In Through The Out Door

Avical’s DVE User-Level Video Calibration Tutorial

A commercial satellite image appears to have captured China’s new nuclear ballistic missile submarine. The new class, known as the Jin-class or Type 094, is expected to replace the unsuccessful Xia-class (Type 092) of a single boat built in the early 1980s.

China’s Space Threat: How Missiles Could Target U.S. SatellitesWhen China destroyed its own satellite, outrage — and debris — rapidly encircled the globe. Was the Sat Kill a policy weapon or the start of an arms race in space?

U of M Internet Motion Sensor

Security Top Concern for New IETF Chair:BobB writes “New IETF chair Russ Housley speaks out about bolting security on after the fact, the prospects for IPv6 and a new security technology called Hokey that could help safeguard wireless and wired networks.”Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Report Warns Against Well-Meaning Net Censorship:A report entitled ‘Governing the Internet,’ was issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The document, which highlights the increasing environment of internet ‘policing’ around the world, characterized the practice as ‘a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes — democracies and dictatorships alike — seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.’ From the article: ‘The OSCE report says Kazakhstan’s efforts to rein in Internet journalism in the name of national security is reminiscent of Soviet-era “spy mania,” and it says Georgian law contains numerous provisions curbing freedom of expression online. Web sites, blogs and personal pages all are subject to criminal as well as civil prosecution in Kazakhstan, and the country’s information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, has vowed to purge Kazakh sites of “dirt” and “lies.”

SSH Overview:Nice article about ssh.”SSH (secure shell) is a program enabling secure access to remote file systems. Not everyone is aware of other powerful SSH capabilities, such as passwordless login, automatic execution of commands on a remote system or even mounting a remote folder using SSH! In this article we’ll cover these features and much more.”

Linux Gains Two New Virtualization SolutionsThe upcoming 2.6.23 kernel has gained two new virtualization solutions. According to KernelTrap, both Xen and lguest have been merged into the mainline kernel. These two virtualization solutions join the already merged KVM, offering Linux multiple ways to run multiple virtual machines each running their own OS.

Hacking Your Neighbour with Wireless Penetration Tools:Isn’t technology a lovely thing? The advent of wireless networking has made sharing a broadband connection a simple task that even your mother can set one up. Its simplicity however is its downfall. How many available wireless networks can you see? Are they taunting you to try connect but guessing someone’s passphrase is not often easy and you wish you had the skills of movie-style hackers just to break your neighbours encryption algorithm for the fun of it?

Sun Says File Systems are Important Differentiator:Sun Microsystems was originally known as a workstation vendor, and it became best known as a maker of servers and their associated Solaris Unix operating system…. Sun still believes that file systems matter, and its Zettabyte File System (ZFS) and the expanding role it could play in the IT industry are proof of this belief. Given the features inside ZFS, it comes as no surprise that Sun is excited to see other companies and open source projects pick it up. According to Jeff Bonwick, who is a co-creator of ZFS with Moore and the storage chief technology officer at Sun, the open source FreeBSD variant of BSD Unix already supports ZFS in its distro and the NetBSD is adding ZFS support through Google’s Summer of Code effort, whereby Google pays young nerds to do coding for a summer job. The future “Leopard” version of MacOS X Server also has ZFS support inside of its beta versions, but it remains to be seen if the file system will make it into the final release of Apple’s server operating system.

News: Spammers dump images, switch to PDF files:

Custom Trojan Creation Tool Sold Online:Net Security.org is reporting on the surprisingly sophisticated ‘virus in a can’ software called Pinch. Pinch is a tool sold on several online forums and designed to create Trojans…. One of the interface tabs, PWD, allows malicious users to select the type of password to be stolen by the Trojan: from email passwords to passwords kept by the system tools. It is possible to order the Trojan to encrypt this data when sending it, so that nobody else can read it. ‘Pinch also lets users carry out other actions: turn infected computers into zombie computers, pack Trojans to make detection more difficult, and kill certain system processes, particularly those of security solutions.

Lax security controls are allowing con men to host fraudulent websites on servers run by government organizations and private sector firms.

1 of the 4 older Bangor boomers converted to a conventional SSGN SOF platform

Boeing Helping to Develop Algae-Powered Jet:Air New Zealand, Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation and Boeing are working together to develop and test a bio-fuel derived from algae. Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation began operating in May last year after it met a request from the local council to deal with excess algae on sewage ponds. Boeing’s Dave Daggett was reported this year as saying algae ponds totaling 34,000 square kilometers could produce enough fuel to reduce the net CO2 footprint for all of aviation to zero.”Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cybercriminals Building New, Stealthier Networks:ancientribe writes “Cybercriminals are adopting a new method of hiding and sustaining their malicious Websites and botnet infrastructures so they’ll be harder to detect, called “fast-flux,” according to an article in Dark Reading. Criminal organizations behind two infamous malware families — Warezov/Stration and Storm — in the past few months have separately moved their infrastructures to so-called fast-flux service networks. The article says bad guys like fast-flux not only because it keeps them up and running, but also because it’s more efficient than traditional methods of infecting victims’ machines.” I’m not exactly sure why this is new/different than the more well known open relay proxy networks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How Does the FBI’s Computer-Monitoring Malware Work?:Plenty of Windows holes could lend themselves to a bureau cyberattack. Which one, if any, do the G-men prefer?

Back up like an expert with rsync:

Brief: FBI installs spyware to gather evidence:

FBI installs spyware to gather evidence

Detecting Police Spyware: Most computer security products deliberately do not detect police spyware.