Support from studios has been widely cited as the reason for Blu-ray's victory, but few consumers know that the studios were likely won over by the presence of a digital lock on movies called BD+, a far more sophisticated and resilient digital rights management, or DRM, system than that offered by HD DVD.

This is very interesting.

How Crypto Won the DVD War | Threat Level from Wired.com

bucy wrote:

Pakistan Telecom then made an error by announcing that dummy route to its own telecommunications partner, PCCW, based in Hong Kong, shortly before noon New York time on Sunday, according to Renesys.

PCCW then made a second error, accepting that dummy route for YouTube and relaying it to other Internet providers around the world.

Except that everyone makes this "error." No one dutifully filters routes they accept from peers. The core point here is that anyone with a BGP feed can take anyone else out pretty much whenever.

RE: Pakistan Cuts Access to YouTube Worldwide - New York Times

President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems.

Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring - washingtonpost.com

Greg Conti published a book last October!

Information overload. If you're responsible for maintaining your network's security, you're living with it every day. Logs, alerts, packet captures, and even binary files take time and effort to analyze using text-based tools - and once your analysis is complete, the picture isn't always clear, or timely. And time is of the essence.

Information visualization is a branch of computer science concerned with modeling complex data using interactive images. When applied to network data, these interactive graphics allow administrators to quickly analyze, understand, and respond to emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

Security Data Visualization is a well-researched and richly illustrated introduction to the field. Greg Conti, creator of the network and security visualization tool RUMINT, shows you how to graph and display network data using a variety of tools so that you can understand complex datasets at a glance. And once you've seen what a network attack looks like, you'll have a better understanding of its low-level behavior - like how vulnerabilities are exploited and how worms and viruses propagate.

You'll learn how to use visualization techniques to:

# Audit your network for vulnerabilities using free visualization tools, such as AfterGlow and RUMINT
# See the underlying structure of a text file and explore the faulty security behavior of a Microsoft Word document
# Gain insight into large amounts of low-level packet data
# Identify and dissect port scans, Nessus vulnerability assessments, and Metasploit attacks
# View the global spread of the Sony rootkit, analyze antivirus effectiveness, and monitor widespread network attacks
# View and analyze firewall and intrusion detection system (IDS) logs

Security visualization systems display data in ways that are illuminating to both professionals and amateurs. Once you've finished reading this book, you'll understand how visualization can make your response to security threats faster and more effective

You can download Chapter 5, "One Night on my ISP", from the publisher.

Security Data Visualization: Graphical Techniques for Network Analysis

Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet may have a serious security vulnerability in its onboard computer networks that could allow passengers to access the plane's control systems, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

The computer network in the Dreamliner's passenger compartment, designed to give passengers in-flight internet access, is connected to the plane's control, navigation and communication systems, an FAA report reveals.

Dec0de says: How f*#king stupid can people be?

Well, lets see:

Gunter wouldn't go into detail about how Boeing is tackling the issue but says it is employing a combination of solutions that involves some physical separation of the networks, known as "air gaps," and software firewalls. Gunter also mentioned other technical solutions, which she said are proprietary and didn't want to discuss in public.

"There are places where the networks are not touching, and there are places where they are," she said.

What?! Either the networks are connected or they are not. There is no middle ground. This isn't some enterprise network where you've got to have connectivity and you put in a firewall but every once in a while a virus outbreak happens anyway and you loose a day. This is an airplane. One virus outbreak on your internal network and you kill a lot of people. Conclusion: REAL, REAL f*#king stupid!

FAA: Boeing's New 787 May Be Vulnerable to Hacker Attack

PhreakNIC 0x0b presentation from CypherGhost on the funny rules surrounding what you can and can't ship via the USPS, as well as why some things take longer than others.

I've also been meaning to watch this. I hear he mailed a sphere. :) I think I can take 45 minutes this morning....

PhreakNIC 0x0b Day 1 - 04 - CypherGhost - Postal Experiments

PhreakNIC 0x0b presentation from Bruce Potter where he rants about the 800 lb. gorillas and talks about the dirty secrets of the security industry.

I've been meaning to watch this...

PhreakNIC 0x0b Day 1 - 09 - Bruce Potter - Down and Dirty on the Security Ind.

Anyway, it’s not really about the dance scene vs. the hacker scene: it’s about two hugely popular hit songs vs. a tiny in-group that can’t be proven to have used the word at all.

There is an interesting conversation going on here about the origins of the word w00t. Basically, the question is, did w00t come into gamer slang via l33t speak, and therefore the hacker scene, or did it come into general usage online because of the 1993 hit song "Whoop, There it is!"

At the core is that there is absolutely no written evidence of use of the word w00t as an exclamation by people in the hacker scene prior to about 1998. There is a use in the hacker scene in 1995, but it is a proper noun (a crew called "w00t'z kidz"). Jason Scott drug up evidence of use on Usenet in 1994, but it was in the context of Magic Cards (D&D is another claimant to the origin of the word). Sans evidence, the verdict must go to "Whoop, There it is!" My memory, and that of several others, is that w00t was used in the hacker scene long before 1998, mostly on IRC. Although I'm not positive that w00t has no relationship to "Whoop, There it is!" I am pretty sure that it was used far earlier than internet archives seem to indicate.

So here is the question; Does anyone out there in MemeStreams land have any mailing list, BBS, or IRC chat logs from before 1998 that include the word w00t, in particular its use as an exclamation? I know some of you are pack rats and have lots of old stuff lying around. Looking for evidence, and not "I recall" or "we used to."

Need your help with w00t

Voters at Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007 poll have chosen "w00t" as 2007's most iconic word. M-W says that the word is a gamer's acronym for "we own the other team," but I'm inclined to think that that's a backronym, a back-formed acronym created to explain a word already in use.

I am simultaneously amazed and annoyed at the misattribution of this word.

w00t is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007 - Boing Boing

Search engine Ask.com deployed a new tool today that allows users to purge records of their searches from the Ask.com database. Initially announced in July after talks with the Center for Democracy and Technology, the AskEraser feature was created in response to growing concerns about the privacy implications of search engine data retention.

Ask.com adds new "AskEraser" search privacy feature