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A TSG investigation unmasks the leader of Pranknet and the miscreants behind a year-long wave of phone call criminality AUGUST 4--At 4:15 AM on a recent Tuesday, on a quiet, darkened street in Windsor, Ontario, a man was wrapping up another long day tormenting and terrorizing strangers on the telephone. Working from a sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment in a ramshackle building a block from the Detroit River, the man, nicknamed "Dex", heads a network of so-called pranksters who have spent more than a year engaged in an orgy of criminal activity--vandalism, threats, harassment, impersonation, hacking, and other assorted felonies and...

A Briton wanted in the United States for breaking into NASA and Pentagon networks in "the biggest military hack of all time" lost an appeal against his extradition Friday, making a U.S. trial more likely. Gary McKinnon, 43, has fought a three-year battle to avoid extradition, including going to the European Court of Human Rights, but he appeared to have run out of options as Britain's High Court ruled against his latest appeal Friday. The court rejected arguments by McKinnon's lawyers that extraditing McKinnon, who was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, would have disastrous consequences for...

New Version Reflects Lowered Price on Mac Notebook NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks. In the new version of the ad, Lauren doesn't talk about how much the Mac costs, but she does say: 'It seems like you're paying a lot for the brand.' 'Greatest single phone call' Just last week Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner was ecstatic about a phone call from Apple lawyers, who demanded that Microsoft stop showing...

I came in nn it appears a harddrive was failing. Jumped in the car to take it to the computer guy. I should have a solid backup to restore plus I had a new 80 gig HD in a box.

Note: The following text is a quote: Federal Grand Jury Returns Indictment on Internet Bomb Threats Hammond, IN—The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana announced that a three-count indictment was returned against Ashton Lundeby for his role in Internet bomb and related threats directed to Purdue University, Indiana University/Purdue University at Fort Wayne, Ind., and numerous other educational institutions throughout the country. Lundeby, 16, of Oxford, N.C., was arrested by the FBI at his home in Oxford on March 6, 2009. A federal search warrant was also executed at that time. Lundeby was arrested pursuant to a...

The doctrine of karma states that one's state in this life is a result of actions (both physical and mental) in past incarnations, and action in this life can determine one's destiny in future incarnations. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Karmic Koala, the newest member of our alliterative menagerie. Mark Shuttleworth introduces Ubuntu 9.10-Karmic Koala! A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the API’s of Amazon EC2, and making it...

"Cybersecurity Plan to Involve NSA, Telecoms DHS Officials Debating The Privacy Implications" SNIPPET: "The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials. President Obama said in May that government efforts to protect computer systems from attack would not involve "monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic," and Department of Homeland Security officials say the new program will scrutinize only data going to or from government systems."

Officials accused Aleynikov of stealing codes that are used for sophisticated automated stock and commodities trading.

Microsoft on Monday warned of a vulnerability in its Video ActiveX Control that could allow an attacker to take control of a PC if the user visits a malicious Web site. There have been limited attacks exploiting the hole, which affects Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Microsoft said on its Security Response Center blog. This is the second DirectShow security hole Microsoft has announced in the past few months. The company has yet to provide a security update for a vulnerability announced in May that involves the way DirectX handles QuickTime files. Since there are no by-design uses for...

15 Must-Have Web Apps for Students June 28, 2009 in Tips and Tools Welcome! If this is your first time here, you may want to subscribe to get updates in your RSS feed reader. Thanks for visiting! This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer. For more from Karen, check out her blog about Online College Courses, or follow her on Twitter. College students are increasingly reliant on computers – and, for many of us, that means spending tons of money software that we’d rather not use anyway. The reality, though, is that there are a ton of great, free...

This an unrestricted tout of an "incredible" printer. It's a Brother HL-2140 monochrome-only, but there are a few other brands like this. Monochrome only, laser printer, the cartridges are REALLY cheap, and they have significant life. The cart that comes with the printer is good for 1000 pages. The replacement ones are 1500 pages. Tired of having to refill or rebuy ink-jet printer cartridges, especially since 98% of my printing is just monochrome anyway. This little dude was SIXTY BUCKS at Fry's, including the cartridge. It's USB-only (no parallel input) That may have SOME impact on one's ability (in Windows)...

I've got two kids (12 and 10) and we are moving about 800 miles away from their friends. They want to be able to stay in touch so I am thinking about letting them have email addresses BUT with conditions. Is there a safe way to allow kids this age to surf the web and email? I just looked at my gmail spam box and I'm having second thoughts. What are your suggestions? Spam filters? Web filters? Is there a way to only allow access to specified incoming email and specified web sites? I'll take all the help I can...

A recent computer intrusion that forced the FBI to shut down its computer network and disrupted FBI operations was traced to an e-mail containing malicious code that originated in China, according to FBI officials. The forced shutdown of the network affected one significant FBI operation -- the May 20 arrest of homegrown terrorism suspects in New York, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. "The Chinese shut down our network," said one FBI official familiar with assessments of the attack.

The FTC pulled the plug on the Cutwail botnet by shutting down Internet Service Provider Pricewert LLC when the agency filed a complaint Thursday alleging that it actively and knowingly participated in the distribution of child pornography, spam and malware. Security experts say that the Cutwait botnet was one of the most notorious botnets, accounting for up to 35 percent of global spam levels in May, security experts said. The FTC issued a complaint accusing the San Jose-based Pricewert, also known as 3FN and APS Telecom, of actively recruiting and colluding with criminals that sought to distribute illegal and malicious...

Imagine a world in which all cars are like the Toyota Prius: four-door midsize hybrids. Sure, they aren’t bad cars, you can paint them any way you want and even modify some parts, but in the end you still just have a generic Toyota with a funky paint job.That’s the world of personal computing today. It doesn’t matter if you’re running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. Your machine is almost certainly using Intel chips at its core and almost everything else is fairly generic—even the world’s greatest case mod with water-cooled dual-Xeons and quad-SLI graphics is just a really fast...

May 13th, 2009 China's 'secure' OS Kylin - a threat to U.S offensive cyber capabilities? Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 6:23 am Categories: Browsers, Complex Attacks, Governments, Hackers, Kernel-level Exploits... Tags: China, Operating System, Operating Systems, Linux, Software... Picture a cyber warfare arms race where the participating countries have spent years of building offensive cyber warfare capabilities by exploiting the monoculture on one another’s IT infrastructure. Suddenly, one of the countries starts migrating to a hardened operating system of its own, and by integrating it on systems managing the critical infrastructure it successfully undermines the offensive cyber warfare capabilities developed...

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Rochester, NY (OBBeC) - Researchers have reported new revelations on how the body responds to flu. According to the report, scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have for the first time -- with the use of a computer simulation -- successfully tested a major portion of the body's immune reaction to influenza type A, with implications for treatment design and preparation ahead of future pandemics. The work has been accepted for publication, and posted online, by the Journal of Virology. The new "global" flu model is built out of preexisting, smaller-scale models that capture in mathematical equations millions...

Recently we were approached by a source who is closely connected to Apple’s hardware development team. The source was willing to provide detailed information on the specs and release date of the next generation iPhone. We have checked the source’s credentials to the best of our ability and at this point deem the source as reputable. Of course we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the source’s claims since Apple will neither confirm nor deny any future product releases, including if a new phone will even be released! Many of the specifics proposed by our source have been discussed in recent...

"Jihad Recollections - Issue # 2 In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Ever Merciful Al-Fursan Media Productions Presents Jihad Recollections / Issue no. 2 SNIPPET: "[ Obamaturk: The Secular Phenomenon ]" SNIPPET: "Your brothers in Al-Fursan Media Productions May 2009 / Jumada al-Awwal 1430H" SNIPPET: "73 Pages DATE ADDED 05/16/2009" DOCUMENT DETAILS - QUOTE: http://www.scribd.com/docinfo/15508071?access_key=key-p4jtwgkqbgc51b1xpos SNIPPET: "Document Details for Jihad Recollections - Issue # 2 Metadata Title Jihad Recollections - Issue # 2 Description In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Ever Merciful Al-Fursan Media Productions Presents Jihad Recollections / Issue no. 2 [ Obamaturk:...