The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

My lovelife has been awfully idle, but not my newslife

Sun battles to regain luster
Sun Microsystems, backed into a corner by competitors and economics, is launching new projects in an effort to revitalize its diminished computer-industry leadership. Sun shook up computing giants in the late 1990s with its success in selling heavy-duty networked "server" computers, machines that caught IBM and Hewlett-Packard flat-footed, and with its Java software, a cross-platform programming language that undermined Microsoft's operating system dominance. But Sun's revenue and stock price have plummeted since peaking in 2000, and competitors are circling like sharks. Now, though, Sun is trying to fight back. Its efforts will determine whether the company ends up relegated to a small niche of high-end computing -- the fate that befell Silicon Graphics -- or continues its ability to steer the industry with profitable new ideas.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-957986.html

Linux worm creating P2P attack network
A new worm that attacks Linux Web servers has compromised more than 3,500 machines, creating a rogue peer-to-peer network that has been used to attack other computers with a flood of data, security experts said Saturday. The worm seems to spreading fairly rapidly, according to security company Symantec, which early Friday detected about 2,000 infected computers that were actively attacking -- a number that climbed to 3,500 late Friday. The company's security personnel could not be contacted for comment Saturday. "It is confirmed through various sources that this worm is in the wild and actively attacking other servers," the company warned its newest advisory Saturday.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-957988.html

Nanotech bill: Big money for tiny tech
Sen. Ron Wyden has big plans for small technology. On Tuesday, the Oregon Democrat is planning to introduce a bill and convene a hearing to spur the development of nanotechnology by spending more government money on early-stage research. A summary of the bill seen by CNET News.com says it will establish a "National Nanotechnology Research Program" to coordinate federal efforts in the area and balance research objectives with ethical and societal concerns. It will spend about $446 million, with a portion of that to come from existing money located elsewhere in the federal budget.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-958089.html

Big Blue brings Linux to Hollywood
As Hollywood goes ever more digital, IBM is gearing up to grab some of its business by introducing souped-up technology for production and editing of video and audio. The technology, called General Parallel File System (GPFS), is a cluster of computing systems with massive storage capabilities and collaborative editing tools for digital content. Media producers, digital editors and animators can use it to concurrently work on postproduction of streamed audio and video in different places around the world, IBM said. For example, moviemakers working on the same project from London and Los Angeles could edit a digital film and see the changes take place simultaneously, helping them save time in the development process.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-958097.html

PS2 becomes a TiVo-like recorder
Sony's PlayStation 2 video game console will gain TiVo-like video functions with software to be announced Monday by two start-ups. Austin, Texas-based BroadQ is offering Qcast Tuner, software to connect the PS2 with a PC running SnapStream Media's video recording software. Houston-based SnapStream released its Personal Video Station software last year. The program allows a PC connected to a TV signal to record and play back programs using the PC's hard drive, similar to standalone devices such as the TiVo video recorder.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-957971.html

ISP dreams: We can do TV, too
Forget the revolutionary promises of "new media." Internet companies' newest hope is to model themselves after the business successes of cable TV. America Online wants to be the Internet's HBO, scheduling exclusive content that people will go out of their way to pay for, according to CEO Richard Parsons. SBC Communications has linked hands with Yahoo to create its own bundles of "programming" -- music, video, and other content and services. Other Internet service providers (ISPs) and content companies are increasingly striking variations on the same tune: The ISP business needs to attract people with content, in much the same way cable TV does. The trouble is, some analysts say, there's not yet much reason to believe that people will respond the same way they do to cable TV.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-957972.html?tag=fd_lede

Napster draws over a dozen bids
More than a dozen bidders have expressed interest in buying the assets of bankrupt online music-swapping site Napster, an investment banker handling the bidding process said on Monday. Rick Chance, managing director at Trenwith Securities, the investment banking unit of BDO Seidman LLP, said that the bids will be analyzed and the bank will provide a recommendation to Napster's official creditors committee later this week. Bidding will close for Napster's assets on Sept. 17. In a ruling on Friday, a bankruptcy judge gave Trenwith and the committee until Friday, Sept. 27 to select the highest and best bidder for Napster's assets, Chance said. The Napster asset sale has drawn both U.S. and international bidders.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-958118.html?tag=fd_top

Here comes Internet2
The dot-com implosion has left many managers wary of the promised wonders of information technology, but those who ignore the next phase of the Internet -- dubbed Internet2 -- do so at their peril, HBS professor Richard Nolan says. "The idea that information technology is over with the dot-coms is fallacious," Nolan said. In a lively discussion with about fifty HBS alumni held during reunion weekend this summer, Nolan, who spent a year's sabbatical concentrating on Internet2, described the current state and potential of the beast. Though its business applications remain to be seen, managers need to arm themselves with information and get ready for what he called "round two" of the Internet.
http://news.com.com/2009-12-957016.html

Lightning Rods for Nanoelectronics
We're all familiar with electrostatic charge: shuffle across a shag carpet in sneakers, touch a piece of metal, and zap. The slight prick we feel -- caused when the electric charge built up by the shuffling suddenly leaps to another object -- is nothing compared with what modern electronic equipment experiences. On a dry winter day, walking on a new carpet can generate a whopping 35,000-volt discharge. We are not harmed by this high voltage, because the amount of charge that flows is puny. Still, it is large enough to destroy sensitive micro-electronic components. Researchers have come up with clever ways to prevent such damage. But as circuits get smaller, they become more sensitive to electrostatic discharge (ESD) and the old tricks no longer work. Can we continue to find new ways to prevent electrostatic damage and thereby maintain the pace of innovation?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...880000&catID=2

Issues that will shape the Internet
It took a series of smart decisions to create the Internet as an open network where innovation could thrive, as I noted in this space a week ago. Now let's look at some upcoming decisions that will shape communications for the next 50 years -- and ponder the consequences for openness and innovation if we make the wrong choices this time. Based on current trends, unfortunately, the future looks difficult. The forces of central control seem to be in charge at the moment. Powerful interests, caring little for your rights and needs, are dominating the debate.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ts/4081203.htm

Mozilla bug leaks Web surfing data
Netscape and other Web browsers based on the Mozilla development project contain a bug that leaks people's Web surfing data, according to a new report. The bug reveals the URL of the page someone is viewing to the Web server of the site last visited. This allows a Web server to track where people go after they leave the site, even if the next Web address comes from a bookmark or is manually typed into the browser. Researcher Sven Neuhaus, who published a security alert on Wednesday about the issue to the Bugtraq mailing list, said he had confirmed the bug in Mozilla 1.0, 1.0.1 and 1.1, though it probably also existed in older Mozilla versions. It also appears in browsers based on Mozilla's technology, including Netscape 7 and Galeon, a Linux application, he said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-958001.html?tag=cd_mh

Wireless rebel offers drive-by Wi-Fi
Public hot-spot operators have a weapon in their protest against the growth of commercial Wi-Fi networks: Michael Oh's "war car." The 1997 Saturn has enough Wi-Fi equipment installed on its bumper and rooftop to create a 150-foot wireless network, said Oh, who helps run a free wireless network covering two Boston city blocks and is one of hundreds of so-called public hot-spot operators who believe Wi-Fi networks and the Internet access they offer should remain free. The war car's first sortie was nine days ago to a Starbucks cafe, where Wi-Fi access is sold by the minute. Supporters of free Web access were among the first to set up the 300-foot zones of wireless access that Wi-Fi created in the mid 1990s, primarily in large cities like New York.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-957941.html?tag=cd_mh

Internet cements itself in ivory tower
College students consider the Internet as integral to their lives as the television and the telephone, according to a new study on their Web habits. The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 79 percent of students surveyed think the Web has had a positive influence on their lives overall, with 60 percent saying it's improved relationships with classmates and nearly half saying e-mail allows them to tell professors an idea they would not have expressed in class. Nearly three out of four college students check their e-mail every day and use the Web for library research. Not surprisingly, college students -- long known as the most prolific downloaders of music -- are much more Web-savvy than the average American. While 59 percent of Americans are online, the percentage of college students connected to the Web is much higher at 86 percent.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-957874.html?tag=cd_mh

First "smiley" shows its face
A Microsoft researcher has apparently rediscovered the first known computerized instance of a "smiley," the combination of characters used to signify a smile in e-mail and on bulletin boards. The smiley has spawned a whole range of emoticons, as they are now known, since its appearance on a bulletin board discussion at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. Emoticons have become an important part of the worldwide online social culture because they make it easy to communication emotions quickly -- something that many people find difficult to express using words. Like Jones, who works in the systems and networking research group at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., kicked off the effort to find the first smiley in February.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-957817.html?tag=cd_mh

E-mail a weapon in file-swap fight
Hoping for a repeat of Napster's legal flameout, the record and movie trade associations are using file-swapping company executives' own words against them in the attempt to close the Kazaa and Morpheus networks. In court documents filed Monday, and kept under seal until Thursday, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America used internal e-mails, message board postings, and interviews with executives in hopes of persuading a federal judge to shut down the file-swapping networks. The trade associations are asking for a summary judgment, or a quick end to the case before going to trial, against Morpheus parent StreamCast Networks, Grokster, and Kazaa parent Sharman Networks.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-957779.html?tag=cd_mh

Making connections for a digital home
Attendees at a recent industry confab got a glimpse of prototypes that could help create what computing and consumer-electronics companies have long sought: a connected digital home. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Oak Technology demonstrated at the Intel Developer Forum last week a prototype that uses a recently approved communications specification to transform a commercially available DVD player into a connected part of a home network. The setup lets the DVD player access digital media files, such as digital video, images and audio, that are stored on a PC. Intel recently announced its own gadget based on the Universal Plug and Play specification for audio and video products, which was approved in June. The company's "digital media adapter" lets stereos and TVs access files stored on a computer.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-957974.html?tag=cd_mh

Route of Problem: Bad Online Maps
A couple delayed their wedding when bad directions led the groom's parents astray. A pallbearer got lost on the way to his friend's funeral service. A dejected bachelor missed dinner reservations with a date when he couldn't find the restaurant. These misguided travelers all used MapQuest, the site that provides detailed maps and driving directions for millions of locations worldwide. Increasingly, drivers are leaving Thomas Bros. guides and AAA maps in the glove box in favor of custom directions from online map services. When they lose their way, they inevitably blame their tardiness not on human fallibility but on the mapping service: "MapQuest lied to me."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54949,00.html

A Call to Shutter the Spammers
It's a torrent, a flood, an avalanche. It clogs servers and makes gigabit fibers perform like dialup modems. It's a cross between the postal service and Darth Vader. Studies routinely show spam accounting for as much as 50 percent of all e-mail traffic on the Internet. Sadly, spam is everywhere. If the trend continues, spam may soon disrupt the usability of the Internet more effectively than any al-Qaida cyberterrorist. The Internet is too important to permit it to be ruined by spam and the trash who generate it. And emotions are bubbling over on all sides of the spam battle.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54982,00.html

The Plot to Kill the Carp
European carp. Wildlife officials discovered them swimming among the lake's rare native fish seven years ago and wasted no time taking drastic action by quarantining the area. Opportunistic and adaptable, Cyrprinus carpio uproots aquatic vegetation and turns clear-running water into a muddy morass, depriving native fish of food, light, and oxygen. To save Lake Crescent, government authorities had to partially destroy it by lowering water levels, denying the carp space to spawn. The invader — likely the descendant of juveniles used as fishing bait — has been held in check but are not yet eradicated. The planet's most farmed fish and a staple of Asian diets, carp are the Borg of the fish world, infiltrating lakes and rivers from China to California. Now, for the first time anywhere, Australian scientists have a plan to genetically engineer carp out of existence. Injected with "daughterless" genes, the fish will produce only male offspring and thus spawn the seeds of their own destruction.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/carp.html

Private Info Becoming Plane Truth
Initial rollout of what may eventually become the world's largest silicon repository of personal data could be less than 90 days away. As expected, civil liberties groups aren't happy about it. The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) is designed to scan multiple public and private databases for information on individuals traveling into and out of the United States. The system will feed the results to an analysis application that mathematically ranks travelers' potential as security threats. A brainchild of the Transportation Department's Transportation Security Administration (TSA), CAPPS II is a quantum expansion of the current system used to identify potential terrorists attempting to board airplanes.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55037,00.html

Cloned Food Products Near Reality
Milk from cloned cows and meat from the offspring of cloned cows and pigs could show up on grocery shelves as early as next year under the plans of livestock breeders who are already raising scores of clones on American farmsteads. A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's top scientific body, has given fresh impetus to the effort to turn cloning into a routine tool of U.S. agricultural production. A special NAS panel that reviewed developments in animal biotechnology was alarmed by genetic manipulation of fish and insects that might escape and harm wild species, but it found cloning of farm animals less troublesome, since the technique involves copying adult animals without altering their genes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002Sep15.html

The Coming Virus Armageddon
Computer virus writers are known for building on each other's work to create ever-deadlier malware. In the future, a truly malicious code might not create an immediate uproar by hitting the Internet with a big bang. Instead, it could slowly and quietly seize control of a vast number of computers, doing significant but not immediately apparent damage to data. How conceivable is the supervirus threat? "We never say never in this business," McAfee.com virus research manager April Goostree told NewsFactor. "We've never really seen it, but we've seen some things that are pretty darn close. I really don't see why it couldn't be done." But Trend Micro global director of education David Perry disagreed, telling NewsFactor that given the nature of viruses today, it is unlikely that one could cripple the Web. "I really don't believe in the concept of there being an ultimate computer virus," he said. "There are rumors about there being a metavirus or megavirus, but it's fiction." Regardless of probability, Goostree and Perry agreed that the key trait of a virus with the ability to knock out the Internet has nothing to do with technology.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19406.html

Nuclear ships sail into storm of protest
Two armed British freighters carrying enough plutonium for up to 50 bombs are sailing into a storm of protest in the Irish Sea on Monday. They will be confronted by a flotilla of over 20 boats and closely monitored by the Irish navy. The state-owned company that operates the boats, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), has confirmed that the ships are expected to dock at Barrow in Furness at around 0900 BST on Tuesday. BNFL also said that the boats, the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, were heading into the Irish Sea from the south. Greenpeace had alleged the ship would take the longer northern route, which would have had the advantage of avoiding Irish waters. The Irish government is fiercely opposed to the shipment.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992801

Cloning business closes down
The company that created Dolly the sheep is shutting down part of its cloning business to focus on more profitable markets. PPL Therapeutics has decided to shut down its stem cell research programme, based at Roslin near Edinburgh, after failing to find a buyer. The biotechnology company still hopes to sell off its xenotransplantation arm, which was responsible for the birth of "double-knockout" pigs last month. The piglets had been genetically altered by the Edinburgh-based group so their organs could be received by humans. Scottish-based PPL Therapeutics said it had created the first so-called "double knock-out" pigs, genetically-engineered to lack both copies of a gene which causes rejection.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/2260841.stm

Scientists Hope to Monitor Space Junk Hitting Moon
The chance that a derelict rocket stage may hit the Moon has stirred up hopes of gathering valuable lunar science data. In early September, an object was discovered slipping through space. Later tagged J002E3, the mystery flotsam is speculated to be a relic of space program’s past: A Saturn IVB upper stage from the Apollo 12 mission that flew in November 1969. After its use, the rocket stage was cast off. Although tracking experts are still assessing J002E3’s trajectory, early reports suggest the object might slam into the Moon next year. The odds are 20 percent but could change as more is learned about the exact path of J002E3. If the impact occurs, equipment left there by Apollo moonwalkers could turn the crash of space junk into a bit of smashing science. But there’s a slight catch.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ct_020916.html

CD players glued shut to stop piracy
A US record company has issued reviewers with portable CD players that are glued shut to prevent two new albums from being pirated online before their official releases. Epic Records Group has taken the drastic step of sealing CD players shut and gluing headphones onto them to stop digital copies being made from promotional albums. The albums involved are Riot Act by Pearl Jam and Scarlet's Walk by Tori Amos. A spokeswoman for Epic told New Scientist: "Obviously we have a problem with piracy and this is one of the ways we're trying to address it. We're trying lots of things." New albums have appeared early on file sharing networks such as KaZaA, Morpheus and Grokster with a frequency which is alarming record companies. Eminem's The Eminem Show suffered this fate prior to release in May 2002.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992804

Both sides claim victory in court ruling on Madster
Immediately following a federal judge's ruling granting a preliminary injunction against file-swapping service Madster, both the music industry and Madster claimed victory. In U.S. District Court in Chicago, Judge Marvin Aspen ruled last week in favor of the music industry, saying Cohoes-based Madster seemed to be designed to contribute "to copyright infringement on a massive scale." He granted the music industry's motion for a preliminary injunction to stop Madster from infringing on copyrighted works. Madster software — formerly known as Aimster — allows users to send encrypted files, including music files, to other individuals using instant messaging systems. Madster creator Johnny Deep sued the Recording Industry Association of America Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based trade group for recording artists, and was countersued by them, regarding the legality of his software.
http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/st...16/story5.html

Rights issue rocks the music world
Record companies see it as mutiny. Musicians call it an overdue rebellion. Either way, the artists' rights movement has set the stage for combat that could revolutionize the music industry. What started as a classic David-and-Goliath skirmish over contractual terms could be tilting toward a level battlefield as opposition on a wide range of issues swells against an industry mired in a sales slump. "The record business is in rough enough shape that something might actually change," says Craig Marks, editor of Blender magazine. "If things weren't so uncertain, so bleak and in such disarray, the industry would be immovable, even with a gun to its head. If there was ever a set of circumstances that could lead to artists making inroads, it's now."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/n...s-rights_x.htm

USC to Students: No Sharing Files
Students at the University of Southern California could face a school year without computer access if they are busted swapping movies and music online. In an e-mail message to all students, school officials warned that using peer-to-peer file-trading services could force the university to kick students off the network. "We want to alert you to the fact that many of you are risking complete loss of access to the USC computer system and both disciplinary and legal action," wrote USC dean of libraries Jerry Campbell and vice president of student affairs Michael Jackson in the e-mail.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,55159,00.html

More news later on

[MagicMorpheus]

THanks for the news, walktalker!

Originally posted by walktalker
CD players glued shut to stop piracy
A US record company has issued reviewers with portable CD players that are glued shut to prevent two new albums from being pirated online before their official releases. Epic Records Group has taken the drastic step of sealing CD players shut and gluing headphones onto them to stop digital copies being made from promotional albums. The albums involved are Riot Act by Pearl Jam and Scarlet's Walk by Tori Amos. A spokeswoman for Epic told New Scientist: "Obviously we have a problem with piracy and this is one of the ways we're trying to address it. We're trying lots of things." New albums have appeared early on file sharing networks such as KaZaA, Morpheus and Grokster with a frequency which is alarming record companies. Eminem's The Eminem Show suffered this fate prior to release in May 2002.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992804

Who cares? Sooner or later someone's goning to buy the album and put it a p2p program. I don't see no point in the glueing it. They are just showing they don't trust the critics (or whoever they gave the album to).

[walktalker]

Originally posted by MagicMorpheus
THanks for the news, walktalker!

Who cares? Sooner or later someone's goning to buy the album and put it a p2p program. I don't see no point in the glueing it. They are just showing they don't trust the critics (or whoever they gave the album to).

Actually, I heard that album was being shared on the web since almost three weeks from now

[JackSpratts]

CD players glued shut to stop piracy

desperation!

cut the headphone cord and splice in a mini-jack. it goes to the sound card and bingo, you're making a copy. and yes, they're on the nets already. just got files from toris' "scarlet's walk", in mp3 and wav no less.

- js.

[TankGirl]

Thank you very much, WT!

Originally posted by walktalker
Napster draws over a dozen bids
More than a dozen bidders have expressed interest in buying the assets of bankrupt online music-swapping site Napster, an investment banker handling the bidding process said on Monday. Rick Chance, managing director at Trenwith Securities, the investment banking unit of BDO Seidman LLP, said that the bids will be analyzed and the bank will provide a recommendation to Napster's official creditors committee later this week. Bidding will close for Napster's assets on Sept. 17. In a ruling on Friday, a bankruptcy judge gave Trenwith and the committee until Friday, Sept. 27 to select the highest and best bidder for Napster's assets, Chance said. The Napster asset sale has drawn both U.S. and international bidders.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-958118.html?tag=fd_top

It would be interesting to know what kind of wishful brand builders are after Napster (besides the Spanish company wanting to make Wankster out of it... )

- tg

[Shani]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
CD players glued shut to stop piracy

desperation!

cut the headphone cord and splice in a mini-jack. it goes to the sound card and bingo, you're making a copy. and yes, they're on the nets already. just got files from toris' "scarlet's walk", in mp3 and wav no less.

- js.

the mp3's you got were probably from the 6-track radio sampler SW selections - haven't seen any of the other SW mp3's around.. if there are though.. let me know

hadnt heard about the glue thing.. :/ though I did read this bit from an interview with her about only being able to get to b-sides using a code.. or something. anyone know anything about it?

from here

Tell us about the extras that are the CD, this is awesome, the maps and stuff.

"Well, this is how it works. So when you get the CD, I kind of figured, you know you can't change technology, I mean people are doing what they do so you change it's function. So the CD becomes a key and then you put it into your computer and it will take you to Scarlet's Web. So that's the only way you can get there...it [the CD] will be a code, that I am sure somebody will break within 8 months but I've got 8 months and I kind of know that, but once you get to Scarlet's Web there will be extra tracks which in the old days would have been b-sides but because we don't do that anymore.."

edit - found some fakes on imesh. A sorta fairytale given different titles. hmph

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
Rights issue rocks the music world
Record companies see it as mutiny. Musicians call it an overdue rebellion. Either way, the artists' rights movement has set the stage for combat that could revolutionize the music industry. What started as a classic David-and-Goliath skirmish over contractual terms could be tilting toward a level battlefield as opposition on a wide range of issues swells against an industry mired in a sales slump. "The record business is in rough enough shape that something might actually change," says Craig Marks, editor of Blender magazine. "If things weren't so uncertain, so bleak and in such disarray, the industry would be immovable, even with a gun to its head. If there was ever a set of circumstances that could lead to artists making inroads, it's now."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/n...s-rights_x.htm

This was a very good story btw. I especially liked Keith Richards' comment:

At least one rich rock star says he's bellyaching on behalf of music itself, not just the artists who make it.

"We're on the threshold of a whole new system," says Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. "The time where accountants decide what music people hear is coming to an end. Accountants may be good at numbers, but they have terrible taste in music. I don't know how I'm going to get paid, but I'd rather go out into the brave new world than live with dinosaurs that are far too big for their boots."

- tg

[Ðiego]

Linux worm creating P2P attack network

A new worm that attacks Linux Web servers has compromised more than 3,500 machines, creating a rogue peer-to-peer network that has been used to attack other computers with a flood of data, security experts said Saturday.

The worm seems to spreading fairly rapidly, according to security company Symantec, which early Friday detected about 2,000 infected computers that were actively attacking—a number that climbed to 3,500 late Friday. The company’s security personnel could not be contacted for comment Saturday.

"It is confirmed through various sources that this worm is in the wild and actively attacking other servers," the company warned its newest advisory Saturday.

The worm targets Apache Web server installations on a variety of Linux systems, including those from Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake and Slackware.

By exploiting a security hole in the Apache OpenSSL module that enables a widely used encrypted communications service known as the secure socket layer, the worm can copy itself to new servers.

The advisory includes an analysis of the so-called Linux.Slapper.Worm’s code, revealing some details of the attack network created from servers compromised by the worm.

"(Slapper) also includes a number of peer-to-peer capabilities, which allow it to communicate with other clients, and participate in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) network," stated the advisory.

It’s uncertain how much danger the worm poses. While an advisory posted Friday by Symantec rates the new threat a 2 out of 5, with 5 being the most severe threat, the latest advisory rates the potential danger as “high.”

Antivirus company Kaspersky released an advisory on the worm early Saturday, which stressed that the the company hadn’t seen any reports of infected machines from its customers.

Though the rogue peer-to-peer network of compromised servers is still being created, it has already been used to attack the DNS servers of a major Internet service provider, according to a statement posted on the Internet Storm Center, a Web site that tracks security incidents on the Net by correlating data among voluntarily submitted firewall logs.

Domain-name service, or DNS, servers acts as the yellow pages of the Internet by matching domain names, such as news.com, to the numerical addresses used by the Net’s hardware. By leveling a denial-of-service attack at such servers, an attacker can block customers of the assaulted ISP from connecting to Web sites.

Further evidence of the DDoS network being used came in an e-mail sent out by RackShack.net to its customers. The Web hosting provider apparently warned administrators that several of its servers had been used to conduct attacks against other providers.

"This morning we found 20-plus machines that were used to launch a DoS attack," Patrick Smith, a systems administrator for the company, stated in the e-mail seen by News.com. "We are currently reviewing the compromised hosts and it appears this worm is the culprit."

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2880336,00.html”]All about the Slapper TROJAN/WORM here..[/url]


TalkBack: Post your comment here

Okay..I will you retards..

Why is this trojan being called a P2P network?

Are people sharing ideas and information, knowledge and understanding, humor and experience? No. Systems are linking in the way of all trojans used for this purpose in the past and in the future and as all their ilk they have SFA to do with P2P.

To label this trojan part and parcel to P2P is to call all computer users hackers.

This pisses me off to no end and is just what I do NOT expect to read on the ZDNet site. This is no more than tripe and no less than slander of the community I support and have come to love. Some of the brightest and best of the internet are in our ranks and I take great offence at being lumped in with script kiddies intent on mayhem and self-gratification through the exploitation of others with back-handed measures.

This more accurately describes the ‘Music Industry’, not the P2P community!

Ðiego
________________
www.naphoria.com
www.napsterites.net

Dispicable reporting if ever there was.


Ð