A page for randomness

“It’s going to take more than delivering a line about lipstick to win over undecided women voters,” said Rebecca Kirszner, a consultant with Hilltop Publics Solutions.

Emily’s List was perhaps the first to sing out about an opportunity rather than a threat from Palin, pointing to a poll it had done a couple of days after McCain selected the Alaskan moose huntress.

The survey of 800 women likely voters said Obama holds an 11-point lead on McCain, and that women Hillary voters in particular flooded the Illinois senator’s way.

Before the Palin pick, Obama led McCain by 44 points among female Clinton backers. That jumped to a 54-point lead afterward, 75% to 21%, the poll said.

Read more: Sarah Palin may have women flocking - to Barack Obama

Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.

Read more: Op-Ed Columnist - Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

As the country rapidly diversifies, Republicans are presenting a convention that is almost entirely white.

Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago. Each night, the overwhelmingly white audience watches a series of white politicians step to the lectern — a visual reminder that no black Republican has served as a governor, U.S. senator or U.S. House member in the past six years.

Read more: In a More Diverse America, A Mostly White Convention - washingtonpost.com

John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin puts his campaign firmly on track toward a hard-edged drive to mobilize the GOP’s conservative base, threatening to erase what remains of his centrist maverick image and his appeal to moderate and independent voters.

The McCain of days past who attacked leaders of the Christian right as “agents of intolerance,” who voted against “budget busting” Bush tax cuts, who broke ranks with his party on issues from gay rights to campaign finance reform, is now a faded memory.

What remains unclear is the extent to which McCain actively participated in the transformation of his political persona, and the extent to which he has been passive — pushed and shoved by aides, partisan pressures, and external forces.

McCain and Palin now head a ticket that is emerging as more red-bloodedly conservative than Bush-Cheney in 2004 — when conservatism would have appeared to have reached its zenith — with a platform substantially further to the right on issues ranging from education to immigration.

Read more: Palin Pick May Erase McCain’s ‘Maverick’ Image

Barack Obama Campaign Spokesman Bill Burton responds to John McCain’s choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate:

“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer says:

“After the great success of the Democratic convention, the choice of Sarah Palin is surely a Hail Mary pass. It is a real roll of the dice and shows how John McCain, Karl Rove et al realize what a strong position the Obama-Biden team and Democrats in general are in in this election. Certainly the choice of Palin puts to rest any argument about inexperience on the Democratic team and while Palin is a fine person, her lack of experience makes the thought of her assuming the presidency troubling. I particularly look forward to the Biden-Palin debate in Missouri.”

Read more: Sarah Palin: Dems Pounce On McCain Pick

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wants creationism taught in science classes.

In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, the soon-to-be governor of Alaska said of evolution and creation education, “Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.”

Asked by the Anchorage Daily News whether she believed in evolution, Palin declined to answer, but said that “I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class.”

“I’m not going to pretend I know how all this came to be,” she said.

The battle between evolution and creationism — specifically, Christian creationism — in U.S. classrooms dates back to the 1925 Scopes trial, when a Tennessee court banned the teaching of evolution. Since then, state and federal courts have repeatedly rejected so-called creation science in public schools, calling it religion rather than science.

Read more: McCain’s VP Wants Creationism Taught in School | Wired Science from Wired.com

Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency.

The tactic exploits the internet routing protocol BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) to let an attacker surreptitiously monitor unencrypted internet traffic anywhere in the world, and even modify it before it reaches its destination.

The demonstration is only the latest attack to highlight fundamental security weaknesses in some of the internet’s core protocols. Those protocols were largely developed in the 1970s with the assumption that every node on the then-nascent network would be trustworthy. The world was reminded of the quaintness of that assumption in July, when researcher Dan Kaminsky disclosed a serious vulnerability in the DNS system. Experts say the new demonstration targets a potentially larger weakness.

“It’s a huge issue. It’s at least as big an issue as the DNS issue, if not bigger,” said Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, noted computer security expert and former member of the L0pht hacking group, who testified to Congress in 1998 that he could bring down the internet in 30 minutes using a similar BGP attack, and disclosed privately to government agents how BGP could also be exploited to eavesdrop. “I went around screaming my head about this about ten or twelve years ago…. We described this to intelligence agencies and to the National Security Council, in detail.”

The man-in-the-middle attack exploits BGP to fool routers into re-directing data to an eavesdropper’s network.

Anyone with a BGP router (ISPs, large corporations or anyone with space at a carrier hotel) could intercept data headed to a target IP address or group of addresses. The attack intercepts only traffic headed to target addresses, not from them, and it can’t always vacuum in traffic within a network — say, from one AT&T customer to another.

Read more: Revealed: The Internet’s Biggest Security Hole | Threat Level from Wired.com

Dynamically linked shared libraries are an important aspect of GNU/Linux®. They allow executables to dynamically access external functionality at run time and thereby reduce their overall memory footprint (by bringing functionality in when it’s needed). This article investigates the process of creating and using dynamic libraries, provides details on the various tools for exploring them, and explores how these libraries work under the hood.

Libraries were designed to package similar functionality in a single unit. These units could then be shared with other developers and permitted what came to be called modular programming—that is, building programs from modules. Linux supports two types of libraries, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The static library contains functionality that is bound to a program statically at compile time. This differs from dynamic libraries, which are loaded when an application is loaded and binding occurs at run time.

Read more: Anatomy of Linux dynamic libraries

He might not have had the marquee billing of a Mark Warner or a Hillary Clinton, but Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) nonetheless whipped his party faithful into a frenzy Tuesday evening.

The Ohio lawmaker and liberal stalwart who earlier sought the Democratic presidential nomination delivered a passionate address calling on those in the audience here in Denver at watching at home to “wake up” and prevent another four years of Republican rule.

“Wake up America,” Kucinich declared from the podium of the Democratic National Convention. “In 2001 the oil companies, the war contractors and the neocon-artists seized the economy and added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt. … Trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war paid for with borrowed money.”

Read more: The Raw Story | Kucinich tells DNC: ‘Wake up America!’

A Denver TV station is reporting authorities may have foiled an assassination plot against Barack Obama, and there’s talk the suspects may be members of a white supremacy group.

KUSA-TV claims three men are in custody after a routine traffic stop in Aurora (near Denver) turned up two rifles, high-powered scopes, ammo and meth. The man in the car led authorities to a hotel where another suspect jumped out of a fourth floor window in an attempt to escape.

Source: Obama Assassination Plot? - TMZ.com

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Read more: 101 Atheist Quotes - The Atheist Blogger

John McCain broadcasts his affection for Theodore Roosevelt, but his opposition to regulating the local telephone industry suggests that he may not share the former president’s passion for busting huge corporate trusts.

Unlike Roosevelt, who railed against “malefactors of great wealth,” McCain’s positions frequently have echoed those of the giant regional Bell phone companies, now consolidated as AT&T, Verizon and Quest, the big survivors of the telecommunications wars of the last quarter-century.

McCain’s opposition to the 1996 Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act, intended to spur competition by pressuring the Bells to lease their lines and switches to competitors cheaply, offers a window into how he might view regulation of other markets as president.

Read more: Politics - In Senate, McCain has been reliable ally of big telecom firms - sacbee.com

If you didn’t vaccinate your kids, you too could find yourself partly responsible for the resurgence of a disease thought eliminated in 2000

Measles—a highly contagious disease-causing virus—is making a comeback in the U.S., thanks to parents fears over vaccines. Fifteen children under 20, including four babies, have been hospitalized and 131 sickened by the red splotches since the beginning of this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

The CDC had announced in 2000 that the disease was eliminated in the U.S. thanks to a vaccine that can completely control it. But fears of autism have led some parents to forego this treatment and at least 63 of the sickened children were unvaccinated.

Peditrician Pauline Filipek of the University of California-Irvine told ScientificAmerican.com this spring that parents who don’t vaccinate their kids are putting the tykes at risk of long-forgotten diseases, like measles. What they’re not doing: preventing autism.

Read more: Measles is back, and it’s because your kids aren’t vaccinated: Scientific American Blog

I have decided I can no longer be a registered Republican. For the first time in my life I announced my support for a Democratic candidate for the presidency, in February of this year. This was not an endorsement of the Democratic platform, nor was it a slap in the face to the Republican Party. It was an expression of support specifically for Senator Barack Obama. I had always intended to go back to party ranks after the election and work with my many dedicated friends and colleagues to help reshape the GOP, especially in the foreign-policy arena. But I now know I will be more effective focusing on our national and international problems than I will be in trying to reinvigorate a political organization that has already consumed nearly all of its moderate “seed corn.” And now, as the party threatens to trivialize what promised to be a serious debate on our future direction, it will alienate many young people who might have come into party ranks.

My decision came at the end of last week when it was demonstrated to the nation that McCain and this Bush White House have learned little in the last five years. They mishandled what became a crisis in the Caucusus, and this has undermined U.S. national security. At the same time, the McCain camp appears to be comfortable with running an unworthy Karl Rove–style political campaign. Will the McCain operation, and its sponsors, do anything to win?

Read more: The National Interest

Most states don’t recognize gay marriage — but now Hallmark does.

The nation’s largest greeting card company is rolling out same-sex wedding cards — featuring two tuxedos, overlapping hearts or intertwined flowers, with best wishes inside. “Two hearts. One promise,” one says.

Hallmark added the cards after California joined Massachusetts as the only U.S. states with legal gay marriage. A handful of other states have recognized same-sex civil unions.

The language inside the cards is neutral, with no mention of wedding or marriage, making them also suitable for a commitment ceremony. Hallmark says the move is a response to consumer demand, not any political pressure.

Read more: Now on the Hallmark aisle: Gay marriage cards: Financial News - Yahoo Finance

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, ‘Well, I’m off now. The man should be here soon.’
Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. ‘Good morning, Ma’am’, he said, ‘I’ve come to…’
‘Oh, no need to explain,’ Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
‘Have you really?’ said the photographer. ‘Well, that’s good. Did you know babies are my specialty?’
‘Well that’s what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat’
After a moment she asked, blushing, ‘Well, where do we start?’
‘Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room floor is fun You can really spread out there.’
‘Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn’t work out for Harry and me!’
‘Well, Ma’am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the results.’
‘My, that’s a lot!’, gasped Mrs. Smith.
‘Ma’am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I’d love to be In and out in five minutes, but I’m sure you’d be disappointed with that.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Mrs. Smith quietly.
The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. ‘This was done on the top of a bus,’ he said.
‘Oh, my God!’ Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.
‘And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with.’
‘She was difficult?’ asked Mrs. Smith.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a good look’
‘Four and five deep?’ said Mrs. Smith, her eyes wide with amazement.
‘Yes’, the photographer replied. ‘And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had to pack it all in.’
Mrs. Smith leaned forward. ‘Do you mean they actually chewed on your, uh…equipment?’
‘It’s true, Ma’am, yes.. Well, if you’re ready, I’ll set-up my tripod and we can get to work right away.’
‘Tripod?’
‘Oh yes, Ma’am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It’s much too big to be held in the hand very long.’
Mrs. Smith fainted!!

We all knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time. A lawsuit has been filed against Apple over what the plaintiff is referring to as the “Defective iPhone 3G,” which she hopes will become a class-action complaint. Alabama resident Jessica Alena Smith filed the complaint yesterday against the iPhone maker, alleging that the new iPhone’s 3G performance and reliability has been subpar, despite the claims made by Apple’s aggressive marketing campaign. Considering that a true fix has yet to be issued for users’ 3G problems, this could just be the tip of the iPhone lawsuit iceberg.

Read more: Apple hit with class-action lawsuit over iPhone 3G flakiness

Rowe’s not just being a Linux booster. It’s the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL-E; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend, to name but a few recent movies, were all created using Pixar’s RenderMan and Autodesk Maya running on Linux clusters.

The really short version for why this is so comes down to Linux clustering enables you to put massive computational firepower into rendering 2D and 3D images. It’s ironic. While getting the most out of NVIDIA and ATI graphic cards on a Linux desktop is still a pain and there’s always some trouble dealing with proprietary video formats on Linux, the top animated and FX-heavy videos usually have their start on Linux systems.

Read more: If it’s animation or special effects, it’s Linux | Computerworld Blogs.

AMD’s going through some rough times, no doubt about it, but for fanboys of the CPU maker (wait, do CPU fanboys still exist?) here’s your feel-good story of the year. The always-thorough Tom’s Hardware has pit Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor against AMD’s Athlon 64 2000+, and the results just might surprise you.

Read more: Athlon 64 2000+ at 8-watts outperforms, draws less energy than Atom - Engadget.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Canonical has become a member of the Foundation.

Canonical is the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, a popular version of the Linux operating system, and supports a wide range of other open source projects including Bazaar, Storm and Upstart. Ubuntu has become a popular choice for the server and desktop as well as for the rapidly emerging areas of netbooks and mobile Internet devices.
Matt Zimmerman is the CTO of the Ubuntu project in Canonical, chairs the Ubuntu Technical Board and leads all engineering efforts for the distribution.

“The Linux Foundation occupies a critical, non-commercial function in the use and popularization of Linux around the world. We’ve always seen the Linux Foundation’s value and are pleased to now become an official member and support its activities. We look forward to working with them to continue the march of Linux in all areas of computing,” said Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu program manager and CTO, Canonical.

Read more: Canonical Joins The Linux Foundation

I admit it, even I was skeptical. When I received the first demonstration of the Silverlight plugin and the NBCOlympics.com web site back in March of this year at the 2008 Microsoft Technology Summit, where a group of Open Source experts gathered from around the world were asked for feedback on various aspects of Microsoft’s emerging technologies, I truly believed that when they finally rolled that website out, that NBC was going to be overwhelmed with traffic and the site would come to a screeching halt, resulting in a catastrophic embarrassment for Microsoft and NBC.

At the time, the content caching partner for the Olympics that was disclosed to us was Akamai, which is what Microsoft currently uses for hosting its own downloads from MSDN and Microsoft Update.  Akamai uses a centralized data hosting infrastructure with big Internet pipes that mirrors content that is hosted on a customer’s own servers. Usually with the aid of a special caching appliance installed at the customer’s ISP or edge network, the request to download that content is re-directed to Akamai’s own servers and fat Internet pipes. When you download big ISO CD and DVD images from MSDN, its going right to Akamai’s data centers over the public Internet. As fat as Akamai’s pipes are, I’ve seen MSDN’s downloads slow to a crawl during peak download periods, such as the days following Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1’s release. So like my colleagues here at ZDNet, I was expecting the worst.

Read more: Limelight Networks: Why the Olympics didn’t ‘Melt’ the Internet

Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, the pastor that presided over Jenna Bush’s wedding ceremony and is considered a close personal friend of President Bush, absolutely ripped into John McCain today on a conference call with reporters. Rev. Caldwell took issue with Senator McCain’s remarks that he made at the Sturgis bike rally last week when he volunteered his wife for the rally’s “beauty” pageant, the Ms. Buffalo Chip pageant. For those who were not familiar with that story, the Ms. Buffalo Chip pageant is a topless modeling contest, that among other things, involves a section with a banana.

Caldwell comments highlight exactly why true family values conservatives should have a problem with John McCain.

From ABC:

“Well, I don’t know a lot about John McCain’s family history, I do know, however, that as recently as last week I think it was, the Senator made a comment in South Dakota regarding his wife entering some Buffalo Chips contest which is this topless deal and if she were to enter she would probably win it and my personal opinion and based on my understanding of the Christian faith, that’s not not, N-O-T, not the type of expression that a presidential candidate, or anyone for that matter who is a follower of the Christian faith, ought to make,” said the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell. “I don’t know if that is a perfect case in point, but it surely does help to juxtapose the DNA of Senator Obama, if you would, versus the DNA of Senator McCain.”

The article also points out that Caldwell is backing Obama for president, and is a member of the Matthew 25 network.

Read more: Bush pastor RIPS McCain over Sturgis, backs Obama « Strategy ‘08

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) currently holds the title of most absent U.S. senator, missing over 60 percent of votes this session. In an interview with Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute yesterday, McCain claimed he has not “missed any crucial vote” on energy legislation

McCain’s has actually missed several “crucial” energy votes. In July alone, he missed every single energy vote brought to the floor. This session, McCain has skipped votes supporting renewable energy tax credits four times, all of which were filibustered. In June, for example, McCain missed a vote on the landmark Lieberman-Warner climate change legislation.

Read more: Think Progress » McCain: ‘I Have Not Missed Any Crucial Vote’ On Energy Legislation

Michael Phelps won his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Olympics on Saturday, edging Milorad Cavic by a fingernail, .01 of second in the 100m butterfly on Saturday at the Water Cube.

Phelps’ seventh gold ties Spitz’s 36-year-old record from the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The Serbian federation filed a written protest to FINA, swimming’s world governing body, contesting the result, but Serbian officials were shown video of the finish and agreed not to pursue it further.

Replays showed clearly that Phelps had won, according to USA Swimming’s Jamie Fabos Olsen.

“If it was up to me, I would just drop the protest,” said Cavic, who swam in college at the University of California-Berkeley and now trains in Florida. “I’m stoked with what happened. I don’t want to fight this.”

Still, Cavic said he wasn’t sure the fastest swimmer won. “Is Michael Phelps the gold-medal winner? I think if we got to do this again, I would win it,” he said.

Phelps, who was seventh out of eight swimmers at the first wall but made up ground with his turn, still looked to be behind Cavic in the final meters but touched first in an Olympic record 50.58 to Cavic’s 50.59. Phelps took a half stroke to the wall and Cavic glided in.

Read more: NBCOlympics.com - Phelps wins by a nail

Esti tot ce am / You are all I have

Doar cand tu nu esti aici / Only when you are not here
Tot orasul imi pare trist./ All the city seems sad to me
Singura ma sting usor/ I’m dying slowly
Nu vreau sa te pierd /I don’t want to lose you
Si nu ma satur sa te ador/ and I don’t get enough to adore you

Doar tu esti tot ce am / Only you are all I have
Si sufletu-mi atingi, /And my soul…
E atat de goala viata mea/ My life is so empty
Cand tu nu esti aici./when you are not here
Si-n ganduri te ascund/ I hide you in thoughts
Aproape sa te tin./ To keep you close
Daca te pierd,/ If I lose you
Daca te uit,/ If I forget you
Eu nu mai am nimic. /I don’t have anything

Noaptea nu pot sa adorm,/ I can’t sleep at night
Nu mai esti sa ma atingi,/ You are not here to touch me
Acum, ziua ma topesc de dor/ Now, I’m melting in the day
Si numai vreau sa plang,/and I don’t want to cry anymore
Caci lacrimi nu te aduc aici./ Because the tears don’t bring you here

Source: Dj project - Esti tot ce am. Translation, please. - Lyrics Forum

Someone was attacking women in Fairfax County and Alexandria, grabbing them from behind and sometimes punching and molesting them before running away. After logging 11 cases in six months, police finally identified a suspect.

David Lee Foltz Jr., who had served 17 years in prison for rape, lived near the crime scenes. To figure out if Foltz was the assailant, police pulled out their secret weapon: They put a Global Positioning System device on Foltz’s van, which allowed them to track his movements.

Police said they soon caught Foltz dragging a woman into a wooded area in Falls Church. After his arrest on Feb. 6, the string of assaults suddenly stopped. The break in the case relied largely on a crime-fighting tool they would rather not discuss.

“We don’t really want to give any info on how we use it as an investigative tool to help the bad guys,” said Officer Shelley Broderick, a Fairfax police spokeswoman. “It is an investigative tool for us, and it is a very new investigative tool.”

Read more: Police Turn to Secret Weapon: GPS Device - washingtonpost.com

A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency’s former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.

The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico’s Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer’s behalf. In it, Richer declared, “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document … as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book.”

The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer’s own remarks in the transcript.

Read more: The Raw Story | Tape: Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery

“The genius of this is that it’s completely reusable,” said Dino Dai Zovi, a well-known security researcher and author. “They have attacks that let them load chosen content to a chosen location with chosen permissions. That’s completely game over.

“What this means is that almost any vulnerability in the browser is trivially exploitable,” Dai Zovi added. “A lot of exploit defenses are rendered useless by browsers. ASLR and hardware DEP are completely useless against these attacks.”

Researchers develop lightweight Cisco IOS rootkit Black Hat: Building on previous research against IOS, Core Security researchers have theoretically shown the plausibility of an IOS rootkit attack.

Mozilla to release Firefox threat-modeling data: The Mozilla Foundation’s security chief says it will soon publicly release threat-modeling data for the next version of the Firefox Web browser.

Valuable lesson emerges from DNS flaw handling Any effort to prevent others in the legitimate security community from working out the problem is a waste of time.

Many of the defenses that Microsoft added to Vista and Windows Server 2008 are designed to stop host-based attacks. ASLR, for example, is meant to prevent attackers from predicting target memory addresses by randomly moving things such as a process’s stack, heap and libraries. That technique is useful against memory-corruption attacks, but Dai Zovi said that against Dowd’s and Sotirov’s methods, it would be of no use.

“This stuff just takes a knife to a large part of the security mesh Microsoft built into Vista,” Dai Zovi said. “If you think about the fact that .NET loads DLLs into the browser itself and then Microsoft assumes they’re safe because they’re .NET objects, you see that Microsoft didn’t think about the idea that these could be used as stepping stones for other attacks. This is a real tour de force.”

Read more: Windows Vista security ‘rendered useless’ by researchers