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Unless you're clearly up to no good, you don't have to worry about spyware like this.

You mean up to no good like Angela Merkel, Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande the last three French presidents, and 35 world leaders?

But of course you don't need to be a celebrity or a politician to be up to no good. You could be trying to help people through a humanitarian organization like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, , or you could just have said something bad about the government of a minor island, etc.

And even if you're not one of the above 'bad people', you could simply be one of the 90% of people who are collateral surveillance victims. So no, you don't need to be up to no good to be under surveillance and that's something to be concerned about.

Marie Curie thought she knew well education and institution were sexists crap : French Science Academy & institutions tried to bar her from being the first french PhD and the first ever Nobel prize in hard Science).

So she decided to make a pool of education with other colleagues that resulted in her daughter being a legitimate scientific and the second Nobel prize in chemistry.

So I will say I don't respect zuckerberg, I do respect Marie Curie going on the battlefield experimenting as a nurse the first X ray radiography dispositive to save life.

Oh, Marie was as French as Polish.

http://next.liberation.fr/livr...

You also have a big critic of Feynman on modern education and the cult of the expert (Cargo cult science was first written as a critic of US education).

"the drug was a painkiller containing cannabinoids" the french ministry of health says no cannabinoids was involved:

http://www.liberation.fr/franc...

The drug is about treating anxiety.

You're trying to get me to agree to a ridiculous sounding oversimplification of my position

No, that's *literally* your position as stated.

"If the warmer temperatures led to the water having lower salinity that could cause more ice."

You are *literally* asserting that warmer temperatures decrease salinity, and therefore cause a mitigation of the typical freezing point depression, and therefore cause more ice.

They said it's going to be fairly slow for the next century or so and didn't hide the fact. How is that hype?

I'll quote the article I cited:

"As seems to always be the case the climate fear propaganda news media have completely mislead the public once again regarding climate related issues this time by alleging claims of 4 meter high future sea level rise increases supposedly addressed in two recent studies which performed analysis of glacier melt behavior of six large glaciers in West Antarctica.

One study was published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) and titled “Sustained increase in ice discharge from the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, from 1973 to 2013“. This study is available here:

http://www.ess.uci.edu/researc...

The second study was published in Science and titled “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica“. This study is available here:

http://sciences.blogs.liberati...

Both studies evaluate the relatively recent melt rate history of these glaciers with one focusing on the use observed satellite data to estimate melt rate behavior while the other uses computer models to estimate melt rate behavior.

Amazingly enough and considering how the press manufactured headlines about sea level rise increases being determined from these studies neither of the studies addresses or make any claims about the impact of their research results on specific future sea level rise projections.

In fact GLC study mentions nothing specific about future sea level rise projections while the Science study clearly notes that their research models “are not coupled to a global climate model to provide forcing nor do they include an ice-shelf cavity-circulation model to derive melt rates. Few if any such fully coupled models presently exist (13). As such, our simulations do not constitute a projection of future sea level in response to projected climate forcing.”

Also unreported by the same climate alarmist propaganda focused media were the significant qualifications, limitations and cautions noted in these studies concerning their glacier melt research findings.

The GRL published study noted for example the following qualifiers regarding its analysis:

“These observations are a possible sign of the progressive collapse of this sector in response to the high melting of its buttressing ice shelves by the ocean.”

“Until numerical ice sheet models coupled with realistic oceanic forcing are able to replicate these observations, projections of the evolution of this sector of West Antarctica should be interpreted with caution.”

The Science published study contained the following similarly related qualifiers regarding its analysis:

“Although our simple melt parameterization suggests that a full-scale collapse of this sector may be inevitable, it leaves large uncertainty in the timing. Thus, ice-sheet models fully coupled to ocean/climate models are required to reduce the uncertainty in the chronology of a collapse.”

Why aren’t these significant research finding qualifiers regarding the preliminary nature of these studies results addressed by the main stream media?

The main stream media manufactured numbers alleging sea level rise projections not addre

p>If it's tidelocked, ... , just like Mercury.

BTW: Mercury is locked in a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance - if somebody's selling you some real-estate on the Hermian day-night terminators, better buy the Broolyn bridge.
If you however decide to go for Mercury, take an insurance: they are saying that Mercury is bound to collide with Venus somewhere in the future (others say that even if you buy the Brooklyn bridge you have some chances to lose: Mercury may collide even with Earth - and that's because of Jupiter).

Working group 2 of the IPCC seems to have made some embarrassing mistakes. Upon seeing the letter in Science, I wondered why I'd never noticed these ludicrous statements before. Then I realized that the mistakes weren't in working group 1 report, which is all I'd ever bothered to read. Here's what each working group does:

The IPCC Working Group I (WG I) assesses the physical scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change.

The main topics assessed by WG I include: changes in greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere; observed changes in air, land and ocean temperatures, rainfall, glaciers and ice sheets, oceans and sea level; historical and paleoclimatic perspective on climate change; biogeochemistry, carbon cycle, gases and aerosols; satellite data and other data; climate models; climate projections, causes and attribution of climate change.

The IPCC Working Group II (WG II) assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it.

It also takes into consideration the inter-relationship between vulnerability, adaptation and sustainable development. The assessed information is considered by sectors (water resources; ecosystems; food & forests; coastal systems; industry; human health) and regions (Africa; Asia; Australia & New Zealand; Europe; Latin America; North America; Polar Regions; Small Islands).

The wild claim that "glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world", the 2350/2035 typo, confusion of Himalayan glacier area with the worldwide total, and reliance on non-peer-reviewed source material all occurred in a single paragraph(!) in the WG2 report (section 10.6.2, paragraph 2).

Statements in the WG1 report regarding glaciers, on the other hand, accurately reflect conclusions in the peer-reviewed literature.

Due to my obsession with the physical sciences, I'd never even realized that other working group reports existed. Perhaps other scientists reacted in a similar fashion, which might be why such an absurd cluster of errors went undetected for so long...

Is this picture better?

Are you still reading newpapers? On the Web? Do you prefer watching news?

Personally, I m only reading newspaper on the web (http://www.lemonde.fr http://www.liberation.fr/ http://www.lalibre.be/ http://www.lesoir.be/ and less http://www.lefigaro.fr/ http://www.letemps.ch./ Even if people describes me to be more on the right (for Belgium, translate as communist in the USA :) ), i prefer leftish newspaper. But I like to be able to read different point of view and then make an opinion about myself. Still i find the quality of the writing to be weaker than before. If you now a subject well, you see obvious errors.

Now, i still buy 2 papers every month : "le monde diplomatique" (in http://mondediplo.com/) and "foreign affairs" ( http://www.foreignaffairs.com/) both are very interessing and they are following high standard, I also read the Economist from time to time. I wouldnt want to read them on the web because each article is quite dense and asl myself to focus on it. I would like to have the same depth into classical newpaper but alas :(.

I think Democracy needs Journalism. In democracy, voters must vote for the best candidate. And how would you do without knowing? I think that both Education and Information need to be analyse in the light of how good they are to Democracy

To come back to the proposition, I think is not neccesaraly wrong, this could allow some smaller publication to exist and that will bring more diversity where before the News Conglomerate were tending to uniformity.

Some violence began just after election: (Yahoo's Article). (All the links will target French content, use translators, or learn french)
Here are the links to see major points of his program :
First, his ideas on genetics : Suicide, pedophilia and homosexuality are genetic, if one of your parent is pedophile, you are a criminal too.
Sources :
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/politiques/2467 52.FR.php/ ,
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-823448,3 6-892092,0.html?xtor=RSS-3208/,
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/09042007/202/genes-les-pr opos-de-sarkozy-pas-scientifiquement-fondes-pour-l es.html/,
http://www.france.qrd.org/actualites/article.php3? id_article=2976/.
On civil liberties, the Human Rights League has announced that democracy is in great danger with Sarkozy :
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/26042007/202/la-ligue-des -droits-de-l-homme-attaque-le-bilan.html/
Since 2 years now (Sarkozy was in the Government), since you are seven year old, the police can take your DNA if you are caught in a fight (even in the school yard) or any reprehensible act. Exemple of new criminal act : be more than 3 people in front of a building (that was to prevent suburbs criminality)!.
Sarkozy wanted a law to drug to calm restless children, since they are 3 years old. There was too much opposition at the time and the law was temporarily abandoned, but in an interview he said his delinquency prevention laws will be activated if he becomes president (http://www.senat.fr/leg/pjl05-433.html/).
Wish us good luck, no more civil or human rights in France.

http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=346947 states that the amendments were deposited by a PS representative and an UDF representative.

1. Robert Menard, the President of 'Reporters without Borders', an ONG dedicated to preserving reporters, freedom of speech and freedom of the press worldwide, has been denied access to Tunisia, under the pretext that his organization protested the imprisonment of a Tunisian journalist.
2. Coincidentally (or not) Reporters without Borders has published its list of the Top 15 Internet black holes: the top 15 countries who try to limit access to an uncensored Internet.

Have we forgotten about France? It seems the French are quite keen on this technology. As of 22 April 2005, Infosat started offering BPL as a commercial service in La Haye-du-Puits, in Normandy.

The technology is also being experimented with in Paris.

According to this very positive Liberation article, the French authority for the regulation of telecommunications recently gave the go-ahead for BPL operators to offer commercial services. Previously, BPL was not considered a proven technology and was only allowed to be offered as an experimental service.

The article goes on to explain that tests have shown that the technology is able to meet the obligations placed upon public networks and is seen as a way to provide low-cost internet.

This article says that in La Haye-du-Puits, it's priced at 24 euros a month for a 1mbps connection, including some kind of VOIP service.

Neither article mentions interference, except to say that it doesn't interfere with the electrical network!

That's it : Apple is doing in low prices now Liberation article (french). 499 Euros. As predicted. Am pretty impressed.

The court decision is there.

Interview (fr) of Joel Reidenberg (internet legal issues expert, law teacher at Fordham university.)

...
La cour d'appel le dit clairement: ce n'est pas parce que le site est heberge aux Etats-Unis qu'il est exonere de respecter les lois dans les pays ou il diffuse un contenu qui vise les utilisateurs locaux. En precisant ce point, le juge effleure en effet une question de fond. Il laisse sous entendre qu'un site americain ne peut pas faire n'importe quoi a l'etranger.
...

...
Court said plainly: An american hosted internet site can not do anything abroad. It has to respect the law, where the targeted business users are.
...

If I remember correctly, the Chinese moon shot has been put on ice, simply due to the massive financial costs involved. I read about it in the French newspaper Libération: http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=207147. The article is now subscription only, but the headline says it all: Espace. L'exploration du satellite de la Terre est abandonnée pour raisons financières. (The exploration of the earth's satellite is abdandoned due to financial reasons.)

Personally, I think it's a shame that the Chinese are not interested at the moment. I would like to relive the drama of a Moon attempt in my lifetime. Plus all the tinfoil hat moon conspiracists can check to see if the Chinese find an American flag on the moon ;)

I agree with most of your response, except:

1) Historically speaking, non-aligned foreign fighters have always been treated more poorly than regular POW's. There is some honest debate as to whether a non-aligned, sneaking terrorist deserves the same rights as an army regular. But I don't necessarily agree with how far the current U.S. administration has taken this idea. (Though I suspect I might have stronger feelings about it if I were a soldier.)

The U.S. splits hairs when it comes to the Geneva Convention, but so does everyone else from what I hear. (Tip: Don't end up in a French prison ;-)

2) I still maintain that few (no?) other countries have the equivalent of the U.S. Bill of Rights. There is a subtle-but-important distinction. You mention that UK law grants some rights to its citizens. But the Bill of Rights does not grant any rights.

Really, see for yourself. It's a Bill of Restrictions -- restrictions on the government. It works off the assumption that people innately have rights, and then ennumerates how the government can or cannot infringe on them. This is exemplified by #10 on the list.

Open-source software -- uncopyrighted software which has no license cost

France is evil because they were singlehandeldy building Saddam's arsenal and tunnels.

Single-handedly? I seem to remember seeing an old picture of Saddam warmly shaking the hand of a certain war^H^H^Hdefense secretary.

A better reason to think that France is evil is that the French helped shelter the génocidaires in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which over a million people died.

Also compared to such third-world countries as France and Great Britain.

I once whined against Liberation.fr which index page opens a NEW popup window each time you go there, and basically , the only answer I got from their webmaster was "you still can go to hell" (ok...it's not exactly that but it's accurate enough).

So really, reporting to the host that you won't read their web site or anything similar is useless.

That was the reason why I installed Firefox

Where is Jean-Louise Gassee?

Here. He writes chronicles about the computer industry in french newspaper Liberation.

Where is Jean-Louise Gassee?

Here. He writes chronicles about the computer industry in french newspaper Liberation.

Confirmation of the parent post... The vote has been posponed to the end of September. Check out this article (in French).

It's more than "several people", news now repport as much as 3,000 dead for France only...

The French newspaper Liberation has an interview this morning with Michel Rocard MEP, who wrote the opinion of the CULT committee, and is firmly anti-swpat.

A former prime minister of France, Rocard is one of the most senior and influential figures in the Social Democrat group, and his words probably speak for quite a following amongst their MEPs.

(Translation to follow)

http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=121303

Michel Rocard s'oppose à la brevetabilité des logiciels:

Tout le monde se copie et c'est bien ainsi Par Florent LATRIVE et Laurent MAURIAC

lundi 30 juin 2003

Il faut préserver une civilisation où la part du non-marchand et des savoirs humains est respectée.

On ne trouve pas d'ordinateur sur le bureau parisien de Michel Rocard. Il l'admet volontiers : il n'est pas de la génération qui a une pratique facile de l'ordinateur. Président de la Commission de la culture au Parlement européen, il a pourtant dû se plonger, avec un mal fou, dans la brevetabilité des logiciels, des mots qui étaient pour moi inconnus il y a encore un an. Aujourd'hui, s'il en parle avec autant d'animation, c'est que derrière les aspects techniques se cache un vrai sujet de civilisation. Pour l'ex-Premier ministre, l'introduction de brevets sur les logiciels en Europe serait très grave. Elle remettrait en cause la libre circulation du savoir humain. Jusqu'à présent, les logiciels sont officiellement exclus du champ de la brevetabilité en Europe, tout comme les équations mathématiques ou les recettes de cuisine. Depuis plusieurs mois, un projet de directive très polémique est soumis aux institutions de l'Union européenne et vise à modifier ce régime. Il sera soumis au vote du Parlement européen début septembre.

Pourquoi estimez-vous que l'Europe ne doit pas autoriser les brevets sur les logiciels ?

Depuis la grotte de Lascaux, il n'est pas sûr que l'humanité ait progressé dans ses capacités esthétiques. Quant à ses capacités éthiques et morales, on s'entre-tue toujours autant. En revanche, dans le domaine du savoir technique et de la maîtrise de la nature, les progrès sont foudroyants. La croissance vertigineuse du savoir est la clé de cette histoire. Le savoir s'est répandu par la copie, tout le monde a recopié tout le monde, et c'est bien comme ça. Avec la brevetabilité du logiciel, on change le statut du savoir humain. Tout le commerce intellectuel des produits de l'esprit humain, les moyens de connecter les savoirs passeront de plus en plus par des logiciels. Si on introduit une brevetabilité, c'est-à-dire un coût, une interdiction, on met en place une règle inédite. C'est inquiétant.

Il ne paraît pourtant pas anormal de rémunérer les créateurs et les inventeurs...

Il faut distinguer deux choses : les oeuvres, protégées par le droit d'auteur, et les inventions, protégées par le brevet. Au XIXe siècle, on s'est d'abord intéressé aux premières. On a considéré comme normal de rémunérer les créateurs et de garantir la préservation de l'intégrité de leurs oeuvres. On a ainsi créé le droit d'auteur. Plus tard, on a mis en place le brevet d'invention, soit l'interdiction à quiconque d'utiliser une invention sans payer une redevance. Pendant le XXe siècle, nous n'avions pas de problèmes pour différencier les deux. Contrairement aux oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur, l'invention se définit par la mise en jeu de la matière ou des forces de la nature. La conviction que le savoir humain doit circuler impliquait qu'il n'y ait pas de breve

(We wanted the program eventually to be sold as MacWorks, but early versions were called BSWorks, for Bob & Scott.)

Of course, the most intriguing part is,

Scott Holdaway, Scott Lindsey, and Carl Grice, did rejoin Apple as employees when Gobe failed. They won't tell me what they are up to (even off the record!), but whatever it is, it does not involve the Gobe Productive codebase. Nor, I am reasonably sure, does it involve the ClarisWorks / AppleWorks codebase.

• 2002-12-04 15:16:13 France to introduce own DMCA (articles,news) (rejected)

Today's Libé previews a new bill introduced by the French government to, in one stroke and all too familiar terms, not only legalize anticopy media , but also prohibit everyone from diffusing, advertising and even making known any means of circumvention. (Google translation.) Meanwhile, no plans to end a 56 tax on blank CDs, which brought the industry 95.3 million in 2001. Sad news from a country which, in more enlightened times, pioneered copyright reduction (to 50 years) and thus enabled such wonderful reissue programs as Chronological Classics.

• 2002-12-04 15:16:13 France to introduce own DMCA (articles,news) (rejected)

Today's Libé previews a new bill introduced by the French government to, in one stroke and all too familiar terms, not only legalize anticopy media , but also prohibit everyone from diffusing, advertising and even making known any means of circumvention. (Google translation.) Meanwhile, no plans to end a 56 tax on blank CDs, which brought the industry 95.3 million in 2001. Sad news from a country which, in more enlightened times, pioneered copyright reduction (to 50 years) and thus enabled such wonderful reissue programs as Chronological Classics.

Just to speak about Open Source, it has gained media coverage in France in two of the main newspapers (Libération and Le Monde - the latter raising the subject again today).

Europe is also lucky enough that the vast majority of press agencies/newspapers/etc are not owned by big greedy conglomerates and are therefore marketing independent. Economy biased media exist, but they are the minority here. The Diana hype has occured here too (hey, it happened in Paris, how could this be ignored), but the death of Mother Theresa, OTOH, hasn't gone unnoticed.

Marketing disease in the media is of particular worry because medias are a political force today. See the pedophilia "trend" (again in Europe), for example, which all started with the case of Marc Dutrou, in Belgium, several years ago. Raising this case led to 1. politicians looking at the problem and 2. people, aware or victims, starting to speak on public whereas they would remain silent prior to that. The media can influence people in the good way, like in this case, but the other way around is also true.

I just hope that this disease doesn't infect us, honestly. I just don't want to see presidential campaigns turning into commercials just like they are in the US.

<rant>

Speaking of news, I hope you US citizens know that Mr Bush refuses to adhere to the Global Court because he doesn't want his soldiers to be subject to its juridiction. Crimes are crimes, period. FYI the two other countries refusing to adhere are Russia and China. Nice refereces. This is a blatant insult to the rest of the world, as was his rebuttal of the Kyoto Treaty (need I say which country emits the more pollution in the world?). If not, then the rot in your media is not only about marketing.

</rant>

The prime source of information about software patents in Europe is the patents mailing list on the AFUL web site (french free unix user group).

Some information is also available on the APRIL web site (french association for research in free software).

In particular, to date, all the big (poll-wise) candidates to the french presidential election have expressed their opposition to software patents, see in french Haro sur les brevets and Tous les candidats dans l'opposition.

And of course the EuroLinux web site and FFII web site (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure ) have links to a lot of ressources and interesting readings.

We, european citizens, are seeking ways to get other european countries take position against the current proposed european law that opens the gates of unrestricted software and ideas patenting.If you're willing to help the cause, please contact your local free software association and try to get some activism in place together with the established assiociations like the FSF Europe. If you are French or German you can even make a tax-deducible donation, it may help the cause too.

--
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

The prime source of information about software patents in Europe is the patents mailing list on the AFUL web site (french free unix user group).

Some information is also available on the APRIL web site (french association for research in free software).

In particular, to date, all the big (poll-wise) candidates to the french presidential election have expressed their opposition to software patents, see in french Haro sur les brevets and Tous les candidats dans l'opposition.

And of course the EuroLinux web site and FFII web site (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure ) have links to a lot of ressources and interesting readings.

We, european citizens, are seeking ways to get other european countries take position against the current proposed european law that opens the gates of unrestricted software and ideas patenting.If you're willing to help the cause, please contact your local free software association and try to get some activism in place together with the established assiociations like the FSF Europe. If you are French or German you can even make a tax-deducible donation, it may help the cause too.

--
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

Then there's the international issue. Do you think a "security enabled" windows is going to sit well with the the EU(they tend to side with the consumer)?

Summit meeting yesterday in Matignon: French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin received IBM's Lou Gerstner who, after having already met Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, "had wished to talk" with him on one of his "regular visits in Europe".

Times change. In the past, it is Bill Gates that used to be consulted before tarring the "information highways". Now, it is IBM. In other words, the enemy: indeed Big Blue, as the company is called, has lately taken a malicious pleasure in singing the praises of "free" software, this anti-Microsoft missile (in Bill Gates, one has on the contrary the cult of Copyright). "One of IBM's strategic choices is to support the development of the free software of rights, which interests us because a number of significant applications in electronic administration use this type of solutions", Matignon underlined.

So the Republic has chosen the "free", and suddenly, Bill Gates is no longer to be seen our ungrateful corridors.

But the big worry, methinks, is how long it will remain so. The Brussels institutions are still being defined, and I'm sure that many dream of it becoming like Washington, D.C. -- a place to lobby and bargain for legislation.

I do not like the notion that my ideas, the ideas formed with my own genius and hard work, should be thrown into the public domain just because I formulated them. I should have the freedom to share my ideas, keep them secret, or sell them to the highest bidder. Taking away that freedom in the name of other freedoms not only tramples some of my liberties, but also cheapens the others.

The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.

But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the users, under the GPL.

What's disturbing is that not only you (if sincere) are buying into that FUD, but so is the Washington Post article (the following is so misconstrued it sounds almost like Craig Mundie):

That model holds that if you use open-source code, you have to put your enhancements in the public domain and offer it to others with the same privileges that you got, i.e. free.

GPL (General Public License). En premier lieu, chacun est libre de décortiquer le logiciel en accédant au code source, les lignes de programme qui en constituent les secrets de fabrication. Ensuite, chacun est libre de le modifier, de l'améliorer ou de l'adapter à ses besoins. Une condition: tous les changements doivent être rendus publics [transl: all changes must be made public] et faire l'objet des mêmes modalités d'utilisation et de diffusion.

I just used up all my moderator points, or I'd up this comment.

Renaud Deraison is known in french security circles for his nessus scanner, a program similar to nmap. He published his findings at the end of last year, but it wasn't widely trumpeted at the time. Shimomura is a publicity whore who copied Deraison's comments (probably used the fish, the grammar follows the same butchering) and claimed the discovery as his own. A few days ago, there was a press release going around touting Shimomura's discovery, not a CERT advisory, just a press release from the San Diego Super Computer Research Center.

The french paper Le Liberation ran a story filled with horror but little detail. Some of the claims are ridiculous, such as how someone who cracks the modem has unlimited access to every file on all the computers behind it, and how any machine on the internet can access the modems which sit on unaddressable IP addresses (the 10.x.x.x private IPs from RFC 1918)

Today Le Libe is running a follow up story where Alcatel denies the backdoors were placed intentionally, and claims there is a security program installed on the modems to prevent cracking by unauthorised persons.

I have a Speed Touch Home modem, and I've played with these backdoors. In /. speak, they are a number of IP services, the "simple" services (echo, chargen, etc), an HTTP server, an FTP server, a telnet server, and a TFTP server. The modem has a simple internal file system, and if you know the names of the files, you can copy them or overwrite them with TFTP. If you connect with telnet (or FTP), it presents you with the MAC address of the modem, and asks for a password, which is a simple hash of the MAC address. Deraison either intercepted his provider connecting and reverse engineered the hash, or he had access to some engineering docs at an ISP, or played around and figured it out. Either way, an impressive hack, in the good sense of the word.

Since the modem uses "private" IP addresses, and access is limited to the local LAN or from the DSLAM, he didn't consider this to be a big problem. The modems typically sit on the DSLAMs private address range, and only connect the users computer to the BAS using PPoE or PPPoA, and can't really generate traffic to the internet. To gain access to the modems, you would either have to crack the DSLAM, crack the users computer, be on the same DSLAM (and thus same subnet) as the target, or intercept the copper wires and play DSLAM. Of these scenari, only cracking a computer on the LAN behind the modem would be possible from the internet at large, and if you can do that, why bother with a stupid little DSL modem?

I agree with Betcour (and a large crowd on fr.comp.securite) on this, Shimomura is tooting his own horn because his bank account is empty after Cybertraque flopped at the cinema. Did Takedown ever open in the U.S.? If it didn't, count your blessings, it was bad, not Ed Wood bad, just unredeemably bad.

the AC

I just used up all my moderator points, or I'd up this comment.

Renaud Deraison is known in french security circles for his nessus scanner, a program similar to nmap. He published his findings at the end of last year, but it wasn't widely trumpeted at the time. Shimomura is a publicity whore who copied Deraison's comments (probably used the fish, the grammar follows the same butchering) and claimed the discovery as his own. A few days ago, there was a press release going around touting Shimomura's discovery, not a CERT advisory, just a press release from the San Diego Super Computer Research Center.

The french paper Le Liberation ran a story filled with horror but little detail. Some of the claims are ridiculous, such as how someone who cracks the modem has unlimited access to every file on all the computers behind it, and how any machine on the internet can access the modems which sit on unaddressable IP addresses (the 10.x.x.x private IPs from RFC 1918)

Today Le Libe is running a follow up story where Alcatel denies the backdoors were placed intentionally, and claims there is a security program installed on the modems to prevent cracking by unauthorised persons.

I have a Speed Touch Home modem, and I've played with these backdoors. In /. speak, they are a number of IP services, the "simple" services (echo, chargen, etc), an HTTP server, an FTP server, a telnet server, and a TFTP server. The modem has a simple internal file system, and if you know the names of the files, you can copy them or overwrite them with TFTP. If you connect with telnet (or FTP), it presents you with the MAC address of the modem, and asks for a password, which is a simple hash of the MAC address. Deraison either intercepted his provider connecting and reverse engineered the hash, or he had access to some engineering docs at an ISP, or played around and figured it out. Either way, an impressive hack, in the good sense of the word.

Since the modem uses "private" IP addresses, and access is limited to the local LAN or from the DSLAM, he didn't consider this to be a big problem. The modems typically sit on the DSLAMs private address range, and only connect the users computer to the BAS using PPoE or PPPoA, and can't really generate traffic to the internet. To gain access to the modems, you would either have to crack the DSLAM, crack the users computer, be on the same DSLAM (and thus same subnet) as the target, or intercept the copper wires and play DSLAM. Of these scenari, only cracking a computer on the LAN behind the modem would be possible from the internet at large, and if you can do that, why bother with a stupid little DSL modem?

I agree with Betcour (and a large crowd on fr.comp.securite) on this, Shimomura is tooting his own horn because his bank account is empty after Cybertraque flopped at the cinema. Did Takedown ever open in the U.S.? If it didn't, count your blessings, it was bad, not Ed Wood bad, just unredeemably bad.

the AC

I just used up all my moderator points, or I'd up this comment.

Renaud Deraison is known in french security circles for his nessus scanner, a program similar to nmap. He published his findings at the end of last year, but it wasn't widely trumpeted at the time. Shimomura is a publicity whore who copied Deraison's comments (probably used the fish, the grammar follows the same butchering) and claimed the discovery as his own. A few days ago, there was a press release going around touting Shimomura's discovery, not a CERT advisory, just a press release from the San Diego Super Computer Research Center.

The french paper Le Liberation ran a story filled with horror but little detail. Some of the claims are ridiculous, such as how someone who cracks the modem has unlimited access to every file on all the computers behind it, and how any machine on the internet can access the modems which sit on unaddressable IP addresses (the 10.x.x.x private IPs from RFC 1918)

Today Le Libe is running a follow up story where Alcatel denies the backdoors were placed intentionally, and claims there is a security program installed on the modems to prevent cracking by unauthorised persons.

I have a Speed Touch Home modem, and I've played with these backdoors. In /. speak, they are a number of IP services, the "simple" services (echo, chargen, etc), an HTTP server, an FTP server, a telnet server, and a TFTP server. The modem has a simple internal file system, and if you know the names of the files, you can copy them or overwrite them with TFTP. If you connect with telnet (or FTP), it presents you with the MAC address of the modem, and asks for a password, which is a simple hash of the MAC address. Deraison either intercepted his provider connecting and reverse engineered the hash, or he had access to some engineering docs at an ISP, or played around and figured it out. Either way, an impressive hack, in the good sense of the word.

Since the modem uses "private" IP addresses, and access is limited to the local LAN or from the DSLAM, he didn't consider this to be a big problem. The modems typically sit on the DSLAMs private address range, and only connect the users computer to the BAS using PPoE or PPPoA, and can't really generate traffic to the internet. To gain access to the modems, you would either have to crack the DSLAM, crack the users computer, be on the same DSLAM (and thus same subnet) as the target, or intercept the copper wires and play DSLAM. Of these scenari, only cracking a computer on the LAN behind the modem would be possible from the internet at large, and if you can do that, why bother with a stupid little DSL modem?

I agree with Betcour (and a large crowd on fr.comp.securite) on this, Shimomura is tooting his own horn because his bank account is empty after Cybertraque flopped at the cinema. Did Takedown ever open in the U.S.? If it didn't, count your blessings, it was bad, not Ed Wood bad, just unredeemably bad.

the AC

The proposed tax also makes tonight's headlines (and 7 articles) in Paris' major daily Libération .

1) A "moral person" is a legal concept which includes corportations, associations, foundations, and any kind of organisation that can have a legal existence.

2) It's rather surprising to discover a law project from my own government on Slashdot...
This proposal hasn't made headlines here in France - in fact nobody mentioned it. This is even stranger when you consider the Nouvelle Economie frenzy that has developed over the last few months in the press - anything that involves computers, internet and economics has become incredibly fashionable here. Not to mention the extensive coverage of the Microsoft case (see today's edition of Liberation)

3) The strongly pro-market vocabulary ("consumer choice", "more competition", etc.) is also unusual for left-wing MPs. In fact, the text of this law project seems to be designed for the European level. I would not be surprised to see proposals of this kind making their way to the European parliament of Strasbourg over the next few months.

4) A short real-world case study:
Universities in France are regarded as public administrations (although they are independent for their internal organisation). In my university, as far as data exchange is concerned, open standards are enforced - e.g., all complex text documents are transmitted under RTF format. This is not for political reasons, but simply to avoid problems with different versions of Word. Microsoft programs has pushed the proprietary logic as far as losing compatibility with themselves (!), thus providing a strong rationale for using open standards.

I can't help finding this incredibly funny.