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 …
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 …
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 …
There's been another disturbing development pertaining to the Forth Amendment recently, in that laptop computers may be seized for inspection without a warrant. This isn't the first time this has been in the news, but now a couple of precedents have been set in court, which is doubly worrisome; this was from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (United States v. Ziegler), and upholds statements in employment contracts that state that you have no privacy whatsoever if you're at work and using their equipment, and most of the time you don't have any privacy if you're using your own equipment …
It wasn't an Earth-shattering kaboom, but it was China using a ballistic missile to take out one of its old satelites in orbit around the planet. The decommissioned weather satellite was orbiting at an altitude of 535 miles above the Earth, and thus made a perfect test target. This was, it is said the first successful knockout of an orbitting satellite in over twenty years. The rest of the world sat up and took notice when the Chinese government confirmed their intelligence reports because satellite constellations are critical to the infrastructure of the twenty-first century, and are involved in everything …
This Saturday past, the Pentagon took a major leap sideways when it had to distance itself from one of its senior officials, one Charles "Cully" Stimson. Stimson went on the record during a radio interview as saying that US companies should boycott legal firms that employ lawyers who represent Guantanamo Bay detainees that are US citizens. He then went on to recite a list of a dozen legal firms that should be boycotted. When last I checked, if you were a US citizen you had the right to legal representation under the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Lieutenant …
New and interesting developments in the field of neuroprosthetics! Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are culturing living data cables by stretching nerves! Because nerves do not mix well with nonorganic structures unless they are coated with organic compounds and practically grown there, the most ideal way of growing nerves is to take a section of viable nerve tissue, culture it in a growth medium, and slowly stretch the section of nerve. The idea is that the neurons are stretched away from one another, so the neuronal bodies and axons will lengthen to fill the space. Interestingly, nerves will stretch …
We lost another fish sometime today. Sidhe, the betta that used to live in the library, had taken ill late last week, swimming in an irregular manner (or should I say corkscrewing through the water crazily) and ignoring his food. This happened a couple of months ago with Ghost, who used to live in a bowl on my workbench in the office. This weekend he took to floating upright in the water, as if standing straight up on the tip of his tail. He still wasn't eating by the time I left for work this morning.
