Name calling over Federated fallout
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Blog: Dust-up continues over a Web site built by Federated Media promoting Microsoft's "People-Ready" ad campaign.
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Federated goes crazy with the Macy's moniker.
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A growing practice known as domain name "tasting," a form of cyber squatting, ties up millions of domain names at a time, keeping them out of the reach of legit buyers. By the Associated Press.
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Nobody&#39;s exactly sure why or how the FBI got warrants to take Indymedia&#39;s HDs, but their
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A directory reversal within "flat" extensions could lead to system profile attacks.
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Less than a week after motsa&#8217;s announcement at the Resource Zone Forum for Dmoz Editors that the Abuse Form is available again (see SEJ coverage here), was another update posted by the Dmoz Directory Meta Admin with the nick name &#8220;photofox&#8221;. I received the email notification Friday night and was curious what the news are. It [...]
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When a hacker going by the name Chujwamwdupe published attack code that exploited a recently patched bug in Microsoft Office 2003 earlier this week, it looked almost as if he were publishing the software out of spite.At the top of his submission, Chujwamwdupe wrote about an e-mail informing him that &quot;Unfortunately, Microsoft has refused to credit you using the name you requested.&quot;&quot;What&#39;s wrong with &#39;chujwamwdupe&#39;, eh?&quot; the hacker asked.Well quite a lot, it turns out, if you live in Poland, where it refers explicitly to a form of sexual intercourse.In the hacker world, where so much rides on reputation, Microsoft had been put into a tough position. The company generally goes out of its way to credit hackers who responsibly disclose software vulnerabilities, and by not crediting Chujwamwdupe, it may have put customers at risk by accelerating the&#160;release of attack code. After all, quickly releasing an exploit is the one way a hacker can back up his claim that he actually discovered the bug in question.Even though the flaw, which lies in the Works File Converter, was&#160;patched the day before the exploit code was released, it will be months before all of Microsoft&#39;s customers install the updates. This means that Chujwamwdupe&#39;s code could be misused by criminals.A member of Microsoft&#39;s security team flagged Chujwamwdupe&#39;s submission, a spokeswoman with Microsoft&#39;s public relations firm said in an e-mail message. &quot;One of them happened to speak the right language and brought the issue to our attention,&quot; she said. &quot;The finder&#39;s user name could have been perceived as offensive in another language, so we credited the vendor, VeriSign iDefense VCP, [Vulnerability Contributor Program] for reporting the issue to us responsibly.&quot;VeriSign pays hackers like Chujwamwdupe for vulnerability information so that it can give its customers better information on the bugs when Microsoft finally patches them. And while the majority of contributors use their real names, some do use hacker pseudonyms.Usually that&#39;s not a problem, said Matthew Richard, the director of iDefense&#39;s Rapid Response Team. &quot;It really doesn&#39;t come across that often. There really aren&#39;t that many handles that are offensive,&quot; he said. Chujwamwdupe is &quot;one of the very few that I&#39;ve seen,&quot; he added.3Com&#39;s TippingPoint division, which also pays hackers for vulnerability information, had to talk researcher Manuel Santamarina Suarez out of using a similarly offensive pseudonym, telling him, &quot;we totally get your originality, but we&#39;re professionals here,&quot; said Terri Forslof, TippingPoint&#39;s manager of security research.According to Forslof, who spent four years working for Microsoft&#39;s Security Response group, there are technical reasons why offensive terms cannot be included in the security bulletins. Such a word might cause the bulletin to be blocked by e-mail or Web-filtering software, she said, making it harder for Microsoft to communicate vital security information with its customers.Still, things would have probably worked out better for all parties if Microsoft and VeriSign had worked out some way to credit the hacker, she said. &quot;If Microsoft would have credited him, would he have felt the need to post that exploit code?&quot;&quot;I believe that there was a communication breakdown here,&quot; she said.&#160;
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New .mobi and .jobs, a shift in the ownership of .net
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This user has been known to install software that crashes workstations and delete shared network directories -- and he's been blasted by IT support people. But this pilot fish wants to change that.
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OK, we had an extended breather from our last look at BIND's zone file pri.example.org. It's time to finish up and get a sense of what these records mean. To go off-topic a little, recently, I had the task of setting up two OpenLDAP servers and putting together a test environment for a project with several developers and several applications including some LAMP applications. Without a working knowledge of DNS, the project would have gone amuck.
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When the social discovery site turns members' most trivial actions into unfolding "News Feeds," users rebel, and the company races to quiet their anger. Both sides learn a hard lesson about the illusory nature of online privacy. Commentary by Bruce Schneier.
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Was the Novell/Microsoft deal a worthwhile well-meaning effort between renegade open-source geeks at Microsoft and geeks at Novell that got derailed by salespeople and management, after which it was turned into a nightmare deal with the devil?  I raise this question because I know someone with ties to people at both Microsoft and Novell.  He has a credible story to tell about what really happened, and how much it differs from what we now know about the Novell/Microsoft deal.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get him to write up the history - yet.  While I continue to pester him, here's the short version, third hand.
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Ziff Davis - Vulnerabilities in LibTIFF and Xpdf could allow remote system compromise.
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The British Phonographic Industry threatens tough action. &quot;We will get IP addresses and names,&quot; a spokesperson said. &quot;P2P users have a misconception that they are anonymous, but they are not.
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bulk messages clogging instant-messaging accounts. AOL and its Anti-Spam Alliance partners -- EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo
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This domain will self-destruct in five seconds "In the past couple of weeks, over 70% of the non-jurisdictional contacts my Office has received have concerned registerflyâ¦ In most circumstances, the matter would be refered to Mr. Mike Zupke, ICANN's Registrar Manager, and he would in turn pass along consumer concerns to the registerfly contactâ¦ If, however, Mr. Zupke determined that the matter you are complaining about is unrelated to the Registrarâs Accreditation Agreement, or any other ICANN policy, he will likely encourage you to work out the situation with the registrar..." ICANN Ombudsmanâs Blog, February 12, 2007â¦
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I bought the domain name HeyMicrosoftSueMe.org at the suggestion of Marcel Gagne after posting a blog entry on the topic.  The idea was to ask Linux users to join me in calling Microsoft's bluff.  Let's get the patent infringement claims tried in court and get this over with. Several people talked me out of it.  Fortunately, a lawyer named Christian Einfeldt had the same idea and followed through. Here's a copy of Marcel's entry on the topic from his own blog, with a link to the "Sue me first Microsoft list" in case you want to add your own name. Christof, if you're reading this, you're welcome to the domain name HeyMicrosoftSueMe.org.