The real measure of a free, open and just society is how it behaves in bad times - not in good times. When difficulties arise and the authorities want sweeping powers to 'protect' the citizens, should the citizens give up important civil liberties for what is probably just an illusion of safety? When are you ever safe enough in these times? Maybe the citizens should stop and ask themselves how much they really value their civil liberties - just how far should you go? Maybe the citizens should not crow too loudly about how free, open and just their society is when they look back at how their country has behaved in difficult times..
A good thing to do is to use the AllowUsers configuration directive for sshd in/etc/ssh/sshd_config. The following would allow some account named 'unprivguy' authenticated ssh access from anywhere. All other ssh connections must come from local and local domain authenticated users. So root@localhost or root@*.mydomain.com could log in. All others are blocked, even if they have the password.
AllowUsers unprivguy *@*.mydomain.com *@localhost
You still see the attempts in your logs, but now you also see:
User root not allowed because not listed in AllowUsers
"Linux now has become so technically powerful that it lays claim to a prestigious title--it runs more of the world's top supercomputers than any other operating system"
I found that you also needed to do
(fedora core 2 - system plugin dir is/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ ):
ln -s/path/to/rp_source_dir/mozilla/nphelix.so/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/.
Geez, time to add a new item to the faq for/. moderators:
"If a posting comes from an AC, and if the posting seems interesting, BUT YOU,
as a moderator, don't know anything about the subject, then don't
moderate up an AC. Just ignore them if you aren't sure."
Does anyone have any good info on the robot engine used by msn to cull info on the web? I found a a reference to MSNBOT on the web. So in one of my more active web trees I count 4600 visits from googlebot, and in the same 9 month period 180 visits from MSNBOT. The last visit from googlebot this evening, and the last one from MSNBOT at the end of june.
Well, that seems telling to me! There isn't enough web crawling from MSNBOT to justify a search engine, from what I've seen. I see _way_ more traffic from the IBM almaden web bot (945 visits), for example.
Of course, this begs the question: who is doing the web crawling for MSN? I find it hard to believe that MSNBOT is the main crawler. Today, for example I found girafabot in my logs. A visit to their web site shows an association with MSN..
One of the things I like about google is that no matter what country you are in, one of the links on their small, uncluttered, clean presentation is a link to google.com (in english). One cookie seems to be involved in dealing with google in different domains.
OTOH the MSN 'clutter sites' around the world just don't have this kind of 'come home to mama', uniform, pleasant experience - not to mention needing to pass through at least 3 cookies if you say 'no cookies, and moz please remember this'. If you say yes to cookies then, at least with www.msn.fr, _twelve_ cookies are involved.
MSN has a _long_ way to go on the interface front. Try going to www.google.ch, and you have french, german, italian and the ever present google.com link in english. And just one cookie... But www.msn.ch is german, french, and that's it. If there are more choices I certainly can't see it in all that clutter. Yuck.
>... You simply can't train this kind of problem out of a broad userbase, so you have to account for the human element in your software design.
amen. Just the fact that I have to save most attachments, and then switch to another window and examine them stops me dead in my tracks for most attachments (hey, I'm a pine user). I simply can't be bothered with extraneous stuff in email. It has to __really_ interest me to make me look at it.
At that point, if I am interested (virii are always interesting), I usually put on my surgical gloves, and pull out 'file', 'strings', 'od', and company and go to work on the 'attachment'.
> That's what I don't get. How many people ever put their message in an attachment and say "please see the attachment for details".
Hey, I've seen some pretty bad, lazy email that would fit your description:-}
> How many people really send mails with subject lines like "wicked screensaver".
Good point, but then again, many of the other subject lines were less 'eloquent'.. Imagine what kind of subject lines you would use in their place. Don't forget, to be effective you have to be short, to the point, and probably confuse/convince someone who is NOT a native english speaker that this email should at least be previewed..
> In other words, how can smart people be fooled by such crude social engineering?
Easy, because the message 'appeared' to come from someone they know (and possibly trust). That is the catcher, that is the root of the problem here, at least from what I have observed. Really, in some years of watching this sort of thing happen, I really have to say that this virus was effective.
They may eventually catch the morons(s) - it isn't clear from this article, since their _really_ isn't much info, except the interesting stolen creditcard item.
But one of the lessons to be learned by people with all colours of hats from the sobig.* family is that the interface design of the virus is very effective.
It is subtle, in that the subject lines of the emails are rather muted. It has no other message than to tell people that the info is in the file, and it may appear to come from someone you know (and might trust). In short, it isn't very 'spam-like'. and of course it has a very effective mail engine.
I work in a university setting, and I can tell you that having a PHd will not save you from accidentally opening this virus. Email programs should make it _hard_ to open any file that is executable. How many times does it have to be said? Thanks to the internet gods that my users are on linux, and that the secretariat is staffed by savy people.
I watched this puppy rise from category 'low' to 'high' in a space of 6 hours on nai.com on tuesday. I am more than a bit surprised that it started at level 'low'; anybody else remember the eariler incarnation when the email appeared to come from 'support@microsoft.com'?
No, they probably really are running windows on ir.sco.com (Investor Relations). Wouldn't it be a hoot if they were running linux:-)
I like the cnames for this host: Non-authoritative answer: ir.sco.com canonical name = cald.client.shareholder.com. cald.client.sharehol der.com canonical name = client.shareholder.com. Name: client.shareholder.com Address: 170.224.5.43
Well, one wonders if SCO trusts any of the operating systems it sells,
or has sold, in recent times. Take a look at the http response string
for the web server used in this announcement:
$ HEAD http://ir.sco.com
200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 14:42:15 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Content-Type: text/html
Client-Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 14:42:16 GMT
Client-Response-Num: 1
Page-Completion-Status: Normal
Page-Completion-Status: Normal
No. The company will be dead, at least as an OS company - no matter what happens they will be dead.
I am sickened by their behaviour. I would rather dig ditches than install or maintain any of their products because of this lawsuit. I can smell it around me - the loathing and, well, shock. Hell, who in the trenches of IT thinks that SCO are 'winners'?
Some people in the company might profit, but most companies are made up of a lot more people who profit very little from wierd stock schemes, especially in very recent times.
A few low-lifes may profit, but I would wager that a lot of ordinary, decent folk at SCO will be kicked in the teeth. What a shame.
Nope, the company is a loser. I don't care how much money their CEO makes. He is a loser. I wouldn't be him for all the tea in China, or all the bravado in America. I spent too much time in the trenches in hospitals to think that making a bunch of money turns you into a winner.
"Below, we've provided answers to questions that may help clarify Red Hat's position. If you have additional questions that aren't answered below, please email us at legal@redhat.com."
The diary entry is Jan 9th, so presumably xfree86 opened up the developer link since then. One wonders of they opened it in response to undercurrents or complaints in the ranks?
Mike Harris is a bright guy, as anyone who has followed the various Red Hat mailing lists over the last few years will know. When he speaks out like this about the inadequacies of the development process of XFree86 we should all stand up and take notice. Be sure to take the time to read the advocago link in this story.
One of the best comments that I've read about this lawsuit was made by "josh_stern" over on LWN.net, and I quote:
But I hope Bruce and others won't lose time pointing out the implications for
people who want to participate in programs like MSFT's "shared source". They
open themselves up to later lawsuits if they later develop or distribute anything
technologically related, even if it isn't textually derived from the original.
It is an interesting counterpoint in case Microsoft wants to use the lawsuit in any anti-linux campaign...
Not that dumb actually. Even though Red Hat is mirrored here where I work, the betas, for example, are typically not. Three RedHat beta versions in the past two months, at a minimum of 3 iso-images each.. and you would kick your quota in the teeth pretty hard.
Okay, I'm going to be a bad girl, and say this. Mostly the slashdot posts today have been informative and thought-provoking (even, and especially, those I don't agree with). I can't begin to imagine what it was like for so many Americans today. I still can't believe it.
But I have to say I snickered a bit when I reloaded the slashdot front page and saw this headline.. the window wasn't completely refreshed (I'm at home behind a modem now) --> but I saw the headline, and I thought 'Katz'..... yup. sure enough. and I snickered a bit. thanks Jon. I can't exactly say why, but there are times when you like the world to seem more normal again.Probably only long-term slashdot-ers are going to know what I mean....
Slashdot Mirror
The real measure of a free, open and just society is how it behaves in bad times - not in good times. When difficulties arise and the authorities want sweeping powers to 'protect' the citizens, should the citizens give up important civil liberties for what is probably just an illusion of safety? When are you ever safe enough in these times? Maybe the citizens should stop and ask themselves how much they really value their civil liberties - just how far should you go? Maybe the citizens should not crow too loudly about how free, open and just their society is when they look back at how their country has behaved in difficult times..
A good thing to do is to use the AllowUsers configuration directive for sshd in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. The following would allow some account named 'unprivguy' authenticated ssh access from anywhere. All other ssh connections must come from local and local domain authenticated users. So root@localhost or root@*.mydomain.com could log in. All others are blocked, even if they have the password.
AllowUsers unprivguy *@*.mydomain.com *@localhost
You still see the attempts in your logs, but now you also see:
User root not allowed because not listed in AllowUsers
Forbes Supercomputing article
You really have to wonder about organisations like Agility Alliance when they claim that large enterprises should not use Linux...
I found that you also needed to do /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ ): /path/to/rp_source_dir/mozilla/nphelix.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/.
(fedora core 2 - system plugin dir is
ln -s
It's worth a gander.
And for that email address google turns up this link:r s.pdf
http://spar.research.sc.edu/pdf/USCRF_Board_Membe
Strangely there is only this google link. Well, there will certainly be more now..
"If a posting comes from an AC, and if the posting seems interesting, BUT YOU, as a moderator, don't know anything about the subject, then don't moderate up an AC. Just ignore them if you aren't sure."
Well, that seems telling to me! There isn't enough web crawling from MSNBOT to justify a search engine, from what I've seen. I see _way_ more traffic from the IBM almaden web bot (945 visits), for example.
Of course, this begs the question: who is doing the web crawling for MSN? I find it hard to believe that MSNBOT is the main crawler. Today, for example I found girafabot in my logs. A visit to their web site shows an association with MSN..
One of the things I like about google is that no matter what country you are in, one of the links on their small, uncluttered, clean presentation is a link to google.com (in english). One cookie seems to be involved in dealing with google in different domains.
OTOH the MSN 'clutter sites' around the world just don't have this kind of 'come home to mama', uniform, pleasant experience - not to mention needing to pass through at least 3 cookies if you say 'no cookies, and moz please remember this'. If you say yes to cookies then, at least with www.msn.fr, _twelve_ cookies are involved.
MSN has a _long_ way to go on the interface front. Try going to www.google.ch, and you have french, german, italian and the ever present google.com link in english. And just one cookie... But www.msn.ch is german, french, and that's it. If there are more choices I certainly can't see it in all that clutter. Yuck.
> s/seen/sent/, and within the past 24 hours IIRC
umm, no, not me. You? What's your point?
> ... You simply can't train this kind of problem out of a broad userbase, so you have to account for the human element in your software design.
amen. Just the fact that I have to save most attachments, and then switch to another window and examine them stops me dead in my tracks for most attachments (hey, I'm a pine user). I simply can't be bothered with extraneous stuff in email. It has to __really_ interest me to make me look at it.
At that point, if I am interested (virii are always interesting), I usually put on my surgical gloves, and pull out 'file', 'strings', 'od', and company and go to work on the 'attachment'.
> That's what I don't get. How many people ever put their message in an attachment and say "please see the attachment for details".
:-}
Hey, I've seen some pretty bad, lazy email that would fit your description
> How many people really send mails with subject lines like "wicked screensaver".
Good point, but then again, many of the other subject lines were less 'eloquent'.. Imagine what kind of subject lines you would use in their place. Don't forget, to be effective you have to be short, to the point, and probably confuse/convince someone who is NOT a native english speaker that this email should at least be previewed..
> In other words, how can smart people be fooled by such crude social engineering?
Easy, because the message 'appeared' to come from someone they know (and possibly trust). That is the catcher, that is the root of the problem here, at least from what I have observed. Really, in some years of watching this sort of thing happen, I really have to say that this virus was effective.
They may eventually catch the morons(s) - it isn't clear from this article, since their _really_ isn't much info, except the interesting stolen creditcard item.
But one of the lessons to be learned by people with all colours of hats from the sobig.* family is that the interface design of the virus is very effective.
It is subtle, in that the subject lines of the emails are rather muted. It has no other message than to tell people that the info is in the file, and it may appear to come from someone you know (and might trust). In short, it isn't very 'spam-like'. and of course it has a very effective mail engine.
I work in a university setting, and I can tell you that having a PHd will not save you from accidentally opening this virus. Email programs should make it _hard_ to open any file that is executable. How many times does it have to be said? Thanks to the internet gods that my users are on linux, and that the secretariat is staffed by savy people.
I watched this puppy rise from category 'low' to 'high' in a space of 6 hours on nai.com on tuesday. I am more than a bit surprised that it
started at level 'low'; anybody else remember the eariler incarnation when the email appeared to come from 'support@microsoft.com'?
No, they probably really are running windows on ir.sco.com (Investor Relations). Wouldn't it be a hoot if they were running linux :-)
l der.com canonical name = client.shareholder.com.
I like the cnames for this host:
Non-authoritative answer:
ir.sco.com canonical name = cald.client.shareholder.com.
cald.client.shareho
Name: client.shareholder.com
Address: 170.224.5.43
Well, one wonders if SCO trusts any of the operating systems it sells, or has sold, in recent times. Take a look at the http response string for the web server used in this announcement:
$ HEAD http://ir.sco.com
200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 14:42:15 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Content-Type: text/html
Client-Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 14:42:16 GMT
Client-Response-Num: 1
Page-Completion-Status: Normal
Page-Completion-Status: Normal
http://trenzterra.yupapa.com/
there is a link about a new worm on www.trendmicro.com: WORM_RPCSDBOT.A
Does anyone have any other info?
No. The company will be dead, at least as an OS company - no matter what happens they will be dead.
I am sickened by their behaviour. I would rather dig ditches than install or maintain any of their products because of this lawsuit. I can smell it around me - the loathing and, well, shock. Hell, who in the trenches of IT thinks that SCO are 'winners'?
Some people in the company might profit, but most companies are made up of a lot more people who profit very little from wierd stock schemes, especially in very recent times.
A few low-lifes may profit, but I would wager that a lot of ordinary, decent folk at SCO will be kicked in the teeth. What a shame.
Nope, the company is a loser. I don't care how much money their CEO makes. He is a loser. I wouldn't be him for all the tea in China, or all the bravado in America. I spent too much time in the trenches in hospitals to think that making a bunch of money turns you into a winner.
http://www.redhat.com/advice/speaks_rhletter2.html
From the article:"Below, we've provided answers to questions that may help clarify Red Hat's position. If you have additional questions that aren't answered below, please email us at legal@redhat.com."
and yes, you can always have problems, even with 10 beta releases..
So you can be sure that it hasn't been released on a whim...
The diary entry is Jan 9th, so presumably xfree86 opened up the developer link since then. One wonders of they opened it in response to undercurrents or complaints in the ranks?
Mike Harris is a bright guy, as anyone who has followed the various Red Hat mailing lists over the last few years will know. When he speaks out like this about the inadequacies of the development process of XFree86 we should all stand up and take notice. Be sure to take the time to read the advocago link in this story.
But I hope Bruce and others won't lose time pointing out the implications for people who want to participate in programs like MSFT's "shared source". They open themselves up to later lawsuits if they later develop or distribute anything technologically related, even if it isn't textually derived from the original.
It is an interesting counterpoint in case Microsoft wants to use the lawsuit in any anti-linux campaign ...
Not that dumb actually. Even though Red Hat is mirrored here where I work, the betas, for example, are typically not. Three RedHat beta versions in the past two months, at a minimum of 3 iso-images each.. and you would kick your quota in the teeth pretty hard.
But I have to say I snickered a bit when I reloaded the slashdot front page and saw this headline.. the window wasn't completely refreshed (I'm at home behind a modem now) --> but I saw the headline, and I thought 'Katz' ..... yup. sure enough. and I snickered a bit. thanks Jon. I can't exactly say why, but there are times when you like the world to seem more normal again.Probably only long-term slashdot-ers are going to know what I mean....