Hell with it...

Wednesday 25 October 2006 at 10:29 pm Jeffrey Skilling, former president of Enron, was sentenced to 24 years in Club Fed for his role in the Enron scandal.

Famous sci-fi authors tell stories in six words or less.

The Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey has voted to recognise same-sex marriages.
More under the cut...

Malware infestations can be bad, but this takes the taco.

Wednesday 25 October 2006 at 10:25 pm I was wrong, things can get more weird. Malware researcher Joe Stewart has been working on a new infective agent called SpamThru, and discovered some very unusual things about it: It goes to incredible lengths to ensure that it is the only infection on the machine in question, namely, it downloads and installs a pirated copy of Kaspersky Antivirus, hacks it so that it doesn't check for a valid license key, and scans the infected machine to get rid of every other piece of malware that isn't SpamThru. Control of zombied machines is done with a peer-to-peer protocol that can replace the central server in case it is ever discovered and shut down.

Counterpane Internet Security acquired!

Wednesday 25 October 2006 at 10:24 pm British Telecom has purchased Counterpane Internet Security for an undisclosed amount.

Is nothing sacred?

Wednesday 25 October 2006 at 10:23 pm Counterfit Cisco hardware??

Confiscation of laptops entering the United States.

Wednesday 25 October 2006 at 10:17 pm Just when you thought travelling by air couldn't get any more harrowing, along comes confiscation of laptop computers when re-entering the United States. Some are never seen again; from anecdotal evidence, the hard drives are imaged for analysis. US Customs has the authority to detain people carrying portable computers and confiscate the hardware without giving a good reason, or any reason at all, for that matter. The matter of what, exactly, happens to proprietary information contained therein (encrypted or not) is still up in the air. The standard advice here is to encrypt any sensitive data, but if the folks looking over your laptop are reasonably intelligent, they'll put two and two together and demand that you turn over your keys and passphrases so they can examine the data. This is already law in the UK, and at some point the US is going to do the same thing if they can.
More under the cut...

Flattened by the first cold of the year.

Wednesday 25 October 2006 at 10:15 pm Last night, I got home from work around 1730 EST/EDT. Lyssa worked from home on Tuesday, so she had dinner, one of her Indian cuisine experiments, waiting as I arrived. By 1745 we were done with dinner and in bed to nap because both of us were utterly worn out (Lyssa from working on a project Monday night, myself from going on an adventure with Butterfly on Monday night, as mentioned earlier). We finally woke up again around 2030 EST/EDT, much more rested and feeling better. Lyssa, unfortunately, is coming down with the first cold of the fall, and is still feeling under the weather.