AT&T Concerned About H2K2

An anonymous submitter forwards this possibly-authentic note about today's H2K2 conference. If you're in the New York area and you love computers and nice hotels, come on down. Anonymous writes "So I get into work, and what do I find in my mailbox? Why, nothing less than a warning cautioning me to be very careful talking to people from July 12 to July 14. (Not me specifically, you understand, it went out all over). Full text follows."

****************************************************************
AT&T Network Fraud Advisory
July 11, 2002
****************************************************************
Possible Hacker Social Engineering Attempts
Friday July 12 - Sunday July
14, 2002
===================================================
Caution:
------------
Be careful about giving information to anyone you don't know and those making unusual information requests by claiming to be an AT&T employee or customer. The H2K2 (Hackers on Planet Earth 2002) Hacker Conference will take place this weekend, Friday, July 12 to Sunday to July 14, 2001, [ed. note: 2001?] in New York City. This conference will be a gathering of over five thousand computer hackers, guest speakers, and computer enthusiasts. http://www.h2k2.net In 1994, 1997 and 2000 at the previous Hope (Hackers on Planet Earth) Conferences, live demonstrations of "social engineering" techniques were performed in front of thousands of hackers and other attendees. The hacker panel dialed live into AT&T offices and centers and demonstrated how to get proprietary information by pretending to be an AT&T employee and customer. These calls were recorded and videotaped by the hackers and are sold as instructional material at future hacker conferences. There is a very high likelihood that AT&T will be a target again this weekend. The social engineering contest is scheduled for Sunday July 14th, at 4 P.M. ET, (1 PM PT). During this period hackers may be dialing into AT&T to get information. AT&T Network Security would like to warn our employees to be on guard this entire weekend for any unknown person calling and claiming to be an AT&T employee to request proprietary information or claiming to be an AT&T customer with unusual requests. Remember, if anyone, who is unknown to you calls for proprietary information or make unusual requests, please follow your procedure by requesting additional information to ensure the person is who they say they are before giving out any information. If the person is claiming to be an AT&T employee, please request name, callback and HRID #. Then verify through POST or the email global address list if the information is correct and even request to call the employee back at their contact number. If the person is claiming to be an AT&T customer verify this by requesting additional info on their account like address and SS# and even request to call the person back at their contact number listed on the account. Please be on guard for any unusual requests. Verify the person is an AT&T employee or a legitimate customer and if they have a need to know the information they are asking. If you can't verify employment or number, don't give out the information. If you are still in doubt regarding the legitimacy of the caller, then speak to a supervisor regarding the situation before proceeding further and inform the caller you will call them back. If you still have questions you can call the Security Hotline 1-800-822-9009. Remember you do not want to be the lucky guest of honor on a telephone call from the hacker conference this weekend with thousands of hackers listening to you and attempting to scam AT&T out of proprietary information. Please be on guard.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Source: AT&T Network Security
*******************************************************************

Comments

Burn One For H2K2 #@ +1, 420 Lewis !! @#

[Anonymous Coward]

Be Patriotic, Smoke Amerikan grown marijuana, not treasonous imports !!!!

Courtesy of About 420

Connotative Use/Meaning

420 is a phreak s (and not just a hippie s) favorite number for a
variety of reasons, or maybe for no reason at all, but colloquially
the number says pot -- let s smoke pot, or someone s smoking
pot, or gee, i really like pot, or time to smoke pot, either by
time (4:20 a.m. or p.m.), date (April 20th), or otherwise (e.g. State
Route 420). April 20th at 4:20 is marked by annual events in
Mount Tamalpais, CA (an informal gathering); Marin Conty, CA
(the 420 Hemp Fest); Ann Arbor, MI (the Hash Bash); and
Washington, D.C. (buildup towards the July 4th Smoke-In).

Original Source(s)

Conventional wisdom: The most common tale is that 420 is the
police radio code or criminal code (and therefore the police call)
in certain part(s) of California (e.g. in Los Angeles or San
Francisco) for having spotted someone consuming cannabis
publicly, i.e. pot smoking in progress; that local cannabis users
picked up on the code and began celebrating the number temporally
(esp. 4:20 a.m., 4:20 p.m., and April 20); that the number became
nationally popularized in the late 1980s and, more ferverently, in
the early- to mid-1990s; and is colloquially applied to a variety of
relaxed and/or inspired contexts, including not only pot
consumption but also a good time more generally (in contrast to
the drug war surrounding).

Conventions are legends: 420 is not police radio code for
anything, anywhere. Checks of criminal codes (including those of
the City of San Francisco, the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles
County, the State of California, and the federal penal code) suggest
that the origin is neither Californian nor federal (the two best
guesses). For instance, California Penal Code 420 defines as a
misdemeanor the hindrance of use (obstructing entry) of public
lands, and California Family Code 420 defines what constitutes a
wedding ceremony (Marco). One state does come close: The
Illinois Department of Revenue classifies the Alcoholic Liquor Act
under Part 420, and the Cannabis and Controlled Substances Tax
Act are next, under Part 428. (RB 5/19/99)

True story?: According to Steven Hager, editor of High Times,
the term 420 originated at San Rafael High School, in 1971,
among a group of about a dozen pot-smoking wiseacres who
called themselves the Waldos. The term 420 was shorthand for the
time of day the group would meet, at the campus statue of Louis
Pasteur, to smoke pot. ``Waldo Steve, a member of the group who
now owns a business in San Francisco, says the Waldos would
salute each other in the school hallway and say ``420 Louis! The
term was one of many invented by the group, but it was the one
that caught on. ``It was just a joke, but it came to mean all kinds of
things, like `Do you have any? or `Do I look stoned? he said.
``Parents and teachers wouldn t know what we were talking about.
The term took root, and flourished, and spread beyond San Rafael
with the assistance of the Grateful Dead and their dedicated cohort
of pot-smoking fans. The Waldos decided to assert their claim to
the history of the term after decades of watching it spread, mutate
and be appropriated by commercial interests. The Waldos contacted
Hager, and presented him with evidence of 420 s history, primarily
a collection of postmarked letters from the early 70s with lots of
mention of 420. They also started a Web site, waldo420.com. ``We
have proof, we were the first, Waldo Steve said. ``I mean, it s not
like we wrote a book or invented anything. We just came up with a
phrase. But it s kind of an honor that this emanated from San
Rafael. Maria Alicia Gaura for the San Francisco Chronicle,
4/20/00 p. A19; and thanks to Noah Cole for the submission

Alternate explanations

There are a variety of other explanations, all much more interesting
than police code, and many plausible. Some are more likely uses
of the 420/hemp connection rather than sources of it, such as the
score for the football game in Fast Times at Ridgement High,
42-0.

Known Myths: It isn t police code (see above). There are 315
chemicals in marijuana, not 420. And although tea time in
Amsterdam is rumored to be 4:20, it is actually 5:30 (Gerhard
den Hollander).
Sixties Songs: For instance, Bob Dylan s famous Rainy Day
Women #12 and 35 is a possible reference, or source --
12x35=420. And Stephen Stills wrote (and Crosby Stills Nash
& Young performed) a song 4+20 (first recorded 7/16/69,
released on Deja Vu 3/11/70) about an 84-year-old
poverty-stricken man who started and finished with nothing.
(Thanks to Sherry Keel 12/6/98.) Dylan aslo mentions 4 and
20 windows in The Balland of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
(on John Wesley Harding).
Older Verse: But 420 in poetry is older than that - Greg
Keller notes the old nursery rhyme line, four and twenty
black birds baked in a pie. Revelation 5:14 (in the King
James Version of the Christian Bible) reads, And the four
beasts said A-Men. And the four and twenty elders fell down
and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever. (Travis
Spurley 2/15/99) And in Midnight s_Children, Salman
Rushdie wrote, Inevitably, a number of these children failed
to survive. Malnutrition, disease and the misfortunes of
everyday life had accounted for no less than four hundred and
twenty of them by the time I became conscious of their
existence; although it is possible to hypothesize that these
deaths, too, had their purpose, since 420 has been, since time
immemorial, the number associated with fraud, deception and
trickery. (Comet 2/14/98) Comet s best guess is that this
refers to something in Indian mythology or numerology, since
the book is set in India and frequently involves Indian history,
culture, and religion. Given the high interest in Eastern
religion among the phish/dead community, this seems a likely
origin of 420 s current significance.
Temporal Significance: Hands on analog clock at 4:20 look
like position of doobie dangling from mouth Larry in
Tuscan and Alex Mack 5/19/99). Disruptive students are out
of detention and safetly away from school by 4:20, also
rumored to be the time that you should dose to be peaking
when the Dead went on stage Hart. The Waldos were a
group of teens back in the 70 s that lived in San Rafael, CA.
420 was the way they talked about pot in front of teachers,
non-smoking family members etc. Also it was the time of day
they could just go relax, and get baked. (PhunkCellar)
Jamaicans purportedly worked till 4 then walked home then
lit up. They would talk 420 like our parents talked about after
5. That s when partying began Larry in Tuscan). Albert (not
Abbie) Hofmann supposedly first encountered LSD at 4:20
p.m. on 4/19/1943 (Bart Coleman citing Storming Heaven by
Jay Stevens, recommended by Mickey Hart in Planet Drum).
Surrealist painter Miro was born April 20, 1893. And
www.filmspeed.com says the propoganda film Reefer
Madness has a copyright date of April 20, 1936 (i.e. 4/20).
(Patrick Woolford)
Misc: Could be that it comes from hydroponics, the practice
of cultivating plants in water often used by indoor marijuana
cultivators, since 4 is used for H on a calculator (420/H20).
(Nick Lowe 3/30/00) The number 80 (eight) is quatre vingt
(pronounced cah-truh vahn), meaning four (times} twenty.
Dan Nijjar 1/27/00 (No connection yet between the number
80 and pot. A quarter pound is roughly 120 grams, rounding
quarter-ounces to 7.5.) The titanic was supposed to arrive
4/20/1912. (Thanks to RB.) Perhaps the heavy use of vt420
terminals in the Berkeley area is to blame? (BTW, 420 in
binary code is 110100100.)

Ubiquitous?

Now there s a 420 Pale Ale. One of the late-97/early-98 Got
Milk ads featured a character eating cookies without milk and
then passing a sign that reads Next Rest Area 420 miles (as Ross
Bruning). Reportedly, all of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction
are stuck on 4:20. Shirts with the number 420 on the red-and-blue
interstate highway shield (Interstate 420?) have show up on the
sitcom Will and Grace (Paul Risenhoover 5/14/99) and in several
videos. UPS labelling software has a 420 postal code legend for
next-day/2-day deliveries (which is how Phish tickets are sent).
(Jack Lebowitz 10/3/98) MTV s 1997 Viewer s Choice Award (for
the MTV Video Awards) was decided by calls to
1-800-420-4MTV. And by May of 1998, the number was
appearing in so many ads (eg Copenhagen 5/14/98 Rolling Stone
p54, Corvette p55 5/98 Car & Driver) that its presence is
presumed to be intentional. Many songs are around 4 minutes 20
seconds long (since many songs fall between 2:30 and 5:30),
including for example Pink Floyd s A Great Day for Freedom (on
The Division Bell, 1994), the Foo Fighters My Hero, and
Smokin from Boston s first album. There have also been some
420 references on The Simpsons. In the re-run episode aired on
April 20th, 1999 at a special time (probably in honor of those
college students staying in the holiday spirit ;-), Homer mentions to
Flanders that Barney s birthday is April 20th. Also, the jackpot sign
in one part of the casino says $420,000. There are a couple less
concrete ones, but these two have to be legit, especially since they
decided to air THAT particular episode on 4/20/99. (Submitted by
Matt Meehan 4/21/99) And (as of Fall 99) the 60 free minutes that
Working Assets Long Distance offers, at the 7 cents per minute
rate, is $4.20 free. There s even a band named 420, and another
names . In the first fifteen pages of Karel Capek s novel War with
the Newts, a man diving under wonder stayed down for four
minutes and twenty seconds. Grant Garstka 1/6/00 At the
suggested retail price ($3.96) and Michigan (6%) sales tax, a deck
of Uno cards costs $4.20. Nic Boris 4:20 marks the first downbeat
of the drums in Led Zeppelin s epic Stairway to Heaven. (Dan
Harris) The bill authorizing force after the World Trade Center
attacks of 9/11/01 passed 420 to 1, and news reports in following
months noted many times that there are (or were then, anyway) 420
airports in the U.S. Allan Morris And don t forget that Adolf Hitler
was born on April 20, macabely celebrated (or at least
referenced) via the Columbine High School shootings.

Phish-related Occurances

Whatever the origin, the number appears frequently... For the
summer 1997 tour, TicketMaster service charges were $4.20. In
the Fall 1997 Doniac Schvice Dry Goods section, a limited edition
Pollack poster printed on 100% hemp is order number 420P. The
Great Went was 420 miles from Boston (former home of Phish).
The official logo includes 4 gills and 20 bubbles (Gringo
11/12/98). As of 6/15/97, including covers and originals, Phish
had performed a total of 420 songs (thought its 486 by 4/24/98).
(David Steinberg). Lawnboy is 420megs of memory. Patrick
Walker Phish s The Vibration of Life underlies a whirling loop
with Seven Beats per second (which makes 420 beats per minute.)
Trey has used the altered line woke up at 4:20 in Makisupa
Policeman, which also often indirectly celebrates 420ing, e.g. by
mention of goo balls. One of the funniest shirts around takes light
jabs at both the 4:20 phenomenon and the rumored evolution
(collapse?) of the Phish.Net (especially rec.music.phish) from
being Gamehendge to Flamehendge, and beyond. The first day of
the Great Went started at 4:20 (with Makisupa Policeman. (The
second day started late, at 4:37.) Noah Cole The first single from
Slip Stitch and Pass was played on WBCN 10/14/97 at 4:20 pm.
An uproar at 12/31/96 can be heard on tape during the 2001, in
response to an enormous digital clock (which was counting down
to midnight) reaching 11:55:40 and reading -4:20. (Yoda)
During the 9-12-00 2001, Trey hits the first riff right at 4:20 into
the intro jam. (Cal 2/25/01) Some mail order tickets for the 1997
New Year s run were in section 420. The first Mass Pike toll
leaving Oswego was $4.20. (Camille Heath ) And the standard
shipping for The Phish Companion through Amazon was
originally $4.20.

420 Shows: Phish performed on April 20 in 1989, 1990, 1991,
1993, and 1994. The first day of the Great Went started at 4:20,
although that was called a soundcheck by Trey after three songs.
The Jazzfest Harry Hood 4-26-96 started at about 4:20 reported by
Trevor. At Big Cypress, David Bowie was playing at 4:20 a.m.
And the one event during the hiatus (10/8/00 - ?) featuring all
four members - for Jason Colton s wedding - was 12/1/01, 420
from: http://www.phish.net/faq/n420.html:

How is all of this relevent to the origional post?

[locutus2k]

I"m just wondering if this is relevent to the origional post, or are you just babbling?

*BSD is dying by poopbot

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying


- poopbot: lovely snot! wonderful snot!

Pointless link

[wackybrit]

Did that 'nice hotels' link really have to be there? In a Slashdot story, we expect that one of the links will have part of the specific story in question. Instead, I read through an extremely vile description of a hotel in New York City. Is throughing in pointless links really necessar y?

This certainly approaches the status of 'non story'.

Re:GOATSE.CX IMAGE: DON"T CLICK!

[drdata.nl]

I bet you liked it

Karma: Terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

What is karma?
Your karma is a score that primarily represents how your comments have been moderated in the past. If a comment you post is moderated up, your karma will rise by 1, and if it is moderated down, you will lose a point.
In addition to moderation, other things factor into karma as well. You can get some karma by submitting a story that we decide to post. Also, metamoderation can cause your karma to change. This encourages good moderators, and ideally removes moderator access from bad ones.

Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/19/00

Is there a limit to how much karma you can accumulate?
Yes. Karma is now capped at 50 points (keep in mind that any karma over 25 really doesn't matter). This was done to keep people from running up insane karma scores, and then being immune from moderation. Despite some theories to the contrary, the karma cap applies to every account.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 1/24/02

It seems unfair that I can't get any more karma than that even if I earn it.
Karma is used to remove risky users from the moderator pool, and to assign a bonus point to users who have contributed positively to Slashdot in the past. It is not your IQ, dick length/cup size, value as a human being, or a score in a video game. It does not determine your worth as a Slashdot reader. It does not cure cancer or grant you a seat on the secret spaceship that will be traveling to Mars when the Krulls return to destroy the planet in 2012. Karma fluctuates dramatically as users post, moderate, and meta-moderate. Don't let it bother you. It's just a number in the database.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 10/19/00

Why didn't I get karma for a Quickie or a Slashback story?
This is a shortcoming in the code that we haven't solved yet. Essentially, the system can easily track a submitter of a story and grant them karma, but Quickies and Slashback each operate differently. A dozen or more people might contribute directly to any one of those stories. The system doesn't really have any internal record to handle sorting out the karma distribution. Besides that, we currently grant 3 karma points for an accepted homepage story. If 10 people each have an entry in the quickies, that's 1/3rd of a point each. Since karma is an integer, that rounds to zero. So just pretend that your karma got rounded out ;)
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/19/00

What is karma good for?
Karma is used to determine who moderates and who doesn't. Extremely bad karma usually indicates a user account that is being used to spam the discussion board.
Secondly, users with higher karma are given a bonus point. Logged-in users normally post comments with a score of 1, but the theory is that if a user earns higher karma, they may post with a score of 2. Essentially its a reward for being a good participant on Slashdot, or a punishment for being a bad one. Users with very low karma might lose the +1 associated with being a logged-in user. Extremely bad users might even be penalized to a -1.

Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/12/00

Why is my karma not what I expect?
If you've been moderating or posting, your karma will likely fluctuate a little as you are moderated or metamoderate. Don't worry about it; this is normal. Please remember that this is just a number in a database that helps us determine who gets selected as a moderator. It doesn't determine your IQ or your value as a human being. It's simply not a big deal.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/12/00

Is there a minimum amount of karma you can have?
It's very difficult to go below -10 or so. Once you get really low, you start posting at -1, and the moderators are less likely to see your posts, so it's hard to lose any more karma.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 10/12/00

Whenever I use my +1 Bonus, I get moderated down and lose Karma!
As a good poster, you earned a bonus: you are allowed to speak slightly "louder" then other people. In most cases, this is because you've earned it. But with that right comes a responsibility - you have to justify that bonus score. The louder you speak, the more likely you are to be moderated down, unless you're sufficiently interesting to prompt the moderators to let you keep your bonus score. This is how the system is designed to work: you can't just rack up big karma scores, and then post nonsense.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/12/00

I'm not getting the Karma I deserve (or Unfairly Losing it!) for posts once I get near the Karma Ceiling!
You're right. But please keep in mind that any karma over 25 or so really just doesn't matter. You have your bonus point already. What more do you want? Karma by its very nature fluctuates fairly dramatically, and the karma ceiling does tend to cause some ripples in that fluctuation at the top end of the scale... but they are only small ripples, and they are normal. They really don't matter at all. Its not punishment, its just the normal flow of things.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 1/24/02

Re:Editors, please....

[Oculus Habent]

<ul>?

In our world of Microsoft Word formatted documents, I think the underline in painfully overused. Bold, italic... These are the tools of emphasis.

--
Many times I've wondered how much there is to know.

Re:Editors, please....

[ZaMoose]

Ummmm, wow. In html,

stands for "unordered list", not "underline".

Like so:
• This is
• an unordered
• list
As opposed to ordered lists, <OL>

Look on the bright side

[MemeRot]

Everyone who had high karma now just has 'excellent'. Since according to the editors, nothing over 25 karma really matters, I figure I've got 23 karma to burn with goatse.cx posts.

I've always loved your posts Subject Line Troll. To anyone that finds slashdot getting boring, start reading at -1.

Down with goat man... Long live linux loving sluts

[Anonymous Coward]

Down with goat man... Long live linux loving sluts

http://www.phrozen-neon.com/lls/
http://www.sti leproject.com/lls.html

Re:The Second Rule

[af_robot]

Sory dud, i've bean playang to mutch camputers games

CLAIMED

[Anonymous Coward]

Another claim for the AC congress.

MODDED TROLL, NO EFFECT ON MY KARMA!

[MemeRot]

i love this new system that no longer punishes me for goatse.cx links. exactly what slashdot needed.

Re:Editors, please....

[Anonymous Coward]

why the heck was that post modded down to zero? that wasn't so bad, not even disrespectful...! slashdot moderators are fuckin dumass 5KrU+|-|00rZ!!!

Re:What IS "Social Ingeneering"?

[Ashtangi]

Uhhh, these are things that are not only tolerated, but nutured in civilized society (wrongly so). Perhaps this is what you meant. I would say that there are many people in this country whose views on oil consumption, drugs, or politics has nothing to do with truth and has everything to do with social engineering. This is now how groups with money influence the much larger groups without money.

Disinformation about global warming, nutrition, the role of ethnogens, the importance of money, and an infinite number of other things too long to go on about (especially in this pendantic way) is tolerated. I would say that this tolerance is yet another example of Social Engineering.

Oh well, it's not like this is on topic or that there is anything to do about it, so mod me down to oblivion. Or what about: AT&T good, hackers bad.

Re:HOW COME MY KARMA IS "TERRIBLE" NOW INSTEAD OF

[acceleriter]

http://goatse.cx