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Evidence gathered by Microsoft, the FBI, and the Secret Service on the worldwide attacks made against the computers running the Windows operating system fits the profile of 'terrorist activity.'Industry sources citing Mirosoft officials told World Tribune.com that the recent attacks from the 'Blaster' worm and its variants, coupled with an email virus called 'SoBig-F' show signs of a coordinated attack by an entity wanting to disrupt world commerce.Microsoft is cooperating with both the FBI and the Secret Service and will report their findings in the next few days.While at present no terrorist organizations have claimed responsibility for these attacks in...

THE NATIONAL SECURITY Agency, the government's security arm, along with help from Network Associates, last week announced it has made a security-enhanced version of Linux available for download. The NSA said it realizes that operating system security is necessary and that mainstream operating systems often lack critical security features that could enforce the confidentiality and integrity of network communications. Dubbed Security-Enhanced (SE) Linux, the NSA's version allows programs to have only the slimmest security permissions to run. SE Linux has a strong, yet flexible, access control architecture incorporated into the kernel to foil tampering and bypassing of security mechanisms. The...

1) MSFT knows it put out flawed software. 2) MSFT knows that a hostile hacker could take malicious advantage of the flaws. 3) MSFT knows that no one has been downloading the patches they've been sending out. 4) MSFT sends out a relatively benign worm that does not destroy data, but gets users to update their machines. 5) MSFT deflects suspicion by putting a "Billy" message in the worm, and intimates that the real weapon will be directed at MSFT on Saturday. 5a) MSFT doesn't direct the worm at old versions of Windows because they don't care about them any...

After weeks of defending itself against charges of bad programming and lax security, Diebold Election Systems is facing an independent, third-party audit of the software for its touch-screen voting machines. Maryland Gov. Robert L. Erhlich Jr. ordered the review after researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University released a report (PDF) last month revealing numerous programming flaws and security vulnerabilities in the source code for Diebold's AccuVote-TS voting machines.

All, Here a scoop to Freepers which is just now hitting us security pro's. There is a first vulnerability that uses the MS Bug that MS addressed with MS 03-026 two weeks ago. It is calling itself MSBLAST.exe and is spreading in the wild unbelievably fast. http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?date=2003-08-11 A first advisory from McAffee has just been published: http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/defa...&virus_k=100547 Once it finds a vulnerable system, it will spawn a shell on port 4444 and use it to download the actual worm via tftp. The exploit itself is very close to 'dcom.c' and so far appears to use the "universal Win2k" offset only....

Another conspirator gets his blood money. A couple months ago it was Al Gore getting appointed to the board of directors of Apple Computer -- not because he invented the Internet, but as payola for crucifying Apple's competitor Microsoft on a cross of antitrust. This time it's Eric R. Dinallo, a legal pitbull in New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer's office, who's getting a big executive job with Morgan Stanley -- one of the investment banks that he helped Spitzer plunder in his Wall Street stock research jihad. Gretchen Morgenson reports on this in the New York Times without...

I (author) went shopping for a cheap printer, and the first machine that waggled its cartridges at me was the Apollo P-2200. I stared open-mouthed at the price tag: $10. I was tempted. That $10 price tag translated to $40 with a $30 mail-in rebate. But still, 10 bucks! I wanted that printer. I wanted a house full, a different printer for every day of the week. The clerk caught me drooling in the aisle and talked trash to me. He told me that people were coming back after a few months and buying another one. The printer comes loaded...

Is it cool to just seal this thing off with Duct Tape or would black electrical tape be more hip? How about hitting it with a hammer, just a tap... will that help? The CD/CDR drive is continually opening and closing by itself. I tried running a maintenance program on it but it's freezing up and ridiculously slow. I've checked to see if the manual button for the CD/CDR drive is stuck and it's okay. I also checked the eject button on the keyboard. Any chance that this is a virus? Should I take a photo in hopes that George...

My computer, which had been running Windows 98 SE, recently developed a problem which left the hard disk unable to boot into Windows. I have created a startup disk which does at least allow me to get to a command line prompt. I have done countless CD and DIR commands, but am unable to find my .WAB (address book) or .MBX (mailbox) files. Any help would be appreciated. Part of the problem, of course, is that the directory names are truncated. Is there a DOS-based "file search" tool that I could use, that would let me find the files? Thanks.

An intermediate appellate court in Waco has upheld the felony child pornography conviction and seven-year prison sentence of a former Baylor University professor. Waco's 10th Court of Appeals overruled Bruce Watson's appeal on Wednesday, determining that he didn't have permission to appeal after his guilty plea and rejecting his assertion that the statute under which he was convicted is unconstitutional. Watson, 44, a non-tenured French professor who had been with Baylor 12 years, was indicted in September 2000 on 10 counts of possession of child pornography. University officials discovered hundreds of images of nude children and children engaged in sex...

Meet the latest spaced out modern artist - a picture-drawing robot arm in Australia whose brain sits in a petri dish in the US.Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, American and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings: "the semi-living artist". Gripping three coloured markers positioned above a white canvas, a robotic arm churns out drawings akin to that of a three-year-old. Its guidance comes from around 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish 19,000 kilometres away. The "brain" lives at Dr Steve Potter's lab at Georgia's Institute...

My Windows 98 system has a bad hard disk. However, I can get to a command line prompt on that system via a boot diskette I have created. I need to copy off a file that is larger than 1.44 mb. But of course neither COPY nor XCOPY support multiple destination diskettes. I have looked at the utility RAR but it seems pretty hard to understand. So, here is what I need: - a program that works in the command line environment that copies (compression would be great too) a file to multiple diskettes - a corresponding program that uncompresses...

I am getting the dreaded "operating system not found." I have backup, but still would like a recommendation for a data recovery service, if anyone has used one. Thanks.

Why Male Leaders Cannot Have a Female Secretary?Sichuan Province in southwest China has recently formulated a new regulation forbidding male leaders to employ female secretaries, which has sparked heated discussions in various newspapers. An article in Nanfang Metropolitan Daily says the new regulation has significant meaning and can be taken as a reference by other local governments. The author of the article believes there are a few disadvantages of male leaders and female secretaries working together. In today's China, quite a few corruption cases are blamed to have been connected with female secretaries who've won the favour of their...

Re-defining the desktop paradigm By Adamson Rust: Friday 18 July 2003, 08:02 THERE'S A FUN interview with the Apple hierarchy over at Digital Video Editing. After telling interviewee Charlie White all about Mac OSX and the G5, they're challenged about the statement that Apple has released the "first 64-bit desktop". Charlie makes the Apple marketeers splutter when he mentions that BOXX shipped a dual processor 64-bit desktop on June 4th. At first they try and tough it out, but then try and redefine the meaning of desktop. Nor do the Apple folk seem aware that the Opteron is a 64-bit...

<p>Microsoft Corp. acknowledged a critical vulnerability Wednesday in nearly all versions of its flagship Windows operating system software, the first such design flaw to affect its latest Windows Server 2003 software.</p> <p>Microsoft said the vulnerability could allow hackers to seize control of a victim's Windows computer over the Internet, stealing data, deleting files or eavesdropping on e-mails. The company urged customers to immediately apply a free software repairing patch available from Microsoft's Web site.</p>

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean man angry with his daughter's Web surfing faced possible charges on Monday after he threw a computer monitor out of his 12th-floor apartment, hitting a four-year-old girl below on the head, police said. A police official said the man, 49-year-old Park Yong-ju, had got angry when he returned to his flat in Seoul on Saturday. His 20-year-old daughter was playing an online computer game and failed to greet him, as Korean custom requires. When she declined to let him join the game, he grabbed the monitor and flung it through the balcony window, the...

Microsoft is considering paying its shareholders a special dividend of more than $10bn to reduce its $46bn cash pile. Shareholders would receive the dividend in a one payment of "significantly more than $10bn" or spread over three or four quarters, according to a person close to the discussions. The dividend, which would be the largest corporate pay-out ever, is one of a number options Microsoft is looking at, the FT's sister paper, Les Echos, has learned. The other options include a buyback, acquisitions and higher ordinary dividends. A decision is expected by the end of the year. The software giant...

We've seen some bizarre PC case modifications in our time, but this one takes the cake. One Russ Caslis has build a PC into the Millennium Falcon. Yes, Han Solo's famous smuggling vessel - 'You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?' 'Should I have?' 'It's the ship the made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs...' - now comes equipped with 7GB of hard disk storage, USB ports, PS/2 ports, network adaptor, 800MHz Via C3 processor, 256MB of 133MHz SDRAM memory and the works. Alas there's no CD or floppy, but who needs diskettes when you're outrunning Imperial cruisers?...

Empty jargon is put to the sword by new program Political speeches and corporate reports may never be the same again. A computer program that sifts the bull from business jargon and exposes politicians' empty rhetoric has been developed by management consultants. Called Bullfighter, the jargon buster was developed by Deloitte Consulting after it noticed that Enron's documents became more indecipherable as it slid further towards bankruptcy. Brian Fugere, a partner at Deloitte Consulting, said the firm came up with Bullfighter because "we've had it with repurposable, value-added knowledge capital and robust, leveragable mindshare". In testing Bullfighter, Mr Fugere said,...