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Re: Pentagon discovers Assasination Politics, deadpools
by Major Variola (ret) 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

Re: Pentagon pulls their AP plans.. It was simply too obviously free feedback (marketing data) for their domestic PSYOPs people. Now they'll have to go back to interpreting CNN (etc) polls to find out which way the sheeple are stampeding.

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RE: Someone at the Pentagon read Shockwave Rider over the weekend
by Trei, Peter 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

> Tim May[SMTP:timcmay@got.net] > > > On Tuesday, July 29, 2003, at 09:26 AM, Bill Stewart wrote: > > > Also, NYT Article was > > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29TERR.html?th > > > > But it sounds like they've chickened out, because various people > > freaked > > about the implications. (And they only got as far as it being > > "an incentive to commit terrorism", without getting to > > "a funding method for terrorism" or to "Assassination Politics".) > > > > > > Not to mention the obvious problems with letting government agents bid > on things like when various unwanted foreign leaders would be > assassinated. > Over on Dave Farber's IP list, it's been pointed out that there is a pre-existing, live, real-money market in futures on these types of events. Go over to www.tradesports.com, and click on 'Current Events' under 'Trading Catagories' on the left. Drill down and you'll find things like 'WMDs will be found in Iraq on or before Sept 31', the value of which has dropped from 80 to 25 over the last few months. Peter Trei

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RE: Dead Body Theatre
by Rayburn, Russell E. 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

While not arguing the specifics of the socioeconomic situation in India, remember that per capita income is only half the equation. Cost of living is the other half of the equation. Within the U.S., cost of living varies widely between cities. See: http://www.bestplaces.net/html/cost_of_living.html For examples. -----Original Message----- From: Mike Rosing [mailto:eresrch@eskimo.com] <snip> Out of a population of 900 million (or so) that's definitly the wings of the bell curve. The "poverty line" in the US is twice the middle class income of India. That's pretty stunning. </snip> <snip> In the US, anyone below $20,000/yr income is "poor". According to that, 90% of India is "dirt poor"!! </snip>

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Bids on Wolfwitz's assassination
by Tim May 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

http://www.pentagon-terror-market/employees.com WOLFOWITZ, PAUL: ODDS FOR ASSASSINATION BY 2003-11-15: 7:3 ODDS FOR NECKLACING OF HIS FAMILY MEMBERS BY 2004-02-15: 12:2 ODDS THAT NEXT PENTAGON BLAST WILL TAKE HIM OUT BY 2003-10-05: 7:1 I guess now that the Pentagon is setting up a murder pool it can't be illegal for us to do it. --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.

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Dead Body Theatre
by Eric Cordian 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

I just noticed all news channels on the boob tube are showing endless repetitions of what the US alleges are the dead bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons. We all know how easy it is to make realistic fake pictures now that everything is digital, so I was thinking what a cool hack it would be to Photoshop some similar pictures of the Bush daughters, and post them on the Internet for everyone to enjoy. Now that the new standard for pre-emptive war is to murder the legitimate leader of another sovereign nation and his entire family, an "artist's rendering" of Shrub reaping what he sows would surely be an excellent political statement. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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RE: GPS blackbox tracking
by Trei, Peter 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

> Harmon Seaver[SMTP:hseaver@cybershamanix.com] wrote: > > Before this, AFAIK, we only had to worry about getting a GPS > transmitting > device planted on our vehicles, which would be bulky enough to spot fairly > easily by anyone checking out the cars underside, etc. Here's one that > doesn't > transmit, just records where you go, and that info can be retrieved later > ala > bluetooth from 30 feet away. > > http://www.blackboxgps.com > > Harmon Seaver > Of course, if you have one of the newer 'enhanced 911' cellphones, you've done their work for them. Peter

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GPS blackbox tracking
by Harmon Seaver 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

Before this, AFAIK, we only had to worry about getting a GPS transmitting device planted on our vehicles, which would be bulky enough to spot fairly easily by anyone checking out the cars underside, etc. Here's one that doesn't transmit, just records where you go, and that info can be retrieved later ala bluetooth from 30 feet away. http://www.blackboxgps.com -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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Random numbers hit and miss: Maths pinpoints cause for faulty computer simulations. (fwd)
by Jim Choate 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

http://www.nature.com/nsu/030728/030728-1.html -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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[eff-austin] Nonprofit Hackers Who Broke Windows (fwd)
by Jim Choate 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 04:46:34 +0000 Subject: [eff-austin] Nonprofit Hackers Who Broke Windows The Hackers Who Broke Windows By SecurityFocus Posted: 25/07/2003 at 07:48 GMT The Last Stage of Delirium, the hacking group that laid open nearly every version of the Windows operating system last week, could use a little sleep, writes Deborah Radcliff of SecurityFocus. Since going public with the RPC buffer overflow bug that some are describing as the worst Windows security hole in history, the group has been caught in a media frenzy. The hubbub has been just as bad as when, in April, 2001, LSD broke Argus Systems' PitBull security software in a contest for $50,000 in cash. (After the media glare faded, the team was stiffed for $43,000 of the prize money.) Then, as now, the work and its media aftermath kept them up at night when they'd rather be home with their families, said Tomasz Ostwald, one of the four founders of LSD, during a phone interview at 9:00 at night, Poland time. "This has been going on for three weeks. We had to work all weekend, even Sunday," he said with his thick Polish accent. "We're still taking at least two media calls a day." Delirium was dreamed up in 1996 by four security engineers who'd just graduated the master's of computer science program at Poznan University of Technology in Western Poland. Now all between the age of 27 and 28, they manage the security infrastructure for an academic and scientific supercomputing center in the university town of Poznan, where they all live. They also do security engineering consulting and penetration testing for other clients. By night, they crack software. Their day jobs are not to be confused with the work they do with LSD, says Ostwald. And even though they liken themselves to other hacking groups such as the Cult of the Dead Cow, don't call the LSD members hackers: They'd like you to call them security engineers instead. But in the truest sense, these engineers are indeed hackers. What's different between their non-profit group and a number of earlier code cracking groups is the way they conduct themselves. Along with their technical skills, these researchers possess unusual business and media savvy, say their peers. "The LSD team always seems to find problems in critical core technologies," says Chris Wysopal, director of research and development for @stake, Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., which also does vulnerability testing on software applications. "They handle themselves professionally with the technology community and are able to span the cultural and language barriers between Poland and the U.S." The LSD's research is also impeccable (for example, a 50-page paper that exposed implementation vulnerabilities of Java) -- far better than anything produced by the l0pht, the hacking group that grew up to become @stake, Wysopal adds. Exploit Controversy But LSD hasn't completely escaped criticism. In March, the group put itself at the center of a controversy when it released exploit code for a Sendmail vulnerability discovered by Internet Security Systems. "As a security vendor, we don't think it's good business to post exploit code because it enables bad guys to break into systems," says Chris Rouland, vice president of ISS's X-Force team in Atlanta. Ostwald says the group decided to release the Sendmail exploit code because ISS was overstating the threat posed by the bug. "When a threat is overestimated, it makes it hard to perform appropriate risk management. So we put the exploit code out for testing and proved that the threat was not as serious as the vendors claimed," Ostwald says. Off the record, at least one security company now criticizes LSD for not posting exploit code for the Windows RPC bug. "How do you prove the bug without the code?" the source said. But because the bug affects so many of the Windows operating systems, releasing the exploit code would not have given IT managers enough time to patch, counters Ostwald. Wysopal agrees. "If [they] released the code to the Windows buffer overflow attack too soon, we'd have another SQL Slammer on our hands," says Wysopal. Besides, people are already developing the exploit code anyway, says Tim Mullen, CIO of AnchorIS.Com, and a SecurityFocus columnist. And Rouland says ISS had developed exploit code four hours after news of the bug was released to the public. When they're not trapped between the proverbial rock and hard place of releasing or not releasing exploit code, LSD members are generally praised -- even by ISS -- for the way they conduct themselves professionally. The group now enjoys even-handed relationships with vendors. That wasn't always the case, says Ostwald. "In the past two years, we've observed improvements in the way software and anti-virus vendors respond to our findings." Delirium contacted Microsoft's security response center through its Secure(a)Microsoft.com address on June 27, says Stephen Toulouse, security program manager for Microsoft's response center. "From our standpoint, the entire process with them [LSD] was completely professional. And we appreciate them not posting the exploit code to give our customers a fair chance to install the patch," Toulouse says. If there's one niggling problem with the group's image, it's their name. Ostwald says he can't remember how they came up with "The Last Stage of Delirium." "But lately," he says. "We've been thinking we should change it." http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/31957.html _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail

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Shot in the Dark
by R. A. Hettinga 28 Jul '03

28 Jul '03

We talked about this stuff here several years ago. Now, like everything else, Moore's "law" and wirelessness have had their effects on things... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/print_version/prototype0703.asp> Wireless sensors listen for gunfire. (Photo courtesy of Proxity Digital Networks) Shot in the Dark If a gun goes off in an abandoned junkyard, does anyone hear it? The police do, at least in the handful of U.S. cities equipped with gunshot detection sensors, which listen for weapons' acoustical signatures and clock the arrival of sound waves to triangulate their origin. But these sensors must be plugged into telephone lines, meaning they can't be installed in out-of-the-way places, and a separate detector is needed every 300 to 400 meters to produce accurate results. Now New Orleans, LA-based Proxity Digital Networks is testing battery-powered detectors that can be clamped onto trees and poles and that communicate wirelessly with communications towers up to five kilometers away. The Tulsa County, OK, sheriff's department is testing the system, which transmits information on the location of gunfire to officers on patrol. It can even identify specific types of weapons, which helps police "dispatch a more effective response team specific to the situation," says Tulsa County ! sheriff Stanley Glanz. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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