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Seti@HOME Cracked By Aliens?
Chris L. Mason
writes "The Seti@HOME website appears to have been cracked. The front page has been replaced by a picture of ALF (from the really bad comedy.) However, the perpetrators have been somewhat polite about it. A comment in the new html tells where the original page has been backed up. " Might be fixed by the time you read this, but it really happened. The story was submitted by a number of slashdot readers almost immediately. Thanks.
The hack I have heard about was completely
harmless. It does raise issues about security
but thats about it. I think changing the banner
to alf is rather amusing. It was a prank.
The real culprits as far as hacking are concerned
should be people who do malicious damage, especially like the guy who created the CIH virus and caused misery to more than a few people with lost work, studies, books etc etc.
You cant always interpret things as black and white so easily.
Im sure someone at SETI had to see the funnier side of things after they worked out that their data wasnt mashed, and it also gave em a chance to find the hole and plug it before someone did attack them in anger. If they didn't see the funnier side then they need to lighten up a bit, I mean after all look at the support they've got from the internet community at large. The number of users helping them is a huge endorsement. There fore I seriously doubt the hack was done just to annoy them.
The world would be a very boring place without the occasional prank. Prank away, but keep it harmless and if possible, helpful.
Brad
I once read a short story on exactly this subject.. can't remember the author though..
In the end the prize went to some kind of queen woman (as in queen of bees..). she won, because
her measurements coincided the best with the ideal measurements given by the local male population.. Guess being the only female of an entire race does make you THE best female..
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Yes
> Prove your point. What was the damage done to the web site? As far as I can see NONE.
> Now what is the positive to come out of this crack? Well now seti know they have a sercuity flaw
> and it has probably been fixed by now.
> So at least 1 positive thing came out of. And no negatives.
One negative at least. I found the hacked site yesterday while trying to download a seti client. I was unable to do so... so SETI lost a day of cpu time from me (and who knows how many others?).
In a perfect world, the hackers could have just emailed the sysadmins to tell them about the hole.
In a less-than-perfect world, they could have left a link to the original page so that the
site could still be used.
Well, it's back up now. Actually I laughed my ass off (for about 2 seconds.) This isn't a big deal, they could have done serious damage.
5 hours per unit - that's damned quick. They're going to be bypassing /. very soon.
It's funny, MS have 500 people on it and SGI are beating them with just 90.
Ok I just checked now at 5:24pm EST and the official page is back. Now a very embarrassed/upset sysadmin has to restore the system from backup (to make sure security has not been compromised). This may be funny to us, but lets spare a thought for the guy who has to do all the work;)
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
You mean like www.mersenne.org?
AFAIK, that program also uses 'lost' cycles, and they've already got some results. (As opposed to SETI ;-)
The speed of light isn't constant, in fact a team at MIT (or somewhere like that) slowed light down to something like 30 Mph (that's Mile per hour!!)
It appears that people think that all I'm worried about is security.... That isn't true. Yes, I am amused at the hack -- it's actually funny and semi-appropriate, and a nice bit of amusement... However, my concerns about the data integrity DO remain. The people who hacked this site didn't delete any data (at least that wek know of...), but what about someone else who may have got in but not even TOUCHED the web pages?
This is why you folks who rent out your spare cycles to the "Greenpeace 'Where's Waldo?' Distributed Challenge" are so very NOT AT ALL security concious. The machine I use for critical work doesn't even have a modem in it, and there are, uh, ingenious and overlapping measures to prevent (or at least loudly proclaim) physical breaches in the system. (Even now, NSA would STILL rather pick your locks and unscrew your hard drive than screw around with crunching your password -- if you're worth bothering over.)
No, no, no. I knowfor a FACT that the gestation period for these aliens is 33 months. ;)
If he's still employed after the first successful attempt, he deserves your envy and his employers your scorn. Sympathy doesn't enter into it. Not all of us do this as a hobby, or get buttock compression therapy while on the clock, you know.
to tell someone to go kill themselves. What if he/she is right on the edge?
I think the stunt was really funny. The page was backed up and returned to Seti@home, so no permanent damage was done.
I'm a little disapointed that the whole debate has generated into name calling, RC5 vs. Seti and such. I see two benefits from this Stunt.
1. It showed the Seti SysAdmin that he/she should be more vigilant.
2. It was a damn funny prank. I just wish I could see it.
Too all you who think Seti is a waste of time and to those who hold it on a Pedestal.... Lighten up!
Gung Gee Fook Fei Fu - Taming the Flabby Tiger
at 15:30 PST Alf is still there....
-- Viva FreeBSD --
What's the point of those mirrors ... :) :))))
The site still displays Alf, so all of you, go there and say hello
I really doubt this is a real hack (crack), because they could really have putten back the index page.
Also, i liked it
Long life Distributed.net. Will they hack them too ?
:))
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Belgium HyperBanner
http://belgium.hyperbanner.net
Linux hosting for $2.50/mo
The whole question of "If the speed of light is constant, how come it slows down in things like lenses" stems from the fact that the explanation of refraction given in high school textbooks is much simpler than what is actually going on.
If I remember correctly (it's been a while), what happens when light passes through a transparent medium (like glass or water) is that it interacts with the electrons in the material so as to be briefly absorbed and then re-emitted in the same direction (I may be mangling this - like I said, it's been a while). This kind of interaction is logical when you think about it - a photon is a packet of coupled electric and magnetic fields, while matter is made up of charged particles (electrons and atomic nuclei [small enough to look like points to most photons]).
The net effect of photons being absorbed and re-emitted is that the propagation of the light wave seems to slow down in the material. In actuality, the photons are still travelling at the speed of light in vacuum - they're just not travelling very far before interacting with the matter they're travelling through.
It turns out that a very small fraction of the photons do manage to travel through the material without interacting with anything (though this drops off very sharply with distance). Someone built a device a few years ago that used this effect to take "x-rays" of peoples' hands with visible light (detecting these "ballistic" photons only; their pattern naturally varied depending on how absorbing the materials they passed through were, and was sharp because the photons hadn't scattered off of anything). Check back issues of Scientific American (or possibly Discover) for the reference.
Recent speculation about the speed of light in vacuum not being constant stems from completely different observations, probably celestial.
A) Logically, life must be possible in the Universe. Else you would not be here. Assuming you are.
Agreed..
B) If life is possible here, then it is possible where ever the conditions are like the conditions here.
This point is irrelevant, who says other life needs conditions like ours. Much the way Tux and his peguin buddies thrive in the south pole.
C) The Sun is a normal, slightly variable G0 star in the main sequence. Slightly heavier than the
average in heavy metals and Rare Earth metals, but that's not all that rare. Millions of stars just like it are scattered through the galaxy
See above..
D) Every day, we find more planets around stars we never thought could possibly have them, indicating
that planets are very common in the Universe.
Not everyday, but it should be quite obvious that we are not the only solar system in the universe in just using common sense. The chances of there being 9 planets in our solar system and no others in the whole of the universe is incredibly low.
E) Given all these things, we are extremely likely to find life someday. Through SETI? Who knows? Let's find out.
I am running seti@home right now, but seriously doubt we will find anything in our lifetime.
F) If the Earth First! and Greenpeace and other tree-hugging wackos would quit getting in the way of
nuclear plants and solar power stations, we would not be using any fossil fuels. All the neo-luddites can go live in caves in the dark if they wish. I prefer the taste of well-cooked steak and nice, bright electric lamps and convenient hot water. But if you disagree, that's your right. Go ahead. Quit using your computer - you don't want to waste more fuel, do you?
Don't like 'em either.
Finally, the art of language is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Quit mangling it.
One could replace "mangling" with evolving.
As a Greenpeace supporter you urge me to respond to your offense on Greenpeace.
In Holland Greenpeace collaborates with the Dutch government to install solar energy collectors on houses of consumers. A dutch house-owner can apply for a subsidized solar collector which will cost less than half of normal prize. Thus it will be cheaper (in the long run=10 years) than buying energy from a local energy company. Thanks to Greenpeace! The project is aptly but confusingly named "Solaris". Greenpeace has a (dutch) website here.
On nuclear power: Greenpeace may be fiercely against nuclear power (I am not), in Holland it is the government that shuts down the old plants. And the government of the Netherlands are the people themselves.
The reason we shut the existing plants down is that old-style, colossal, complex nuclear power facilities are way too unprofitable to sustain. That is if you want to apply decent security measures.
A lot of American people and companies and local governments are ruthless in how they exploit the country. If you want to destroy all nature in your country, eventually you'll make life for yourself uncomfortable too. No more hot water for you - no more water at all. But we in Europe wouldn't care a bit.
--[rosso bright]--
The odds may 1 billion to 1 against for Seti@home finding anything but its still a chance. To Not even look reduces that chance to 0. If you don't want to look, don't ... do something else with your spare cycles.
That still doesn't give some teenage peckerwood the right to deface a web page just becasue they don't agree with it or think its a waste of time. I don't agree wit the Catholic Church, but I won't go and deface there sites.
Grow up. Get an imagination.
AFAIK, that program also uses 'lost' cycles,
;-)
True.
and they've already got some results.
Also true, however they've been running for something like two years.
(As opposed to SETI
Everybody grants that the SETI test is an extreme long shot. However, if they are successful, the payback will be much higher.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
As much as I support SETI@Home, I have to say that their web site has not been the most forthcoming or interactive. Things like distributed.net go all out to keep everyone informed of what's going on, whereas the folks at SETI@Home would go weeks or months with no status updates or anything.
Old news. The Seti at Home people have gotten much better about posting updates - sometimes multiples per day. Take a look at their Technical News link off the main page.
That still isn't justification.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
You haven't worked with research folks, have you?
The PI is the guy who gets the grant, controls the research and gets his name first on the papers. He only responsible to whomever got the grant. They tend to be hard to work with.
He won't accept "MS bug"-he'll say "Then why did you spend my money on that piece of s**t server". He won't accept that you have a day off. There will be yelling involved-talk to anyone who works as a "grant monkey"-try your local research hospital, or large tech oriented university.
Oh-and NOBODY works hourly in a research facitlity-mainly because nobody works 40 hours.
It's not a life I'd care to live. I've done some contract work for them, and while it paid well, I'm not eager to jump back in.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
You should care, where do you think all of us "uncomfortable" Americans go? Southeast Asia? Middle East? I'm betting on Western Europe..
I resent the racist "peckerwood" comment.
Why hack SETI? The only purpose SETI has is to further mankind. Those who choose to hack should choose more wisely.
well, 555-1212 is a viable number, it would be more like 5B6-44C6, or 1232-1298773
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
We just dont agree that telling them theres a hole and showing them theres a hole makes much difference in what has to be done. You have to assume the machine has been compromised anyway, even if you dont _think_ its been cracked just because your frontpage is still right.
Showing it like this just makes fixing it a little more pressing...
I'll have a mirror up for you all at http://www.gashalot.com/setihack if anyone wants to see this and it's gone from the SETI servers.
This is actually one of the funny website hacks that I have seen recently, instead of one that uses some 3l33t h4x0r sp34k trying to free Kevin Mitnik (or however you spell his name).
-R
Like what, styrofoam?
it would probably be more cost effective to *trade* with us then to try and destroy us.
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Its probally just there go at joke... It is pretty funny...
Its indepenence day.. Alf, alien...
=1000101
I had forgotten about Seti@Home, come to think of it I still have a flashing icon for it on my taskbar... I'll get back to it sooner or later.
Seriously though, if your system is so "mission critical" that any of these problems are an issue, you really shouldn't have the seti@home client running on it in the first place...
If you look at the source of the page, you can see the following:
//---! original index.html is backed up as index.html.old !---//
(took out greater-than and less-than signs)
Looks like the crackers were just having a little bit of fun. I found it kind of amusing. If the page is gone, at any time later, im gonna mirror it at http://high.amvalue.com/~edgy/seti in case anyone misses it.
Go read Drake's equation. ... Solve for 1 and see the numbers that are required, just to prove the point.
:)
Not possible. You can only solve an equation when you are missing only one variable. Since Drake's Equation relies on the values of 11 variables, and you're specifying one, you're left with trying to simultaneously solve for 10 independent variables. I think we can safely put that in the "too hard" basket
Cheers
Alastair
-- "I believe the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully." - George W. Bush, 29 September 2000
Good point -- my machines that I do sensitive work on are secured down, and only networked to each other, primarily for data sharing -- no outside connections...
But I still want to know what they have done or will do to ensure that no data tampering takes place... If I'm going to dontate spare cycles off my non-secured machines, I want to know that it at least has a chance of being worthwhile.
-- Blu "Where's the password?!" Knight
You've got it all wrong!
It didn't get hacked -- that's the message from outer space that they found!
I think he was talking about sites that say "Burn the Jews etc". And are you saying that to stop the KKK, Jews should renounce their religion? btw there are very few atheist countries. North Korea is one of them...
---
Yes, but this is only true if you aren't diligently running tools that maintain offsite hashed indexes of the contents of your machine so you can tell if anything critical has been modified.
Primary investigator? What planet are you on?
The boss will want to know 'what happened'. The guy will say 'some kind changed our page to a picture of alf. He left everything else alone, i've already verified this. It was due to a bug that MS didn't reveal until yesterday, and it was my day off. It's been fixed now. NO harm done.
That'll be 24 hours overtime.
If you read the source code you will see that the original page is still there, as index.html.old
Adrian
Millville, NJ Cape May, NJ Fulshear, TX and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia all lost power today (that's all I know of). And SETI@Home was hacked by aliens.
PLease tell me if you know of any other power failures. And be sure before you say.
Uhm, ok. Well when I viewed the story (the first 3 times) there were no comments posted. After I submitted my post it let me view the other comments posted... heh either something was screwy or somebody read my mind.
It is not hatred but fear. And let us not forget what master Yoda has taught us of fear.
I remember a while back /. was hacked. Did you
guys ever find out how they gain access?
Stephen
The speed of light is certainly not constant, it was never claimed to be.
It is the speed of light in a vacuum that was supposed to be constant, but I believe that is being called into question recently by new experimental evidence? (correct me if I'm wrong)
In any case, this thread is fairly offtopic, and should end here. As for SETI@Home being cracked, this was obviously not a malicious hateful cracker. Really, it could've been a hell of a lot worse. Stop acting like it's the end of the world. It was a joke, and an easily repaired one, that surely didn't damage SETI and probably helped them out quite a bit by pointing out their security hole!
Random and weird software I've written.
if the KKK is so religious then why do they target Jews (a religious group) burn crosses and black churches?
---
Let me honest:
The show was written for cretin morons that would laugh at grass growing.
I guess honesty IS the best policy.
Idiot. Apache has nothing to do with it.
Alf didn't suck.
You're right. He blew.
You're complaining about America? At least we don't kill off our old and sick.
Sorry, no can do.
The speed of light is constant in whatever medium its in - in a vacuum the speed of light *is* 186000 miles/sec - light travels slower through other mediums, for example water (that's how *refraction* works).
The recent news has been about forcing a beam of light to travel through an ultra-cold medium through which it can only travel very slowly - which may have some interesting applications.
You can't speed up the "speed of light" (i.e. the speed of light *in a vacuum*) - due to the fact that you can't get a less dense medium than a vacuum itself.
thank you moderators for encouraging FUD by marking up woo-woo and paranoid drivel.
/. decline.
you are doing your part to helping
congratulations.
That is correct. Saying that the speed of light is constant is like saying that the speed of that 747 flying above me is constant and will never change.
It doesn't matter. The machine was compromised, the system must be installed. Otherwise the webmaster/sysadmin should be fired.
If you rebuilt my 100k hit a day webserver because of one security hole that is probably know to Sun, pache, netscape or whoever, I'd fire you. Do you rebuild your entire data center because of a disk crash too, because something isn't right, I fix mine? ooohhh?
Q: How many computer geeks does it take to replace a burned out light bulb?
A: 10,000. 9,999 to search around in the dark for 'extraterresteral intelligence' and one to finally in exasperation say "what the hell are you geeks doing sitting in the dark" and replace the bulb.
Yeah, and like Columbus, once we have found them we should rape and pillage them if they can't or haven't already destroyed us for our natural resources.
Aliens: We must begin our landing sequence and destroy these two legged creatures so we can mine their planet for very precious sheep dung!
It takes more energy to produce a solar panel than the said panel will ever produce in its lifetime.
> Finally, the art of language is one of the
> greatest achievements of humanity. Quit
> mangling it.
art -
4 a : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced b (1) : FINE ARTS (2) : one of the fine arts (3) : a graphic art
He was merely using his creative imagination. To each his own I guess.....
If there are any phenomena that leave traces in the radio signals earth receives from space (sort of what radio telescopes are for), analyzing those signals and checking out the prospects winnowed from the data is likely to reveal those phenomena.
:-)
So, attacking the SETI problem, which (obviously) interests people enough to participate in the analysis, will IMO much more likely result in announcements of natural galactic-scale masers (or something sounding like that), than the discovery of ET. Which will greatly interest, at least, the astronomers and astronomy mavens.
I think the term for this is marketing
IIRC, the Casmir Effect - two conducting plates placed near each other, which excludes from a vaccum between the plates virtual particles with wavelengths longer than the plate separation - is one way to raise the speed of light in the affected region.
Here's a clue: shut the machine off when you're not using it.
For cripes sake!
Yours is the logic that watches Star Trek or Star War, or any of that crap when you should be hitting a calculus or physics textbook. If you're real, that is, and not just playing dressup with your sci-fi friends at a con.
All life is sacred. Don't you even think about swatting that biting fly. And don't get me going again on the extinction of the smallpox virus.
I would like to see a 'dark-future' science fiction movie made where all 'non-believers' are forced to live in a hellhole of a hospital that sustains their lives until they 'repent and are saved' so they can be put out of their misery.
Face it. You're gonna die. Don't spend your whole damn life dwelling on it.
Destroy humans to protect sheep?
Now thatwould be ignoring symbiosis!
If you're referring to doctor-assisted suicide, you got the wrong idea. "we don't kill off our old and sick", we simply allow people who are suffering in pain with a terminal illness to end their suffering in peace and dignity, *only with their consent*
If you think the hack was funny and/or harmless, then there is no reason to go off like a lunatic trying to kill the invaders off just because they were able to get into your computer. The fact is, it's always going to be possible to do that in one way or the other (whether just through technical expertise or through such techniques as social engineering); it's better to have "good" hackers do this, do no harm and point out the security hole, than to have crackers do this and force you to change the root password and bring the site back up from backups.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
And if you mysteriously run out of aluminum foil on what you KNEW was an especially important day to be wearing a protective hat, you have to do far more than just go to the grocery and buy three extra large rolls of aluminum foil. . .
for other reasons, of course. Long about 9:00 or 10:00 I turn on the TV in hopes of finding some really cool cartoons on. However, I find some sports shows, some Saved By the Bell-ish shows (talk about the worst show of all time) and a whole bunch of Infomercials. What's happened? What will the children of tomorrow do about cartoons? They will be deprived of so many wasted Saturday mornings.
. when in danger or in doubt, run in circles scream and shout --Robert Heinlein
Yep,
And the truth hurts at Seti@home
Actually, you should warn your customers of the tremendous risk involved in having any online presence of the cash sort. Then the ethical thing to do would be to go out of business. But that wouldn't sell space on the server, would it?
Well when I went to the Seti@home web page I found that they had all ready put the normal web page back. So then I went to 2600 at www.2600.com the place to find all the web pages that have been cracked, all thought I don't recommend it for someone under 18 'cause some of the hacked site they show show it all if you get what I mean. Also I don't agree with the people who cracked Seti@home when they could crack some site that is worth hacking like the nazi, kkk, porn site, any anti religion site, Microsoft (he he just kidding, but then again maybe not) or any other site that is like that. chow (^_^)
When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to reform. --Mark Twain
Yes, I'm sure Alf hopped on his PowerBook G3, beamed up to their web server, replaced their front page... All to prove that their efforts were going to good use. Hmm.
:-P
And, Alf didn't suck.
JR
Why feel sorry for him for that reason.
I feel sorry for him (her?) because of the waste of time and effort the whole Seti project is. They're obviously sincere about the effort, and I can't help but think they'd be more gratified in the long run if they were doing something actually useful to somebody more than the power utilities who get to sell more electricity to idealistic geeks.
People have the right to express their opinions on topics, to be sure. But hacking sites is just wrong, and downright infantile. There are vast forums available to issue protests in legally, without resorting to illegal methods.
As for finding anything by looking at noise, of course I expect them to find something! How can they find it if they don't listen? The odds may be no better than winning the lottery, but you can't win if you don't play!
seti@home is a beautiful concept. My computer has millions of spare cycles per day that would otherwise be wasted. So, I am not wasting fossil fuel, I am putting it to good use. And hundreds of thousands of other people feel the same way. The possiblility of the greatest discovery in the history of humankind...hmm, let's see...do I want to be a part of it? Hell yeah!
I know that I'm not the most up to date with popular culture. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you would explain how "peckerwood" is racist? Please do not respond to this post, but rather email it to me. I have a feeling that it won't be suitable for a public forum such as this
. when in danger or in doubt, run in circles scream and shout --Robert Heinlein
Perhaps he meant things like the remarkable lack of medical treatment for the elderly some countries, for example kidney dialysis?
"It grows like a fungus in the dark!"
"It could be growing inside you!"
"Look, there it is! " (screech)
get real
(Score:2, Funny)
What is this, Mad Magazine?
You should be doing more than worrying.
You should huff off to get a new hard drive (they could have hacked the partitions), a new bios for your motherboard if it's a flash chip, and thirty-seven-and-a-half other protective measures, just like all the 'admins' are saying the site itself should be doing.
You should especially be doing all of this stuff if you're the gullible sort of person who takes SETI@home seriously.
You know, it would be rather nice if the SETI project would now distribute a utility to check if people are running the SETI client or a hacked copy of what they thought was the SETI client.
I'm not trying to cause offense here, but have you stopped to remember that old people are *meant* to die. It's how life works. You get born, you breed, then you die.
Keeping old people in a world of pain for what amounts of purely selfish reasons is wrong.
Does anybody know if there's a copy of the hacked website posted anywhere? My proxy won't let me go to www.2600.com and see if a copy's been posted there (I might get fired for checking) and I'd love a picture of Alf for my desktop wallpaper.
Their webserver is Apache/1.3.6 which explains everything.
Even when it's just to go to the toilet ? Or make a cup of coffee ? Or answer the phone ?
The page is fixed, but the alf.jpg is still right where it was. I can't really think of why they might have left it there. It DOES mean that they most likely DIDN'T do a full restore of the site from a backup, as someone earlier said they might.
This really could be a hoax or some other kind of "sanctioned" event. I bet, at the least, they're laughing about it; if they regarded it as a serious threat I doubt they would have left an image file in their root www directory that someone else had put there.
Ofcourse not. That doesn't make sense, it doesn't work that way. All I said was that religion promotes ignorance, and quite often hate as well. At least christianity does, and that's where the KKK come from.
Now before you start jumping down my neck, I'm not saying that all christians are KKK's, far from it, but there's no denying that the KKK is based on christianity.
And where did you get this jews stuff from anyway? I see absolutely nothing about jews in either my post or the one I was replying to.
Al Gore.
almost exactly 9 months........ Hmmmmmm
especially since they give us lotsa sheep for trinkets
Posted by rdobbs:
The data that is being sent out is prone to corruption. However, it doesn't really affect the project as the packet, once returned, is compaired to the original data and checked for integrity.
If it don't fit - the datagram is tossed, and the packet is resent to another client for reprocessing. SETI has the original telescope radio data somewhere offsite - because if they didn't, the whole project would have been destroyed years ago...
Of course old people die. Age is an incurable condition, so far. Duh! I would not argue that if, fully informed of what treatment is or is not effective for a possibly fatal condition, and offered it they should not have the option to choose death instead.
Perhaps from an evolutionary perspective, "You get born, you breed, you die" is all that is important. But this logic indicates persons who are sterile, women who have reached menopause, and so on should be excluded from public health programs. Morally, I reject this eugenics approach.
In human society a person's contributions can extend for their entire lives. They do not become of less worth to society as they age, and limiting the choices available for them is as objectionable as any genocide based on discrimination by sex, race, et cetra. But excluding them from treatment is no better than murder being excused by other conditions they may have.
"Selfishness"? Give me a break. Goodness, the money saved by excluding the sick elderly from treatment using your excuses, and the inheritances transferred more quickly to their heirs, just seem terribly convenient, don't they? What an amazingly convenient, cost-saving coincidence. Not.
no, it's more like someone who uses a hammer and chisel to destroy the deadbolt on your door, then leaves the door open for the entire neighborhood to see, and puts a flashing neon sign "idiot lives here".
Posted by JPFunk:
They moved the original index.html to index.html.old, so at least they were nice about the hack. Amusing, anyway...
Posted by Napalm4u:
Okay i agree maybe people would see the kkk site more. I have many people in my family who faught the nazis during ww2. Alright?, I hate these Bastards! Hate is tearing apart this country, just the other day there were shootings in chicago, during the bombing of kosovo there was a string of firebombings in LA of Jewish Temples.
This country makes me sick. Everyone here thinks that the constitution says they have the right to do all this crap. The other day i saw that there was a Neo-Nazi protest somewhere in the south. I can't believe that, all those flags and pictures of Hitler. A man that killed is directly or indirectly responsible for 26 million dead russians and postilby 100 million more dead.
Why?
About the anti religion sites: I mean all those Anti Islam, Anti Hindu places.
I used my post to say that I hate all kinds of oppression.
This planet sickens me, i dunno maybe i'm just bitter
I am not meaning to say that humans will never find aliens, it is just that with our current technology the only ones that we would find are the ones that want to be found and we would not need seti@home for them.
Finally :)
/. into The Globe or some crap like that :)
someone with common sense...
If some of you are that paranoid, run TCP dump on a machine while it's xmitting SETI@Home data...
And please, dont turn
--- sig moved for great justice.
well people like you helped cut SETI funding so they cant afford to hire 24/7 staff.
moron. shoo. go away.
I beleive that the cracker wants to show that SETI@home is silly, just like ALF. Do you really expect to find anything by looking at white noise? I am all for the progress of humankind but is this really doing anything more than wasteing fossil feuls.
... but it wasnt funny. it was infantile.
It's still not at all nice, but it's much better than 1 0wn u sh0\/\/ts 2 fuDpack0r and syb0rpHag3 ha ha ha.
An Object at rest CANNOT BE STOPPED! -The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight
95%+ of hacks are what you would call script kiddie attacks. These use pre-made exploits on rootshell.com or "social engineering" methods like calling up tech support and cliaming to have forgotten the password to the system. The rest are done by attacking custom cgi's on the system *somewhat difficult) or maybe breaking into other systems on the same segment and running a password sniffer on there to capture passwords for the target system.
Perhaps it's a funny way of saying 'Your site is insecure?' .'
The original site, as they say, was backed up. Restoring it is probably a matter of 'mv backup/*
no big deal. Kinda funny.
How exactly are the myriad users of the Windows versions going to do this thing?
Excuse me, Alf was one of my favorite shows!
And I think that anyone else out there who is being honest would admit that too..
How are we wasting fossil fuels by simply capturing cpu cycles which would otherwise be wasted on NOP's? It's a far more egregious waste of energy to have the countless PC's which are on for say 15 minutes while their users go grab a cup of coffee to simply sit and do nothing productive!
Admittedly the SETI project (note that it is currently a test, and not really geared to a large scale survey) has little prospect of finding signals from intelligent life. Does this mean we should never look?
How wasteful would it be for the human race to have missed its one opportunity for contact with an alien civilization, simply because we were too bullheaded to even listen!
drudd
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
As a Sysadmin I would have no trouble with this. Of course, you would have to accept a CYA memo from myself, recommending the rebuild, noting the possible damage and liability, and releving me from any responsibility for your decision to do otherwise.
If they left the car where it was, but changed the presets on the radio to Country & Western stations - now that would be malicious.
Hey, if they make us prosperous, humans will follow them anywhere.
And bite them, of course, as Mark Twain observed.
I've always wanted a jpg of Alf for my desktop.
This raises, at least in my mind, concerns over the integrity of the data that SETI@Home is sending out... Remember the fiasco about duplicate data? And now their webserver gets hacked...
What's to say that their data server hasn't been hacked, and random sections deleted, or tainted?
-- BluKnight, who forgot his password
The alternate text for the alf image says "Gordon Schumway"... I wonder if Gordon knows the hacker (or is the hacker, though probably less likely).
Geeky modern art T-shirts
RC5 cracking is something which makes use of the unused cpu cycles. and that has some real use
HAHA! Now that's humor! 8-)
To me, this appears as though there's no bad intentions intended...
--Chris, chris@ntr.net
most likely, seeing as Gordon Schumway is Alf's name on his home planet. :P
perhaps Alf and ET got on their computer (which according to ID4 is compatible with the Mac) and thought they might drop some hints...
have they logged their ip? cos it could be past 255 (like in the movie 'the net').
0-255 reserved for earth, and the rest for the aliens...
Gordon Schumway was ALF's real name, on his home planet of Melmac.
Isn't it sad that I remember that ?
I will be mirroring this at http://www2.truman.edu/~u789/alf/ if anyone wants to see it.
And what would that be ? RC5 has outlived it's usefulness. It proved that rc5-56 could be cracked in a reasonable amount of time and that, by logical extension, all crypto was crackable. Nobody doubts that 64bit will eventually fall, and that the time to crack it will lessen to a point when it will eventually be crackable in a practical timeframe. Bovine fought the good fight, fought hard and WON. Now it's time to move on.
you are the one comparing him/her to a terrorist..
what i would compare him to is a humourous poster on a door. cos if you look around you'll see that nothing else has seemed to be effected
Was the site really cracked? I would expect the site would have been fixed by now if that was actually the case (of course, they might all just be sleepyheads over in Berkeley.. ;-)
Maybe it's just a publicity stunt or whatever..
whoops, i meant i'd compare him/her to someone who puts a poster on a door. and they also had enuff decincy(sp?) to tell us where the orig is
I went to the homepage and now ALF's back.
Did they hack the page again?
The waste of fossil feul that I am referring to is from people who leave there computer on overnight all the time. Also what were they trying to test? If people would use the program, if their servers could handle the load generated, or what.
Alf subscribes to a cat-lovers magazine because he thinks it might contain recipes. How can go wrong with a show like that? Kinda the innocent comedy that we're missing these days.
The hack is really creative. Hehe
to crack 64 as you said. but looking at noise in space, i'm yet to see the point in that?
Why do you give the crackers what they want? There's no news value in this story anyway, everyone have seen cracked sites before.
-segfault
Yuk yuk. Now put the original home page back, please.
Bruce Perens.
http://www.pinball.nu/setihack/index.html
Enjoy
Posted by Napalm4u:
Why don't they do something constructive and hack the assholes on the KKK site???? White power, nazi, and anti any religion sites should all be hacked!
This pisses me off!
Does anybody else remember the Saturday morning cartoon of Alf? It was set up like repertory theater. Each show would have a frame story on Melmac and then the characters would "act" in another story. It was great. I wonder if it will come out on DVD.
No fun in the noise, but on the off chance we actually do FIND anything, I don't think I really need to go into all the potential benefits to mankind do I ?
AFAIK Alf's last name is spelled "Shumway". That spelling error might uncover the cracker as a German....
Bovine fought the good fight, fought hard and
WON. Now it's time to move on.
You are definitely right. Cracking rc5 isn't really useful any more, since the point has already been made. Looking for aliens isn't much more useful, at least when seti@home send the same blocks to many clients.. Distributed.net should find something new to do - OGR sounds nice. But the fact is that we started cracking rc5 - and I like finishing what I've started.
--
It has to work - rfc1925
don't worry, up North we only waste solar energy which would otherwise go to heat by using hydro power.:) No lost fossil fuels...
OFTC: By the community, for the community
That hack looks an awful lot like Microsoft's new homepage..
yea, either they are as brainless as a rock (why arn't they ever portrayed as dumb in movies) or are super brainy and decide to kill us.. or.. in the middle where they are friendly and will come down anyway
...does bill gates birthday co-inciede with roswell does it?
Yeah I know it's wrong and bad and all that but some of them are really clever.
Actually they should probably move on to something that is "actually" useful such as searching for Mersenne (sp?) primes or Goloumb rulers. Both of which have practical importance to the world. (Including ironically making it possible to create stronger encryption and position telescopes to receive signals from space more efficiently)
Especially if it's a fairly harmless one. I like the SETI project and am using the client software, and definitely would not like to see it fail. That said, at least these guys had the decency to back up the page and not screw the site up too badly, and who knows, they may have done SETI a favour and illustrated the security breach before someone less benign got to it!
Thanks to the folks who posted mirrors for those of us who could not get there fast enough to see it.
For all those taking this too seriously I have one thing to say (well maybe two) lighten up. I don't see it anywhere even close to destructive. Hell, they backed up the old index.html file, what more do you want from them? I found it funnny, its not like it will take them hours and hours of effort to restore. I just hope the people who did it tell the seti people how they did it so the security hole can be fixed. Other than that I think most people just need to lighten up. Though I am glad to see that a good number of the geeks out there do have a sense of humor about things like this that were just ment to be funny.
I'm disappointed that you could actually compare this to terrorist acts that kill people. There was no damage done here. Seti's been made aware of a security issue. They'll make up for their downtime in the number of hits they'll get when they reopen the site. And we've all gotten a good chortle out of it. Obviously you didn't.
If you want to discuss motive, you need to learn that there's a BIG difference between mischief and malice.
Lighten up.
if i am not mistaken, the basic idea of the prime hunting was for fun. as the numbers that were found we verified on a supercomputer? (well at least something that could veryfy it within like a day or something?
i agree with ya point about rc5, but its still something do to which will eventually be cracked.
and its cool, being competitive against ya friend or something
If you downloaded code from SETI@Home and ran it without reading the source and compiling it yourself, then you should be worried that their security is so lax. Perhaps you really installed a trojan that is even now uploading your /etc/passwd file to a cracked ftp server somewhere. If you installed it behind a company firewall, you should be even more worried.
.....and he must die!
-jpeg
Didn't you love those one liners alf always gave to willy tanner?
agreed.
--------------------------------
( my music)
It's just a text file w/ the html in it. They can just copy it and put it back as html. No problem.
Unlike physical graffiti, this can be cleared up quickly at no cost.
Besides, the important thing is the work, not the site, and as I just watched my latest block upload, the work appears to be going on unabated.
Now let's hope someone at Seti notices and tightens up their security.
(Oh yeah, pun intended.)
The cake is a pie
Hey all,
This is really *really* bad... I mean, what's to stop the hackers doing stuff to log your ip number, ftp into your machine, find security faults and then screw your machine ???
Even worse, what's going to happen if these hackers happen to find the piece of data that proves that UFOs are out there ??? They could trash it and we would never know !!!
Even worse, the hackers could get a ton of £££ somehow and when the alien data came through, launch a rocket and cause the first war of the worlds !
I'm not sure about you, but this scares me...
Satire - A design for life
Even if they don't find life, sooner or later they'll find something interesting, I'm sure.
Most of the great discoveries in our history has been made while looking for something else.
At the moment, virtually everyone ignores the KKK website. Hacking the KKK website virtually guarantees that the KKK website will be seen by millions of people on the evening news.
That is not a good thing.
One could even claim that this little security breach is a good thing as if we're lucky, it may generate publicity for Seti.
The cake is a pie
Speaking of talking about things you know nothing of...
Why don't you stop calling that kettle black?
ET's are already here... they've been observing us for years.. and
they've been communicating with the world leaders (who have been deny
it.) Ever wonder why the gov't pulled the plug on SETI funding? It's
because they know it's pointless (we're already talking to them.)
It's nothing but sheer arrogance that leads the SETI people to believe
that they're going to find something...
The fact is that they're not, because there is nothing to find.
So how does finding out about the leak with or without explicitly knowing if you have been Hacked make any difference?
If your that security conscious you have to assume you have already been Hacked either way.
Oh yeah, that's right. The purpose of life is to constantly press forward until we win. "99% of human action is equaly useless"? Please go kill yourself before you infect the others. I for one will be enjoying all thost "wasted" moments.
+&x
What the hell are you talking about?
UMM ITS 3:00 pm EST and its still not fixed!!! What're these lazy SETI people doing!
Roblimo must go!
;)
It starts with a little comment (in parenthesis) next thing you know he's posting ignorant views on American government and disabling comments ala Sengan. ( Sengan Must Go Too!)
Yes. I loved alf.
Thank you. Drive through. (:wq)
Sorry, but that was damned funny.
Oh, and I suggest that perhaps the website development and their software development are not really all that intimately tied. (This is not to say that their clients are secure...I don't know. I'm just saying take a logic class.)
AFAIK Alf's lat name is spelled "Shumway". That spelling error might uncover the cracker as a German....
insightful thought... it could possibly be that. Or, the author of the page featuring Alf could be playing on the English pronunciation of the word "school" (note the "sch" at the beginning of the word) which would be "sk-oool"... which would then render the word "Schumway" to be pronounced "Skum-way".. of course, I could be ranting on a wild tangent here....
Insert mind here.
Better to know that its been compromised and have them really make the system secure than them just being lazy and only fixing the hole. Leaving the possibility that somoene already hacked the system before without making it obvious.
Maybe all the SETI guys are at the beach. (California + Independece Day)
Or maybe the Melmacs want to make sure we find and return Alf.....
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
Exactly. It is like Columbus. He didn't find what he is looking for, but obviously that didn't mean much in the long run. Hell, what he found was more interesting than what he was looking for!
Science is filled with people who found something while looking for something else.
The cake is a pie
Huh? I didn't understand anything it seems. Go and re-read the phrase:
- "I am all for the progress of humankind but is this really doing anything more than wasteing fossil feuls. "
- and the answer "99 % of the human action is equaly useless."
Did you notice the use of the word equally ?I for one will be enjoying all thost "wasted" moments.
I do to, but I find life better when people are using their brain, and logical abilities when they argue.
You say anti religion sites should be hacked. Why? Think for a bit, it's religion that brought us those KKK idiots in the first place.
Religion promotes ignorance and closed mindedness. Be religious! Join us! Follow the herd, be a good little sheep now, will you? Baaaaa!
I'm anti-religious. Hack me. I think for myself instead of blindly following some religion. Is that so bad that I should be hacked?
Hmm, sorry about the rant, but ignorant assholes like that piss me off.
And why is this guy moderated up anyway?
So he should voice his opinions, with his arguments. Not impose his view. What he did was similar to barge in in a Church during mass, throw the priest on the floor, and shout "God does not exists!" to the peopl there.
I am all for the progress of humankind but is this really doing anything more than wasteing fossil feuls.
99 % of the human action is equaly useless. What's the point of the football ? What have you done for the progress of humankind today ? I'm talking about progress, not subsitance. Most of the people just assure their own subsistance, and whether they exist or not would do no difference.
...does bill gates birthday co-inciede with roswell does it?
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955.
The Roswell crash occured in early July, 1947. (The actual crash was reported in a newspaper on July 8 but a rancher claimed finding debris on July 4.) So let's see who was born around that time period:
July 3, 1947 Dave Berry
July 9, 1947 O J Simpson
July 18, 1947 Steve Forbes
July 24, 1947 Robert Hayes
(Ok, the last one is a bit late, but hey, he played an alien in the TV Series Starman)
Marv
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Nah... What you really want to look at is who was born nine months later.
-D
dcross@cryogen.com
Lighten the fuck up. I'm sure jokes about famous
people are also "not funny because it's making
fun of real people with feelings". Please. The
only people who think like you are fuckin lawyers
out to make a buck.
...it made a lot of us laugh. Mission accomplished.
For example, most religions you never hear much about in the media actually respect other religions as equals to an extent. Only the extremist religions promote intolerence.
As some may have pointed out (though w/ some flawed logic), various religious groups use hatred as a tool to secure power over it's subjects and denounce others as lies of some manner. However, many of their claims are actually based on groundless proof, irrationality, or just plain stupidity.
It's really sad that you'd preach intolerence towards the intolerent (though I can understand the "eye for and eye" bit).
Myself, I don't feel the need to have support
from a religion. But I'm not going to abuse
someone for having a faith of some kind. I
didn't need a God to teach me to be tollerant
and a nice guy.
It was good parenting. Unforunately, no one ever
thinks about that.
Lets see...
1. Someone's been in your machine. They may have replaced only that index.html file, in which case, you're going to rebuild the machine for nothing. On the other hand... you don't know what they did. They might have replaced cron with a toaster-control server app. They might have replaced su with a little script that posts whatever you type after Password: on Slashdot, along with your ip and boss' home phone number. They might just have patched things up so that all credit card numbers coming into your ecommerce form are automatically mailed to 3l33th4xors@yahoo.com and carbon copied to your client with a big ascii-art image that says FSCK U. Or perhaps they simply reconfigured sendmail so that whenever the mail queue runs, it bundles up all the mailbox files on the server and forwards them as PGP encoded attachments to the FBI.
It's not the security hole that you are worried about after its been exploited. You could fix the security hole. But you'll never know what they did AFTER they exploited it, and that's the big concern...
2. If your 100k hit/day webserver is so important, you'll have a clone to dump in its spot during the rebuild, right?
You don't know what they did. You MUST rebuild it.
~Acheron
As much as I hated "The Net", I just looked over that one as the 555-1212 of the computer world.
Your logic is based on the idea that "It's never happened before, so it will never happen." Which is, quite simply, wrong.
Go read Drake's equation. Plug any numbers you like into it, remembering that your numbers must be reasonable and must accept as your starting hypothesis that the lowest possible answer is 1 - Earth. Solve for 1 and see the numbers that are required, just to prove the point. They're preposterous - way, way too small. Any reasonable number provides for millions of planets with life. Intelligent life? Well, that's another question, but it's at least worth taking a look.
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
No one's website is `worth' being hacked, least of all a hate group's or anti-religion organization's. Most of these websites recieve little to no attention from the general public. If someone were to hack them, it would quite likely make it on every major network's evening news program, and then they'd be getting a whole lot of undeserved attention. I also disagree with your statement that anti-religion organizations' websites should be hacked on the basis that I'm an agnostic and could be considered to be anti-religion, or at least lacking in the religion department. In any case, s long as they're not harassing you, don't harass them.
A while back I heard that the speed of light does not necessarily have to be constant. I havent run across any thing other than that though. I also heard that instead of the speed of light being 186,000 miles per second it has slowed to below 160,000 miles per second. Does this mean that light COULD move faster somewhere out in space than it has ever been observed here on earth?
As much as I support SETI@Home, I have to say that their web site has not been the most forthcoming or interactive. Things like distributed.net go all out to keep everyone informed of what's going on, whereas the folks at SETI@Home would go weeks or months with no status updates or anything. How many times were those 115 initial work units processed by the 500,000 people who signed up and had their CPU's devoting time and heat to uselessly redundant processing?
I understand the difference in complexity between the rc5 stuff and what SETI@Home is doing, and the limited resources available to people working on a grant, but I think the folks there need to understand that you do something of this size on the net, you have to expect a rich interaction with the community, one way or the other. I view ALF as the community sort of reaching out and saying 'hi' to folks that haven't been as communicative as we're used to with other net projects.
And it was funny. I had completely forgotten that ALF ever existed. Too bad they didn't include a .wav of ALF ranting about something to be 'the message'.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Analogies are only useful to clarify arguments, not support them. Come back when all it takes is a "mv" command to clean graffiti paint off of your house.
A) Logically, life must be possible in the Universe. Else you would not be here. Assuming you are.
B) If life is possible here, then it is possible where ever the conditions are like the conditions here.
C) The Sun is a normal, slightly variable G0 star in the main sequence. Slightly heavier than the average in heavy metals and Rare Earth metals, but that's not all that rare. Millions of stars just like it are scattered through the galaxy.
D) Every day, we find more planets around stars we never thought could possibly have them, indicating that planets are very common in the Universe.
E) Given all these things, we are extremely likely to find life someday. Through SETI? Who knows? Let's find out.
F) If the Earth First! and Greenpeace and other tree-hugging wackos would quit getting in the way of nuclear plants and solar power stations, we would not be using any fossil fuels. All the neo-luddites can go live in caves in the dark if they wish. I prefer the taste of well-cooked steak and nice, bright electric lamps and convenient hot water. But if you disagree, that's your right. Go ahead. Quit using your computer - you don't want to waste more fuel, do you?
Finally, the art of language is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Quit mangling it.
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
Simply create a 'seti' user and run the program under that id.
Even as a 'seti' user they can:
I can't imagine why you find the lack of source code reassuring.
Now I am only 18 so I was pretty young when I saw ALF but still, I liked it too.