Spyware?
Dynamoo writes "The BBC is reporting that PCs in the UK are infected with over 20 pieces of spyware on average. A frightening statistic, if it is to be believed. In fact, the figures come from Webroot - an anti-spyware firm with a commercial interest in playing up the spyware threat." From the article: "In Poland, 867 of every 1,000 domestic PCs have been infected by trojans, unsolicited programs that can allow remote users to control the machine. It is this international reach that concerns those in authority trying to combat the spread of spyware. " -
eBay Slammed Over Levels of Fraud
Dynamoo writes "The BBC is reporting that companies and law enforcement agencies are becoming increasing frustrated and concerned at the high amount of fraud at eBay. There are reports that it can take two months for eBay to pass details to fraud investigators, and that even for companies with a 'special relationship' with eBay it can take 5 days for fraudulent auctions to be shut down. From the article: 'With all the amount of profits that eBay makes, then there is ample scope for additional staff. Frankly, it is totally unsatisfactory.'" -
Sony Ericsson's P990 Smartphone Released
Dynamoo writes "After months of rumors, Sony Ericsson has finally announced their P990 Symbian smartphone. Packing both UMTS (3G) and WiFi in addition to a 2 megapixel digital camera and a host of other goodies, the P990 looks like it will be a shot in the arm for the Symbian camp. There's no indication of a US release for this handset, but the rest of the world can expect to see it early next year." -
Orkut Linked To Drug Ring Bust
Dynamoo writes "Google's Orkut service has been allegedly used to sell drugs by a Brazilian outfit, according to a BBC news report. According to the report, the dealers offered pot and ecstasy for sale via the system to Brazil's large Orkut user community. Google is reported to be investigating. One interesting issue that springs to mind is: how can you monitor and moderate such a large, multilingual community such as Orkut? And what are the limits of criminal liability in a case like this?" -
Dr Who, Daleks Kiss And Make Up
Dynamoo writes "The BBC is reporting that the creators of the new series of Doctor Who due next year have reached an agreement with the estate of the late Terry Nation to include the Daleks in the new series. This means that I'll definitely be watching.. although whether from behind the sofa or not remains to be seen." We previously reported on the apparent exterminate-ion of the lovable pepperpots from this new version. -
Japanese Cell Phones Offer a Glimpse of the Future
Dynamoo writes "Vodafone K.K. have announced a new range of phones, available exclusively in Japan which easily beat everything else in terms of features. In particular, two phones from Sharp, the V402SH and V602SH between them boast a TV tuner, camera with optical zoom, virtual karaoke machine and dog bark translater (woof woof), according to this review. Perhaps some features are more useful than others, but with a bit of luck we'll see these features in worldwide mobiles sometime in 2005. In the meantime I guess I'll just have to learn to speak dog by myself." -
New Windows Worm on the Loose
Dynamoo writes "The Internet Storm Center has issued a Yellow Alert due to the spread of the Sasser worm exploiting Windows 2000 and XP machines through a documented flaw in the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) as described in Microsoft Bulletin MS04-011. Initial analysis seems to indicate classic Blaster-style worm behaviour. Right now I'm just getting a probe every 10 minutes or so on my firewall, but this is bound to escalate sharply as the pool of infected machines grows. Of course all good Windows-using Slashdotters visit Windows Update regularly and have a firewall, don't you? More information at Computer Associates, F-Secure, Symantec and McAfee." -
Yet Another Critical Windows Flaw
Dynamoo writes "Microsoft released yesterday a whole bunch of critical security updates. Out of these, MS03-043 is a flaw in the Windows Messenger Service (not MSN Messenger) with the possibility of a remote attacker gaining complete control of a Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 based PC remotely. If this sounds like another possible vector for a worm to spread, you'd probably be right. Microsoft's recommendation is to 'disable the Messenger Service immediately and evaluate their need to deploy the patch'. Of course a firewall will offer some protection but shouldn't be relied on. At least administrators can disable the Messenger Service remotely. Of course this is another headache for admins still patching for last month's RPC flaw." -
Microsoft Identifies, Patches Another Critical RPC Hole
Dynamoo writes "Microsoft have another critical vulnerability in the Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 line of OSes, allowing a remote attacker to run arbitrary code. In other words, this probably carries about the same risk as the well-documented RPC hole exploited by MSBlaster and Nachi. A Knowledgebase article is also available. Given the experience of the RPC exploit, this probably gives administrators a couple of weeks to patch all the systems in their organisations. Again. Shucks, we haven't even finished patching the RPC flaw yet." You might want to keep your laptop's batteries charged; this NewsForge article suggests that the Blaster worm may have played a role in the August 14th blackout affecting the eastern U.S. Update: 09/10 20:41 GMT by T : Reader AcquaCow suggests that administrators with multiple machines to patch visit Microsoft's Software Update Services (whitepaper), a tool for "managing and distributing critical Windows patches." -
On The Trail Of Super-Zonda
Dynamoo writes "BBC Radio 4 has been on the trail of the notorious Super-Zonda spammers and crackers, according to this article. Super-Zonda's trick is to find insecure hosts and pressgang them into webservers for mail order brides, viagra and other spam favorites. In this case a server is traced back to a hacked machine at a major international airline. The BBC investigate some of the people allegedly behind the spam in an investigation starting on the Spamhaus houseboat in London and ending in the Netherlands via Moscow. The BBC point the finger at Martijn Bevelander of MegaProvider as being not the innocent party he seems. The BBC provide some evidence to back this up, and are not known for rash accusations." -
Slashback: NIC, Dastar, Defects
Slashback tonight with a round of corrections and updates to recent (and not recent) Slashdot postings. Read on to find out more on the fate of Larry Ellison's thin-client Linux machine, OpenTV vs. GNU, getting satisfaction instead of defective hard drives, and more. Enjoy!Was it ahead of its time or vice versa? BreadMan writes "After limping along for years, the New Internet Computer (NIC) company finally went under. Founded by Larry Ellison, NIC sold a diskless workstation running Linux targeted at home users that wanted internet access. From the spec sheet it looks like this would be fun as a hacking platform if you can get one on the cheap."
Way to GNU! xarium writes "Seems that in response to pressure from the FSF OpenTV has released the source code to all of its compilers. You can download the full package here (~18meg)."
Because a hard drive should not be a rhythm section. Dynamoo writes "As previously noted in Slashdot, Fujitsu MPG3xx series hard drives have been failing in huge numbers. The U.S. law firm, Shepherd Finkelman Miller & Shah is currently conducting a class action against Fujitsu and HP for knowingly distributing faulty drives. According the this article in The Register, Gateway has now been lined up as a defendant.
The fault appears to impact MPG3102AT, MPG3204AT, MPG3307AT and MPG3409AT units manufactured in early 2001. If you have one of these, then it has probably failed already, if not you should replace it asap. If you're a customer of HP/Compaq you can visit the HP Hard Disk Drive Replacement Program site.
We had about 40 of these things fitted to Compaq DeskPro EXDs, and I can assure you the failure rate is pushing 100%."In the public domain, no one knows you're a dog. smiff writes "United Press International reports on Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox. Reversing lower court rulings, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Dastar did not violate the origin-of-work provision of the Lanham act. Dastar had taken public domain video, made some modifications, and sold it as its own product. Twentieth Century Fox sued claiming they should have been given credit for the video. According to Antonin Scalia, Dastar would have violated the Lanham Act if it had simply repacked the material and sold it as its own. But since Dastar made some minor changes, the Lanham Act doesn't apply.
While Dastar has been cleared under the Lanham Act, the Supreme Court sent the case back for a rehearing. The Fox video entered the public domain in 1977, but the book it was based on is still protected by copyright."... or get off the pot. Brazilian Joe writes "The LinuxTag folks, as you may know, are responsible for a restraining order against SCO's claims in Germany. As a result, SCO has shut down its Germany web site. Story here."
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Bayesian Filtering For Dummies
Dynamoo writes "Bayesian filtering for spam is awfully clever stuff, touched on by Slashdot several times before. There's a very accessible article at BBC News explaining in fairly simple terms the drawbacks of current keyword-based filtering. It's slightly ironic that the BBC, through the commissioning of Monty Python, also gave 'spam' its name. Those Vikings have a lot to answer for."