The obituary of a Chicago-area WWII veteran named Theodore Roosevelt Heller requests “in lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans”. Within days, hundreds of people have left comments on his obituary page pledging their support.
Just for fun, I’ve created a Wikipedia entry for “Heller Letter”.
Via Boing Boing:
WEP, the access-control system for WiFi, is notoriously shit. Now Fed computer scientists have shown an attack that can break a WEP key in three minutes. Gabe sez, “Brilliant approach, using a second computer to re-send the same packet back to the router, thus generating more traffic, thus catching more weak packets, etc.”
The FBI team used the deauth feature of void11 to repeatedly disassociate the laptop from the access point. Desired additional traffic was then generated as Windows XP tried to re-associate back to the AP. Note that this is not a particularly stealthy attack, as the laptop user will notice a series of “Wireless Network unavailable” notifications in the taskbar of their desktop screen.
Another attack method the FBI team used is a replay attack. The basic premise of this attack is to capture at least one packet traveling from the victim laptop to victim access point. This packet can then be replayed into the network, causing the target AP to respond and provide more traffic to capture.
Why do computer geeks celebrate Halloween on Christmas?
Because Oct 31 is equal to Dec 25.
Wired News has published that Scientists have successfully modified the AIDS-causing HIV in such a way that it can attack metasticized melanoma (cancer cells). The impact of genetic research on cancer research is in and of itself amazing. To mix this with the strategy of using one strong enemy against another is brilliance! Research will continue, obviously, but they are already reporting success on living creatures.
How it really went down – c/o the New Yorker (by way of JWZ):
“Whut? Whut?” Mr. Leahy shot back.
“Once again,” Mr. Cheney replied (quite obviously quoting a lyric from Ice Cube’s 1990 album, “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted”), “it’s on.”
As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate’s public-address system and cued up the infamous “Seven Minutes of Funk” break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be described as a “take no prisoners” freestyle rap battle.
Most of the rhymes kicked therein cannot be quoted in a family publication, but observers gave Mr. Cheney credit for his deceptively laid-back flow. Mr. Leahy was applauded for managing to rhyme the phrases “unethical for certain,” “crude oil spurtin’,” and “like Halliburton.”
Despite the fact that both participants brought their A-game and succeeded in dropping mad scientifics, the bout seemed to end in a draw.
From Risks Digest #23.19:
A team of organized criminals is installing equipment on legitimate bank ATMs in at least 2 regions to steal both the ATM card number and the PIN. The team sits nearby in a car receiving the information transmitted wirelessly over weekends and evenings from equipment they install on the front of the ATM. If you see an attachment like this, do not use the ATM and report it immediately to the bank using the 800 number or phone on the front of the ATM.
The equipment used to capture your ATM card number and PIN is cleverly disguised to look like normal ATM equipment. A “skimmer” is mounted to the front of the normal ATM card slot that reads the ATM card number and transmits it to the criminals sitting in a nearby car.
At the same time, a wireless camera is disguised to look like a leaflet holder and is mounted in a position to view ATM PIN entries.
The thieves copy the cards and use the PIN numbers to withdraw thousands from many accounts in a very short time directly from the bank ATM.
ATM with theft equipment installed.
Hidden PIN-capture camera installed in leaflet container.
Three members of the SETI@home team will head to Puerto Rico this month to point the Arecibo radio telescope at up to 150 spots identified as the source of possible signals from intelligent civilizations.
Read the press release, help out and install the software.
B3TA has picked the Top 10 Best Flash movies ever. I pretty much agree with every selection, except for #10.
DNS Bajaj – a DNS query and display tool.
Want a baby but also want to avoid missing the Super Bowl? Check out the Birth and Labor Conflict Catcher.
I’ve always been fascinated by symbols, especially hobo marks. From this we now have “wibo marks” which mark areas with free wireless Internet access.
Ran into a strange problem today. A week-old XP box that could log in to a domain yesterday suddenly couldn’t today. We were getting an error box that said:
Windows cannot connect to the domain either because the domain controller is down or otherwise unavailable or because your computer account was not found.
It winds up that that XP tries to cryptographically sign Netlogon sessions, which the servers do not like. The work around according to JSI FAQ is:
1. Use Control Panel to open Local Security Policy in the Administrative Tools.
2. Navigate to Local Policies / Security Options.
3. Double-click Domain Member:Digitally encrypt or sign secure channel data (always).
4. Press Disabled.
5. Press Apply and OK.
I had to also do the old “change to ‘login to workgroup’ and then back to ‘login to domain'” trick. After a reboot it worked fine.
Just FYI…
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