Automated Denial-of-Service Attack Using the U.S. Post Office

In December 2002, the notorious "spam king" Alan Ralsky gave an interview. Aside from his usual comments that antagonized spam-hating e-mail users, he mentioned his new home in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The interview was posted on Slashdot, and some enterprising reader found his address in some database. Egging each other on, the Slashdot readership subscribed him to thousands of catalogs, mailing lists, information requests, etc. The results were devastating: within weeks he was getting hundreds of pounds of junk mail per day and was unable to find his real mail amongst the deluge.

Ironic, definitely. But more interesting is the related paper by security researchers Simon Byers, Avi Rubin and Dave Kormann, who have demonstrated how to automate this attack.

If you type the following search string into Google -- "request catalog name address city state zip" -- you'll get links to over 250,000 (the exact number varies) Web forms where you can type in your information and receive a catalog in the mail. Or, if you follow where this is going, you can type in the information of anyone you want. If you're a little bit clever with Perl (or any other scripting language), you can write a script that will automatically harvest the pages and fill in someone's information on all 250,000 forms. You'll have to do some parsing of the forms, but it's not too difficult. (There are actually a few more problems to solve. For example, the search engines normally don't return more than 1,000 actual hits per query.) When you're done, voila! It's Slashdot's attack, fully automated and dutifully executed by the U.S. Postal Service.

[More]

History textbooks in the United States have long been sanitized to promote the "correct" view of America. Now, apparently they're doing the same thing in Europe.

Scientists have finished mapping the human genome.

In other news, the stars have started winking out....

(Oh, and I get up in the morning, check "Collab" over my morning coffee, and get a nice shot of Donnie Rumsfeld's grinning, skull-like visage! Aieee!!)

I take it back. It's not good news in Baghdad at all.
It's a unmitigated fucking disaster.


"The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?'"


Laugh it up laughing boy. History will never forget you.

Good news in Baghdad, no doubt about it.
Nevertheless it's an occupation, hopefully a very short one.



"These are not the droids you're looking for, move along."

Shamelessly stolen from The Infrequent Itinerant

Big-Ass Squid (not the official scientific name) captured in Antarctic waters. Rumors of a sudden upturn in Red Lobster stock were unconnected.

Here's an update to my post a few weeks back:

Mystery bug doctor dies

The World Health Organization expert who first identified the mystery pneumonia that has claimed dozens of lives has himself died of the disease, the UN agency has announced.

Dr Carlo Urbani, a 46-year-old Italian and an expert on communicable diseases, had identified Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in an American businessman admitted to hospital in Vietnam in February.

The WHO said Dr Urbani's early detection of SARS had led to increased global surveillance, enabling the identification and the subsequent isolation of those with the disease to slow its spread.

At least 54 people are known to have died of the disease, and more than 1,400 people to be suffering from it.

[More]

Schools closed in Hong Kong, 1000 people quarantined, complete media blackout in China and denial of access to World Health Organization doctors...

Like I said, this doesn't sound good.

The taste of fugu is incomparable. If you eat it three or four times, you are enslaved...
Anyone who declines it for fear of death is really a pitiable person. -- Kitaoji Rosanjin


Shinto priests offer prayers to appease the soul of this departed fugu.

Digital Globe



I'm completely obsessed with overhead satellite images. This site has quite a few. The image above is Bora Bora, French Polynesia.

Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.

To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.

-- Joshua Micah Marshall

I'm not sure what bothers me more: what is apparently the underlying geopolitical strategy of the war in Iraq, in which Iraq becomes just a beach-head -- the Normandy of the US-versus-the-Islamic-World War -- which has been touted by people like SDB and the neocons who have Bush's ear, or the incredible cynicism that the Administration won't discuss it with the American people.

Yee-haw, it's time for the true March Madness!!!

Jane Galt asks: do executives necessarily make good or bad Presidents? This is one of her more interesting posts.

For myself, I tend to agree with her sentiment that there probably isn't any job out there that really qualifies one to be President -- but going a bit farther, I have to admit to a certain distrust of any person, whether they're on my side of the political fence or not, who actually wants the job. I just find something inherently scary about any person who actually aspires to the power of the Presidency, regardless of what he or she wants to do with it.

The military has clear guidelines for just about everything, including their saddest duties of all.

Man, have I even been lax in posting here....

Anyway, some of the mealy-mouthed discussion of post-war Iraq that's taken place has centered on, as example, the reconstruction of Japan and Germany after World War II. Of course, some cite those instances as examples of what we won't do -- "We won't be there for years like we were in Japan, we're gonna win the war and bugger off as soon as the Iraqis can stand up straight" -- at the same time as being cited as examples why we should be just hunky-dorey about an American invasion, since after all, "After WWII we rebuilt Japan and now they're just our best friends!" Curious disconnect, there, and I find it interesting that if a Japanese-style post-war occupation is to be our model, our Administration won't tell us so. Interesting, but hardly surprising -- after all, they're just the most forthcoming Administration in Washington since....2001, anyway.

Oh, yeah -- links and such. I've been thinking about this stuff for a while, and Josh Marshall has written an article and a further commentary on Talking Points Memo about why the Japanese and German occupations might not be very good indicators of future results. (Read the article first, then the blog post.)

Google targets blog text ads

This is a lot smarter than anything Pyra could have done with banner ads. You've probably already noticed that since the takeover, ads for free blogspot sites have been replaced with lightweight Google text ads which appear in a floating frame rather than some clunky GIF. This is a very welcome change for slow loading pages like mine, but there's an additional feature to this, the ads are targetted to readership based on what Google perceives to be the content of that blog.

For example, Laputan Logic is now running ads for biblical archaeology sites. Evidently, it has picked up the theme in my last couple of posts and from the archaeological slant in general. Joshua Legg's site is all about war and peace and Byzantium's Shores today is running ads for freelance jobs and ... swimwear (wtf?).

Some of the ads are targetted to the reader's location (via IP address I imagine). I noticed a number of ads for Australian products which had nothing to do with the content of the blog I was reading. When they can't work out to display, apparently they display ads for charities.

Anyway, as part of the grueling research that I have put into this post, I noticed (finally) that the Collaboratory no longer has a banner ad. How long has it been gone? Please don't tell me its been six months.

Does anyone know who paid for it?

The Arrogant Empire

Okay, apologies in advance for yet another post about the current crisis¹ although I thought this was a particularly good article.

I think it goes a long way to explaining from an American perspective the nature of the diplomatic mess that the Bush Administration has created for itself. America faces unprecedented opposition to its policies around the world, not just from its traditional enemies but from its allies as well and especially from the populations of those countries. I think this map nicely sums it up.

Before being tempted to reach for tired cliches like "knee-jerk anti-Americanism" to explain this, it's worth reflecting that it hasn't always been this way.

But in its campaign against Iraq, America is virtually alone. Never will it have waged a war in such isolation. Never have so many of its allies been so firmly opposed to its policies. Never has it provoked so much public opposition, resentment and mistrust. And all this before the first shot has been fired.

Watching the tumult around the world, it’s evident that what is happening goes well beyond this particular crisis. Many people, both abroad and in America, fear that we are at some kind of turning point, where well-established mainstays of the global order—the Western Alliance, European unity, the United Nations—seem to be cracking under stress. These strains go well beyond the matter of Iraq, which is not vital enough to wreak such damage. In fact, the debate is not about Saddam anymore. It is about America and its role in the new world.

¹ - Though if you'd like to see something else posted on this blog, well, what's stopping you?

This doesn't sound good...

Mysterious illness may be new disease

A mysterious, flulike illness that has stricken scores of hospital workers in Southeast Asia has stumped a battery of tests for known bacteria and viruses and most likely represents a new human disease of unknown origin, federal health authorities said Monday.

At least 14 cases bearing some resemblance to the illness are being evaluated in the United States, including that of an unidentified patient, recently arrived from travel to Asia, who turned up in a Los Angeles County emergency room with a high fever and difficulty breathing.

Patients with the disease come down with a particularly dangerous case of pneumonia -- fluid filling their lungs -- and many of those sickened in Southeast Asia have had to be placed on ventilators.

World Health Organization epidemiologists have already given the disease a name -- SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome -- and have confirmed four deaths and 167 cases worldwide.

Under prodding by the United Nations' health agency, China has disclosed an outbreak of 305 cases from November through February that appear similar to SARS. There were five deaths in China, but none of the cases are included yet in the official WHO count.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told reporters that 10 of the 14 suspected cases in the United States were "almost certainly not" SARS, but that "it would not be surprising" to find the illness soon in the United States.

Cases have been confirmed in Canada, where two members of a Toronto family have died after returning from China. One member of that family subsequently visited Atlanta. Cases are also suspected in Switzerland, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Gerberding said she was confident that laboratories in the United States or in eight other nations testing for the disease would pinpoint its cause. But the disease detectives are now fairly sure it is a bug they haven't encountered before.

"We are not suspicious this is a common microorganism, or we would have found it by now," she said. It was unlikely to be some form of influenza, because Hong Kong hospitals are skilled in identifying even exotic strains of that deadly diseases.

While ruling nothing out -- including bioterrorism -- Gerberding indicated that the epidemic was behaving like that of a viral illness spread by "close contact" with infected patients in the home or hospital. SARS appears to be highly contagious but requires contact with droplets of infected body fluids through cough or sneezing.

Health Organization Stepping Up Efforts to Find Cause of Mysterious Pneumonia

...[T]wo features of the mysterious illness led the World Health Organization to sound an alarm last week.

"One was the high degree of contagion to health care workers," Dr. Gerberding said.

She cited the case of an American businessman who became ill while in Hanoi and who died after he was transferred to a hospital in Hong Kong. He inadvertently spread the illness to many health care workers. The extent of spread was much more "than we typically see with most infectious diseases" in the health care environment.

One factor in the greater degree of spread was that the hospital in Hong Kong where the businessman was treated used different infection control measures from those used in the United States, Dr. Gerberding said.

The second feature was the rapidity and severity with which pneumonia developed in some patients. Even among patients who suffer a system illness with influenza, "it is quite unusual to develop pneumonia," Dr. Gerberding said. "Here we had a very high proportion of individuals developing pneumonia, and that signaled something unusual," requiring a closer look.

I have two very close friends who have just recently returned from Vietnam. One of them is a health worker who, as part of his trip, worked in a hospital in Hanoi. Needless to say I'm watching this one closely.

Things like this really matter it seems.

So while you're munching on that plate of delicious Freedom Fries, you might be interested to know the etymology of that wretchedly named "French" Toast.

Could the cursed French really have come up with such a culinary wonder?

Now feeling I was getting somewhere, I moved on the my American edition Larousse Gastronomique:

French Toast (PAIN PERDU)

A dessert consisting of slices of stale bread (or brioche or milk bread) soaked in milk, dipped in eggs beaten with sugar, then lightly fried in butter. French toast is usually served hot and crisp. It was formerly called pain crotté, pain à la romaine, or croutes dorées. In the south of France, it was traditionally eaten on feast days, particularly at Easter. Originally intended to use up crusts and leftover pieces of bread. French toast is usually made with milk bread. It may be accompanid by custard cream, jam or compote.

Now, was there a well attested American origin to French toast, I should certainly think my Larousse would mention it. Instead, I find a set of references to traditional French culinary practices. Furthermore, upon doing a search for pain crotté, I find that it is unanimously considered a Picardian tradition, and Picardy borders Belgium. At the other end, I find a number of references to pain perdu as New Orleans-style French Toast, suggesting that the English term "French toast" may in fact refer to the Louisiana French who prepared this recipe.

So, although my search could hardly be definitive without checking out the OED or the FEW (Oxford English Dictionary and Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch - the two most comprehensive etymological references for English and French), I find no support in the secondary sources for an American origin for French toast, and considerable support for an origin in contemporary Belgium or France.

It may be of some consolation to some patriotic souls to realise that the French word for the dish, Pain Perdu, actually means "Lost" Bread. How appropriate for a nation of primates capitulards et toujours en quete de fromages!!

Rainy day FUN!



Found on the back of a Superman comic from 1965.

Mom seems to be suprisingly supportive of Dad's whacky ideas.
One has the impression that he gets quite a lot of them.