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Botnets

Ed Felten has yet another interesting post Why So Little Attention to Botnets? in his blog Freedom to Tinker.
Ed does a good job explaining what a botnet is:

‘In this context, a “bot” is a malicious software agent that gets installed on an unsuspecting user’s computer. Bots get onto computers by exploiting security flaws. Once there, they set up camp and wait unobtrusively for instructions. Bots work in groups, called “botnets”, in which many thousands of bots (hundreds of thousands, sometimes) all over the Net work together at the instruction of a remote badguy.’

The post includes a link to Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost? by Ryan Naraine, that goes into more detail about what some people are doing to combat botnets.

This past weekend the University of Mary Washington hosted the 22nd annual conference of the Consortium of Computing Sciences in Colleges. Shari Pfleeger gave the keynote address,”Economics of Cyber Security.” Her comments made me more sensitive to Felten’s statement

“Bots exploit the classic economic externality of network security. A well-designed bot on your computer tries to stay out of your way, only attacking other people. An infection on your computer causes harm to others but not to you, so you have little incentive to prevent the harm.”

—
Today’s special is
” It takes a mighty good man to be better than no man at all” – Dixie Carter

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Comment:
Nice post on Felten.

Did I already point you to the podcast that my co-worker did with him
a couple months back? (It’s a podcast I produce.):

http://www.cigital.com/silverbullet/show-005/

… Ryan
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Ryan A. MacMichael (www.laze.net)

2006 10 30 ernie About the Internet and the Web
Commentary
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Beginning of the End?

Here is Olbermann’s take on the Military Commissions Act.
Why did the Congress do this?

2006 10 19 ernie Commentary Comments (0) Permalink

patriotism

Jim Webb appeared at University of Mary Washington yesterday for a campaign stop, and to build up some support in his hopeful run against Allen. John Edwards also appeared and gave a pretty good presentation. The line I remember most is “It’s time to be patriotic about something else other than war.” His talk focused on his work related to dealing with poverty on a world scale.

Speaking of patriotism, Olbermann’s special commentary on Clinton vs Fox is a treat to watch, and needed to be said. “The free pass has been withdrawn Mr. Bush. … Are your actions those of a true American?”

2006 09 27 ernie Commentary Comments (0) Permalink

Notes on classes, September 5, 2006

Third class meetings today. We arrived home at 12:30 this morning from a trip to Santa Fe for the weekend. Things went OK, but a little rocky.

CPSC 110 Original list of topics activities wasn’t completed. But that’s OK. I told students about my background and a little about the notion of a programming language. We went over the goals for the class and modified a few. Students seem to want to get to it. Hopefully, I wandered around enough around the topic that they are ready to go straight ahead with it. We went over Computer and Network policies.

For next time: Tomorrow we’ll continue with that and then go to the lab for getting set to install and modify a Web page. That should give them some indication of working with files in Unix. I suggested they read
Introduction, http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unixintro.html, and Tutorials 1, 2, and 5 from Unix Tutorial for Beginners, http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/

Files and Directories, http://snap.nlc.dcccd.edu/learn/idaho/files.html, from A Basic Unix Tutorial, http://snap.nlc.dcccd.edu/learn/idaho/unixindex.html

CPSC 321 Went over using netbeans and some of the examples in the first 2 chapters of the text. We also talked about creating jar files for submitting their software. Also set up a schedule of presentations.

For next time: Ask students their goals for the course. Continue to talk about the material in chapters 1 and 2. Pay attention to getting a proper jar file and working with classes. Chapter 2 contains that example of points in a plane to motivate the need for an equals method.

—
And today’s special is ..
The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion. – Nadia Boulanger
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2006 09 05 ernie Teaching Comments (0) Permalink

Notes on Classes; August 31, 2006

Second class meetings today. Still feeling my way.

CPSC 110 Original list of topics activities wasn’t completed. But that’s OK. I spent some time getting to know the students and hopefully they are getting to know each other a little better. It doesn’t seem that there are more than 1 or 2 who might want to major in computer science. Next time I’ll try to get more focused on getting to the task. We’ll deal with the goals and then the ethics issues. Maybe I should make them more substantial.

For next time: ask students for goals for the course, have students answer the questions on the instructions sheet, have them come up with something that a computer scientist does, and, if time permits, have them look at the computer use policy. Some scenarios are available at http://www.museophile.sbu.ac.uk/people/jpb/teaching/ethics/acm.html
Also start talking about writing or generating a Web page for their work.

CPSC 321 Worked on the instructions in the list of topics for today. This involved a HW exercises and also some practice using NetBeans.

For next time: Ask students their goals for the course, start to talk about the material in Chapters 1 and 2 of the text. Point out the tutorials for NetBeans and get a schedule of presentations set. Start talking about exceptions.

—
And today’s special is ..
Your ability to juggle many tasks will take you far. – fc
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2006 08 31 ernie Teaching Comments (0) Permalink

Notes on Classes, August 29, 2006

First day of classes today. Things seems to go well. Got students in to the lab the first day. No big glitches.

CPSC 110 Gave out instructions for starting to use paprika. A couple of password issues, but we had good support from Bob Gartland and David Dean. Weldon Burt is the lab aide.

For next time: ask students for goals for the course, have students answer the questions on the instructions sheet, have them come up with something that a computer scientist does, and, if time permits, have them look at the computer use policy.

CPSC 321 Gave out instructions for starting to use paprika and for writing, compiling, and executing a Java program. The instructions included a reference to a JEDI course that has instructions on getting started with NetBeans. Most of the class started reading the instructions and working with NetBeans. Again, no glitches.

For next time: Ask students their goals for the course, start to talk about the material in Chapter 1 of the text. Have them copy the source files from the text to their directory and then put an existing project in to NetBeans.

2006 08 29 ernie Teaching Comments (0) Permalink

Dinner in Brooklyn – August 17, 2006

Our son Karl took us to Ki Sushi for dinner tonight. The meal was wonderful. We started with a seared tuna salad, a grilled eggplant appetizer, and a green salad. This was followed by a plate of fresh sushi flown in from Japan daily and a grilled black cod entree. We ended the meal with a creme brulee flavored with lime juice and ginger, and red bean ice cream.

A wonderful place. Go there.

Ki Sushi
192 Smith St.
Brooklyn, NY 11201
718.935.0575

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2006 08 17 ernie food
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Green Tomato Chutney

A friend gave us some green tomatoes recently and I made a some green tomato chutney as a variation of the recipe “Green-Tomato Chutney” by Susie Quick. I had some friends over today who tried the chutney and got two requests for the recipe. Here’s what I used and did.

Ingredients:

1/2 c packed light-brown sugar
1/3 c cider vinegar
2 T peeled and minced fresh ginger
2 T minced onion
1/8 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
Pinch of kosher salt
2 1/2 pounds green tomatoes, seeded and chopped (about 2 cups)
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 c chopped cilantro

Process:

  1. Bring the sugar, vinegar, ginger, onion, pepper flakes, and salt to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes, until syrupy.
  2. Add raisins.
  3. Add the tomatoes and simmer, stirring, 15 minutes, or until most of the liquid has evaporated and tomatoes are soft. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro. Let cool.

Enjoy.
—
And today’s special is ..
Tyrant custom makes a slave of reason.

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2006 07 28 ernie Recipes Comments (0) Permalink

Names of the dead as reported July 27, 2006

From the New York Times:

The Department of Defense has identified 2,558 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following American yesterday:

SAMSON, Dennis K. Jr., 24, Specialist, Army; Hesperia, Mich.; 101st Airborne Division.

The number of dead, 2558, is 93 more than was reported 55 days ago on June 2, 2006.

Other information available at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.

2006 07 27 ernie Commentary Comments (0) Permalink

wikiHow

I came across wikiHow through the entry “How to Reduce Your Greenhouse Gas Emissions” that was featured on Google homepage. It interesting to me because of the way a wiki is being used to provide how-to information. You can create an account and contribute in wiki-style to the entries. The pages each carry a discussion page as well. The one accompanying the page on reducing greenhouse gas emissions mirrors the discussions found on and offline.

—
And today’s special is ..
Do what’s right for you, as long as it don’t hurt no one. – Elvis Presley

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2006 07 26 ernie Interesting Web Sites Comments (0) Permalink