It is well established that the US helped Iraq develop biological weapons
back in the 80's when they were being treated as allies, including the shipment
of anthrax. A quick search on Google turns up many reports of this. Here are
but two:
You are both arrogant and ignorant to presume that ENVY is the motive behind terrorist attacks against the US.
The US has a history of interference in foreign affairs that should not concern them. While generally touted as acting on behalf of "freedom" or some such noble goal, the cause is invariably economic and nothing more, and many good causes have been ignored because no economic gain was to be had.
It is no surprise that some countries resent the interference of uninvited, self-interested bullies. If you make it a policy to shove people around to get what you want, you should not act so self-rightiously when someone shoves you back.
instead of trying to keep them out. Why is it that Yanks never address the reasons WHY you are so hated in so many places? Or the irony of where people like Bin Laden got their training, anthrax, etc.
You tried prohibition, it didn't work. You waged a "War on Drugs" that didn't work. Now you are waging a "War on Terrorism". Even if it WAS something more than a thinly veiled excuse to protect the price you pay for gas it would still likely fail because you are treating the SYMPTOMS and not the CAUSE. And here's a lttle CLUE for you - adopting a strike-first, unilateral foreign policy is not going to make you safer. It will breed more resentment, hatred and suicidal zealots.
It's no surprise to me that relatively few corporate desktops are running XP. You have to activate every copy! Yes, a few volume license keys were leaked that will get you a non-expiring illicit installation of XP but you can't apply certain updates (such as SP1) with them.
Compare that to Windows 98, 98SE, Me and 2000 where nothing stops you from borrowing a CD and installing it on every desktop in your organization with the same CD Key.
I've wrestled with drive imaging/cloning issue many times on Unix, Linux,
BSD
and Windows platforms. A few observations:
A lot of people recommend dd but in my experience dd alone has has three drawbacks:
1) It is ridiculously slow. Perhaps due to using character devices instead
of buffered?
2) It is of no use for resizing partitions when copying to a larger drive.
3) Making a drive bootable (correctly copying boot sectors) with dd is tricky.
A lot of people recommend Norton Ghost. I used Ghost to backup my notebook
to a network drive until the day I tried to restore the image. Ghost insisted
that my hard drive was too small to restore the image onto - the same hard
drive that had been imaged in the first place. I never trusted Ghost again
after that.
I've had fairly good success with PowerQuest products. Partition Magic is
an indispensable tool for manipulating partitions, and Drive Image in conjunction
with a network boot floppy (or CD) is a nice tool for copying a
partition image
to
a network drive. The biggest problem with PowerQuest products is that they
are artificially crippled to not work with Server editions of Windows.
BootIt NG is very nice and inexpensive but has a few options that could bite
you if you're not careful. I was able to use it to clone a Windows 2000 Server
installation onto a new box (with NTFS resizing), but unfortunately the resulting
system would blue screen when booting despite very little difference in hardware.
I attribute this to pickiness with Windows rather than a problem with BootIt
NG. (So much for Plug 'N Play).
There are also hardware solutions for copying/cloning drives. I have had
very good experiences with such devices. They are extremely fast and can
do dynamic resizing but tend to be a bit pricey.
Looking back at the number and severity
of vulnerabilities exposed in the past 18 months or so (across many platforms)
I
am becoming increasingly pessimistic about the effectiveness of preventative
measures. The rate at which I need to be patching/updating software to plug
the holes has become simply unmanageable. Meanwhile, crackers have access to
increasingly
effective tools like the new Nmap with version detection.
I'm beginning to
question whether the amount of time I spend on prevention would
be better spent simply preparing for rapid recovery/response in the event of
getting hit.
I'm leaning toward reliance on packet filtering at the network edge (ingress
AND egress) while treating the internal machines hard drives as disposable
devices. How about some information on tools for imaging entire system drives?
Rapid recovery
methods? Forensics? What works well? What doesn't?
I want more than just a
user's guide. I want a repair manual for when things don't go as planned.
As open relays become increasingly rare spammers are looking to infect your computer with a virus or trojan and have YOU send their spam. You are authorized to send e-mail to whoever you want through your ISP's mail server, right? The success of spammers in taking out anti-spam sites lately by DoS attacks shows how sucessful they already are at getting other people's computers to do their bidding.
It's trivial to forge the source address of packets. You can even talk to remote computers this way if you can predict their ISN's and you don't care that replies won't get routed back to you. SMTP is a simple enough protocol that spammers could assume what the replies are and thus send mail from a faked address, something like...
Connect to port 25
(Assume response was a ready message)
helo somename
(Assume some response)
mail from fake@domain.com
(Assume response is "Sender ok")
rcpt to: somebody@somewhere.com
(Assume response is "Recipient ok")...
So it seems the problem would just be changed to "are your sequence numbers predictable enough for a spammer to fake a TCP handshake on port 25"?
By coincidence I received a (legitimate) domain renewal notice from Verisign today. Instead of renewing with Verisign I am transferring my domain to a new registrar.
Verisign-ing off.
I find blank spots in web pages preferable to deceptive ads. Given the sheer volume of garbage progagated by a small number of sources, entries like the following in you hosts file are surprisingly effective:
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.ca.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.de.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.es.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.fr.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.it.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.jp.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.kr.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.nl.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.no.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.se.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.uk.doubleclick.net
Slashdot Mirror
meatspace? I'd vote to eradicate a word like THAT.
In Outlook Express 6.0 you can cripple these so-called "web beacons" as follows:
Click on Tools, Options, Read. Place a checkmark beside "Read all messages in plain text".
It is well established that the US helped Iraq develop biological weapons back in the 80's when they were being treated as allies, including the shipment of anthrax. A quick search on Google turns up many reports of this. Here are but two:
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/ussuppliedgerms. html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38 87.htm
You are both arrogant and ignorant to presume that ENVY is the motive behind terrorist attacks against the US.
The US has a history of interference in foreign affairs that should not concern them. While generally touted as acting on behalf of "freedom" or some such noble goal, the cause is invariably economic and nothing more, and many good causes have been ignored because no economic gain was to be had.
It is no surprise that some countries resent the interference of uninvited, self-interested bullies. If you make it a policy to shove people around to get what you want, you should not act so self-rightiously when someone shoves you back.
instead of trying to keep them out. Why is it that Yanks never address the reasons WHY you are so hated in so many places? Or the irony of where people like Bin Laden got their training, anthrax, etc.
You tried prohibition, it didn't work. You waged a "War on Drugs" that didn't work. Now you are waging a "War on Terrorism". Even if it WAS something more than a thinly veiled excuse to protect the price you pay for gas it would still likely fail because you are treating the SYMPTOMS and not the CAUSE. And here's a lttle CLUE for you - adopting a strike-first, unilateral foreign policy is not going to make you safer. It will breed more resentment, hatred and suicidal zealots.
It's no surprise to me that relatively few corporate desktops are running XP. You have to activate every copy! Yes, a few volume license keys were leaked that will get you a non-expiring illicit installation of XP but you can't apply certain updates (such as SP1) with them.
Compare that to Windows 98, 98SE, Me and 2000 where nothing stops you from borrowing a CD and installing it on every desktop in your organization with the same CD Key.
by the same geniuses who decided that file extensions should be hidden by default in Windows Explorer. Microsoft's design philosophy seems include:
1) Don't let the ignorant users see entire filenames / URLs - it will only confuse them.
2) Obscure things to give a false impression of simplicity.
3) Don't worry that users won't know the true nature of things they are clicking on. Bad guys won't figure this out and abuse it.
I've wrestled with drive imaging/cloning issue many times on Unix, Linux, BSD and Windows platforms. A few observations:
A lot of people recommend dd but in my experience dd alone has has three drawbacks:
1) It is ridiculously slow. Perhaps due to using character devices instead of buffered?
2) It is of no use for resizing partitions when copying to a larger drive.
3) Making a drive bootable (correctly copying boot sectors) with dd is tricky.
A lot of people recommend Norton Ghost. I used Ghost to backup my notebook to a network drive until the day I tried to restore the image. Ghost insisted that my hard drive was too small to restore the image onto - the same hard drive that had been imaged in the first place. I never trusted Ghost again after that.
I've had fairly good success with PowerQuest products. Partition Magic is an indispensable tool for manipulating partitions, and Drive Image in conjunction with a network boot floppy (or CD) is a nice tool for copying a partition image to a network drive. The biggest problem with PowerQuest products is that they are artificially crippled to not work with Server editions of Windows.
BootIt NG is very nice and inexpensive but has a few options that could bite you if you're not careful. I was able to use it to clone a Windows 2000 Server installation onto a new box (with NTFS resizing), but unfortunately the resulting system would blue screen when booting despite very little difference in hardware. I attribute this to pickiness with Windows rather than a problem with BootIt NG. (So much for Plug 'N Play).
There are also hardware solutions for copying/cloning drives. I have had very good experiences with such devices. They are extremely fast and can do dynamic resizing but tend to be a bit pricey.
The Storage Tank may have finally arrived, but according to this article it falls rather short of what IBM claimed it was going to be.
is tantamount to wishful thinking.
Looking back at the number and severity of vulnerabilities exposed in the past 18 months or so (across many platforms) I am becoming increasingly pessimistic about the effectiveness of preventative measures. The rate at which I need to be patching/updating software to plug the holes has become simply unmanageable. Meanwhile, crackers have access to increasingly effective tools like the new Nmap with version detection.
I'm beginning to question whether the amount of time I spend on prevention would be better spent simply preparing for rapid recovery/response in the event of getting hit. I'm leaning toward reliance on packet filtering at the network edge (ingress AND egress) while treating the internal machines hard drives as disposable devices. How about some information on tools for imaging entire system drives? Rapid recovery methods? Forensics? What works well? What doesn't?
I want more than just a user's guide. I want a repair manual for when things don't go as planned.
As open relays become increasingly rare spammers are looking to infect your computer with a virus or trojan and have YOU send their spam. You are authorized to send e-mail to whoever you want through your ISP's mail server, right? The success of spammers in taking out anti-spam sites lately by DoS attacks shows how sucessful they already are at getting other people's computers to do their bidding.
It's trivial to forge the source address of packets. You can even talk to remote computers this way if you can predict their ISN's and you don't care that replies won't get routed back to you. SMTP is a simple enough protocol that spammers could assume what the replies are and thus send mail from a faked address, something like... Connect to port 25 (Assume response was a ready message) helo somename (Assume some response) mail from fake@domain.com (Assume response is "Sender ok") rcpt to: somebody@somewhere.com (Assume response is "Recipient ok") ...
So it seems the problem would just be changed to "are your sequence numbers predictable enough for a spammer to fake a TCP handshake on port 25"?
it caused the program to crash. In many cases Trillian could not even start until automatic login to Yahoo! was edited out of an ini file.
I had a look at that response to ICANN. What the hell is a "FASILMILE"?
By coincidence I received a (legitimate) domain renewal notice from Verisign today. Instead of renewing with Verisign I am transferring my domain to a new registrar. Verisign-ing off.
I find blank spots in web pages preferable to deceptive ads. Given the sheer volume of garbage progagated by a small number of sources, entries like the following in you hosts file are surprisingly effective: 127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.ca.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.de.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.es.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.fr.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.it.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.jp.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.kr.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.nl.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.no.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.se.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ad.uk.doubleclick.net