Passed away yesterday. He had a good run at 97. About time he got some rest.

Link to article

SMS Bug Can Allow Hackers to Turn an iPhone’s Mic On
Eavesdropping on a conversation is just one of many ways to exploit the vulnerability.

Charlie Miller, the winner of two consecutive editions of the Pwn2Own hacking contest, is signaling that a critical vulnerability exists in the way iPhones handle their text messages. According to the security expert, an attacker could exploit the hole even to turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on a conversation.

The news comes via a PC Advisor report citing Miller as saying that Apple is already working to fix the iPhone vulnerability in question. In the simplest terms, the bug found by Miller could allow an attacker to remotely install and run unsigned software code with root access to the phone. The security expert could not disclose too much information about the vulnerability, citing an agreement with Apple. Usually, in such a situation, those who find a bug and report it to the company responsible for the software must wait until a patch is made available, so they can go public with it.

According to the PC Advisor report, Miller said that the SMS vulnerability could, indeed, allow an attacker to run software code on the phone that was sent by SMS over a mobile operator's network, even though the service allowed for a maximum of 140 bytes per message to be sent. As users should know, longer sequences can be sent to the phone as multiple messages that combine into one, when received.

“The malicious code could include commands to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet,” Miller is cited as saying. “SMS is a great vector to attack the iPhone,” he added. Admittedly, “The iPhone is more secure than OS X,” Miller pinpointed, “but SMS could be a critical vulnerability.”

Needless to point out, iPhone software update 3.1 or 3.0.1 should become available soon to fix this and other potential issues.

Yes, that's the 72'x 160' LED screen at the new Cowboy's Stadium!!

Whoot!

We really do live in an age of miracles and wonders!

If you told someone a hundred years ago, that you'd be able to see and talk to someone half way around the world using a machine not much bigger than a photo album, they'd have called you crazy. Walking on the moon? What a lunatic! Driving down the highway at 70 miles an hour? Impossible! Organ transplants? Rediculous! Pope Soap on a Rope? Heresy!

We have virtually instant communications that cover the world. Billions of people have access to the Internet in one form or another. Traveling from New York to London takes less time than it took to go from Kansas City ti St. Louis a hundred years ago. We have submarines that go to the bottoms of the oceans (but no underwater cities!) and space craft that have gone past the edge of the solar system (without people, of course).

The Hubble telescope---now considered to be obsolete---has taken pictures of a planet orbiting another star! As if that wasn't amazing enough, there is a new telescope coming that will make Hubble look like a child's toy. Just imagine what kind of incredible secrets we'll be able to uncover by looking even farther in to the visible history of the universe! Not to mention those incredible pictures!

When I was 16, I got my first computer. It was a TRS-80 clone. It had a Zilog Z-80 processor (8bit, 4mhz) and 48K of memory. Now I have a PC with an Intel Q6600 (4x64bit, 2400mhz) and 8,000,000K of memory! My 160kb floppy was microscopic compared to the 4.5 TERRABYTES (4,500,000,000kb) on my computer today.

Of course, with all those wonders you also get the worst of humanity. The digital age we live in where data communication is almost instantaneous, there's no way to track everything and scrutinize the data. This has lead to humanity's greed causing everything from the current economic crash, to all of the phishing e-mails and bogus web sites trying to steal your personal information and all your money with it. The people who create malicious viruses to infect computers and disrupt their ability to function just for fun, or worse, profit.

Corporate greed and the corruption of our political system have brought about a new national freedom for the big guys, but in a manner that is constantly squeezing out the little people. We as individuals can't compete with the likes of Exon, Microsoft, and other mega-huge corporations who can afford to buy and sell politicians like they're just another commodity.

Add in the dumbing down of Americans in general (Can anyone tell me what country Spottsylvania is in w/o looking it up?) and the fact that most people will believe the most OUTRAGEOUS bullshit without ever thinking or even BOTHERING to look around and see if maybe it's---well--bullshit! Or the fact that people seem to think that just because you're not face to face with someone that it gives you the right to be abusive and insulting. This is the breakdown of our moral fabric. Mind you, I'm not talking about religious morals (contradiction of terms, really) as no two religions can agree much on anything except that the other guy is wrong. I'm talking about how we interrelate with each other.

If we can survive the next hundred years without our civilization imploding in on itself, I think we might actually have a chance at getting off of this rock and ensuring that our species might actually survive in the long run.

I know I won't be around to see what happens, but at least I'm enjoying my part of the ride.

"We have industrial areas, commercial areas, we have residential areas … we don't have cell towers in residential areas. It doesn't make any sense." -- Linkage

This guy gets my moron of the day award.

Phigment (the main virtual with all MY stuff on it) is working just fine.  Planet Furry is up and running, but for some reason it's not talking to the net.  Ricky has info on how to get into it so we'll see if he can fix it.  SOund.Net mail is just plain fucked.  I'll have to figure out why the kernel hangs during initial load.


Biggest pain in the ass was MS suddenly deciding it didn't like the VMWare DLL'l and denying them run privs. (WTF?)  I hate MS with a passion.  Next server plan is to use 100% (not 98%) compatible hardware for a VM ESXi server and get rid of windblows all together.

Ja ne.

To anyone who has their page/messageboard/etc. hosted on one of my servers:

  At approximately 10PM Central tonight, the servers will all be going down. I'll be transporting them back to my apartment where I'll be merging many of the servers into a single master virtual server.  Do not expect the servers to be back on-line again until sometime Tuesday evening.

Thank you for your patience.