Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Disclosure, Maricopa, Telecoms
Quick work by smart people. ciaweb writes "The OpenSSH group has revised its security advisory about the recent OpenSSH vulnerabilities. In it, they describe their decision-making process for releasing the bug information. It is interesting to contrast their procedure, which appears designed to maximize user protection, against Microsoft's, which appears to maximize Microsoft's protection."
Pardon me, sir, would you mind if I SLAMMED THIS HAMMER ON YOUR FINGERS?! D0wnsp0ut writes "I thumbed through my mail today and found what appeared to be a renewal notice for my domain. This one came from "Domain Registry of America." Verisign attempted something similar back in March and Bulkregister.com fought back and won an injunction, against the mailings. So watch out if your domain is getting close to expiring. I talked to my registrar (Register.com) and they're aware of it.
I'll scan the letter but have no place to post the pictures. Can anyone lend some bandwidth?"
Half the world has never eaten a Krispy Kreme donut, either. cshirky writes "I've just written an essay on the phrase ' Half the world has never made a phone call'. It's more 'voice telephony-y' than the usual telecom stories here, but after seeing the interest in media and the market that surfaced during my /. interview, I thought it might be of some interest."
Please stop sending my money to Redmond, OK? TrumpetPower! writes "All that brouhaha over Maricopa County's policy prohibiting companies or persons convicted of antitrust violations has had an effect. I just received the following note announcing a public forum scheduled for this coming Monday.
You recently inquired about the County's use of Microsoft products and the manner in which we license their software. We appreciate your interest in the County's technology plans. To provide a forum in which to discuss our technology direction and address any questions you may have, we will have Information Technology staff members available to meet with citizens at 8:30 am on Monday July 8th. The meeting location will be the County Administration Building at 301 W. Jefferson in Suite 420. Please RSVP your attendance so we can ensure that adequate facilities are available for the meeting.Thank you for your inquiry,
Paul Allsing
Deputy CIO
Maricopa County
301 W Jefferson, Suite 420
Phoenix, AZ 85003"
Ah, but what about the first annoying family photographer? 7h3_B055 writes: "Contrary to this article on Slashdot claiming the first photograph was created in 1826, much evidence is pointing to the fact that the Shroud of Turin may have been an earlier example (substantially earlier) of photography using ingredients as basic as egg-white for treating cloth (the photopaper) and urine for developing it. The camera itself could have been a simple box with a hole in it and the exposure time would have been lengthy."
Of course, there are a lot of theories about the Shroud of Turin, and a google search is likely to intrigue you for days.
I've gotten both the Verisign and the DRA letter, and after reading both in light of the Veresign suit, the DRA letter is VERY clear that submitting the form back to them will switch your registry to them; this is printed on the front of the letter in the same type as the rest of the page. In the Verisign case, the transfer statement was printed on the back of the letter in fine print (with no indication there was something on the back). While somewhat tacky, I don't think DRA is in the wrong here, compared to Verisign.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
From the linked evidence website...
One theory is that Jesus became pure energy and the radiation burned the image into the cloth. This isn't a far fetched theory really. We don't know how He resurrected. As the theory suggests, He could have transformed into a form of energy. Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 tells that matter can become pure energy. In fact this is the same concept of an atom bomb - matter becoming pure energy using radioactive material as a catalyst.
This is evidence???????
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Urea, a component of urine, can be mixed with sodium carbonate, sodium sulfite, catchetol(?), and ascrbic acid to make developer for film. I found the recipe on a holography site. I'm not sure about it's uses, though, as I'm no photographer. http://members.aol.com/gakall/holopg.html
-J
-J
Anyone who runs SuSE Linux from version 6.4 through version 8.0 inclusive may be interested in this.
SuSE's "SuSE-Security-Announce" mailing list released this post today regarding their response to the OpenSSH vulnerability. It contains a ton of information, and FTP links to update your OpenSSH packages for the aforementioned versions of SuSE's distribution.
My take on the problem (no guarantees, this may make you bald, blind and impotent, etc. etc.).
The problem lies with the xmalloc line in:
if (nresp > 0) {
response = xmalloc(nresp * sizeof(char*));
for (i=0; i < nresp; i++)
response[i] = packet_get_string(NULL);
}
Basically, the sizeof(char*) will return 4 on a normal x86 machine... which means that if nresp is greater than one-fourth of 0xffffffff (UINT_MAX), i.e. over 0x4000000, then you overflow xmalloc(), which is just a wrapper function for standard malloc().
As someone who regularly consults at the county , city and AZ state agency level, I hate to inform ya'll that this is very much a Microsoft kinda town. Yep, you heard it here first.
Further, Maricopa county is small potatoes when compared to the state and city agencies/IT budgets. Scottsdale's (one of the valley's cities) CIO probably has four times the dough than the dude that runs the county's boxen. Not to mention Phoenix city proper. And Tempe, Chandler, Mesa, etc. etc. Oh, and the state government.
And of course, government agencies are the least prepared to transition an existing employee base to a brand new technology paradigm, regardless of the cost benefits this might theoretically bring (or how supposedly easy it is to switch to Linux/KDE/OSS Office suite).
Sorry, I had to break the news.