If the international data plan charges $24 per 20MB, and they got a bill for $4800, that means the 3 phones, while turned off, downloaded a total of around 4GB. WTF?
at a guess it takes feed from a GPS and squirts it off in SMS at a pre-set time interval,
Many lie dormant until the vehicle is started. Then they transmit only as the location changes. Some are programmed to remain silent until the car is shut off to hide the radio signal, then they transmit the trip log when the car is shut down. In that mode the cell phone module won't cause strange noise in the radio or cause glitches in the engine computer while driving.
If you call it, most likely you will only get a modem for data retreival and re-programming parameters, or a silent audio monitor mode. The data may go out sms or batch mode, but the phone sometimes can still be called to monitor audio in real time. It all depends on the programming and what mode is used. Magnetic bumper ones have limited battery life so they rarely transmit constantly and live audio while driving is useless. They typicaly monitor their position and send a burst indicating they are on the move and then transmit the trip when they stop. For real time tracking for a bust, they can be called for real time persuit. This is used in abduction cases where the stop locations indicate something other than a short local trip.
At the end of the day you have a full log of all the trips paths and the location of every stoplight, customer, and gas station visited. The trip data contains time stamps including position and speed. Look up NEMA data for the information contained in a GPS data string. Data strings are updated every second while the position changes.
NEMA is the National Electronics Manufacturers' Association, the group that defines (among other things) levels of waterproofness for conduit fittings and wiring boxes. NMEA is the National Marine Electronics Association, who many years ago defined a set of signals and messages for marine instrumentation, including anemometers, automatic chartplotters, and satellite navigation receivers. NMEA 0183 is that standard.
Part of the data may contain the RMC string. It contains; $GPRMC,hhmmss.ss,A,llll.ll,a,yyyyy.yy,a,x.x,x.x,dd mmyy,x.x,a*hh
RMC = Recommended Minimum Specific GPS/TRANSIT Data
1 = UTC of position fix 2 = Data status (V=navigation receiver warning) 3 = Latitude of fix 4 = N or S 5 = Longitude of fix 6 = E or W 7 = Speed over ground in knots 8 = Track made good in degrees True 9 = UT date 10 = Magnetic variation degrees (Easterly var. subtracts from true course) 11 = E or W 12 = Checksum
Trimble make GPS devices designed to be used indoors; it wouldn't have mattered where in the car the antenna was placed it still would have gotten enough signal for a reasonable lock.
Spoken by someone who has never used GPS.. Do some research on S/N ratio. A high gain antenna does wonders, but still does not pull in a signal where there is 100% attenuation.
Google is "finally succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar"
The dollar is quite the temptress and very deceitful. Following the money has led many to the path of destruction. The record companies have tried to collude and through artificial scarcity kept CD prices way above reasonable. Sales have fallen as a result of completion even though i Pod sales skyrocket.
Google has command of the advertising market. If they follow the temptress and try to follow the money, then Google will become just another search engine.
It would be sad to see Google become another ad-laden site with no special attraction to the users. Is Google stupid enough to ditch tons of eyeballs to get a slightly higher price per ad?
Others are ditching the overburdening pages and imitating Google's success. Most of these pages now don't load their page with banner advertisements anymore and for good reason. They lost major market share to Google because of it. They have modeled Google.
If Google gets tempted by the money, they may find themselves quickly in the company of almost dead search engines that they stomped. They know how the other search engines dropped to obscurity. Why are they even interested in putting on that well known way to the bottom of the search engines.
a man being investigated by the police found tracking devices in two of his cars, ripped them out,
The article was very sparse regarding what problem he had with the cars that led to the discovery. I will take a speculation stab at this. Cell phones are well known for causing RFI problems with poorly shielded electronics doing everything from causing keyboards on PC's to lock-up to putting a buzz into radio and stereo gear.
The location of the device was on the passenger side footwell. This would place it close to the engine computer in many cars. It may be an easy to install location for the police and the GPS antenna can be located under the dashboard giving a good location for GPS reception through the plastic dash and windscreen, but the cell transmitter in that location could and probably did cause problems with both the stereo and engine computer. As he stated, it was a botched installation that led to the discovery. A proper install would have located the cell transmitter in the trunk away from sensitive electronics to transmit out the rear window. The car ran poorly, but it was probably the teltale radio noise that geve it away. Removing it fixed both the radio and engine computer.
This interference issue is why most magnet mount tracking devices are mounted on the rear of the car away from the engine compartment. Inside the plastic rear bumper on a metal bracket is a favorite location. there is little chance of interference revealing it's presence, and good GPS and cell signals.
The SIM card is a nice bonus... hack it to change content of the message (make it send fake data), put it in a old throwaway mobile phone and let it do its work.
I like that idea. NMEA data is easy to capture from almost any hand-held GPS. Playing back that data later would be great. The only give-away would the the real-time clock info. It could take a while to ignore the location information and notice the time stamp is wrong. Transmitting the prior day travel information of a buddy could mess with them. Spend a day riding the city bus with a handheld, Capture the track and replay it. Fun.
Or even better, put each of them into separate packages, mail one to China and one to America.
Would love to see the police phone bill after that ^_^ --
If the device is not subscribed to roaming service, it could be a waste of postage.
I think it would be much more fun to wrap the GPS antenna in foil so it can't give the location. Then put it in a backpack and spend a few hours shopping near police parking and impound lots. Unwrap the antenna for a few minutes at each location before catching the city bus. Do this only when a large crowd is there.
Cell tower triangulation is not near as accurate as GPS location and requires bugging the cell company for location information. That would introduce delays. After you are done with that, take it to the local post office and buy a parcel box and send it to a bad address cross country. They may be able to locate the post office where you dropped it off, but they would have a very hard time finding the right package. In most places the post office will not let the police rummage through the mail room. Be sure not to use your name on the return address. Wait for it to be returned to shipper, also to a bad address. Hopefully by that time the batteries will die and they lose the package.
If the police leave something in your car like that, do you now legally own them? If a burglar breaks into your house and leaves his jacket, I'm pretty sure he can't ask for it back. If the police did not obtain a warrant, it seems like an analogous situation. I'm not sure what the rules are if the cops did obtain a warrant.
Funny you should mention that. Whan I lived in an apartment, I had a shortwave antenna on my balcony handrail. I heard a noise outside and peeked out the window with the lights off. Sure enough, someone was dis-connecting the antenna. I turned on the outside light and they beat it out of there. I stepped out to re-connect the antenna and picked up his wallet.;-). He did come to ask for it back. We had a nice discussion on television interference causes and cures. I did return the wallet.
just having an up to date virus scanner check.exe files before execution stops storm entirely
Firefox on Ubuntu also does a nice job out of the box and does not require a credit card for a subscription. Even better, it's free. So are the updates.
is there a way to test or check that people who might be part of the bot net how to see if they have it?
Shut down your e-mail, filesharing, VOIP, chat, and automatic update software, then check the lights on your network switch. If it is busy, it is time to find out what process is using your connection.
rather than gong on about what it is doing, how about we spread the word on how to stop it one computer at a time.
Already doing that. I just gave a copy of Linux on a live CD to my boss. This was after chatting up the cost of Vista + MS office. The cost to install it on several machines at home for desk, laptop, kids machines, etc is substatial. Try this, it comes with a free office suite, photo editor, etc. By the way, by default new users are given user accounts, not administrator accounts. This may be my 4 convert in the last 2 months.
With the right program, any FW device plugged into your system can suck out the plaintext RAM contents (including your keys), install and run rootkits without even touching the disk, etc.
I guess I needed to be more specific than this statememt. I prefer encrypted external storage which uses a non-standard filesystem.
To be more specific, hardware based encrypted NAS appliance, not a general purpose PC. Not only is it lacking a firewire port, but has no place to install one. http://www.simpletech.com/commercial/simpleshare/
The old version of firmware supports drive encryption. The newer version dropped encryption and has a fancy drop and sort media directory instead.
Several forums have discussed removing the internal drive to read them on a Linux PC, but was unable to mount the filesystem.
The only ports on this box is a power jack, USB ports, and an ethernet connection.
I prefer encrypted external storage which uses a non-standard filesystem.
My NAS uses an encrypted reiser FS. The filesystem is non-standard. Users have removed the internal HD and attempted to mount it in a Linux PC, but the PC could not find the partition table.
Even if they can mount the drive, without the encryption key, it will take them quite a while to crack the key to the encrypted volume. This is not a connect and copy drive.
Also, all the ip addresses i did a lookup on, resolved to a dynamic host address so it looks like the infected machines are distributing the storm files themselfs to new victims with no central distributing server to shut down.
I noticed that also, but didn't mention it. Even though every e-mail had an IP address link, all the links were unique, but the content on the resulting pages was identical.
I got a bunch of those e-card emails several weeks ago. Knowing how my Ubuntu box is configured, I went ahead to see how the exploit works. The link is a very sparce page indicating a video download that will start automatically. If it doesn't, click here. The exploit uses both a script and social engineering. Firefox didn't start an automatic download on Ubuntu, so for grins I clicked the link. I was asked where I wanted to save e-card.exe. This exploit page was common to many e-mails indicating cards from my mother, relative, etc. I thought it interesting there was no information passed to load any kind of customized card like a real e-card. Also highly suspicious is the link was an IP address, not a URL. That move alone gets past filtered DNS services and a hosts file.
By the way, the download in Ubuntu asking where to save it has a cancel button. I didn't download it to get a filesize. Sorry.
I know I am not sending any extra data as part of this bot simply because my network switch sits right under my monitor. There is no unusual traffic here. I think everyone should be constantly monitoring their network traffic.
Maybe MS and Ubuntu can make a traffic monitor that sits on the desktop by default. I know most people would ignore it thinking it is Limewire or Torrent traffic.
It's great if you are doing that on a Linux machine with a SMB share called c:\. You could keep them busy for hours if you seeded the share properly. Include lots of links to your PayPal account, Bank of America, Barcleys,... the phishing sites..
As enraged as people seem to get about these things, though, nobody actually stops buying.
In reality, those in the know do stop buying. There are enough fake Music CDs out there to poison the pot. WGA stops many from considering Vista. DRM in iTunes is a show-stopper for those who have a Zen or other non-Apple product. (Myself included. My player does not play any DRM content. The package clearly states "Plays MP3 and WMA formats excluding DRM WMA") Between high prices, DRM, and low quality (overcompressed) I simply quit buying CD's altogether. I get better value in movies instead. Public Domain MP3's and freely released MP3's without DRM, I do enjoy. I believe Smashing Pumpkins released some stuff for free on their website without DRM.
SONY / Columbia had the Rootkit. Later SONY Pictures was dumb enough to add additional copy protection to some DVD's. That stopped sales dead right there when one would not rip with AcidRip to put it on the kids Zen Video. As soon as I found the number to call for a replacement, I had them ship me one without extra copy protection. Prior to that, I got an ISO off Bit-Torrent. I still don't buy SONY Pictures movies since that. Now I just heard about their thumb drive.. It is now another nail in the Don't Buy Anything SONY mindset. I am not alone.. Google search for Boycott SONY provides -- Results 1 - 10 of about 1,630,000 for boycott sony. (0.21 seconds)
There are a few who keep buying that stuff, why is why we still have DRM after all these years. If more people rejected DRM in the marketplace, it would be very short lived.
Due to DRM and viruses/malware, I have upgraded to Linux instead of Vista.
Since most Slashdotters have never tried to remove Bittorrent from their favorite distro, I can say first hand that it isn't easy in Ubuntu. I didn't think I needed it as I am on Comcast and mirrors are way faster than any torrent I tried to get a distro.
Trying to remove it led to error messages. Many things in Ubuntu are dependant on Bittorrent for updates.. Removing Bittorrent breaks updates. Thought you would like to know.
I have teenage kids. I was just avoiding the most likely avenue to an expensive RIAA lawsuit by locking down the kids machine. They have done very well with the sneaker-net instead of online peer to peer.
First the links in your sig are very funny. Well done.
Try Here.
Thanks. It's funny, I didn't make it there. I have kids and can't afford a RIAA attack so I am using filtered DNS. Following your link brought up a page somewhat like this.. http://test.scrubit.com/ It showed ThePirateBay as being scrubbed. Maybe later, I'll stuff this into my personal hosts file and try again later but that would be a moot point as the wireing job is long finished and apporved.
and he didn't thats why he charges $1500 and in the grand scheme of things $150 is peanuts compared to your average rewiring a full house scenario, spread that 150 over a year and n jobs and it becomes insignificant especially compared to tools (even if you dont count a book as a tool
Absolutely true. Now look in another vein and apply it to other part time hobby work.. Take Fishing for example. A commercial Salmon gill net operator may be able to justify the regulation book to comply with state fishing regulations. Why should the weekend angler have to pay the same rate for the same book? I don't know if you are a fisherman, but if a salmon or steelhead tag cost the same as now, but the fishing regulations were tied up and hidden in a $150 book, it would put a serious damper on fishing.
Pole and tackle $150, Check. Resident Saltwater Fishing License http://fishhunt.dfw.wa.gov/wdfw/licenses_fees.html $20.26 check Tags and Etc... Unknown. Need to buy the regulations book just to find the season & Limit information and tags required $150.00... %%^$%((&^^)*%^$
You are correct in stating as a business, the cost is a drop in the bucket, but for the weekend warrier wanting to spend Labor Day on the river, It is a serious chunk of change.
" In the light of this kind of copyright abuse and of the PRISM Coalition, a new FUD group set up by scientific publishers to discredit open access, isn't it time to say enough is enough, and demand free access to the research we pay for through our taxes?"
Research is one thing. Rules and regulations you have to follow has taken the same road to being expensive. I needed to do some rewireing and wanted to comply with the National Electrical Code. In the past the book was under $20. Now it is expensive far beyond any publishing costs.
How would you feel if your town took published the standard your were required to follow to legally use the roads, but by the way, the standard drivers manual with the new revisions is now $150
Cost of materials for the job $160 Permit and inspection $192 Cost of the book $159.95 for the 6th edition.
This makes the latest Harry Potter hard bound edition look like a bargain compared to this spiral bound paperback. The price of the book is not in any way related to the publishing cost.
By the way, I passed inspection on first try. I saved paying an electrician $1500.00. I skipped buying the book. I Googled the discussion on the changes proposed to the standard to learn of the changes that I needed to comply.
It's important legally such as needing to know the legal distance you have to stay back from a responding fire truck. It would suck to have to pay $150 for a drivers manual. Why the heck is the NEC, a required standard selling for over $150?
Can anybody justify the reasoning for the overpricing of this book by a full order of magnitude? The price of the regulations should not be 1/3 of the cost of a large rewire job.
4. Vista is a buggy, expensive POS. It will become the OS of 90% of personal computers within five years anyway.
Actualy I don't hold that against them as an anti-trust point. The projection of 90% is maybe a little optomistic. Vista is driving Apple, Ubuntu, and even XP as alternatives to the OS with bugs.
My dad bought a Mac. I upgraded 4 older machines of mine to Ubuntu. My wife got a Vista Laptop for her Masters classes. I found out the hard way in the first day some of the bugs. It started simply. "Honey, please transfer my documents from the old machine and set up printing to use our LAN printers."
The Vista machine was unable to log into any SMB share requiring a password... 3 hours of internet searching later and one regestry edit later, that was fixed. Files transferred. My printers on the LAN use stand alone hardware printservers providing IPP printing. Everything from Windows 95-XP and all the Linux and Mac's connect fine. (older windows needed IPP drivers) Linux uses IPP with CUPS by default. Vista mangles the printer set up pages so bad renaming everything it took another 2 hours to properly configure printing. (It's called network printing. The port name on the print server has to be entered elsewhere and it's called printer name, not port.) IPP://192.168.1.101/lp1 becomes address 192.168.1.101 and on another page the port lp1 is entered in a field marked Printer Name. Very intuitive. My first attempt at setting up my first Linux box on the Windows only LAN back then took a total of 30 minutes instead of the 5 hours Vista took.
What you've quoted is the EULA for Internet Explorer.
Are you implying Internet Explorer is somehow some kind of external application and not part of the core operating system? Somehow in some anti-trust court case, MS declared otherwise. The EULA for IE is the EULA for Windows because they are one and the same. Just ask Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
If the international data plan charges $24 per 20MB, and they got a bill for $4800, that means the 3 phones, while turned off, downloaded a total of around 4GB. WTF?
Storm Botnet e-mail.
at a guess it takes feed from a GPS and squirts it off in SMS at a pre-set time interval,
d mmyy,x.x,a*hh
Many lie dormant until the vehicle is started. Then they transmit only as the location changes. Some are programmed to remain silent until the car is shut off to hide the radio signal, then they transmit the trip log when the car is shut down. In that mode the cell phone module won't cause strange noise in the radio or cause glitches in the engine computer while driving.
If you call it, most likely you will only get a modem for data retreival and re-programming parameters, or a silent audio monitor mode. The data may go out sms or batch mode, but the phone sometimes can still be called to monitor audio in real time. It all depends on the programming and what mode is used. Magnetic bumper ones have limited battery life so they rarely transmit constantly and live audio while driving is useless. They typicaly monitor their position and send a burst indicating they are on the move and then transmit the trip when they stop. For real time tracking for a bust, they can be called for real time persuit. This is used in abduction cases where the stop locations indicate something other than a short local trip.
At the end of the day you have a full log of all the trips paths and the location of every stoplight, customer, and gas station visited. The trip data contains time stamps including position and speed. Look up NEMA data for the information contained in a GPS data string. Data strings are updated every second while the position changes.
NEMA is the National Electronics Manufacturers' Association, the group that defines (among other things) levels of waterproofness for conduit fittings and wiring boxes.
NMEA is the National Marine Electronics Association, who many years ago defined a set of signals and messages for marine instrumentation, including anemometers, automatic chartplotters, and satellite navigation receivers. NMEA 0183 is that standard.
http://www.nmea.org/pub/0183/
http://www.kh-gps.de/nmea-faq.htm
Part of the data may contain the RMC string. It contains;
$GPRMC,hhmmss.ss,A,llll.ll,a,yyyyy.yy,a,x.x,x.x,d
RMC = Recommended Minimum Specific GPS/TRANSIT Data
1 = UTC of position fix
2 = Data status (V=navigation receiver warning)
3 = Latitude of fix
4 = N or S
5 = Longitude of fix
6 = E or W
7 = Speed over ground in knots
8 = Track made good in degrees True
9 = UT date
10 = Magnetic variation degrees (Easterly var. subtracts from true course)
11 = E or W
12 = Checksum
I predict the sudden rise of on-screen keypads, operated via the mouse.
Nope, the rise of live CD's and thumb drives.
Trimble make GPS devices designed to be used indoors; it wouldn't have mattered where in the car the antenna was placed it still would have gotten enough signal for a reasonable lock.
Spoken by someone who has never used GPS.. Do some research on S/N ratio. A high gain antenna does wonders, but still does not pull in a signal where there is 100% attenuation.
Google is "finally succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar"
The dollar is quite the temptress and very deceitful. Following the money has led many to the path of destruction. The record companies have tried to collude and through artificial scarcity kept CD prices way above reasonable. Sales have fallen as a result of completion even though i Pod sales skyrocket.
Google has command of the advertising market. If they follow the temptress and try to follow the money, then Google will become just another search engine.
It would be sad to see Google become another ad-laden site with no special attraction to the users. Is Google stupid enough to ditch tons of eyeballs to get a slightly higher price per ad?
Others are ditching the overburdening pages and imitating Google's success. Most of these pages now don't load their page with banner advertisements anymore and for good reason. They lost major market share to Google because of it. They have modeled Google.
http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.dogpile.com/
http://www.live.com/?searchonly=true&mkt=en-US
http://search.yahoo.com/
http://www.hotbot.com/
If Google gets tempted by the money, they may find themselves quickly in the company of almost dead search engines that they stomped. They know how the other search engines dropped to obscurity. Why are they even interested in putting on that well known way to the bottom of the search engines.
a man being investigated by the police found tracking devices in two of his cars, ripped them out,
The article was very sparse regarding what problem he had with the cars that led to the discovery. I will take a speculation stab at this. Cell phones are well known for causing RFI problems with poorly shielded electronics doing everything from causing keyboards on PC's to lock-up to putting a buzz into radio and stereo gear.
The location of the device was on the passenger side footwell. This would place it close to the engine computer in many cars. It may be an easy to install location for the police and the GPS antenna can be located under the dashboard giving a good location for GPS reception through the plastic dash and windscreen, but the cell transmitter in that location could and probably did cause problems with both the stereo and engine computer. As he stated, it was a botched installation that led to the discovery. A proper install would have located the cell transmitter in the trunk away from sensitive electronics to transmit out the rear window. The car ran poorly, but it was probably the teltale radio noise that geve it away. Removing it fixed both the radio and engine computer.
This interference issue is why most magnet mount tracking devices are mounted on the rear of the car away from the engine compartment. Inside the plastic rear bumper on a metal bracket is a favorite location. there is little chance of interference revealing it's presence, and good GPS and cell signals.
"He's running for it! He's heading for Texas! Stop him!"
From Google Maps;
"We could not calculate driving directions between New Zealand and Dallas Texas."
Maybe Mapquest could do better..
The SIM card is a nice bonus... hack it to change content of the message (make it send fake data), put it in a old throwaway mobile phone and let it do its work.
I like that idea. NMEA data is easy to capture from almost any hand-held GPS. Playing back that data later would be great. The only give-away would the the real-time clock info. It could take a while to ignore the location information and notice the time stamp is wrong. Transmitting the prior day travel information of a buddy could mess with them. Spend a day riding the city bus with a handheld, Capture the track and replay it. Fun.
Or even better, put each of them into separate packages, mail one to China and one to America.
Would love to see the police phone bill after that ^_^
--
If the device is not subscribed to roaming service, it could be a waste of postage.
I think it would be much more fun to wrap the GPS antenna in foil so it can't give the location. Then put it in a backpack and spend a few hours shopping near police parking and impound lots. Unwrap the antenna for a few minutes at each location before catching the city bus. Do this only when a large crowd is there.
Cell tower triangulation is not near as accurate as GPS location and requires bugging the cell company for location information. That would introduce delays. After you are done with that, take it to the local post office and buy a parcel box and send it to a bad address cross country. They may be able to locate the post office where you dropped it off, but they would have a very hard time finding the right package. In most places the post office will not let the police rummage through the mail room. Be sure not to use your name on the return address. Wait for it to be returned to shipper, also to a bad address. Hopefully by that time the batteries will die and they lose the package.
If the police leave something in your car like that, do you now legally own them? If a burglar breaks into your house and leaves his jacket, I'm pretty sure he can't ask for it back. If the police did not obtain a warrant, it seems like an analogous situation. I'm not sure what the rules are if the cops did obtain a warrant.
;-). He did come to ask for it back. We had a nice discussion on television interference causes and cures. I did return the wallet.
Funny you should mention that. Whan I lived in an apartment, I had a shortwave antenna on my balcony handrail. I heard a noise outside and peeked out the window with the lights off. Sure enough, someone was dis-connecting the antenna. I turned on the outside light and they beat it out of there. I stepped out to re-connect the antenna and picked up his wallet.
just having an up to date virus scanner check .exe files before execution stops storm entirely
Firefox on Ubuntu also does a nice job out of the box and does not require a credit card for a subscription. Even better, it's free. So are the updates.
is there a way to test or check that people who might be part of the bot net how to see if they have it?
Shut down your e-mail, filesharing, VOIP, chat, and automatic update software, then check the lights on your network switch. If it is busy, it is time to find out what process is using your connection.
rather than gong on about what it is doing, how about we spread the word on how to stop it one computer at a time.
Already doing that. I just gave a copy of Linux on a live CD to my boss. This was after chatting up the cost of Vista + MS office. The cost to install it on several machines at home for desk, laptop, kids machines, etc is substatial. Try this, it comes with a free office suite, photo editor, etc. By the way, by default new users are given user accounts, not administrator accounts. This may be my 4 convert in the last 2 months.
With the right program, any FW device plugged into your system can suck out the plaintext RAM contents (including your keys), install and run rootkits without even touching the disk, etc.
I guess I needed to be more specific than this statememt.
I prefer encrypted external storage which uses a non-standard filesystem.
To be more specific, hardware based encrypted NAS appliance, not a general purpose PC.
Not only is it lacking a firewire port, but has no place to install one.
http://www.simpletech.com/commercial/simpleshare/
The old version of firmware supports drive encryption. The newer version dropped encryption and has a fancy drop and sort media directory instead.
Several forums have discussed removing the internal drive to read them on a Linux PC, but was unable to mount the filesystem.
The only ports on this box is a power jack, USB ports, and an ethernet connection.
Don't buy a computer with a Firewire port
I prefer encrypted external storage which uses a non-standard filesystem.
My NAS uses an encrypted reiser FS. The filesystem is non-standard. Users have removed the internal HD and attempted to mount it in a Linux PC, but the PC could not find the partition table.
Even if they can mount the drive, without the encryption key, it will take them quite a while to crack the key to the encrypted volume. This is not a connect and copy drive.
Also, all the ip addresses i did a lookup on, resolved to a dynamic host address so it looks like the infected machines are distributing the storm files themselfs to new victims with no central distributing server to shut down.
I noticed that also, but didn't mention it. Even though every e-mail had an IP address link, all the links were unique, but the content on the resulting pages was identical.
I got a bunch of those e-card emails several weeks ago. Knowing how my Ubuntu box is configured, I went ahead to see how the exploit works. The link is a very sparce page indicating a video download that will start automatically. If it doesn't, click here. The exploit uses both a script and social engineering. Firefox didn't start an automatic download on Ubuntu, so for grins I clicked the link. I was asked where I wanted to save e-card.exe. This exploit page was common to many e-mails indicating cards from my mother, relative, etc. I thought it interesting there was no information passed to load any kind of customized card like a real e-card. Also highly suspicious is the link was an IP address, not a URL. That move alone gets past filtered DNS services and a hosts file.
By the way, the download in Ubuntu asking where to save it has a cancel button. I didn't download it to get a filesize. Sorry.
I know I am not sending any extra data as part of this bot simply because my network switch sits right under my monitor. There is no unusual traffic here. I think everyone should be constantly monitoring their network traffic.
Maybe MS and Ubuntu can make a traffic monitor that sits on the desktop by default. I know most people would ignore it thinking it is Limewire or Torrent traffic.
Both are owned by Sourceforge, Inc. (Formerly VA Linux, then OSDN, now Sourceforge). This is nothing but a cheap way to earn more pageviews.
Do you think Microsoft would like to post it on MSN to get more pageviews?
Thank You very much. I'll be here all week.
c:\credit-info.goatse.cx.jpg
... the phishing sites..
Get's em every time.
It's great if you are doing that on a Linux machine with a SMB share called c:\. You could keep them busy for hours if you seeded the share properly. Include lots of links to your PayPal account, Bank of America, Barcleys,
As enraged as people seem to get about these things, though, nobody actually stops buying.
9 0_0_2_0_C
In reality, those in the know do stop buying. There are enough fake Music CDs out there to poison the pot. WGA stops many from considering Vista. DRM in iTunes is a show-stopper for those who have a Zen or other non-Apple product. (Myself included. My player does not play any DRM content. The package clearly states "Plays MP3 and WMA formats excluding DRM WMA") Between high prices, DRM, and low quality (overcompressed) I simply quit buying CD's altogether. I get better value in movies instead. Public Domain MP3's and freely released MP3's without DRM, I do enjoy. I believe Smashing Pumpkins released some stuff for free on their website without DRM.
The band's last album was 2000's "Machina II: The Friends And Enemies Of Modern Music", which was released as a free internet download. More news as we get it.
http://www.side-line.com/news_comments.php?id=139
SONY / Columbia had the Rootkit. Later SONY Pictures was dumb enough to add additional copy protection to some DVD's. That stopped sales dead right there when one would not rip with AcidRip to put it on the kids Zen Video. As soon as I found the number to call for a replacement, I had them ship me one without extra copy protection. Prior to that, I got an ISO off Bit-Torrent. I still don't buy SONY Pictures movies since that. Now I just heard about their thumb drive.. It is now another nail in the Don't Buy Anything SONY mindset. I am not alone..
Google search for Boycott SONY provides -- Results 1 - 10 of about 1,630,000 for boycott sony. (0.21 seconds)
There are a few who keep buying that stuff, why is why we still have DRM after all these years. If more people rejected DRM in the marketplace, it would be very short lived.
Due to DRM and viruses/malware, I have upgraded to Linux instead of Vista.
Most linux distros are available this way
Since most Slashdotters have never tried to remove Bittorrent from their favorite distro, I can say first hand that it isn't easy in Ubuntu. I didn't think I needed it as I am on Comcast and mirrors are way faster than any torrent I tried to get a distro.
Trying to remove it led to error messages. Many things in Ubuntu are dependant on Bittorrent for updates.. Removing Bittorrent breaks updates. Thought you would like to know.
I have teenage kids. I was just avoiding the most likely avenue to an expensive RIAA lawsuit by locking down the kids machine. They have done very well with the sneaker-net instead of online peer to peer.
First the links in your sig are very funny. Well done.
Try Here.
Thanks. It's funny, I didn't make it there. I have kids and can't afford a RIAA attack so I am using filtered DNS. Following your link brought up a page somewhat like this..
http://test.scrubit.com/ It showed ThePirateBay as being scrubbed. Maybe later, I'll stuff this into my personal hosts file and try again later but that would be a moot point as the wireing job is long finished and apporved.
The link is safe for work.
and he didn't thats why he charges $1500 and in the grand scheme of things $150 is peanuts compared to your average rewiring a full house scenario, spread that 150 over a year and n jobs and it becomes insignificant especially compared to tools (even if you dont count a book as a tool
Absolutely true. Now look in another vein and apply it to other part time hobby work.. Take Fishing for example. A commercial Salmon gill net operator may be able to justify the regulation book to comply with state fishing regulations. Why should the weekend angler have to pay the same rate for the same book? I don't know if you are a fisherman, but if a salmon or steelhead tag cost the same as now, but the fishing regulations were tied up and hidden in a $150 book, it would put a serious damper on fishing.
Pole and tackle $150, Check.
Resident Saltwater Fishing License http://fishhunt.dfw.wa.gov/wdfw/licenses_fees.htm
Tags and Etc... Unknown. Need to buy the regulations book just to find the season & Limit information and tags required $150.00... %%^$%((&^^)*%^$
You are correct in stating as a business, the cost is a drop in the bucket, but for the weekend warrier wanting to spend Labor Day on the river, It is a serious chunk of change.
" In the light of this kind of copyright abuse and of the PRISM Coalition, a new FUD group set up by scientific publishers to discredit open access, isn't it time to say enough is enough, and demand free access to the research we pay for through our taxes?"
? CMP=KNC-Google
Research is one thing. Rules and regulations you have to follow has taken the same road to being expensive. I needed to do some rewireing and wanted to comply with the National Electrical Code. In the past the book was under $20. Now it is expensive far beyond any publishing costs.
How would you feel if your town took published the standard your were required to follow to legally use the roads, but by the way, the standard drivers manual with the new revisions is now $150
http://www.constructionbook.com/electrical-codes/
http://www.constructionbook.com/nec-code-2005/
Cost of materials for the job $160
Permit and inspection $192
Cost of the book $159.95 for the 6th edition.
This makes the latest Harry Potter hard bound edition look like a bargain compared to this spiral bound paperback. The price of the book is not in any way related to the publishing cost.
By the way, I passed inspection on first try. I saved paying an electrician $1500.00. I skipped buying the book. I Googled the discussion on the changes proposed to the standard to learn of the changes that I needed to comply.
It's important legally such as needing to know the legal distance you have to stay back from a responding fire truck. It would suck to have to pay $150 for a drivers manual. Why the heck is the NEC, a required standard selling for over $150?
Can anybody justify the reasoning for the overpricing of this book by a full order of magnitude? The price of the regulations should not be 1/3 of the cost of a large rewire job.
4. Vista is a buggy, expensive POS. It will become the OS of 90% of personal computers within five years anyway.
Actualy I don't hold that against them as an anti-trust point. The projection of 90% is maybe a little optomistic. Vista is driving Apple, Ubuntu, and even XP as alternatives to the OS with bugs.
My dad bought a Mac. I upgraded 4 older machines of mine to Ubuntu. My wife got a Vista Laptop for her Masters classes. I found out the hard way in the first day some of the bugs. It started simply. "Honey, please transfer my documents from the old machine and set up printing to use our LAN printers."
The Vista machine was unable to log into any SMB share requiring a password... 3 hours of internet searching later and one regestry edit later, that was fixed. Files transferred. My printers on the LAN use stand alone hardware printservers providing IPP printing. Everything from Windows 95-XP and all the Linux and Mac's connect fine. (older windows needed IPP drivers) Linux uses IPP with CUPS by default. Vista mangles the printer set up pages so bad renaming everything it took another 2 hours to properly configure printing. (It's called network printing. The port name on the print server has to be entered elsewhere and it's called printer name, not port.) IPP://192.168.1.101/lp1 becomes address 192.168.1.101 and on another page the port lp1 is entered in a field marked Printer Name. Very intuitive. My first attempt at setting up my first Linux box on the Windows only LAN back then took a total of 30 minutes instead of the 5 hours Vista took.
What you've quoted is the EULA for Internet Explorer.
Are you implying Internet Explorer is somehow some kind of external application and not part of the core operating system? Somehow in some anti-trust court case, MS declared otherwise. The EULA for IE is the EULA for Windows because they are one and the same. Just ask Microsoft.