Robert Tappan Morris is a character of Internet lore, anyone who has studied Computer Science, Software Engineering or Computer Security will have heard of this guy.
He’s pretty much the fellow that made the Internet famous (for all the wrong reasons) and the first creator of a bit of self-replicating network based malware (now known as a worm) that did some serious damage. The worm is called the Morris Worm after it’s creator and this Sunday will be it’s 20 year anniversary.
It’s an interesting story to read if you are familiar with it and probably even more interesting if you’re not, so do check out the Wiki pages on the history of the situation.
There have been very few worms that have caused such widespread infection and failures. Blaster was quite memory and on the virus front I remember CIH was terrible.
Source: Network World
Morris Worm To Turn 20
Nigeria needs more workers for Internet security
Moved by this situation and the estimated 20,000 job fair participants, Bavisi offered scholarships worth US$44,000 to outstanding students. The offer attracted a rush among youth attendees, who would be required to pass a pre-registration test and meet basic requirements as conditions of the scholarship.
LPTs are licensed to use "LPT Audited" logos in their projects and, in some cases, are referred to as "ethical hackers."
As corporate organizations search for individuals who can analyze vulnerabilities of the network and be trusted not to disclose those vulnerabilities to competitors, penetration testers are in high demand, Bavisi said.
"Licensed Penetration Testers are preferred over non-licensed ones by companies for recruitments and assignments," he added.
EC-Council University is an information security training institute with branches in more than 60 countries.
Google’s Orkut Hit by Data Stealing Worm
So just a few days about there was a new MSN Worm - BlackAngel.B, before that the Yahoo! e-mail worm, long before that of course the MySpace worm and a few others not notable enough to mention.
And of course plenty of nasty Trojans.
A new Internet worm capable of stealing bank details and other personal data from users is circulating via Orkut, Google Inc.’s social networking service, a computer security company warned on Monday.It seems this is not the first time Orkut has been hit, this one however goes after personal details of a more valuable nature.
Instant-messaging service provider FaceTime Communications said its software security lab had detected the spread of the electronic virus, the third such threat to disseminate itself via messages posted on Orkut users personal Web pages.
Google’s service, while available globally, is wildly popular among Brazilians which make up the bulk of its users.
The malicious program, dubbed by FaceTime as “MW.Orc,” works its way onto users’ personal computers when they click on infected links on Orkut scrapbook pages. The link is followed by a message in Portuguese that entices the user to click.
Once the link is activated, a file is uploaded to the PC, according to a description of how the worm works contained in a statement by the Foster City, California-based company.The earlier attempt seemed to be more of a phishing affair.
When infected Orkut users using Microsoft Corp.’s widely used Windows XP operating system to find personal files on their PCs through their “My Computer” icon, that triggers an e-mail back to the creator of MW.Orc creator filled with personal information stored on the PC, FaceTime said.
The new threat to Orkut follows an earlier worm, Banker-BWD, which was uncovered by Sophos, an anti-virus company.
That malicious software also disseminated itself through Orkut’s scrapbook pages, but automatically transferred the victims to fake Web pages of banks in order to entice the users to enter personal data that can then be stolen by the hackers.
Source:Darknet
Google Announces limited API support for OpenID 2.0
Google announced it’s support for OpenID 2.0 protocol. So now with your existing Google account you can login and use other sites. I think this move was made after Microsoft announcing that they will give an OpenID for all its Windows Live users. This new log-in offering is not available to all site owners. But you can apply for it using the sign-up form. Zoho, Plaxo and Buxfer are the launch partners for this new API.
Google’s OpenID implementation doesn’t directly give your OpenID identifier to other sites, instead it acts as a middleman, authorizing you through it before it hands it over. Now a wide range of largest web service providers like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, MySpace etc are using OpenID.
Google had announced that it is planning to combine the OAuth and OpenID protocol so that a service can not only request a user’s identity through OpenID, but also “request access to information available via OAuth-enabled APIs such as Google Data APIs as well as standard data formats such as Portable Contacts and OpenSocial REST APIs.”
Google Funded Satellites to provide High Speed Internet by 2010
Now Google is on a new mission to provide high speed internet access to all even those who are not connected till now in the world. In venture with HSBC and Liberty Global it has come up with a startup named O3b networks which clearly means for Other 3 billion people who still can’t have proper access to the Internet. This will be accomplished with an equipment of 16 satellites which are of low cost in order to provide access that can be afforded mainly for the growing markets and upcoming parts of the world like Africa, Middle East, Asia and Latin America. It will be made available to use by 2010 with service being provided and is a good substitute for global networks which used fiber networks even in case of developed nations.
There will direct connectivity to WiMax 3G supportive devices and towers for areas with no option now. There will be access to Telecom carriers and service providers of respective regions directly and even to the Internet service providers, enabling them to provide broadband based services to all of them.Speed will definitely be relatively close to that of the America and with much better cost effective way for the growing markets. The motive for this mission was idea from a similar kind of Mission accomplished in some part of Africa. The system will support all future expansions and is by one of those who were responsible for introduction of 3G fiber networks in Africa and a member of O3b. All backward areas were kept in mind by Google for this project and will be globally beneficial in all the ways.
This development is interesting and will make many political conversations and collaborations easier where no proper person to person communication exists mainly in case of borders. There are some critical issues needs to be addressed and even its impact. One such is government interventions, regulations, classes and accessibility. 03b is anyhow positive about this mission since it eliminates the distance between people which used to be in the past and often read in the books.
Send Pictures Easily Using Your Gmail account With iPhoto2Gmail
iPhoto2Gmail is an iPhoto plug-in that will help you to easily send Images using your Gmail account. This plugin works with iPhoto 5, 6, 7 and 08. You dont even need to Install or configure an email application. You can send your original Images or you can also resize the pictures and send them as JPEG’s. This will help you to save your time. iPhoto2Gmail integrates Gmail Contacts. So you can easily select your desired contacts and send them your Images.
The latest version retrieves the contacts using Google’s GData framework. Now you can also cancel in-progress email sending. It works with Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Download iPhoto2Gmail
Measure the Number of Page Views on any Site
Statbrain is a online web stats tools that helps you guess the number of page views on any site using a combination of Alexa rank, backlink counts from Google, Yahoo and some other unknown factors.
Don’t expect it to be too accurate, but if you want a very rough estimate for any site, this could be useful.
This could be very handy for advertisers or people who are interested in measuring rough traffic on a competitor’s website.
You may also want to checkout Google Trends as they are pretty accurate.
StatBrain gives an estimate about number of visits and not unique visitors or page views. If that sounds confusing, let me explain:
