You can't make something immune to malware, because nobody can be sure that Common Sense 2009 XTREEM EDITION is installed on the user.
But you can be sure to cut down on the automatic propagation. Automatic propagation of badware on OSX and Linux is nearly nonexistent. This is because every single file coming in off the wire is not an executable. That must be set by the user or retreived by unpacking the file. Windows, by contrast, considers anything with the correct three letters at the end of a file name as executable. Add to that Windows' dubious feature of hiding filename extensions and you've got one of the biggest reasons for Windows being a security disaster.
The other way Windows badware gets around is that Windows users are trained from the start to find "free" software randomly on the 'net instead of from trusted and signed repositories. The best they can hope for is the likes of Tucows and C|net's download.com, both of which are laughably bad and have become impossible to navigate due to web2.0 faggotry. So they click on every single "free wallpaper" "free shadow cursors" and "free antivirus, you're infected!" page they come across. This leads to everything from purple gorillas to extortion schemes.
And then we get to the pile of shit that is ActiveX and Internet Explorer which has given us the term "drive-by infection." Clicking on a url in a Google search should not be a game of Russian roulette, but in Windows, it is.
It sounds funny, I know, But it really is so, Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa. I'm my own grandpa. It sounds funny, I know, But it really is so, Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three, I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be. This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red. My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed.
This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life, My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father's wife. To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy, I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.
My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad, And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad. For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother Of the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother.
Father's wife then had a son who kept him on the run, And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son. My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue, Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.
Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild, And everytime I think of it, it nearly drives me wild, For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!
I'm my own grandpa. I'm my own grandpa. It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so, Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
... then institute impenetrable whips-and-chains bondage style copy protection. Immediately.
It can be done. I dare you guys. I dare Ballmer to crank up the WGA and OGA knobs to 11 as he promised.
End software piracy once and for all. DO IT!
I want to see what would happen if everyone suddenly switched to legitimate software overnight. No more will companies be able to use software piracy to distort the market and shut out competitors.
Let's see what Bill Gates thought of copyright infringement:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." - Bill Gates 1998
When you've only got 33,000 atoms decaying per second, it's well below the threshold of being able to power something. The Americium isn't even powering anything. It's there to trigger an SCR latch powered by a 9v battery.
This is something far different. I don't feel like doing the math, but scaling this up to 50 watts to power a laptop is going to require more oomph than what's in a gamma ray smoke detector.
I got modded "funny" for proposing a scenario where a guy contaminates everything he touches because he disassembled one of these types of battery.
They found traces of Po210 *everywhere* in the case of Litvinenko, even on the plane the assassin flew in. The assassin was trained in how to handle Po210 so he wouldn't kill himself yet he left traces of Po210 all the way from Moscow.
I know there are Po210 based anti-static brushes that professional photographers use. These are sealed, and your typical mouthbreather isn't likely to buy one or even know it exists.
These researchers would like to see these in consumer level devices and don't expect someone to take one of these apart? Naive at best. Get out of the flippin' lab once in a while, guys.
Which isn't all that much better with other kinds of batteries.
It's one thing to clean up after someone drilled a hole in a Lithium battery and had it flame up.
It's another to decontaminate the livingroom, car, Starbucks counter the guy stopped at for his coffee, etc, because he got liquid radioactive semiconductor on his fingers and wiped it on his pants.
It's yours. If you cause interference because you modified the firmware to get more than 1/4 wat, and you wind up interfering with licensed spectrum, Linksys isn't going to be on the hook. You are.
There is no law against modifying electronics.
Even if you didn't modify the router, if it was interfering with licensed spectrum, it's your repsonsibility to shut it off.
The responsibility does not lie with the manufacturer. It lies with the operator.
Microsoft is getting more like the old Xerox and IBM every day.
Xerox PARC: Create industry changing new technology that we hear about but never see. Never release. IBM of the 1980's: Fat, lethargic, bureaucracy driven. Microsoft right now: Both.
searching people thoroughly enough to detect the card
Avi: Tony. Bullet Tooth Tony: What? Avi: Look in the dog. Bullet Tooth Tony: What do you mean "look in the dog?" Avi: I mean open him up. Bullet Tooth Tony: It's not as if it's a tin of baked beans! What do you mean "open him up"?
It's the prosecution's job to prove consipiracy, not the defendant's to prove it wasn't.
Furthermore, conspiracy is between two or more people *who agree to break a law* Title 18 United States Code (U.S.C.) Section 371. I only see one here. The law also states "and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy." Where is the planning with another person? Where is the follow through on any of it? Where is the cake? Where is the mens rea?
I also see a violation of free speech should he be prosecuted for discussing what might happen.
Captain Koons: The way your dad looked at it, this iPod was your birthright. He'd be damned if any US Border agents gonna put their greasy hands on his boy's birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this iPod up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the iPod. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the iPod to you.
To charge someone on break and enter you need to have adequately protected the house. This generally means a locked door. The US gov I hear had default passwords which is an unlocked door, no special tools are needed. If a moderately smart 10yr old can get in I wouldn't call that adequate protection for something on the internet. This guy should be getting 1000$ charges tops. not 1000x that.
Computer tresspass laws do not use lack of security as a mitigating factor when it comes to break-ins. None of them do. Not the Federal one, not the state where I live (Rhode Island), not Minnesota, not Florida, none.
There could be a banner that says "Authorized Users Only" and an "honor system" login without passwords. If you are an unauthorized user, you are unauthorized, whether there is a "lock" (password) or not. If you're going to snoop *GOVERNMENT* computers, you'd better know what you're getting into before you do it. You take your chances and you pay the price. And you do not whine about it.
If you don't like it, then get the law changed. But until then, people like Gary are not absolved of anything because an administrator forgot to secure a single machine or a thousand machines.
So when is some federal prosecutor going to jail this guy for RICO? Eh?
"When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet," Jason Crawford, a spokesman for the group, said in a news release.
If you're "in charge" of an organization that does these kinds of things, then you should be in jail.
Epilogue In the time since this paper was published, some people have treated the 35-pass overwrite technique described in it more as a kind of voodoo incantation to banish evil spirits than the result of a technical analysis of drive encoding techniques. As a result, they advocate applying the voodoo to PRML and EPRML drives even though it will have no more effect than a simple scrubbing with random data. In fact performing the full 35-pass overwrite is pointless for any drive since it targets a blend of scenarios involving all types of (normally-used) encoding technology, which covers everything back to 30+-year-old MFM methods (if you don't understand that statement, re-read the paper). If you're using a drive which uses encoding technology X, you only need to perform the passes specific to X, and you never need to perform all 35 passes. For any modern PRML/EPRML drive, a few passes of random scrubbing is the best you can do. As the paper says, "A good scrubbing with random data will do about as well as can be expected". This was true in 1996, and is still true now.
Looking at this from the other point of view, with the ever-increasing data density on disk platters and a corresponding reduction in feature size and use of exotic techniques to record data on the medium, it's unlikely that anything can be recovered from any recent drive except perhaps a single level via basic error-cancelling techniques. In particular the drives in use at the time that this paper was originally written have mostly fallen out of use, so the methods that applied specifically to the older, lower-density technology don't apply any more. Conversely, with modern high-density drives, even if you've got 10KB of sensitive data on a drive and can't erase it with 100% certainty, the chances of an adversary being able to find the erased traces of that 10KB in 80GB of other erased traces are close to zero.
The other overwrite patterns actually produced results as low as 36.08% (+/- 0.24). Being that the distribution is based on a binomial choice, the chance of guessing the prior value is 50%. That is, if you toss a coin, you have a 50% chance of correctly choosing the value. In many instances, using a MFM to determine the prior value written to the hard drive was less successful than a simple coin toss.
The purpose of this paper was a categorical settlement to the controversy surrounding the misconceptions involving the belief that data can be recovered following a wipe procedure. This study has demonstrated that correctly wiped data cannot reasonably be retrieved even if it is of a small size or found only over small parts of the hard drive. Not even with the use of a MFM or other known methods. The belief that a tool can be developed to retrieve gigabytes or terabytes of information from a wiped drive is in error.
Selectively deciding doesn't matter. Flickr can choose to kick you for any reason. Read your AUP.
Yahoo! and its designees shall have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse, or remove any Content that is available via the Yahoo! Services. Without limiting the foregoing, Yahoo! and its designees shall have the right to remove any Content that violates the TOS or is otherwise objectionable.
See that "otherwise objectionable" there? That means they can delete content at whim.
I thought that Republicans were all about business freedom. Only when it suits them, I guess, right?
Sherrif Joe is afraid of the information on those servers... why? It would be nice to know, wouldn't it? Streisand Effect, anyone?
The county should turn it all over to the FBI for forensic investigation after this. I don't care who you are, unauthorized access to a computer system is a felony in most states and a federal offense, too.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't make something immune to malware, because nobody can be sure that Common Sense 2009 XTREEM EDITION is installed on the user.
But you can be sure to cut down on the automatic propagation. Automatic propagation of badware on OSX and Linux is nearly nonexistent. This is because every single file coming in off the wire is not an executable. That must be set by the user or retreived by unpacking the file. Windows, by contrast, considers anything with the correct three letters at the end of a file name as executable. Add to that Windows' dubious feature of hiding filename extensions and you've got one of the biggest reasons for Windows being a security disaster.
The other way Windows badware gets around is that Windows users are trained from the start to find "free" software randomly on the 'net instead of from trusted and signed repositories. The best they can hope for is the likes of Tucows and C|net's download.com, both of which are laughably bad and have become impossible to navigate due to web2.0 faggotry. So they click on every single "free wallpaper" "free shadow cursors" and "free antivirus, you're infected!" page they come across. This leads to everything from purple gorillas to extortion schemes.
And then we get to the pile of shit that is ActiveX and Internet Explorer which has given us the term "drive-by infection." Clicking on a url in a Google search should not be a game of Russian roulette, but in Windows, it is.
--
BMO
I'm my own grandpaw.
I'm My Own Grandpa
( Lonzo & Oscar )
It sounds funny, I know,
But it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know,
But it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed.
This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life,
My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father's wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.
My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad,
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad.
For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother.
Father's wife then had a son who kept him on the run,
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son.
My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue,
Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.
Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild,
And everytime I think of it, it nearly drives me wild,
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!
I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
... then institute impenetrable whips-and-chains bondage style copy protection. Immediately.
It can be done. I dare you guys. I dare Ballmer to crank up the WGA and OGA knobs to 11 as he promised.
End software piracy once and for all. DO IT!
I want to see what would happen if everyone suddenly switched to legitimate software overnight. No more will companies be able to use software piracy to distort the market and shut out competitors.
Let's see what Bill Gates thought of copyright infringement:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." - Bill Gates 1998
Yeah, wishful thinking on my part, eh?
--
BMO
I read the thread
When you've only got 33,000 atoms decaying per second, it's well below the threshold of being able to power something. The Americium isn't even powering anything. It's there to trigger an SCR latch powered by a 9v battery.
This is something far different. I don't feel like doing the math, but scaling this up to 50 watts to power a laptop is going to require more oomph than what's in a gamma ray smoke detector.
--
BMO
I got modded "funny" for proposing a scenario where a guy contaminates everything he touches because he disassembled one of these types of battery.
They found traces of Po210 *everywhere* in the case of Litvinenko, even on the plane the assassin flew in. The assassin was trained in how to handle Po210 so he wouldn't kill himself yet he left traces of Po210 all the way from Moscow.
I know there are Po210 based anti-static brushes that professional photographers use. These are sealed, and your typical mouthbreather isn't likely to buy one or even know it exists.
These researchers would like to see these in consumer level devices and don't expect someone to take one of these apart? Naive at best. Get out of the flippin' lab once in a while, guys.
--
BMO
Which isn't all that much better with other kinds of batteries.
It's one thing to clean up after someone drilled a hole in a Lithium battery and had it flame up.
It's another to decontaminate the livingroom, car, Starbucks counter the guy stopped at for his coffee, etc, because he got liquid radioactive semiconductor on his fingers and wiped it on his pants.
--
BMO
Everything is safe under "normal conditions"
The problem is that normal people are fucking stupid. Imagine the shitstorm when someone disassembles one of these to "see what's inside."
--
BMO
But that's not their problem.
It's yours. If you cause interference because you modified the firmware to get more than 1/4 wat, and you wind up interfering with licensed spectrum, Linksys isn't going to be on the hook. You are.
There is no law against modifying electronics.
Even if you didn't modify the router, if it was interfering with licensed spectrum, it's your repsonsibility to shut it off.
The responsibility does not lie with the manufacturer. It lies with the operator.
--
BMO
What I was pointing out was what you're jumping down my throat about.
Indeed, didn't I say I was still waiting for Cairo? Yes, I believe I did.
Please take a fuckin' chill pill and say hello to your new status.
Burning karma because I have it to burn.
--
BMO
Imagine what might have happened if this actually got momentum behind it and we never went through the stagnation that is DOS/Windows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation
--
BMO
3 "New Architechture" operating systems.
Microsoft is getting more like the old Xerox and IBM every day.
Xerox PARC: Create industry changing new technology that we hear about but never see. Never release.
IBM of the 1980's: Fat, lethargic, bureaucracy driven.
Microsoft right now: Both.
I'm still waiting for Cairo.
--
BMO
searching people thoroughly enough to detect the card
Avi: Tony.
Bullet Tooth Tony: What?
Avi: Look in the dog.
Bullet Tooth Tony: What do you mean "look in the dog?"
Avi: I mean open him up.
Bullet Tooth Tony: It's not as if it's a tin of baked beans! What do you mean "open him up"?
--
BMO
Good luck trying to tie J.Random Terrorist with a post by an unconnected person on a message board when there is no other "communication."
Loosen the tinfoil, bub.
--
BMO
Where in the post did he say it wasn't?
It's the prosecution's job to prove consipiracy, not the defendant's to prove it wasn't.
Furthermore, conspiracy is between two or more people *who agree to break a law* Title 18 United States Code (U.S.C.) Section 371. I only see one here. The law also states "and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy." Where is the planning with another person? Where is the follow through on any of it? Where is the cake? Where is the mens rea?
I also see a violation of free speech should he be prosecuted for discussing what might happen.
I am not a lawyer but this guy is. http://research.lawyers.com/blogs/archives/629-Federal-Criminal-Conspiracy-Law.html
And obviously I offended someone because I got modded "overrated," a chickenshit move.
Anyone defending baudbarf's claim of conspiracy is a troll trying to chill legitimate free speech.
--
BMO
Hypotheticals aren't conspiracy.
Bad troll. No cookie (or cupcake)
--
BMO
Captain Koons: The way your dad looked at it, this iPod was your birthright. He'd be damned if any US Border agents gonna put their greasy hands on his boy's birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this iPod up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the iPod. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the iPod to you.
Computer tresspass laws do not use lack of security as a mitigating factor when it comes to break-ins. None of them do. Not the Federal one, not the state where I live (Rhode Island), not Minnesota, not Florida, none.
There could be a banner that says "Authorized Users Only" and an "honor system" login without passwords. If you are an unauthorized user, you are unauthorized, whether there is a "lock" (password) or not. If you're going to snoop *GOVERNMENT* computers, you'd better know what you're getting into before you do it. You take your chances and you pay the price. And you do not whine about it.
If you don't like it, then get the law changed. But until then, people like Gary are not absolved of anything because an administrator forgot to secure a single machine or a thousand machines.
--
BMO
So when is some federal prosecutor going to jail this guy for RICO? Eh?
"When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet," Jason Crawford, a spokesman for the group, said in a news release.
If you're "in charge" of an organization that does these kinds of things, then you should be in jail.
Jason Crawford is just another mobster.
--
BMO
A radio signal was detected from the Moon and appears to be aimed at Io.
--
BMO
Who the hell modded this informative?
It's perpetuating a myth.
Even Guttman says that with modern hard disks it's impossible to retrieve data once overwritten.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html
Also:
http://sansforensics.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/overwriting-hard-drive-data/
--
BMO
That goddamn site design.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Over?
--
BMO
Oh dammit, mod that down into the ground for that last sentence. Don't know what the frig I was thinking.
--
BMO
Selectively deciding doesn't matter. Flickr can choose to kick you for any reason. Read your AUP.
See that "otherwise objectionable" there? That means they can delete content at whim.
I thought that Republicans were all about business freedom. Only when it suits them, I guess, right?
--
BMO
You have as much right to political trolling in Flicker as you do standing on a soapbox in your local mall.
You are allowed to troll so long as the management approves.
--
BMO
This just screams coverup.
Sherrif Joe is afraid of the information on those servers ... why? It would be nice to know, wouldn't it? Streisand Effect, anyone?
The county should turn it all over to the FBI for forensic investigation after this. I don't care who you are, unauthorized access to a computer system is a felony in most states and a federal offense, too.