"Weapon of Mass Destruction" Targets Sex Shop In FL

In Waldo, people have held prayer vigils and protests aimed at an adult bookstore along US 301, trying to keep the "Cafe Risque" from opening its doors on time.

Those efforts have all failed, so investigators say it looks like someone has turned to what they're calling a clear act of terrorism to keep the store's owner from opening up shop.

Spam Or Ham

SpamOrHam.org is a web site where you can help anti-spammers (like SpamOrHam creator John Graham-Cumming) by manually sorting email. In order to accurately test spam filters anti-spammers need to have large amounts of email that has been accurately divided into spam and ham (normal) messages.

Although there are some existing sets of sorted messages available (such as the SpamAssassin public corpus and the TREC 2005 Public Spam Corpus), they are either small or have been sorted by machine and may contain errors.

SpamOrHam.org has been created to solve that problem by harnessing people power. By manually classifying (clicking This is Spam or This is Ham) a small number of messages a large number of people can quickly sort thousands of messages.

You can help out by clicking through messages that are randomly displayed and saying whether you think the message is spam or ham. It's as simple as that.

Linux for Human Beings

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

I can't say enough good things about this free distribution. Ubuntu is a free, open source operating system based on Debian. A single disk is all you need for install and a Live CD ver is also available.

Great stuff...

Fridays are for Fun! No prison stay for 5-foot-1 child molester

A man found guilty of sexually assaulting a child has been given 10 years of probation by a judge who said the man was too small to survive prison.

District Judge Kristine Cecava of Cheyenne County sentenced Richard W. Thompson, 50, Tuesday on two counts of sexually assaulting a minor.

“What you have done is absolutely inexcusable,” she said.

His crimes deserved a long sentence, Cecava said, but she expressed concern that the 5-foot-1 Thompson would be especially imperiled by prison dangers.

Reporting Vulnerabilities - Not for the Faint of Heart

Interesting essay, and interesting comments, along with an article on the essay.

Nothing bad happened to me, but it could have, for two reasons.

The first reason is that whenever you do something “unnecessary”, such as reporting a vulnerability, police wonder why, and how you found out. Police also wonders if you found one vulnerability, could you have found more and not reported them? Who did you disclose that information to? Did you get into the web site, and do anything there that you shouldn’t have? It’s normal for the police to think that way. They have to. Unfortunately, it makes it very uninteresting to report any problems.

The second reason that bad things could have happened to me is that I’m stubborn and believe that in a university setting, it should be acceptable for students who stumble across a problem to report vulnerabilities anonymously through an approved person (e.g., a staff member or faculty) and mechanism. Why anonymously? Because student vulnerability reporters are akin to whistleblowers.

Top ten spam-generating countries by Spamhaus.org

We are number one!

The US is the leading spam origin country. China and Russia are next.

Management Problems

“There are management solutions to technical problems, but there are no technical solutions to management problems.”

This is true in any business environment, but it is especially true in the security world. Often executive management will look at security and see something that can be “fixed” with a magic box, maybe a firewall, an encryption device, etc.

However, the only way to really fix security is to have management truly understand the right reasons for needing an effective security program vs only perusing security due to external pressures/mandates to do so. Then once they have grasped this basic tenant then and only then can they successfully transmit this message to the troops.

Security can be looked at as an art or even a religion, but with out a foundation built on integrity, reality and wisdom… It is nothing but a lot of smoke and mirrors.

Fridays are for Fun - Cryptography Rap

Crap its Sunday not Friday! Oh well, fun anyway...

The rapper MC Plus+ has written a song about cryptography, "Alice and Bob." It mentions DES, AES, Blowfish, RSA, SHA-1, and more...

Quiz Of The Week

What does JDAN ENTERPRISES, Inc. do?

Ck their website here.

Computer-Savvy Thieves Rip-Off Gas Stations

For almost any crime there needs to be motivation... High Gas $s = motivation

At least two St. Louis gas station owners or managers say somebody is breaking into gas pumps, reprogramming interior keypads and instructing the machines to dispense fuel at no charge.

Free gas is certainly not what the gas station owners had in mind.

Kevin Tippit is manager of the Phillips 66 at Lindell and Boyle in St. Louis. Tippit says his boss lost between $6,000 and $10,000 worth of gas Friday before a regular customer tipped-off an employee.

"They (the thieves) have a key to the pump and then after they open up the pump they go in and they reprogram the pump, so they can have free gas. And then everybody behind them sees what they're doing, and they continue," says Tippit.

X-ray Machines Fail to Detect Assault Weapon

Narcotics officers found the Professional Ordnance Carbon-15 Type-97 pistol in the car of a drug suspect in Newark and noticed it was a cut above the usual weaponry employed by local drug dealers, Fontoura said.

Officers in his ballistics laboratory, who said they had never seen an assault weapon made with so much plastic, had it taken to Newark Liberty International Airport earlier today for a test-run through the security scanners — minus its 30-round clip.

The image on the X-ray appeared as a straight metal rod, with no outline of a stock or a trigger guard, something an inattentive security guard may view as no more threatening than a curling iron, the sheriff said.

How a Boarding Pass Can Get You More Than a Plane Ride

Read how a small stub can enable access to personal information, including passport numbers, date of birth and nationality. Providing the building blocks for stealing an identity, ruining future travel plans - and even creating a fake passport.