Article

2008-08-13 Science & Technology

Ongoing cyberattack against Georgia using botnet

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Posted by lotp 2008-08-13 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ] Top

#1 This is the future, folks. Look for the US internet to be mostly shut down the next war we get into. If it's conflict with the Chinese, we can expect real pain. The "Great Firewall" works both ways - keeping China safe while keeping foreigners out. The US doesn't have anything to keep a massive attack from flooding the internet with useless information. A couple of bombs at key access points, and we'd be back in 1995, with faxes and POTS.

Posted by gromky 2008-08-13 00:30|| 2008-08-13 00:30|| Front Page Top

#2 Gee, wotta shocker. And here I thought all the botnets Russia allowed to proliferate were just for spam...

Posted by mojo">mojo 2008-08-13 02:52|| 2008-08-13 02:52|| Front Page Top

#3 Perhaps I ought to start running the anti-virus, spybot and ad-aware programs weekly, to reduce the chance that my computer is helping the Russians or the Chinese. Any suggestions from the many Rantburg experts?

Posted by trailing wife ">trailing wife 2008-08-13 04:59|| 2008-08-13 04:59|| Front Page Top

#4 I am not too worried about China. Taiwan isn't the flashpoint that it used to be. They conduct heavy trade with the Mainland, and Taiwanese even retire there. .

Posted by McZoid 2008-08-13 05:39|| 2008-08-13 05:39|| Front Page Top

#5 I am not too worried about China

You should be. DOD's information assurance experts are - one of them told me privately he suspects the SIPRNET is may be already passively compromised.

There's a huge effort underway to improve cyberdefense on our mil systems. But those systems are disparate and (for better or for worse) not fully integrated.

The service turf battles that Rummy tried to override made, and continue to make, DISA's work in cyberdefense harder. China meanwhile has a large number of computer scientists educated in the US who will never get a wife and whose energies have been channelled into nationalism.

Posted by lotp 2008-08-13 06:45|| 2008-08-13 06:45|| Front Page Top

#6 The US only controls the root server. Any nation trying this could find themselves for many years in a very dark, self referential corner of the internet.

Posted by ed 2008-08-13 07:52|| 2008-08-13 07:52|| Front Page Top

#7 jumbled mini rant

China meanwhile has a large number of computer scientists educated in the US who will never get a wife and whose energies have been channelled into nationalism.

Caliphornia: Asian Americans will be the largest group at UCLA and Berkeley, outnumbering whites.

Cal Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA etc. are packed full of Chinese, Many are Chinese nationals getting University educations on student visas, the rest are mostly second or third generation Chinese American Citizens.

Will our own Chinese Citizens be loyal to the USA or the greater Chinese Empire?

In WW II we had the same concerns.... but in Nation which basically loved America.

Our volunteers have done a magnificent job in Iraq and A-stan, as good or better as any American Era.

And that was done In spite of a 40 year Bombardment of Lies, Distortions and Hate hammered at them by the elitist rags and the MSM, starting with our founders on up thru today; So called AP "stringers" and millions Lies about Haditha.

lotp, did anyone ask you or any of your friends whether we should have so many foreign Nationals getting a public school education? [free]

No Gubmimnt offical ever asked me or mine.

Posted by Red Dawg">Red Dawg 2008-08-13 08:47|| 2008-08-13 08:47|| Front Page Top

#8 Nope, nobody asked me.

However:

we have a major problem right here at home. Way too few of our own students are interested in or prepared to major in math, science or engineering. The IEEE (the world's largest professional / technical society) is very concerned about this. Those of us active in the IEEE are working hard on a variety of initiatives aimed at getting kids interested, especially at the middle-school level which appears to be the window of opportunity for shaping their career interests.

It will take years, at best. And if we fail we WILL lose our economic and military advantage.

The problem goes deeper than admissions policies. There is little demand by Americans for those skills at the undergrad or graduate level.

Posted by lotp 2008-08-13 08:56|| 2008-08-13 08:56|| Front Page Top

#9 "The problem goes deeper than admissions policies. There is little demand by Americans for those skills at the undergrad or graduate level."

lotp, that is the classic cheicken or egg thingie at work; many potential engineers see what corporate America is doing ( outsourcing or a foreign country) and figure their job security prospects are better in some other field. Hence the low demand. Just my humble observations from the aerospace and manufacturing bleachers.

Posted by USN, Ret. 2008-08-13 13:51|| 2008-08-13 13:51|| Front Page Top

#10 "The US doesn't have anything to keep a massive attack from flooding the internet with useless information"

you can say that again ;)

Posted by supergalitz 2008-08-13 13:55|| 2008-08-13 13:55|| Front Page Top

#11 "did anyone ask you or any of your friends whether we should have so many foreign Nationals getting a public school education"

what gave you the idea that state universities are free, even to instate residents?

Posted by supergalitz 2008-08-13 13:56|| 2008-08-13 13:56|| Front Page Top

#12 That would explain a lot. Maybe "they" decided it was important to wipe out Usenet's sci.space.policy a decade ahead of time.

Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2008-08-13 13:57|| 2008-08-13 13:57|| Front Page Top

#13 For state, ie public, universities, out-of-state students pay double or more the tuition. I don't know if out-of-country students pay even more than that, but I would not be surprised. Way back in 1979 the school I attended, the State University of New York at Buffalo, had the second biggest foreign student population of any school in the country. (UC Berkeley was then #1.) There were a great many Red Chinese and Indian students then. The Chinese went home once they'd got their PhDs, the Indians stayed and settled. The Japanese came only for the summer -- the English As A Second Language course was extremely popular.

Anecdotal, I know, but the boyfriend of trailing daughter #1 is halfway through a 5-year BS/MS program for mechanical engineering, td #2's boyfriend will either go for chemistry or teaching English literature, and formerly temporary daughter's boyfriend should end up a double major in electrical engineering/computer science, after which he'll either end up in lotp's end of the world or academia.

Finally, Forbes recently put out an article about the highest paying Batchelor's degrees. Number one was computer science, followed by the other flavours of engineering, mathematics and economics, and a few others. Their conclusion was that not only the best starting salaries, but the best long term earning potential came from degrees tied to mathematics and science, and not just because the rigour of those programs gives employers a clear indication of actual ability and trustworthiness.link

Posted by trailing wife 2008-08-13 14:31|| 2008-08-13 14:31|| Front Page Top

#14 I like to hope our government has people who can hack as good as they can. It sounds like it'd be a heckuva lot of fun. Why, I could fight the commie bastards in my pajamas from the comfort of my own home office.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2008-08-13 15:40|| 2008-08-13 15:40|| Front Page Top

#15 Offense is easy.

Defending a complex set of systems which were engineered on open assumptions? harder.

Posted by lotp 2008-08-13 15:46|| 2008-08-13 15:46|| Front Page Top

#16 Remember that our cyber infrastructure extends well beyond the Net - as these guys know full well.

Posted by lotp 2008-08-13 15:49|| 2008-08-13 15:49|| Front Page Top

#17 Offense is easy.

So much the better. Defense is good. I like defense. Firewalls, spam filters, SSL and VPNs are all good things. But they are expensive and time consuming and my point is that we should make them pay. Let them know that we can hurt them too. Then sit back and chuckle while our government asserts with a wink and a nod that it was just "rogue" elements in our country over which we have no control.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2008-08-13 18:59|| 2008-08-13 18:59|| Front Page Top

#18 ...over whom we have no control...

Spell checker doesn't catch things like that.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2008-08-13 19:00|| 2008-08-13 19:00|| Front Page Top

#19 It's always amazing just how illiterate and incoherent trolls are.

And how CLEVER to post using the nyms of regulars!!

Posted by not trailing wife 2008-08-13 19:12|| 2008-08-13 19:12|| Front Page Top

#20 new troll here folks

Posted by not lotp 2008-08-13 19:14|| 2008-08-13 19:14|| Front Page Top

#21 Its called linux. BSD is out there too.

I use the debain flavor of linux found here:
http://www.debian.org

It avoids windows virus attacks by not natively running windows code. It is safer than windows because it's code source is always on the web for anybody to peer review. And they do.
I build my own OS kernels based on source from Kernel.org
My desktop is able to do all the fancy stuff that your windows one does except play first person windows games in raw mode.
I can even run windows in a VM like KVM or emulations like WINE.
And best of all... ITS FREE!
as in FREE LUNCH...

Posted by 3dc 2008-08-13 19:40|| 2008-08-13 19:40|| Front Page Top

23:43 FOTSGreg
23:35 Correction
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