Hackers behind the rootkit responsible for crippling Windows machines after users installed a Microsoft security patch have updated their malware so that it no longer crashes systems, researchers confirmed today.
See also: "FIRE, Detroit, GOP, Microsoft."
The fffffine people at fffff.at conjure up one of the most useful media-analysis tools since the I/O/D’s Webstalker: Ctrl+F’d. The NYT, ctrl-f’d:
Feature request:
New electricity meters being rolled out to millions of homes and businesses are riddled with security bugs that could bring down the power grid [...]. The so-called smart meters for the first time provide two-way communications between electricity users and the power plants that serve them. Prodded by billions of dollars from President Obama’s economic stimulus package, utilities in Seattle, Houston, Miami, and elsewhere are racing to install them as part of a plan to make the power grid more efficient. Their counterparts throughout Europe are also spending heavily on the new technology. There’s just one problem: The newfangled meters needed to make the smart grid work are built on buggy software that’s easily hacked, said Mike Davis, a senior security consultant for IOActive. The vast majority of them use no encryption and ask for no authentication before carrying out sensitive functions such as running software updates and severing customers from the power grid.
Fifty-five years ago:
[McKimson/Pierce (Daffy Duck / Porky Pig), “Design for Leaving” (1954) @ 6:06]
Avsim maintainer quoted by the Beeb:
“Some have asked whether or not we had back-ups. Yes, we dutifully backed up our servers every day. Unfortunately, we backed up the servers between our two servers. The hacker took out both servers, destroying our ability to use one or the other back-up to remedy the situation.”
The [exercise for the reader] is left as an exercise for the reader.
(risks)
WiReD says Brazillians are using “high-performance antennas and homebrew gear to turn U.S. Navy satellites into their personal CB radios.” <cane-wave>Not like the good old days when equating something with CD radio meant it was boring.</cane-wave>
David McLeish at Square Root of Minus G*rf**ld:
(“But... but... you just can’t do that.” “Oh yes you can.”)
(aag@s-t)
Google Operating System writes:
Google Spreadsheets added an option in the sharing dialog that allows anyone to view or edit the spreadsheet just by knowing the URL. Until now, you had to send an invitation URL that contained a secret code and the people you invited had to login using a Google account. If you click on the Share tab and enable “Anyone can edit this document WITHOUT LOGGING IN”, your spreadsheet becomes a wiki that can be edited by anyone.
A spreadsheet anyone can edit? Seems like the very idea of a “spreadsheet” is antithetical to all things wiki. But it’s hard to think these things through, because statements like that end up in a wilderness of tautologies and strawmen pretty quickly (what’s the authority for all things wiki—Wikipedia?). So, for the sake of argument, let’s stay on the “consensus” side of the fence.
I hacked together two versions of a command-line gizmo (see below) that grabs Google definitions and butchers the results into a wordlist (x≥5 characters, y≥2 occurrences) sorted by frequency. And, indeed, they speak of very different worlds:
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