I went on strike today. It was cathartic -- And relaxing!
/rizzn
Thursday, September 4, 2003
Tuesday, September 2, 2003
In Other News:
Uzume: best wishes on your marriage thing. :) I'm sending warm warm wishes telepathically to you. Feel them?
Fuzzonwall: w00! sounds like you had fun on the date thing! rock on. If I get a minute to be online with a messenger I'll talk to you about it. :)
Lish: Heh. Don't expect any special messages here. I am seeing you more often these days than I see my reflection in the mirror!
So anyways, time for a personal update.
I've resigned myself to feeling a continual state of despondancy about the state of the company. There's not much I can do at this point to bring it's health status back to 100% from where I sit other than to continue to do my job. Somehow this thing keeps hobbling along.
Picture a threelegged dog on a dirt road getting continually pegged with bb guns and occasionally a much larger stronger dog will rip out it's throat.
Somehow this dog has X-Factor like wolverine and it heals it's throat. But it still is getting shot with bb's and it only has three legs.
That is this company right now. I'd like to digress from mere metaphors into specifics, but my non-disclosure forms prevent me from doing so right now. Again, I promise, once I get this company back on track or the whole thing folds, I'll tell you the whole story.
In my personal personal life, it's actually filled with some drama. Lish and I went out on a date like a month ago or something. We met on Friendster (which is lots of fun, BTW). At any rate we went on a date. I thought it went well, Lish is a hottie, she's a big ol' geek like me, but after it all, she decided we'd be better as friends.
Whatever, it's one date. I mean, don't get me wrong -- I liked her and I told her so once she said we should just be friends. But I'm a mature fellow, or at least I like to think so, and if she just wanted to be friends, I'm okay with that. I'd rather be just friends with someone who's cool like that if I'm unable to be romantic with them. It's better than saying fsck you, if I can't have you in that way then fsck off all together.
So anyways, we hang out the next week, and she meets Matthew, a long long longtime friend of mine to whom I will always be loyal. I knew they were going to hit it off quite well (in fact, I sortof feared that and part of the reason why I engineered the first date away from the locale of Matthew and more towards her end of town).
They did hit it off... and Matthew and Lish two weeks or three weeks later (I forget and lose track of time these days) Lish and Matthew are officially an Item.
Now, as you can imagine, much hullaballoo was made about this. I was pretty interested in Lish early on and I probably went on and on about it like little schoolgirl, thereby giving off the impression that I was head over heels. Which I sortof was.
But I'm a pragmatic sortof fellow, and if things aren't going to work out, I'm not going to cry over it for more than a few minutes. Matthew and I had several long involved talks about how to proceed and I gave him the go-ahead on if he wanted to date her to go ahead and do so.
But still the hullaballoo persists. None of the immediate circle of friends and employees here read this so this is probably falling on deaf ears, but I hereby recuse myself of any feelings of hurt or malice towards either Lish or Matthew.
To quote the immortal words of the one hit wonders, Nada Surf (High/Low (1996)/Popular):
"Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly
Don't make a big production
Don't make up an elaborate story
This will help you avoid a big tear jerking scene
If you wanna date other people say so
Be prepared for the boy to feel hurt and rejected
Even if you've gone together for only a short time,
And haven't been too serious,
There's still a feeling of rejection
When someone says she preferres the company of others
To your exclusive company,
But if you're honest, and direct,
And avoid making a flowery emotional speech when you brake the news,
The boy will respect you for your frankness,
And honestly he'll apeciate the kind of straight foward manner
In which you told him your decision
Unless he's a real jerk or a cry baby you will remain friends."
I am neither a real jerk or a cry baby. And that about sums it up.
/rizzn
Fuzzonwall: w00! sounds like you had fun on the date thing! rock on. If I get a minute to be online with a messenger I'll talk to you about it. :)
Lish: Heh. Don't expect any special messages here. I am seeing you more often these days than I see my reflection in the mirror!
So anyways, time for a personal update.
I've resigned myself to feeling a continual state of despondancy about the state of the company. There's not much I can do at this point to bring it's health status back to 100% from where I sit other than to continue to do my job. Somehow this thing keeps hobbling along.
Picture a threelegged dog on a dirt road getting continually pegged with bb guns and occasionally a much larger stronger dog will rip out it's throat.
Somehow this dog has X-Factor like wolverine and it heals it's throat. But it still is getting shot with bb's and it only has three legs.
That is this company right now. I'd like to digress from mere metaphors into specifics, but my non-disclosure forms prevent me from doing so right now. Again, I promise, once I get this company back on track or the whole thing folds, I'll tell you the whole story.
In my personal personal life, it's actually filled with some drama. Lish and I went out on a date like a month ago or something. We met on Friendster (which is lots of fun, BTW). At any rate we went on a date. I thought it went well, Lish is a hottie, she's a big ol' geek like me, but after it all, she decided we'd be better as friends.
Whatever, it's one date. I mean, don't get me wrong -- I liked her and I told her so once she said we should just be friends. But I'm a mature fellow, or at least I like to think so, and if she just wanted to be friends, I'm okay with that. I'd rather be just friends with someone who's cool like that if I'm unable to be romantic with them. It's better than saying fsck you, if I can't have you in that way then fsck off all together.
So anyways, we hang out the next week, and she meets Matthew, a long long longtime friend of mine to whom I will always be loyal. I knew they were going to hit it off quite well (in fact, I sortof feared that and part of the reason why I engineered the first date away from the locale of Matthew and more towards her end of town).
They did hit it off... and Matthew and Lish two weeks or three weeks later (I forget and lose track of time these days) Lish and Matthew are officially an Item.
Now, as you can imagine, much hullaballoo was made about this. I was pretty interested in Lish early on and I probably went on and on about it like little schoolgirl, thereby giving off the impression that I was head over heels. Which I sortof was.
But I'm a pragmatic sortof fellow, and if things aren't going to work out, I'm not going to cry over it for more than a few minutes. Matthew and I had several long involved talks about how to proceed and I gave him the go-ahead on if he wanted to date her to go ahead and do so.
But still the hullaballoo persists. None of the immediate circle of friends and employees here read this so this is probably falling on deaf ears, but I hereby recuse myself of any feelings of hurt or malice towards either Lish or Matthew.
To quote the immortal words of the one hit wonders, Nada Surf (High/Low (1996)/Popular):
"Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly
Don't make a big production
Don't make up an elaborate story
This will help you avoid a big tear jerking scene
If you wanna date other people say so
Be prepared for the boy to feel hurt and rejected
Even if you've gone together for only a short time,
And haven't been too serious,
There's still a feeling of rejection
When someone says she preferres the company of others
To your exclusive company,
But if you're honest, and direct,
And avoid making a flowery emotional speech when you brake the news,
The boy will respect you for your frankness,
And honestly he'll apeciate the kind of straight foward manner
In which you told him your decision
Unless he's a real jerk or a cry baby you will remain friends."
I am neither a real jerk or a cry baby. And that about sums it up.
/rizzn
Timeline: Bush on 9/11 :: Memes.org :: Memes are Mind Viruses
Timeline: Bush on 9/11 :: Memes.org :: Memes are Mind Viruses (my copy): "The New York Times points out that flight controllers learn Flight 77 has been hijacked 'within a few minutes' of 8:48. [New York Times, 9/15/01 (C)] Is Bush and his aides putting on a charade to pretend he doesn't know there is a national emergency? If so, why?"
This has got to be the most interesting account of an American President's day. It's tedious at times to read around all the date and bibliographic material, but read it all the same. It's informative and interesting.
My only observation is that in a couple places it places Dubya's motives in question based on some words he says, and tries to pin him down on it. Obviously, to me at any rate, it isn't where he was at or his motives that should be in question, but his words. This is, after all, the only president I know of we've had here in America that in the first year of his presidency there were three books out already on the social and oral faux pax's he's made (not to mention the only president I know of who scored a 600 on his SAT's).
/rizzn
This has got to be the most interesting account of an American President's day. It's tedious at times to read around all the date and bibliographic material, but read it all the same. It's informative and interesting.
My only observation is that in a couple places it places Dubya's motives in question based on some words he says, and tries to pin him down on it. Obviously, to me at any rate, it isn't where he was at or his motives that should be in question, but his words. This is, after all, the only president I know of we've had here in America that in the first year of his presidency there were three books out already on the social and oral faux pax's he's made (not to mention the only president I know of who scored a 600 on his SAT's).
/rizzn
More Worm Commentary
Mike Lee, a fellow member of OSINT, and I have been discussing for a few days this worm and virus thing sparked by the Blaster and Sobig worms that have been going around recently.
The original article was posted here and copied here.
Mike Lee:
I failed to see that this particular item is in any manner relevant to your contention. This kid took a copy of the virus code, modified it slightly, and fed it back into the i-net. His (now unique) virus infected about 500,000 computers...a fraction of the machines infected by the original.
That said, I share your opinion that blaster was NOT an act of "terrorism", what ever that term means.
HOWEVER, it is important to remember that "Al Qaeda" has motives that to some extent overlap some other, seemingly disparate, groups. Among them are various "environmental activist", "animal rights", Maoist groups. Among these groups are some folks who are more than adequate to do some very disruptive things in computer networks.
POINT BEING: This type of activity doesn't have to originate with Islamist in order to serve their purposes: Resistance against the U.S. as a dominant world economic, political and military power.
Rizzn Do'Urden:
This isn't conclusive, direct evidence that the original worm was written by a script kiddie or a eastern bloc hacker, but in my original email I said: "Chances are that the viruses and exploits in question were created by a virus writer in an eastern bloc country or a script kiddie in midwest America just like nearly every other virus written in recent memory." So my point is simply thus: every time one of these comes out, there's no reason to cry wolf, or terrorist. It simply ain't so. There is nothing new under the sun.
To address your last point, apparently spammer's goals dovetail into Al-Qaeda as well, under that broad definition. SoBIG was written apparently by a hacker who advocates spam, a hacker hired by a spam company, or a hacker who has it out for anti-spam companies.
There is and always has been anti-establismentarianists around. To throw all of them under the war on terrorism movement is irresponsible.
If they break the law, they are criminals. There's no reason to put them in the cell next to John Walker-Lindhe.
Mike Lee:
A distinction without a difference. Admiral Halsey's worst defeat -- the one in which he lost the most ships -- was not at the hands of the Japanese but rather a typhoon. That hardly leads to the conclusion that the typhoon was in cahoots with the Imperial Japanese Navy.
However, if you pierce the veil of the environmentalist, the animal rights activist, etc. you find profoundly "anti-government" blood flowing in their veins.
There are a variety of groups around the planet with "anti-U.S. government" axes to grind. Maoist, Communist, etc. And the Islamist increasingly find this common purpose with such groups. This is consistent with the Koran, incidentally.
Wittingly or not, they serve the purpose. How, exactly, would you paint such actors?
Rizzn Do'Urden:
I beg to differ though. There is a difference between a common criminal's intent to rob a liquor store coinciding with Islamic terrorist's intent to disrupt the flow of society and a militia's intent to say destroy a government office in Oklahoma City coinciding with Islamic terrorist's intent to destroy the infrastructure and create a general atmosphere of fear in the United States.
What we are talking about are young people and crackers here. These are the same people who have been exposing security flaws in computer systems for years and years before there ever was a perceived Islamic or any other terrorist threat.
First of all, the economic threat these types of cyber 'attacks' pose is way overblown by the media and the industry purely for insurance and ratings reasons. Take for instance, the damages claimed by Sun Microsystems in the case of Kevin Mitnick. Sun claimed that Kevin's intrusion to their systems and downloading their software for their Solaris operating system cost their company $80 million. This was a very interesting claim that was rightly refuted by Mitnick's attorney later on because as it turns out, the software was later released by Sun for free (open source) on certain platforms, and Mitnick never widely distributed the source or the compiled software (see http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,19820,00.html).
Understood, this is a separate type of intrusion, and one that has little to do with the release of virii, worms and spam. It is, however, an excellent example of how the technical industry in general will not hesitate to over-estimate their damages if it means they will grab some headlines.
Having established that, these types of cyber-crimes, while they are still illegal, are nowhere near the magnitude of destroying two 80 story towers in NYC or blowing up a federal building in OKC, or even robbing a convenience store down the street. They are simple crimes against property, and they have little to no effect on the economic infrastructure on this country. They should be prosecuted where the laws are applicable, but in my opinion should NOT be prosecuted or even painted as terrorist acts, as that is a gross misuse of the term, not to mention law enforcement time and energy.
It is even debatable whether or not worm and virus creators should be prosecuted at all. The system in which we function (the internet) is very self-regulating. Like I mentioned before, it wasn't even a week before fixes came out, from a plethora of different companies across the industries. The effects of the virii and worms were minimized, and the only thing the FBI was able to do was say "Yay, we caught a guy who made a copy of the original." They weren't able to participate in damage control. They weren't able to do anything substantial to minimized the effects of crime. It's debatable if being arrested by the FBI for such a crime can be called a deterrent, as many of these fellows are able to get high-paying consultant jobs after their probation is over for their crimes.
All this stems from the message I tried to put out there again and again when I was a guest on the John Batchelor and Paul Alexander show, which is essentially this: The governments of the world have no idea how to deal with cyber crimes and they are ineffectual at best, and counter-productive at worst.
Having said all this, what we are both positing amounts to acrimonious agreement. I agree with you for in your statements of many other crimes and dissenting groups aims dovetailing with that of what is thought of as typical terrorism. I disagree, however, that cyber-terrorism, in most forms falls into this common goal. I would posit that it's mostly people who don't truly understand the 'online world' making these allegations or those with something to gain from grouping the two things together doing so.
Mike Lee:
You really don't differ, you point out an esoteric distinction -- a distinction which is utterly lost on the general public, which is completely sold on the notion that 9/11 was "terrorism". The WTC/Pentagon attacks were not intended as "terrorism", per se. They were, in fact, attacks by unconventional means on specific targets. This is different from "terrorism", which is intended to intimidate the populace into thinking that anyone, at any time, can be a target based on no particular criteria. An example would be the German missiles fired into England during WW-2.
Again, I completely agree that it's all overblown, even though I had to spend an entire Saturday manually getting a virus out a couple of years ago after my wife opened an attachment!
But, again, it's the public perception. Notice that after the "black out" recently the immediate public question: "Was it terrorism?". Notice also that after the Islamist claimed responsibility for it, the feds got really, really busy trying to disprove that claim.
[You said, "The governments of the world have no idea how to deal with cyber crimes, and they are ineffectual at best, and counter-productive at worst."] I agree completely. Government isn't very good at much of anything except tormenting honest citizens. Gun control is a classic example, Amtrak is another. "Gun control" ensures that only criminals will have guns.
Amtrak could actually operate at less loss if they just simple put every passenger on an airliner and parked their trains.
We don't really disagree on cyber-terrorism except this: public perception and reaction really determines most of the consequences. You correctly point out that little real economic damage is done, stated as a percentage of the whole.
The trouble is, government actually has a vested interest in encouraging and perpetuating this irrational fear: job security.
There are a few politicians I trust. Unfortunately, they've all been dead for many, many years.
/rizzn
The original article was posted here and copied here.
Mike Lee:
I failed to see that this particular item is in any manner relevant to your contention. This kid took a copy of the virus code, modified it slightly, and fed it back into the i-net. His (now unique) virus infected about 500,000 computers...a fraction of the machines infected by the original.
That said, I share your opinion that blaster was NOT an act of "terrorism", what ever that term means.
HOWEVER, it is important to remember that "Al Qaeda" has motives that to some extent overlap some other, seemingly disparate, groups. Among them are various "environmental activist", "animal rights", Maoist groups. Among these groups are some folks who are more than adequate to do some very disruptive things in computer networks.
POINT BEING: This type of activity doesn't have to originate with Islamist in order to serve their purposes: Resistance against the U.S. as a dominant world economic, political and military power.
Rizzn Do'Urden:
This isn't conclusive, direct evidence that the original worm was written by a script kiddie or a eastern bloc hacker, but in my original email I said: "Chances are that the viruses and exploits in question were created by a virus writer in an eastern bloc country or a script kiddie in midwest America just like nearly every other virus written in recent memory." So my point is simply thus: every time one of these comes out, there's no reason to cry wolf, or terrorist. It simply ain't so. There is nothing new under the sun.
To address your last point, apparently spammer's goals dovetail into Al-Qaeda as well, under that broad definition. SoBIG was written apparently by a hacker who advocates spam, a hacker hired by a spam company, or a hacker who has it out for anti-spam companies.
There is and always has been anti-establismentarianists around. To throw all of them under the war on terrorism movement is irresponsible.
If they break the law, they are criminals. There's no reason to put them in the cell next to John Walker-Lindhe.
Mike Lee:
A distinction without a difference. Admiral Halsey's worst defeat -- the one in which he lost the most ships -- was not at the hands of the Japanese but rather a typhoon. That hardly leads to the conclusion that the typhoon was in cahoots with the Imperial Japanese Navy.
However, if you pierce the veil of the environmentalist, the animal rights activist, etc. you find profoundly "anti-government" blood flowing in their veins.
There are a variety of groups around the planet with "anti-U.S. government" axes to grind. Maoist, Communist, etc. And the Islamist increasingly find this common purpose with such groups. This is consistent with the Koran, incidentally.
Wittingly or not, they serve the purpose. How, exactly, would you paint such actors?
Rizzn Do'Urden:
I beg to differ though. There is a difference between a common criminal's intent to rob a liquor store coinciding with Islamic terrorist's intent to disrupt the flow of society and a militia's intent to say destroy a government office in Oklahoma City coinciding with Islamic terrorist's intent to destroy the infrastructure and create a general atmosphere of fear in the United States.
What we are talking about are young people and crackers here. These are the same people who have been exposing security flaws in computer systems for years and years before there ever was a perceived Islamic or any other terrorist threat.
First of all, the economic threat these types of cyber 'attacks' pose is way overblown by the media and the industry purely for insurance and ratings reasons. Take for instance, the damages claimed by Sun Microsystems in the case of Kevin Mitnick. Sun claimed that Kevin's intrusion to their systems and downloading their software for their Solaris operating system cost their company $80 million. This was a very interesting claim that was rightly refuted by Mitnick's attorney later on because as it turns out, the software was later released by Sun for free (open source) on certain platforms, and Mitnick never widely distributed the source or the compiled software (see http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,19820,00.html).
Understood, this is a separate type of intrusion, and one that has little to do with the release of virii, worms and spam. It is, however, an excellent example of how the technical industry in general will not hesitate to over-estimate their damages if it means they will grab some headlines.
Having established that, these types of cyber-crimes, while they are still illegal, are nowhere near the magnitude of destroying two 80 story towers in NYC or blowing up a federal building in OKC, or even robbing a convenience store down the street. They are simple crimes against property, and they have little to no effect on the economic infrastructure on this country. They should be prosecuted where the laws are applicable, but in my opinion should NOT be prosecuted or even painted as terrorist acts, as that is a gross misuse of the term, not to mention law enforcement time and energy.
It is even debatable whether or not worm and virus creators should be prosecuted at all. The system in which we function (the internet) is very self-regulating. Like I mentioned before, it wasn't even a week before fixes came out, from a plethora of different companies across the industries. The effects of the virii and worms were minimized, and the only thing the FBI was able to do was say "Yay, we caught a guy who made a copy of the original." They weren't able to participate in damage control. They weren't able to do anything substantial to minimized the effects of crime. It's debatable if being arrested by the FBI for such a crime can be called a deterrent, as many of these fellows are able to get high-paying consultant jobs after their probation is over for their crimes.
All this stems from the message I tried to put out there again and again when I was a guest on the John Batchelor and Paul Alexander show, which is essentially this: The governments of the world have no idea how to deal with cyber crimes and they are ineffectual at best, and counter-productive at worst.
Having said all this, what we are both positing amounts to acrimonious agreement. I agree with you for in your statements of many other crimes and dissenting groups aims dovetailing with that of what is thought of as typical terrorism. I disagree, however, that cyber-terrorism, in most forms falls into this common goal. I would posit that it's mostly people who don't truly understand the 'online world' making these allegations or those with something to gain from grouping the two things together doing so.
Mike Lee:
You really don't differ, you point out an esoteric distinction -- a distinction which is utterly lost on the general public, which is completely sold on the notion that 9/11 was "terrorism". The WTC/Pentagon attacks were not intended as "terrorism", per se. They were, in fact, attacks by unconventional means on specific targets. This is different from "terrorism", which is intended to intimidate the populace into thinking that anyone, at any time, can be a target based on no particular criteria. An example would be the German missiles fired into England during WW-2.
Again, I completely agree that it's all overblown, even though I had to spend an entire Saturday manually getting a virus out a couple of years ago after my wife opened an attachment!
But, again, it's the public perception. Notice that after the "black out" recently the immediate public question: "Was it terrorism?". Notice also that after the Islamist claimed responsibility for it, the feds got really, really busy trying to disprove that claim.
[You said, "The governments of the world have no idea how to deal with cyber crimes, and they are ineffectual at best, and counter-productive at worst."] I agree completely. Government isn't very good at much of anything except tormenting honest citizens. Gun control is a classic example, Amtrak is another. "Gun control" ensures that only criminals will have guns.
Amtrak could actually operate at less loss if they just simple put every passenger on an airliner and parked their trains.
We don't really disagree on cyber-terrorism except this: public perception and reaction really determines most of the consequences. You correctly point out that little real economic damage is done, stated as a percentage of the whole.
The trouble is, government actually has a vested interest in encouraging and perpetuating this irrational fear: job security.
There are a few politicians I trust. Unfortunately, they've all been dead for many, many years.
/rizzn
Monday, September 1, 2003
Mice sign on the dotted line
BBC NEWS | Technology | Mice sign on the dotted line: "The system could be used to verify that people using a website are who they claim to be or provide another level of checking when people use credit cards online. "I don't see this getting really popular. Most people I know can't draw a straight line with a mouse, much less sign something.
If it gets popular, I see problems. People who use a mouse over and over for drawing a familiary object get better and better at drawing what it is in their mind, thus changing the median image of what this software finds out in the first 20 scans of the image drawn. I'd like to see more extensive testing on this before it's declared 99% accurate.
/rizzn
Krystin Lewis
Beautiful and talented as evidenced by her wonderful artwork (it's a picture of me):
/rizzn
/rizzn
Re-Design
I hated the old design.
Okay, maybe hate is a strong word. But I wasn't fond of it. So there's this. Why did I decide to do this? Simple. I was writing a really long good article on SoBiG and Blaster, my computer crashed, and I ended up losing about 4 hours worth of research. After having cursed the gods of machinery for a few minutes, I decided to stop crying over spilt milk and do something else somewhat productive. So here you have it. A much more modular, less graphics intensive, more cluttered design than ever. It even has trapped white space! Gotta love it.
Anyways. enjoy. Some of the buttons won't work so well for a couple days, but never fear, I will soonish get them working.
Fuzzonwall: POST! I can't quote you if you don't write.
Dirty: you too!
swordsaintzero: Where's your site?
Anyone Else: What do you think? Like the site? Hate it? Lemme know.
/rizzn
Okay, maybe hate is a strong word. But I wasn't fond of it. So there's this. Why did I decide to do this? Simple. I was writing a really long good article on SoBiG and Blaster, my computer crashed, and I ended up losing about 4 hours worth of research. After having cursed the gods of machinery for a few minutes, I decided to stop crying over spilt milk and do something else somewhat productive. So here you have it. A much more modular, less graphics intensive, more cluttered design than ever. It even has trapped white space! Gotta love it.
Anyways. enjoy. Some of the buttons won't work so well for a couple days, but never fear, I will soonish get them working.
Fuzzonwall: POST! I can't quote you if you don't write.
Dirty: you too!
swordsaintzero: Where's your site?
Anyone Else: What do you think? Like the site? Hate it? Lemme know.
/rizzn
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