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Hacker Tinkering With Yahoo Stories
Lifter writes "A hacker named Adrian Lamo had access for three weeks to the web-based content control system for Yahoo!'s news section, according to a story at SecurityFocus. He tinkered with a couple of stories without anyone noticing, then edited an August Reuters story about Dmitry Sklyarov, so that it said that Dmitry's program raised "the haunting specter of inner-city minorities with unrestricted access to literature, and through literature, hope." He also added a quote by John Ashcroft,"They shall not overcome. Whoever told them that the truth shall set them free was obviously and grossly unfamiliar with federal law." Funny stuff in itself, but the SecurityFocus story explores the harm that could come from a trusted news site being easily hacked in these times."
- They are shy or antisocial;
- They spend a large percentage of their free time on a computer;
- They are quick to criticize the government or corporations, often
complaining about their "rights online";
- They are obsessed with privacy;
- They have a tendency to play violent computer games;
- They frequently illegally copy music, movies, or software;
- They listen to aggressive, "alternative" music;
- They have an aversion to going outside;
- They like to reverse-engineer, or "hack", anything they can
for no substantive reason;
- They use software such as Linux, which is designed by and for
hackers.
For the sake of national security, please report all potential terrorists to the NSA.Nothing to see here, folks.
I think it's possible a lot of major news sites have been lately hacked by script kiddies. How else do you account for the quality of writing on some of these sites?
Ñ'
Yeah, I know this is a serious accusation,
but at the same time, I can't help but find
the humor in it.
Does anybody have any links to a copy of the original Yahoo article?
If you are worried about the trustworthiness of your news site, getting your news from a site named YAHOO might be your first mistake.
How do we know the Security Focus story wasn't actually the hacker-planted story, and that anything happened over at Yahoo at all?
I do not have a signature
How do we know that this story wasn't altered by a hacker that has access to slashdot?
I know that this could be pretty serious news, because unfortunately most people easily get swayed by anything they read (which sometimes consists only of finding waldo), but i find it that it is just a lighthearted hacker with power that he doesnt want to waste. Still, this shows that news stories are compromisable, (at last some are) and this could potentially become a more serious matter if this was raised to a scale of 5 billion.
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
I'm honestly not too concerned about this kind of hacking. I tend to take _anything_ I hear about any major incident like the Sept. 11 attacks with a grain of salt for a day or two. And I would hope to God that the people making important, irrevocable decisions -- e.g. the U.S. government -- aren't relying on Yahoo! News for information.
...
Consider it freedom of speech, and of the press, and of petition for redress of grievances, updated for the modern age
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The problem with security today is the lack of it. Generally security on the Internet today is the same as how secure businesses are physically. Many businesses leave filing cabinet doors unlocked, rooms open, and papers unshredded.
Now in the company where you work, how hard would it be for a person in the general public to walk-in and act like a new client or staff member and gain access to sensitive information?
The problem with computing security in general is that it is more often exploited than flaws in physical security. IT departments don't know how to read www.microsoft.com/security and RedHat's update/errata page. They find security too difficult and do not place it high on their priority lists.
- x-empt
Ever need an online dictionary?
A news site could not be trusted If anyone could anonymously make a comment.
nt... darrrrrrrr i we tah ded ..
all this text is here to bypass the lameness filter because it stinks
...persecution. It shouldn't be illegal to hack a site if your hacks are funny. ACLU where are you now?
Pre Flight Announcement, 2002
"Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Northwest Flight 571,
service to Los Angeles continuing on to San
Diego. Before we take off, we'd like to acquaint you with some of the safety
features of this Boeing 767. You know
about the emergency exits, oxygen masks, floating seat cushions, and so on,
so we will not waste time with those. Consult the cards in your seat pocket
for information on all features of our aircraft.
"Please do pay attention to the new security features.
"In the event of midair terrorism, a panel will open alongside the window
seat, containing two lightweight automatic handguns. They are fully loaded,
and extra clips are available in velcro straps. As the flight attendants are
now demonstrating, to operate the pistol, simply draw back the slide and let
it fall forward, then aim by lining up the slot in the rear site with the
front site, centered on the middle of your targets torso. Depress the
trigger repeatedly to fire. The pistol holds 10 rounds; after the last the
slide will lock back. Depress the clip release button located above the grip
on the left side, remove the clip and slide a new one into place. Please be
careful of your field of fire, and continue firing until your target goes
down.
"Your seats backs are equipped with kevlar armor, stay well down and aim
over the top or around the side.
"Your flight attendants are all armed with compact submachine guns; please
follow their lead in directing fire.
"If you feel you are unable to perform these duties, or are a conscientious
objector, please let our attentants know so
we can reseat you in the 'cowards rows' at the rear of the plane and not
bring you drinks or peanuts.
"For your safety, the aisles are equipped with electrified strips and
computer controlled antipersonnel mines. For this
reason, please remain in your seats until the captain has signalled all clear.
"Note that the area around the cockpit is cleared of seats and marked with
contrasting carpet. Under no circumstances
should you cross this barrier during flight, various automatic devices will
be activated to protect the cockpit.
"The hatch in the floor at the back of the cabin is similarly marked and
should be avoided during flight.
"Anyone creating a disturbance, caught tampering with the pistol cases or smoke detectors in the lavatories will be apprehended and ejected via the rear floor hatch.
"Thank you, and have a pleasant flight. We know you have a choice when you fly, and we thank you for choosing Northwest..."
he didn't do anything than go to what they said was a wide open url - it was "secured" via obscurity - you weren't supposed to know about it.
I don't know how many times dipshits here in my office have suggested that parts of our app were sucure b/c "how would anyone ever figure out that url" - duh - so I showed them.
what pisses me off is these people are everywhere and don't get fired and are still allowed to make these retarded design decisions.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
what would he do? Spell check the stories? Too obvious...
I love this guy. Where do I donate to his cause?
If malicious hacking has to exist, it should certainly be in the style of The Onion.
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
Uhhh, all religion is based on intolerance. That's the whole point of religion.
Which web content management system was he able to get into with only a browser? Documentum?
No really, Yahhoo has news?
I thought the only use for Yahoo was:
$ ping yahoo.com
Is there any reason that the major news organizations don't PGP or MD5 sign their stories as posted on the web, to verify they are posted and mirrored correctly? It could easily be ascertained that the site was being changed if Yahoo News were to include a signature at the bottom to check the veracity of the article. Obviously this guy was making minor changes to the stories early on, just to see if he could get away with it. A simple spider/crawler that checks the signature could be run by Yahoo against any and all of their posted stories, and if they don't match the copy editor's , then a flag can be raised! The AP could do this as well for any stories that go across the newswire, and are posted across the Internet.
Taliban Surrenders bin Laden After Web Site Defaced
http://bbspot.com/News/2001/09/surrender.html
...frames from hell!!
Hackers in the know would suffice with a simple "HACKED BY CHINESE".
well lock me up i guess....sheesh
I've been getting spam that claims to be from Yahoo today. It seems to originate with a site whose front page says "this site is under construction.... ".
Here's the entirety:
Click these links to see recent news and up to the minute stats:
Current link
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ivoc.ob&d=v1
52 week link
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ivoc.ob&d=c&k=c4
Please FWD this email to your associates of similar interests..... Sorry for any
intrusions.
Disclaimer: Neither Corporate America nor the writers of this communique makes
specific trading recommendations or gives individualized market advice.
Information contained in this newsletter is provided as an information service
only. Corporate America recommends that you get personal advice from an
investment professional before buying or selling stocks or other securities. The
securities markets are highly speculative areas for investments and only you can
determine what level of risk is appropriate for you. Although Corporate America
obtains the information reported herein from sources that it deems reliable, no
warranty can be given as to the accuracy or completeness of any of the
information provided or as to the results obtained by individuals using such
information. In no way should this be construed as a recommendation to buy or
sell a particular security.
Not Interested: http://www.cyberxworld.com/cleanlist.html
Seriously, though, disinformation and "information terrorism" may not be as lethal as 110 floors of concrete dropping on you, but for precicely that reason, it's much more insidious, with an impact that no amount of bulldozing can ever clear away.
It's also much more common. AFAIK, only two buildings of that size have ever been felled through malice. On the other hand, virtually every political and commercial organization has at least one "spin-doctor" - the popular name for info-terrorists.
If the US is serious about its war on terrorism, it should first prove itself, by eliminating all spin-doctors from the Government, and demanding rigorous honesty and accountability within all sectors not directly tied to national security.
Yes, NS has to be an exception. Otherwise you get into some, ummm, interesting situations:
Passport Control Officer: Are you a foreign spy?
Foreign Spy: Yes. I'm here to learn all your secrets.
Passport Control Officer (into microphone): Psychiatric Unit to Gate 4, please.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I had a hard time connecting. ;-)
Here's the original article. (Undoctored I promise
Yahoo! News hacked
Hacker tinkers with with news articles undetected.
By Kevin Poulsen
September 18, 2001 4:25 PM PT
In a development that exposes grave risks of news manipulation in a time of crisis, a hacker demonstrated Tuesday that he could rewrite the text of Yahoo! News articles at will, apparently using nothing more than a web browser and an easily-obtained Internet address.
Yahoo! News, which learned of the hack from SecurityFocus, says it has closed the security hole that allowed 20-year-old hacker Adrian Lamo to access the portal's web-based production tools Tuesday morning, and modify an August 23rd news story about Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian computer programmer facing federal criminal charges under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Sklyarov created a computer program that cracks the copy protection scheme used by Adobe Systems' eBook software. His prosecution has come under fire by computer programmers and electronic civil libertarians who argue that the DMCA is an unconstitutional impingement on speech, and interferes with consumers' traditional right to make personal copies of books, movies and music that they've purchased.
Lamo tampered with Yahoo!'s copy of a Reuters story that described a delay in Sklyarov's court proceedings, so that the text reported, incorrectly, that the Russian was facing the death penalty.
The modified story warned sardonically that Sklyarov's work raised "the haunting specter of inner-city minorities with unrestricted access to literature, and through literature, hope."
The text went on to report that Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference about the case before "cheering hordes", and incorrectly quoted Ashcroft as saying, "They shall not overcome. Whoever told them that the truth shall set them free was obviously and grossly unfamiliar with federal law."
It's more difficult to get into their advertising reporting statistics than their news production tools.
Lamo says he's had the ability to change Yahoo! News stories for three weeks, and made minor experimental changes to other stories that have since cycled off the site.
The hacker provided SecurityFocus with a screen shot showing an August 10th Reuters story about a Senate committee?s report on the National Security Agency. The screen shot shows the story on Yahoo! News with a false quote attributed to the report: ?Rebuilding the NSA is the committee?s top priority. In partnership with AOL Time Warner, we fully expect to bring you a service you can?t refuse.?
According to Lamo, the NSA story remained on the portal for three days, before being cycled off.
He says he deliberately chose an old story Tuesday so it would be seen by few readers, while still demonstrating the vulnerability.
"Yahoo! takes security across its network very seriously, and we have taken appropriate steps to restrict unauthorized access to help ensure that we maintain a secure environment," said Kourosh Karimkhany, senior producer at Yahoo! News, in a statement. The company declined further comment.
'Subversion of Information Attack'
The hack highlights a risk that's troubled security experts since 1998, when a group called "Hacking for Girlies" defaced the web site of the New York Times, replacing the front page with a ramshackle tirade that criticized a Times reporter, and defended then-imprisoned hacker Kevin Mitnick.
"There's always been a concern that somebody would gain access to a news site and make more subtle changes," says Dorothy Denning, professor of Computer Science and director of the Georgetown Institute for Information Assurance at Georgetown University.
One year ago hackers modified a news story on the California Orange County Register web site to report that Microsoft founder Bill Gates had been arrested for hacking into NASA computers.
Experts warn that malicious corruption of content at a respected news source -- sometimes called a 'subversion of information attack' -- could have serious consequences during a crisis.
In the hours following the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, millions turned to the Internet for information. Top news sites reported as many as 15 million unique users. Yahoo! reportedly had double the traffic that it received for the entire month of August.
"You can imagine someone changing lists of people who were on the planes, or reported missing, or all kinds of things that could cause a lot of grief," says Denning. "Or posting stories attributing attacks to certain people."
Lamo agrees, and says he's troubled that he had the power to modify news stories that day.
"At that point I had more potential readership than the Washington Post," says Lamo. "It could have caused a lot of people who were interested in the days events a lot of unwarranted grief if false and misleading information had been put up."
Proxy problems
Yahoo! declined to comment on the specifics of the hack, but as described by Lamo, modifying the portal's news stories didn't require much hacking. He made the changes using an ordinary web browser, and didn't need to do so much as enter a password.
The culprit in this case was a trio of proxy web servers that bridged Yahoo!'s internal corporate network to the public Internet. By configuring a web browser to go through one of the proxies, anyone on the Internet could masquerade as a Yahoo! insider, says Lamo, winning instant trust from the company's web-based content management system.
The hacker criticized the web giant for not prioritizing security on the systems that allow editing and creation of news stories.
"There are more secure parts of their network," says Lamo. "It's more difficult to get into their advertising reporting statistics than their news production tools."
The hacker has a history of exposing the security foibles of corporate behemoths. Last year he helped expose a bug that was allowing hackers to take over AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) accounts. And in May, he warned troubled broadband provider Excite@Home that its customer list of 2.95 million cable modem subscribers was accessible to hackers.
Lamo's hobby is a risky one. Unlike the software vulnerabilities routinely exposed by 'white hat' hackers, the holes Lamo goes after are specific to particular networks, and generally cannot be discovered without violating U.S. computer crime law. With every hack, Lamo is betting that the target company will be grateful for the warning, rather than angry over the intrusion.
"I can't give you an exact answer why he does that," says Matthew Griffiths, a computer security worker and a long-time friend of Lamo. "He's kind of a superhero of the Internet."
"I agree that it's not the safest thing I could be doing with my time," says Lamo. "If they prosecute me, they prosecute me."
Hacker plugs huge hole for Excite@Home
AIM users prone to name hijacks
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
He tinkered with a couple of stories without anyone noticing, then edited an August Reuters story about Dmitry Sklyarov, so that it said that Dmitry's program raised "the haunting specter of inner-city minorities with unrestricted access to literature, and through literature, hope."
;-)
My jaw is left gaping.... Oh, I wish all crackers were this smart! Thank you for restoring my faith in human sarcasm
Funny stuff in itself, but the SecurityFocus story explores the harm that could come from a trusted news site being easily hacked in these times."
What about a "trusted" news site spewing forth crap by itself....like oh government and corporate propaganda, misinformation, and happy stuff like that? Oh wait, they're doing it in our best interests. To reassure us that everything is ok, while our civil liberties are stripped away one by one.
Yay!
Finally -- the hacker equivalent of the Jedi mind trick!
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
See The 1982 Daily Kal
(Well, it looked much better on paper.)
Because of this malicious act, there are probably thousands or possibly millions of people who have been duped into thinking that John Ashcroft is an intelligent person with a sense of humor. We can only be thankful that he did not attribute any profound statement to president Bush.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I hear he also hacked into /. and substituted the word "tumor" for "gall bladder". Yeah... *that's* what happened...
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Anyone else think this page is out of date?
I agree with the sentiment, however with the timing, I think there will be problems for you.
. . .this
p l? table=n&cat=51280&id=200109191535000139514
http://dailynews.netscape.com/mynsnews/story.tm
story on U.S. News dubs the new US military movement "Operation Infinite Justice". I feel I must suggest that this story be hacked. We must launch every 'ZIG' against Afghanistan for great justice!
If the editor of news sites would sign news stories with their private PGP or GPG key, which of course should have a passphrase and shouldn't be stored on the web server anyway, then people could actually verify the integrity of the posted articles.
Then again, recent events might prevent a truly secure implementation of that anyway.
SpanishInquisition! Is that you?!
First time reading below level 1 since "new and improved" slashcode 2.2, huh?
It can't be, that's impossible. I mean they're not using Microsoft servers, how did they get hacked?
Your hope might be in vain.
A few years ago, I interviewed with the CIA for a spook position. One of the suggestions given by the interviewer for fast, reliable, international news sources was...Yahoo! News (!?!) I was shocked and thought he was putting me on. I accused him of joking and he assured me Yahoo! News indeed was pretty good.
I'm sure he didn't mean that Yahoo was the CIA's sole source of information, but it was pretty funny to hear him say that they use it!
Some call it "editing."
Ot would be a good idea that all news carry this disclaimer: "For your own protection, please do not depend on a single source for news."
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
He could have changed all the links in the stories to http://www.goatse.cx !
How do we know that the /. article is not planted or had been edited too?
/. are knowledgeable and vigilant as compared to many other sites.
Of course we can only be satisfied with the thought that the team running
Return the bells of Balangiga.
These story mods are great! Here I am in my cubicle desperately trying to laugh quietly! I've got my hand over my mouth, and my nose closed with my finger and thumb. Every few seconds I compose myself long enough to take a breath, and then it starts all over again.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Heh, the only thing unusual about this story is that a *hacker* changed the meaning of a story to suit an agenda. It's not as if the news wasn't biased already!
One of the things that worries me greatly when I am brave enough to think about it at length, is how fantastically biased and non-independent our (USA) official news sources are. Almost every traditional media segment (TV, newspapers, radio) are as we speak undergoing a tremendous reorganization, where the vast majority of the markets are controlled by a few private companies whose major line of business isn't journalism.
For an shock for those who haven't done it already, find an international issue and compare how it is covered in the US with how it is covered by far-foreign or minority news sources. You may find the experience similar to discovering Slashdot and Kuroshin after years of Ziff Davis, especially if you read coverage that goes on for a few pages instead of paragraphs. You might not discover the truth but you'll have much better questions.
The bias is subtle to detect without a comparison, because the bias is often in what is *not* reported, or arguments that are *not* published. If you don't mind being being stoned by a flag-waving mob you can even try this experiment with last week's horrible tragedy.
So, as much as I support punishing this hacker for his illegal actions, a part of me also commends him for increasing the average distrust of mainstream news.
SecurityFocus is annoying as hell with those frames, even when it's not /.ed.
sulli
RTFJ.
. . .of how to trust ANY news agency in these modern times. It's hard enough to trust them when it is so simple for them to tweak images, sound, video to say anything they want it to say. Several people who watched the WTC attack on tv commented on how it looked like a hollywood special effect.
CBS puts their logo all over everything during their news and sports programs. It'd be easy for them to edit out people from backgrounds when they are doing interviews outside, among a million other possibilities.
Now throw into the mix the scary idea that unknown crackers really are fudging the data of major news sources.
What's a guy to do? Become an obsessive paranoid who lives in rural montanta writing manafestos? What? How do we verify our information sources?
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I'm sure he didn't mean that Yahoo was the CIA's sole source of information, but it was pretty funny to hear him say that they use it!
:]
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they check against Fox News too.
I almost miss getting this one exclusively:
/default.ida?XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX%u9090%u6858% ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%uc bd3%u7801%u9090%u9090%u8190%u00c3%u0003%u8b00%u531 b%u53ff%u0078%u0000%u00=a HTTP/1.0" 404 205
64.180.91.211 - - [20/Sep/2001:07:55:59 -0500] "GET
So this whole thing in New York wasn't true after all!!! I knew it!
You know, they say that freedom of press is available only to those that have one. He was just getting one the old fashioned way -- by stealing it!
Do you like German cars?
/.ers begin a denial of service attack on SecurityFocus.com - how we tried to deal with it and how to prevent it in the future.
Becuase we tend to adjust for this based on previous experiences, personal bias, etc., and unexpected content from some interloper can exploit reader expectations. Everyone trusts somebody to tell us the "truth", and will be unlikely to question that entity even when fed disinformation. Imagine how Yahoo's readership could have been confounded by a fake story on the morning of September 11 about any of the following topics:
- Threats of a new airborne attack in another city, or of lots of unaccounted-for planes in the air
- Release of biological agents in the water supply
- False reports of the demise of public figures
- Widespread shortages of food, water, etc.
Would the bulk of Yahoo's readers question these statements? Would those who did be questioned themselves? Remember, terrorists want to sow FUD. This sort of hole provides an ideal opportunity to do so; planting a critical fake fact in a widely read story won't necessarily create a lasting big lie, but it will create a certain amount of confusion and doubt. (Bear in mind that this effect is exacerbated by the tendency of news giants to report each other's stories, sometimes without checking every fact first...)#!
My dick is big,
My dick is thick,
My dick is the best thing in the world!
How do we know this story wasn't made up by some hacker who posted it on the SecurityFocus website?
Sheesh, talk about gullable!
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
You can learn more about some of his other hacks here: http://www.terrorists.net/
:)
Hes an amazingly brilliant guy. I have spent a few 2600 meetings in SF with him. I hope that nothing comes of this type of "cracking" satire. However I would like to say that Adrian is a true hacker. One conversation with him and you will come to this understanding. True hacking can transend computers and into social aspects like Adrian has aparently done.
Hes cute too
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Dude, that is the FUNNIEST thing I've read on here in a while. thanks for the laugh!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
In one of it's many plot points, some Linux-using anarchists gain control of the the Reuters (I think) newswire, and fake the deaths of both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
A "Wall Street Asshole" who overheard the penguinistas at a party plays this for several billion dollars.
It's an enjoyable book, by the way. You could say it predicted the reality show fad, and is one of the few novels I know of with a realistic depiction of hacking and cracking.
Using my (pre-yahoo buyout) account at Geocities, I accidently got root level access to one of their servers this past May (via ftpfs in MC, zipslack 3.9) Took them two weeks to figure out the security hole, while they watched me hit their ftp server @ ft6.geo.yahoo.com! They thanked me, but never sent the goodies my way. (ask jkb about that)
For future use, send all Yahoo server e-mail to:
security-core@yahoo-inc..com
5'16" is easy math, so why do so many miss it?
The real issue is that someone with much more malicious intent can use these sort of holes to:
a) Send messages through the news media.
b) Publish misinformation that could cost lives.
The first is only an annoyance to the authorities, as they would not necessarily expect criminals/terroist to use this as a means of communication. The latter can have drastic results.
Have you tried UNIX today, its most satisfying...
Check out this news site: http://www.gamingprocess.com
This guy is my new hero.
-cbare
Could this be the cause of the shark hysteria a few weeks ago? I thought originally it was George W's people creating an "enemy". Is it a coincidence that we haven't heard of any shark attacks since America's Day Of Terror(tm) ? Hmm...
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
What makes this guy any less credible than your typical mainstream Journalist. To me it seems that yahoo is just pulling stories from the AP news and other stories. And of course most news has thier own slant, were they slant the news to the highest bidder/political/social agenda.
I use Yahoo for my stock quotes, to see how low they have sunk. How do I know that it's accurate. Maybe AMD isn't really at $9.22 a share. Maybe I'm really making a profit?
There is always hope.
If all crackers were this funny, I'd drop my firewall now!
I have no intention of checking Andover's "back doors". It's just not my bag.
look at the end of this
yahoo news it looks that is has been hacked!
(I don't think any normal journalist will sign its story with:
ha
MMMM +++
)
Ever since Yahoo used the first popup - I took them out of my trusted site list. Anyone who abuses Javascript functions to try and take over my desktop, is not trusted by me.
pics?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Report anybody not observing the towel ban.
Report anybody near the water, harbor terrorists have been widely reported in the media.
The airline terrorists used cash for transactions, highly suspicious. They also used Visa cards, suspicious as well. Report any transactions conducted with Visa or cash, especially on the internet.
Report any pilots drinking in strip joints.
Report Italian "looking" males that wander nervously through, but do not purchase anything from, adult bookstores.
Report anybody with unregistered plastic or metal knives.
Don't worry about airliners heading towards large buildings, the Government will handle them.
Don't worry about pastey faced Irish decent men parking truck bombs in front of daycare facilities, the Government will handle them.
Don't worry middle-eastern men, caught on video tape in rented storage rooms, mixing bomb materials. The Government will bring them to Justice, eventually, if they explode the stuff in the basement of a large building.
Don't worry about FBI agents dropping off garbage bags full of documents to Russian agents in public parks. The Government will get to them in a decade or two.
Don't worry about Maryland police officers that demand oral sex in exchange for a speeding ticket, the internal affairs unit will deal with them.
Don't worry about Maryland police beating and jailing random suspects/families after a police shooting. The Government will realize it's mistake when a few feds are killed by the real killer.
Don't worry about New York police egging random people from a rented school bus. The Chief will give them a scolding later.
Don't worry about having your vehicle impounded and sold at auction without your being charged. The Government needs to be free to persue criminals and the funding helps.
Don't worry if you see something suspicious and are charged with submitting a false report. We must all make sacrifices.
Don't worry a peace officer enters your child's business, shoots and kills them, is let off without even a trial and YOU are charged with assault for lunging at the Chief. We must all make sacrifices.
Yours truly, the "Don Knotts guy." Dropping the odk link in memory of something or other.
This is hilarious!
The whole problem is that people DO in fact trust the web as a source of accurate news. Dumb. The web is by it's very nature unreliable. Period. Anybody who gets upset about a little news hacking is a whiner.
It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to double, triple and quadruple check and cross reference any information you find on-line. That's the power of the web; for the first time in history, it is actually possible to get something approaching the whole story. But you can't be lazy. I think hackers who send chills of 'insecure feelings' down the spines of the Norms in Suburbia are doing humanity a service by repeatedly demonstrating just how unreliable the web is. By showing that you CANNOT rely on single sources of information. Such repeated hacks might even raise the awareness of people to the point where they take some personal responsibility for the information which they allow into their heads.
But what is the response? (What will be the response?)
An almost unified cry of "Kill the Hackers".
Last week, 95% of the people on this very site were pissed off when Mafia Boy, (a junior highschool kid. i.e., a CHILD!), got a wrist slap rather than capital punishment.
Shocking! -Especially since most Slashdotters fit the hacker profile to a 'T'. It is utterly dumbfounding that people were so embittered towards a 15 year old who didn't do anything more than perpetrate but a little DOD attack and make life interesting for a bunch of tech support monkeys who get paid hourly anyway.
I was even modded down for the mere suggestion that a crime which doesn't hurt anybody, hasn't damaged or removed any property, and hasn't infringed on anybody's civil rights, should rightly be considered a mis-demeanor on the same level as graffiti or vandalism. But people want blood these days.
All I have to say is, "Be careful what you wish for."
-Fantastic Lad
http://Sexual.Asspussy.isgay.com/
I've heard several times that the CIA gets a lot of their information from CNN. Makes you wonder about how well-run our government agencies are.
So you mean my stocks actually have RISEN instead of plummeting?
:D
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Yeah - because having someone mess with your advertising stats might mean giving false information to your corporate masters^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H advertisers. As where this is simply allowing anyone with a web browser to lie to potentially millions of citizens seeking information. Fsck them - we're talking about the bottom line here.
So it's pretty clear where their priorities lie... as if it wasn't before.
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
This applies to all forms of media - not just the web. I's gotten worse, IMHO, starting with Desert Storm and the O.J. trial - CNN, in its zeal to feed info in bulk form with the emphasis on expediance instead of accuracy, is a case in point. The world, not just U.S., has been "spoiled" by the byproducts of the Information Age. So has journalism.
In fairness, I was up way too late two nights ago, and quickly submitted a report to /. regarding "Taliban Delares Holy War on U.S." that was on CNN (TV) prominently displayed. In this case I'm glad it was rejected. Fifteen minutes later, there was a rephrased "Taliban Warns of Possible Holy War" or something to that effect. MSNBC followed suit and misreported, then "lightened up". This also occurred on the respective websites.
So, the obvious point here is that we can trust most of what we can see, hear, and (hopefully) touch. On topic, it is a concern that Yahoo's "security through obscurity" was so vulnerable. Sure wish I could read the Security Focus article - still /.'ed - but I did read a post with the text here earlier.
I think of more concern would be the vulnerabilities of news services like AP and Reuters - the compromise of them could be a propagandist's dream come true. Hey, Wow, I just thought of something! Why don't we hack into the news "services" of our enemies? We could win the whole damn thing just by convincing the radical factions that they are already with Allah, and all is well. They can just relax and go back to making hashish, and whatever...
There was a interesting discussion of this on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" program a while back, but I can't seem to find it.
db
Cig:
ôô
Hey! I've just found a security hole in Slashdot that allows me to post comments! This is a severe risk; some people might post inappropriate comments. I have done some research, and found that thousands of people know about this exploit; many have taken to posting that they are the "first" to use the exploit in response to a given story. (To avoid detection, they call their cracking a "post", hence, they say "first post!" instead of "first exploit")
________________________________________________
suwain_2
According to the securityfocus article, he was able to access Yahoo's content management system by masquerading as a host on their intranet.
Does that mean that anybody at Yahoo with a mind to can change news stories at will, without even so much as a password? Trusting company, if so.
Changing or faking the news could cause serious, serious problems. It could start a war.
This is why CNN headquarters in Atlanta has such big time security, armed guards, etc.
WRONG! There is a McDonald's at Hanoi Square!
Proof, I'll give you PROOF! Or even MORE PROOF!
I regret I have but one wife to get from my country.
Damn the doritos, potato chips ahead.
Ask not, what your country can do for you, but what you can do for yourself.
Imagine you are an idiot, now imagine you are a member of congress...but I repeat myself...
Wait, that last one did not need changing...hey, 3 out of 4 ain't bad.
Moose
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
The problem with computing security in general is that it is more often exploited than flaws in physical security.
/. right now, and the only person who *might* notice would be the sysadmin looking over the daily logs.
It's been said before, of course, but bears repeating. Physical security requires you to be physically present to defeat it. Network security does not. Therefore, your potential intruders are considerably greater, and are less visible to unauthorized personnel.
Imagine driving down the street and you see 300 people trying to get close enough to a door to knock it down. You'd call the cops. It's a riot. Now, consider there may be 300 people hacking
Physical security is good security. Electronic security is self-contradictory.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
This sort of thing should be legal. It would help security if you take protecting your data in to your own hands rather than being like a sheep and bleating when some script kiddie replaces your web site with a porn page.
If you visit a "terrorists" website at this point in time, all of your communications will be monitored by the FBI. The "attack on america" investigation will be slowed down if the leads are polluted by geeks following a link on slashdot.
Ben Franklin said...
Sorry..broken record..
What a ridiculous concept. Anyone who 'trusts' a news site should contact me for a fire sale of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Is that someone with a different mindset might read this, think it serious and start mass emailing it to their friends.
We're in for some rough times...
Yeah, I know.
The fact that Mafia Boy was given a rational punishment which fit the crime rather than a knee jerk emotional nuke to the head, is a tribute to human sanity and nobility. I was amazed and actually even proud for a few minutes there to be human!
-Fantastic Lad
I find it humorous that the article should focus so heavily on the propogation of misinformation by hackers as if hackers, not the media, we're the normal controls of "information" to people at large. While I do agree that changing a news report might spread "misinformation", it would seem to be that the real thing at stake would be the reputation of the news source as reliable and non-tamper prone. Misinformation occurs every day to some extent or another, and it in itself is not much of a problem to media sources. The media is just worried about protecting its reputation, not giving consumers an unbiased view of what is going on.
John,
You Need a reason to procratinate? Your ALMOST as bad as I am
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Here's a true story that makes clear the consequences of a hole in a pressurized cabin. The first jetliner ever put into commercial service was a runaway success...but some of them exploded in midflight due to, you guessed it, explosive decompression.
Now, this isn't the be all and end all, but arming passengers isn't the best answer. Yes, I can tell the difference between humor and earnest suggestion, but I thought ya'll might find the story interesting.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
No MAC web server has EVER been broken into!
Consult archives of bugtraq if you doubt this.
The mac running webstar under OS 9 is utterly unhackable and thats why the us army uses it.
nice picture
Why don't some of those hackers attack some of those Islamic-trash or Chinese web sites. That would at least show them we aren't going to tolerate their attacks...
Have you harrassed an Islam today? Try throwing garbage. It's more humiliating...
You might have read a bit more of the history of the Comet. Yes, it was explosize decompression. The big difference was that it was a large square window which failed.
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
Here's another try on the URL:9 -63572 40.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/2001091
Note that the strings "20010919" and "6357240" should contain no blanks, but on preview Slashdot adds one between the "2" and the "4" in the second one. Remove it to find the page.
Sheesh!
See? Cryptography isn't just for keeping secrets from people. It actually helps the common person determine what's real and what's hacked.
Now, if we could just convince the media that there are legitimate uses of cryptograph. They seem to only think it can be used for eeeevil by eeeevil h4k0rz.
+tl
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Has the /. community forgotten the difference between hacked and cracked? The site was "broken" into, so the correct term to use is "cracked" not "hacked". A hack would be an improvement so to speak.
Question everything.
I know this was posted as AC, but it is funny but painfully true like the parent.
See my journal, I write things there
Yahoo is far from being a prime mover in the news field. If a service such as CNN or the BBC was hacked, major mischief could take place.
Why bother hijacking some airliners if you can just fake the publicity? Ok, an extreme example, but smaller stories can be placed or alterations made without the information being checked.
In a similar vein, we once looked at taking annual reports of companies in electronic form, getting the company to sign them, the auditor and then the publishing service. The reader then has a very good audit trail, but frankly the problem is to train your average auditor about electronic signatures, not even considering the others.
This was about a key financial document. Does anyone think that this would be feasible for anything other than some especially reliable news service?
See my journal, I write things there
Offtopic.
Where's the discussion about the guy who changed the stories on Yahoo?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Duh! no kidding!
R U paying too much Insurance? Compare here (no sales involved)
No, the Comet jetliners did NOT explode due to explosive decompression. That doesn't even make sense; it is sort of like saying a match burns because it combusts.
What happened with the Comet was a result of crack propagation and stress concentration.
Stress concentration (for those who don't already know) is a phenomenon that occurs when you have a discontinuity in a load bearing structure. Imagine a plate with a hole in it which is under load. The area of the plate away from the hole has a fairly constant stress that can be calculated with your "ideal" equations. As you get near the hole, however, the stress in the material increases; it is as if the hole literally concentrates the stress into that area, hence the name "stress concentration." The smaller the radius of the hole, the greater the stress concentration. In order to keep the stress in the material low, engineers will design things so that they have as large a radius as possible anywhere the geometry changes. Square corners are avoided, because at a perfectly sharp corner you have an infinitely small radius and therefore an infinite stress concentration. Take a look at the rounded corners and stress reliefs on some items around your home or office. The material around a sharp corner will fail under almost any load. At the point of cracks or tears you also have one of these "near infinite" stress concentrations. That is how the little sharp cut at the "tear here" location of potato chip bags and ketchup packets works.
Well, the engineers who made the Comet put in square windows, with those wonderful stress concentrators in the corners. As the aircraft was pressurized and depressurized it stressed the material and in the area around the corners of the window the stress was highly concentrated and the material failed... it cracked. And the crack is also as stress concentrator, so the crack grew with every cycle of pressurization and depressurization until the structural integrity of the airplane was compromised and the force caused by the pressure difference between the inside and outside of the aircraft "unzipped" it like someone opening a bag of chips. Cracks in aircraft structures still cause problems, but it doesn't cause the airplane to "explode" like something out of the movies. One or two sections of the skin may be peeled off, and the airplane decompresses "suddenly" (which is why it is called explosive) but the airplane doesn't just detonate. Some of you may remember back in the 1980s this happened at the intersection of a structural support and skin to a 737 headed to Hawaii and it lost 18 ft. of skin (and a flight attendant).
Could a bullet hole cause similar rapid crack propagation and sudden decompression? Not a clean one, the radius is too big. I suppose little star cracks could exist around the hole that could propagate, in theory; but I doubt the damage would ever be worse than that experienced by the aforementioned 737. I am familiar with aircraft conceptual design, but am not an expert on aircraft survivability so IANAEOAS, however I have never heard of any survivability enhancement programs that focus on preventing structural failure from projectile or fragmentation damage to the skin of pressurized aircraft. Structural failure is one of the rarest causes of military aircraft loss(fuel and propulsion systems are the big problems), and is not usually a high priority on increasing aircraft damage tolerance. Civilian aircraft structures are not sufficiently different to negate the usefulness of this historical data. Of the 34 modern airliners that were subjected to in-flight bombings, 56% survived; of those only 10 crashed because of structural failure. If anyone is interested in the effects of aircraft pressurization on enhancing damage can take a look at http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/aircraft/21.pdf. It is significant, but not what I suspect most people would imagine. My best guess, is that any shot which punctures the skin will cause pressure loss. It would take a lucky shot in an older aircraft to unzip a portion of the skin, even then aircraft would likely not be lost. A modern airliner with multiple load paths would be even harder to "unzip," maybe impossible without multiple penetrations. As I said, though IANAEOAS, so if anyone does have specialized knowledge to the contrary I'd certainly like to see it. If no one does have any data or specilized knowledge in this area that contradicts this, then lets please stop rehashing this "bullets vs. aircraft" debate. Of course the smart thing would just be to use frangible bullets that won't penetrate.
Unfortunateley, they aren't there anymore. Does Yahoo have an automatic link engine that add hyperlinks to some keywords? Or was it the work of our friend?
Another funny story was held on canoe.ca. The title was something like "President Bush called up 50,000 reservists" and beside the article was a photo of Bush on the phone...
All humans are mortal. Socrates is a human. Socrates is dead.
I got the following on the securityfocus webpage.....
/frames/top.html?focus=home
t ) in line 1231 in /home/securityfocus/roxen/local/modules/advert/Adv ert.pmod/Ad.pmod
/home/securityfocus/roxen/local/modules/advert/Adv ert.pmod/Ad.pmod
b je ct,object,"156.153.255.243",0) in line 417 in /home/securityfocus/roxen/local/modules/advert/Adv ert.pmod/Ad.pmod
../local/modules/advert/advert.pike
../local/modules/advert/advert.pike
[ 10 ],object) in line 539 in modules/tags/htmlparse.pike
c t) in line 588 in modules/tags/htmlparse.pike
7 ], 0) in line 3116 in modules/tags/htmlparse.pike
1 7] ,1,0,0,0,mapping[10],object) in line 573 in modules/tags/htmlparse.pike
/frames/top.html?focus=home HTTP/1.0
Anyone want to use the following info to "hack" them?
:P
Roxen version: Roxen Challenger/1.3.111
Requested URL:
Error: mysql->big_query(): Query "UPDATE stats SET impressions=impressions+1, dflt=dflt+1, timestmp=NOW() WHERE ad=210 AND run=432 AND gid=17 AND day=TO_DAYS(NOW()) AND hour=HOUR(NOW())" failed (Incorrect key file for table: 'stats'. Try to repair it)
big_query(string[151]) in lib/pike/modules/Sql.pmod/mysql.pike
query(string[151],0) in line 352 in lib/pike/modules/Sql.pmod/sql.pike (version 1.29)
try_query(string[151],string[102],"stats",objec
update_impression_stats(210,432,17,1,object) in line 1200 in
view(mapping[16],17,"156.153.255.243",9852026,o
get_ad("home-sponsor",0,0) in line 604 in
ad_tag("ad",mapping[1],0) in line 491 in
call_tag("ad",mapping[1],176,0,0,object,mapping
do_parse(string[8017],0,object,mapping[10],obje
parse_rxml(string[8017],0,0,mapping[10]) in line 398 in base_server/roxenlib.pike (version 1.104)
tag_trimlines("trimlines",mapping[0],string[801
call_container("trimlines",mapping[0],string[80
do_parse(string[8041],0,0,mapping[10],object) in line 588 in modules/tags/htmlparse.pike
handle_file_extension(0,"html",0) in line 683 in modules/tags/htmlparse.pike
low_get_file(0,0) in line 1485 in base_server/configuration.pike (version 1.177)
get_file(0,0) in line 1532 in base_server/configuration.pike (version 1.177)
unknown function() in line 1210 in protocols/http.pike (version 1.134)
handler_thread(4) in line 341 in base_server/roxen.pike (version 1.344)
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 08:09:54 GMT
Request data:
GET
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/msword, */*
Referer: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/254
Accept-Language: en-us
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)
Host: www.securityfocus.com
Cookie: RoxenUserID=0x96547a; SITESERVER=ID=9f6d4fe47a1bee2e0e708d7045ccb694; last_ad=200
Cache-Control: max-stale=0
Connection: close
Thinking of something
add a shorter name to your /etc/hosts
After the shooting in Dunblane (Scotland) when an adult went into a school and shot some children, there was universal horror. The widely supported political response was to ban a large number of categories of handguns in the UK. Good on the politicians for having the nerve to do so. After all, it makes life easier for the police. They find somebody with a pistol, its illegal, and they can take action, simple as that.
The recent school shootings in America have also righteously raised universal shock and horror. But I think it shocked a lot of people over here in Europe that one of the responses was - the call to arm the teachers.
It would be great to see the USA get on top of its gun problem but just arming everybody with more and more guns seems to be increasing the problem rather than solving it. Good luck, I hope a sane solution can be found, I hope your politicians have the nerve to do something.
I certainly don't like the idea of someone hacking a news site and altering stories, but on the subject of "trusted news sites"...
There is no such thing. The news media (whether electronic or print) has, for all of its existence, stooped to reporting innuendo and rumor as fact to one-up the competition or to push an agenda.
The Cleveland Press in the mid-1950's became legendary for its incendiary reporting of the Sam Sheppard case (which led directly to his conviction being overturned).
CBS did a story on school demonstrations over the firing of an African-American principal in Selma, AL in the early 90's. I was working there, so I was amused to see a story open up showing first a fine old antebellum home, which was supposed to typical of white residences, followed by some sharecropper shacks, supposedly where African-Americans lived. Well, no one lived in those shacks, and some of the lovliest antebellum homes in Selma are owned by African-Americans.
And they got most of the rest of the facts wrong, too.
The Hearst chain's push for the Spanish-American war comes to mind.
For a recent example, consider the on-the-spot reporter from Kabul on CNN who could hear Cruise missles flying over the city during what turned out to be a helicopter attack by the political opposition of the Taliban. Several times during the report, the CNN anchor kept talking about CNN's exclusive technology that enabled us to get this breaking story. The only thing that was "broken" was the need to separate fact from speculation.
Fortunately, someone usually gets the story right (if only to discredit a competitor), so it pays to check several sources before jumping to any conclusion about any individual story, hacked or not.
---Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.---
...the hacker added a quote and attributed it to John Ashcroft?
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Actually the Comet broke apart because the windows had square corners rather than rounded corners and stress fractures built up.
It took them a long time to work out why they were crashing and the modification to prevent it was very simple (make the window more round).
You just need to transfer the md5 hash in advance, and separate from the actual content of the file. It's easier than PGP, but (almost) as effective under certain conditions.
Stop the brainwash
Of course, should one of these stray bullets after leaving the cabin hit a fuel line or gas tank, the issue becomes academic. Same if stray bullet hits anything of value, like flight control systems, etc.
There's a number of nonlethal options (or even lethal) that are much better than firearms- high velocity weapons on an airplane are Bad Ideas.
Frangible bullets aren't as bad an idea, but guns aren't the best solution.
Of course, IMHO.
I may stand corrected. In the book To Engineer Is Human Henry Petroski tells the story of the Comet. He writes that in the tank compression testing that revealed the window flaw the deadly crack propagated near the speed of sound, starting with a microscopic fracture and ending in destruction almost instantaneously.
Perhaps I don't understand the implications of that process.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
It would seem that the story explaining the hack was itself hacked. Surely no one from Yahoo could say this with a straight face. Not after their "security" was compromised simply by entering the correct url.
"Yahoo! takes security across its network very seriously, (insert hysterical laughter here) and we have taken appropriate steps to restrict unauthorized access to help ensure that we maintain ("Maintain" assumes there was any security to begin with) a secure environment," said Kourosh Karimkhany, senior producer at Yahoo! News, in a statement. The company declined further comment.
For those who don't get it, he was refering to "Slashdotting"...
"Most guns used in crimes are stolen from the legal owners"
... because unless you are part of a "well organized militia" i.e. the National Guard, or Police, you have no right to own a gun!"
/. puts a space between the i and c in public). As a result both sides of the argument cite U.S. vs. Miller to support their position. If the existing Supreme Court did have to rule definitively on the issue, it would probably fall on the "academic" side of the issue and declare it an individual right... but that is by no means certain. In any regard I think it unlikely that the current Court will ever have to make such a ruling because it is in both pro and anti-gun lobbyists best interests to keep the issue in their hands and fight small battles over minor issues than it is to gamble everything on one big decision and then have to live with it (and find other work) whatever is decided.
I have not heard any information on the source of guns used in crime, so I will have to take your word for that. If criminals could not steal guns from people, I guess they'd have to get them from somewhere else. Maybe they could smuggle them into the country hidden in the tons of cocaine they already smuggle.
"most people end up getting shot with their own hand gun"
That is such a ridiculous statement that I don't even feel the need to disprove it. Even assuming you meant to say "most hand gun owners" or "most murder victims" instead of "most people" that is still a fantastic claim, and I would like to know the source (and methods) for where this bizarre statement comes from.
"Show us one example in the news where some crime was thwarted because someone had a hand gun"
O.K. I'll try to make it something local (to me) and recent. The Fayetteville Observer has reported two such incidents so far this year that I can think of. One was Spiro Poulos's pizza shop robbery (1/17/01) and the other was Rastus Hudson up in Dunn (6/26/01). You asked for ONE, so I'll just relate the story of Mr. Hudson because it illustrates my point about guns giving the weak or elderly a chance to fight back against stronger opponents.
-- begin quote --
A Dunn, NC, man and his wife were awakened about 2am by the sounds of someone beating on their back door. Two armed men then kicked in the front door and entered the living room. The suspects allegedly threatened to kill the homeowners. "I begged them not to kill us," said Rastus Hudson, 61. "I told them I'd give them anything we had." Under the pretense of retrieving his wallet, Hudson pulled his handgun from under a mattress and started firing, trying to scare the men away. They did not leave until Hudson shot one of the home invaders in the shoulder. Maj. Steve West of the Harnett County Sheriff's Dept. said that Hudon "has the right to protect his home and his family."
-- end quote --
That is as reported in The Fayetteville Observer of 6/21/1. Any typos are probably my mistakes in transcribing the quote. I'm sure some people will say that it is entirely possible that the invaders would have upheld Hudson's plea not to kill them; but we'll never know for sure. We do know that they left after Hudson used his firearm to protect his home and family. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned that guns allow people to be "masters of their own destiny." Up until Mr. Hudson pulled the gun out and used it his fate was in the hands of his assailants. They were in a position to show mercy or not. By taking action, Mr. Hudson put his own destiny in his hands. There was no doubt still a chance that he could die when he reached for that gun, but he choose to meet his fate standing and fighting instead of hoping others would show him mercy. A lot of people like the feeling of being able defend themselves, even into their old age. Like I said, power over your own destiny is an intoxicating feeling. That is why a lot of people like to own guns; even if they couldn't explain it that simply.
"And don't give me the line that the Constitution says we can own guns
So nice to see that you don't think I have a right to own firearms. Fortunately you aren't Emperor of the World, so unless you have an army marching into my town soon I can pretty much ignore your opinions of what my rights are and aren't. For the record, the constitution says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." I am a people. (The grammar checker had a fit with that sentence.) So, even though it does mention the necessity of a militia, it does not say that only the militia can keep and bear arms. Of course it doesn't matter what I think (unless I am willing to rebel against the gov't for it, which I have no plans to do so... that is a very expensive hobby that I have no interest in). It doesn't matter what anybody thinks other than the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has not ruled directly on this issue, and both sides of the debate have avoided pushing The Court to do so (if they ever did rule definitively, it would put both the pro and anti gun lobbyists out of a job). The Supreme Court has specifically mentioned the right to keep and bear arms as being an "individual right" and not a "state right" in majority decisions; but it did not specifically refer to the 2nd amendment when doing so, so it is possible that these references could be construed to refer to the many state constitutions which give their citizens the right to keep and bear arms. The closest any ruling has come to addressing this issue was U.S. vs. Miller back in the 30s. Unfortunately that was a very confusing and contradictory ruling that actually misquotes other cases (you don't have to take my word for it, you can wade through the decision yourself at www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/wbardwel/publi c/nfalist/miller.txt, watch out in case
""well organized militia" i.e. the National Guard, or Police"
Obviously you don't understand what a militia is. The police are NOT a militia unit, although some individual policemen may be in the militia. The National Guard can be construed as militia... until they are federalized. Technically I am in the militia (as are almost all able bodied men in the United States, I forget the age cutoff right now but I think it is 17 to 67 or something like that), but that is mostly an academic point and even in light of recent attacks I cannot foresee Congress calling on the general militia to fight a war in my lifetime. Just to be philosophically consistent I do wish that Congress would make the symbolic gesture of passing an updated Militia Act that extends it to able bodied women as well (only women in unfederalized national guard units are included now), since we did give them the right to vote and all. There ARE real "organized militia" units still in existence. I'm not talking about "special militias" that are not affiliated with any government or even the National Guard. I mean real state militias whose officers are appointed by state governors. For example the Tennessee State Guard still exists and consists of a light infantry division (my home state didn't earn the nickname "Volunteers" for nothing). The organization traces its roots back to the Revolutionary War; Tennessee State Guardsmen crossed the Appalachian Mountains to fight the British in North Carolina, culminating in the Victory of King's Mountain in 1780. Most recently the State Guard was activated from 1941 to 1947 to guard dams, bridges, and other vital sites in the state from sabotage when the federal government nationalized the state's National Guard units (the State Guard cannot be nationalized). They were reorganized and changed to the Tennessee Defense Force in 1985, but I guess that didn't sound as cool so they have recently been renamed the Tennessee State Guard again. More information on them is available at: http://home.att.net/~dcannon.tenn/TNSG.html . Many other states have their own state militia units but since I was raised in TN, I know its history best.
Reading through all the posts, I was unable to even find anything remotely related to the article.. Tell me my eyes aren't going fuzzy and this article was about Yahoo's news section and apparently everyone decided to post about depressurisation in aircrafts. It would have been nice to see people's opinions on the actual topic presented.
Yes, a combat bomber can be compared to a civilian airliner for this purpose.
The semi-monocoque construction of such strategic bombers is the same type of construction used in civilian airliners, as are the materials used.
Because the bomber was expected to take fire, and it was a 1st generation pressurized design, it did probably have a greater factor of safety in the thickness of the skin and structure. This would have made it harder to penetrate the skin, but once penetrated the crack propogation characteristics should be similar enough for our purposes. On the other hand, modern airliners are designed with multiple load paths specifically to make them more tolerant of damage and less likely to fail catastrophically. So if a crack from a penetration did propogate it would likely have done MORE damage to the old bomber than to a new airliner. The modern airliner is probably also manufactured to a higher quality standard than the old bombers, so that too would make the airliner actually more tolerant of damage than the bomber.
The water was drained and the fuselage examined. The investigators were horrified to find a split in the fuselage. It began with a small fracture in the corner of an escape hatch window and extended for eight feet. Metal fatigue! Had the Comet not been under water, the cabin would have exploded like a bomb.
Yes, it was a window. However, it started small and got real big real fast. Hence the explosive in explosive decompression.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
> Structural failure is one of the rarest causes of military aircraft loss(fuel and propulsion systems are the big problems), and is not usually a high priority on increasing aircraft damage tolerance. But remember that in military aircraft, as a rule, only the cockpits are pressurized (if that), and the cockpits are also pretty well hardened to protect the crew, so decompression due to penetration would be pretty unlikely.
CNet and ZDNet aren't exactly what I would call cross-referencing. After CNet bought ZDNet, CNet's reporting turned into the trash ZDNet always spewed. Then Gamecenter was given the chop in favour of boring (and ugly) Gamespot.
Have a little read at the list of companies CNet owns, and weep to think that all news is manipulated by monopolies.
You are wrong. As simple as that. Think it over again =)
Stop the brainwash