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Predict Worm Headlines, Win a T-shirt
Waggener's goal is to minimize the PR damage that the worm will cause. This is potentially a very damaging story for them. Not so much because it underscores the dangers of an insecure, monocultural environment monopolizing our vital networks. Not even because of the embarrassing and ironic nature of the worm. More because it involves a hot button political topic -- Bush and, allegedly, China -- which the average reader will be interested in and might even almost understand.
So what's their battle plan?
Well, first Waggener will try to predict the yield. Our guesstimates as of right now, 11:36 PM EDT Thursday evening, are that it's a dud -- whitehouse.gov is still accessible and my IRC server hasn't gone down. This is probably because whitehouse.gov simply sidestepped its IP address (the stupid worm author hardcoded it instead of using DNS): White House dodges Web worm.
But at least 196,000 machines were infected. You'd think something would happen. Maybe a router will crash and Delaware will fall off the map. Who knows?
Second, Waggener will have an overall strategy. This might range from overhyping the potential danger ("turn off your computers! prepare for Armageddon! oh it didn't happen -- we saved you") to distraction with trivia ("we are pleased with the judges' verdict last week. look over there!"). How will the firm modify our reality?
Third, Waggener will use different approaches on different audiences. Reporters from different tech publications will talk to different handlers, and hear different things. Keep in mind which way these publications lean when you predict what their reactions will be.
Here's the contest. OSDN will be giving away four Slashdot T-shirts (or some other ThinkGeek shirt) to the four readers who most accurately predict newspaper headlines about the "Red Code" worm.
The newspapers of record we're using are the Washington Times and the New York Times. The categories are:
Headline on the Washington Times news story, Saturday morning
(label it: "WT News") Headline on the New York Times news story, Saturday morning
(label it: "NYT News") Title of the Washington Times editorial, Sunday morning
(label it: "WT Ed") Title of the New York Times editorial, Sunday morning
(label it: "NYT Ed")
Type up four guesses and submit them in a comment below. If your guess for any of the four is the closest in its category, you win a T-shirt!
For example, if our contest had been to predict headlines about global warming on July 19, and you'd said:
"WT News: Bush Visits Europe, Says Many Words Correctly
NYT News: Bush Promises Called Into Question
WT Ed: Good News on Global Warming
NYT Ed: Clueless on Global Warming"
...then you'd win, because you guessed the NYT editorial title correctly.
So put on your corporate-PR "spinning" caps, get out there and make us proud!
The Small Print:
- Top headline only, you don't have to predict subheads or whatever.
- In case of two stories/headlines, we pick the biggest one, our discretion.
- Up to four guesses to a post, one for each headline (post early, post often, but slow down cowboy!).
- One T-shirt to a person.
- Ties go to the f1rst p0st.
- No posts after the paper's out, of course (print or electronic, whichever's first) - first edition print is the goal.
- No OSDN/VA Linux employees or relatives eligible.
- You must either be logged in when you post or include one email address in your comment; email is how we'll contact you for your snail-mail address. Spamarmor it if you like, as long as we can read it.
- If for some crazy, absurd reason one of the papers doesn't run a story/editorial about this at all, we'll go looking for a "similar" paper's story/editorial and pick its headline. We're thinking L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, that kind of thing. If the papers actually run stories today (Friday), well, darnit that wasn't much of a contest was it? We'll still look for editorials on Sunday.
- All judges' judgments are final.
www.wss.net/winupd.jpg
Yeah, I know it's a horrible groaner ....
RFC2119
Ahh, this must be the famous tolerance of the left I keep hearing about.
And who the hell wasted mod points on this? There's true comedy gold below...
Heh! I know this is a Laugh Its Funny article, but the FUD has already started. Not against the hackers but against the system administrators.
They are going out of their way in mainstream publications to let it be known that the only reason these servers have been hacked is because of 'lazy' system administrators. They aren't even trying to blame the hackers as that would point to flaws in their system, but those of us that slave to keep their worthless systems up and running.
I for one have had all the patches installed and STILL been hacked. I keep charts of what is installed and when because my boss demands it...that and I don't want to be caught empty handed when something like this happens.
And to think my employeers forced me off of Mac WebStar & Unix Boxes running our networks to a standard Windows...
Jamie: Got it. No problem. The Washington Times and the New York Post.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
1. reads CNN and Slashdot to fluff his/her/its own ego 2. silently thanks all of the kind people for pointing out the two "bugs" of hardcoding the IP instead of using DNS and not flooding if a connection can't be made 3. fixes and redeploys the worm.
It isn't open source, but decompilation makes everything open source. Isn't it great how the community can improve open source? And who's likely to be more responsive, a sys admin for a MS system or a virus author/copycat?
C'mon, you know you'd love to see a Microsoft bug take out the whitehouse site, anyhow.
-m
No, that will be
At any rate, you should expect all the headlines to include Chinese, hackers, cyberwar, and White House, plus however many other words will fit in the column.
Any editor who doesn't catch all of that should be put out to pasture.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Giant worm devours Bush"
"White House found to be infested with worms"
"Computer thingy does stuff to other computer thingy"
"Pedophilic, drug dealing, open source hackers attack White House"
You know, Hitler was widely admired in Germany, even by people who disagreed with his policies. Up until the end, the people living in the shelter with him saw him as a continued source of strength, even when he was resigned to die.
:)
Ooop, Godwin's law, I lose
-= rei =-
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
Welcome to http://www.worm.com!
Hacked by Chinese!
I'm totally serious. I reloaded it and it never came back.
NYT News: Web worm misses target
Second worm discovered behind grassy knoll - film at eleven!
I'm gonna laugh my ass off if anyone actually gets this right .. the NY Times, and LA Times always massacre the truth right out of the headlines, so, I'm guessing it'll be something wrong, along the lines of:
NYT News: Hackers use virus to attack whitehouse computers.
Obviously wrong, but a good way to get some readers....
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
His email address is actually billg@. Rumor has it that he spends a couple of hours every day on email.
I've heard that too, and it doesn't surprise me that he'd go for the first name thing. I've met the man several times (used to work for an audio-visual company, I put a lav mic on him during the Windows 95 World Conquest Tour), and he's really - urk - friendly and genuine. But everything becomes a race, a game. "Let's see if I can run this lav mic through my shirt before you can connect it to the mixer!"
What he didn't know was that the mixer was at the back of the room, so I was using a snake - basically a bus for mic cables. It was right under the podium. I plugged it in before he got the mic on, and he gave me a hell of a dirty look. >:)
"no truth"You'd think there'd be at least a sig! Did he save the message and go back through the message headers? Heh:
X-Mailer: Gnus v5.6.45/XEmacs 21.1Bill's secret is out. :)
But it was still kind of spooky.His intensity and his absolute unwavering conviction that everything he (and, by extension, Microsoft) does is right is what spooks me the most. Ironically, while I loathe Microsoft, I admire his intelligence and his sense of humor. For example, I would bet money that he's seen the Bill Borg icon that Slashdot uses, and I'd also bet that he enjoyed it. Most computer geeks would like him in person, no matter how much we may abhorr his products.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Heh. Here's my entry headline:
"Worm Killed By Reboot: World Record 7-day Windows 2000 Uptime Over"
On a somewhat unrelated note, adding this:
0 12 * * * uptime | mail -s "Eat your heart out." "bgates@microsoft.com"...to your crontab is a great way to brighten up Bill's morning.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
SLASHDOT READERS WILL BE DOING THEIR DIRTY WORK FOR THEM.
In the name of all that is good, I beg you to stop!
WT News: Early Worm gets the Bird
NYT News: Microsoft Denies Ally with China
WT Ed: Dubya is for Worm?
NYT Ed: default.ida?NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN...
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I couldn't think of anything clever, nor could I think of anything particularly humorous...
- Jman
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
I predict the future and all I can win is a t-shirt?
No thank you. My time is much more valuable than that.
Yes... Microsoft's own servers was hacked...
Microsofts webservers are set up in a load-balancing format.. Meaning when you goto microsoft.com or updates.microsoft.com you aren't going to the same server every time or refresh. So if only one was infected (which is entirely possible b/c the worm spread by randomly choosing it's targets... Not just attacking obvious targets) then once every "x" number of time you would hit the infected server...
--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
------ Ths sntnc n vwl
AOL Headline:
"You've got worms!"