Thursday, August 2, 2007
Nasa's Phoenix Mars Lander was scheduled to take off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Friday, but bad weather has delayed the launch until Saturday.
NASA engineers are trying to trace an apparent cabin leak aboard the shuttle Endeavour about a week before the scheduled Aug. 7 launch, media reported on Tuesday.
Engineers found signs of the leak over the weekend and initially attributed it to a loose bolt. But the problem persisted after the bolt was tightened, NASA spokeswoman Tracy Young was quoted as saying by Space.com, the professional space news website.
Engineers have yet to pinpoint the leak, and now they are forced to once more scan the crew cabin and cargo module, as well as the pressurized tunnel and hatches running between them.
Endeavour is scheduled to lift off on Aug. 7 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When asked if the launch will be delayed because of the leak, Young said "it's still too early to tell."
In the meantime, another spacecraft, the Phoenix Mars Lander is postponed 24 hours to launch on Aug. 4, also from KSC. Given Phoenix's limited launch window, NASA space shuttle program managers have said the Mars mission is a high priority and could prompt a few days of delay for Endeavour's August liftoff.
Inside news: NASA gives "go" for launch of shuttle Endeavour </b>The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour is ready to fly, NASA managers concluded Thursday after wrapping up the two-day flight readiness review at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Launch of Endeavour on the STS-118 mission is officially scheduled for Aug. 7. The exact launch time is set at 7:02 p.m. EDT (2302 GMT), according to NASA TV.
"On behalf of all the people that work on Endeavour, both here and really across the country, it's a great, great feeling to have Endeavour back on the pad," Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said at a news conference. "We're looking forward to a great launch."
NASA managers conduct the review two weeks prior to each space shuttle mission. The group thoroughly evaluates all activities and elements necessary for the safe and successful performance of shuttle mission operations -- from the prelaunch phase through post-landing -- including the readiness of the vehicle, flight crew and payloads.
The STS-118 will be NASA's second flight mission in 2007. As to Endeavour, this is the first flight in almost five years. The last time Endeavour was at the launch pad was in November 2002 on a construction mission to the International Space Station.
During the scheduled 11-day mission, Endeavour will carry into orbit a new truss segment, SPACEHAB module and external stowage platform 3.
NASA hopes to complete the construction of ISS before the shuttle fleet is grounded in 2010.
Engineers found signs of the leak over the weekend and initially attributed it to a loose bolt. But the problem persisted after the bolt was tightened, NASA spokeswoman Tracy Young was quoted as saying by Space.com, the professional space news website.
Engineers have yet to pinpoint the leak, and now they are forced to once more scan the crew cabin and cargo module, as well as the pressurized tunnel and hatches running between them.
Endeavour is scheduled to lift off on Aug. 7 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When asked if the launch will be delayed because of the leak, Young said "it's still too early to tell."
In the meantime, another spacecraft, the Phoenix Mars Lander is postponed 24 hours to launch on Aug. 4, also from KSC. Given Phoenix's limited launch window, NASA space shuttle program managers have said the Mars mission is a high priority and could prompt a few days of delay for Endeavour's August liftoff.
Spam ????
billions of pesky, unwanted emails are sent out weekly promising everything from free handbags, larger body parts and financial freedom... but where did it come from? Where did SPAM actually begin?
The origin of SPAM was recently traced back to 1978 and Gary Thuerk, a marketing person that really wanted to inform the public that his company, the Digital Equipment Corporation, was going to launch a new and powerful computer system.
The company operated out of an old wool mill in Maynard, Massachusetts and was well known on the East Coast, but Thuerk knew that he needed to get his message to the technology related community in California. His method was to utilize "Arpanet" a network of government and university computers that had a couple thousand users.
Thuerk compiled a list of around 600 people he wanted to send his message to and knew that it would take way too much time to send each message separately and that's when the idea hit him...
WHY NOT USE THE NETWORK TO SEND ALL OF THE MESSAGES OUT AT ONCE?
His message " We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DECSystem-20 family " was prepared for delivery and as he pushed that send button... SPAM was born.
Recipients reacted similarly to how they react to SPAM today... with anger. They complained that he had abused the system and should be punished. Administrators of Arpanet did reprimand Thuerk but not before his SPAM blast helped his company sell more than 20 systems at over one million dollars each... sound familiar?
Spam has exploded since that time and has (unfortunately) become a part of almost everyone's daily experience with the internet. SPAM moguls send out billions of messages and make billions of dollars. Some are reprimanded and fined or punished in other ways but it's always too late, the damage has already been done and they've already made their money.
The sad part is that apparently, SPAM works or it would not be used so often and so heavily. For every one of us that deletes a SPAM message that promises a larger penis there are a few others that click the ad and buy the product. For every one of us that erases a message from Pakistan promising massive amounts of money in exchange for bank transfers there are several others who gladly send in their banking information, hoping to get rich.
The only say SPAM will ever stop is if we stop responding to it... and well, even then it may continue. SPAM, the digital equivalent to a cockroach that even after a nuclear war wipes out all life form on the Earth survives may be with us for the long haul... a very long, long, time.
Inside News
spam
Electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. However, if a long-lost brother finds your e-mail address and sends you a message, this could hardly be called spam, even though it's unsolicited. Real spam is generally e-mail advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup.
In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted e-mail, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Consequently, there are many organizations, as well as individuals, who have taken it upon themselves to fight spam with a variety of techniques. But because the Internet is public, there is really little that can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, some online services have instituted policies to prevent spammers from spamming their subscribers.
There is some debate about the source of the term, but the generally accepted version is that it comes from the Monty Python song, "Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam…" Like the song, spam is an endless repetition of worthless text. Another school of thought maintains that it comes from the computer group lab at the University of Southern California who gave it the name because it has many of the same characteristics as the lunchmeat Spam:
Nobody wants it or ever asks for it.
No one ever eats it; it is the first item to be pushed to the side when eating the entree.
Sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1% of junk mail that is really useful to some people.
About the FBI's CIPAV Spyware
The FBI used a novel type of remotely installed spyware last month to investigate who was e-mailing bomb threats to a high school near Olympia, Wash.
Federal agents obtained a court order on June 12 to send spyware called CIPAV to a MySpace account suspected of being used by the bomb threat hoaxster. Once implanted, the software was designed to report back to the FBI with the Internet Protocol address of the suspect's computer, other information found on the PC and, notably, an ongoing log of the user's outbound connections.
Screen snapshot of 'timberlinebombinfo' MySpace account
The suspect, former Timberline High School student Josh Glazebrook, was sentenced this week to 90 days in juvenile detention after pleading guilty to making bomb threats and other charges.
While there's been plenty of speculation about how the FBI might deliver spyware electronically, this case appears to be the first to reveal how the technique is used in practice. The FBI did confirm in 2001 that it was working on a virus called Magic Lantern but hasn't said much about it since. The two other cases in which federal investigators were known to have used spyware--the Scarfo and Forrester cases--involved agents actually sneaking into offices to implant key loggers.
An 18-page affidavit filed in federal court by FBI Agent Norm Sanders last month and obtained by CNET News.com claims details about the governmental spyware are confidential. The FBI calls its spyware a Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier, or CIPAV.
"The exact nature of these commands, processes, capabilities, and their configuration is classified as a law enforcement sensitive investigative technique, the disclosure of which would likely jeopardize other ongoing investigations and/or future use of the technique," Sanders wrote. A reference to the operating system's registry indicates that CIPAV can target, as you might expect given its market share, Microsoft Windows. Other data sent back to the FBI include the operating system type and serial number, the logged-in user name, and the Web URL that the computer was "previously connected to."
News.com has posted Sanders' affidavit and a summary of the CIPAV results that the FBI submitted to U.S. Magistrate Judge James Donohue.
There have been hints in the past that the FBI has employed this technique. In 2004, an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the bureau had used an "Internet Protocol Address Verifier" that was sent to a suspect via e-mail.
But bloggers at the time dismissed it--in hindsight, perhaps erroneously--as the FBI merely using an embedded image in an HTML-formatted e-mail message, also known as a Web bug.
Finding out who's behind a MySpace account
An interesting twist in the current case is that the county sheriff's office learned about the MySpace profile -- timberlinebombinfo -- when the creator tried to persuade other students to link to it and at least one of their parents called the police. The sheriff's office reported that 33 students received a request to post the link to "timberlinebombinfo" on their own MySpace pages.
In addition, the bomb hoaxster was sending a series of taunting messages from Google Gmail accounts (including dougbrigs@gmail.com) the week of June 4. A representative excerpt: "There are 4 bombs planted throughout Timberline High School. One in the math hall, library hall, and one portable. The bombs will go off in 5 minute intervals at 9:15 am."
The FBI replied by obtaining account logs from Google and MySpace. Both pointed to the Internet Protocol address of 80.76.80.103, which turned out to be a compromised computer in Italy.
That's when the FBI decided to roll out the heavy artillery: CIPAV. "I have concluded that using a CIPAV on the target MySpace 'Timberlinebombinfo' account may assist the FBI to determine the identities of the individual(s) using the activating computer," Sanders' affidavit says.
CIPAV was going to be installed "through an electronic messaging program from an account controlled by the FBI," which probably means e-mail. (Either e-mail or instant messaging could be used to deliver an infected file with CIPAV hidden in it, but the wording of that portion of the affidavit makes e-mail more likely.)
After CIPAV is installed, the FBI said, it will immediately report back to the government the computer's Internet Protocol address, Ethernet MAC address, "other variables, and certain registry-type information." And then, for the next 60 days, it will record Internet Protocol addresses visited but not the contents of the communications.
Putting the legal issues aside for the moment, one key question remains a mystery: Assuming the FBI delivered the CIPAV spyware via e-mail, how did the the program bypass antispyware defenses and install itself as malicious software? (There's no mention of antivirus defenses in the court documents, true, but the bomb-hoaxster also performed a denial of service attack against the school district computers -- which, coupled with compromising the server in Italy, points to some modicum of technical knowledge.)
One possibility is that the FBI has persuaded security software makers to overlook CIPAV and not alert their users to its presence.
Another is that the FBI has found (or paid someone to uncover) unknown vulnerabilities in Windows or Windows-based security software that would permit CIPAV to be installed. From the FBI's perspective, this would be the most desirable: for one thing, it would also obviate the need to strong-arm dozens of different security vendors, some with headquarters in other countries, into whitelisting CIPAV.
Earlier this week, News.com surveyed 13 security vendors and all said it was their general policy to detect police spyware. Some, however, indicated they would obey a court order to ignore policeware, and neither McAfee nor Microsoft would say whether they had received such a court order.
More News
"There have been rumors for years about the FBI remotely installing spyware via e-mail or by exploiting an operating system vulnerability from afar - and now there's confirmation. Last month, the FBI obtained a federal court order to remotely install spyware called CIPAV (Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier) to find out who was behind a MySpace account linked to bomb threats sent to a high school near Olympia, Wash. News.com has posted a PDF of the FBI affidavit, which makes for interesting reading, and a summary of the CIPAV results that the FBI submitted to a magistrate judge. It seems as though CIPAV was installed via e-mail, as an article back in 2004 hinted was the case. In addition to reporting the computer's IP address, MAC address, and registry information, it also gave the FBI updates on which IP addresses the user(s) visited. But how did the FBI get the spyware activated and past anti-virus defenses? Two obvious ways are for the Feds to find and exploit their own operating system backdoors, or to compromise security vendors..."
What is CIPAV? CIPAV stands for 'Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier'; a lengthy term for powerful spyware the Federal Bureau of Investigation can bring to bear on web-based crime. It was used last month in a case where someone was emailing bomb threats regularly to a Washington high school. An affidavit by an FBI agent revealed some of the workings of CIPAV. 'According to the court filing, this is [some of] what the CIPAV collects from the infected computer: IP address, Media Access Control address for the network card, List of open TCP and UDP ports, List of running programs ... Last visited URL. Once that initial inventory is conducted, the CIPAV slips into the background and silently monitors all outbound communication, logging every IP address to which the computer connects, and time and date stamping each.' In a Computerworld article, the author attempts to dissect CIPAV's purpose and raises a number of questions such as: What happens to the data the CIPAV collects? Does the CIPAV capture keystrokes? Can the CIPAV spread on its own to other computers, either purposefully or by accident? Does it erase itself after its job is done?"
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