Email Questions Operation Bot Roast Robert Soloway (Spam King) Arrested by FBI Profiles in IT Digicomp Mechanical Computer Nanolaser Lasers Output Can Be Tuned to Many Colors International Space Station News WEP Compromised Even Further War Driving Equipment
Dr. Richard Shurtz, Here is an article on Operation Bot Roast. What is your take on this? Arnie
Operation Bot Roast
Operation Bot Roast tracked up more than one million individually identifiable computers known to be part of one bot net or another.
The law enforcement organization said that part of the operation involved notifying people who owned PCs it knew were part of zombie or bot networks.
The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited.
Many people fall victim by opening an attachment on an e-mail message containing a virus or by visiting a booby-trapped web page.
Those in charge of botnets are called botherders and can have tens of thousands of machines under their control.
Operation Bot Roast has resulted in the arrest of three people known to have used bot nets for criminal ends.
FBI urged PC users to practice good computer security which includes using regularly updated anti-virus software and installing a firewall.
For those without basic protections anti-virus, companies such as F Secure, Trend Micro, Kaspersky Labs and many others offer online scanning services that can help spot infections.
Telltale signs could be if the machine ran slowly, had an e-mail outbox full of mail a user did not send or they get e-mail saying they are sending spam.
Robert Soloway (Spam King) Arrested by FBI
Robert Soloway, accused of being the "Spam King," made more than $1 million over four years by sending millions of pieces of spam for a business he said he started when he was 16
Arrest was part of operation Bot Roast
Newly released court documents show that investigators believe that Soloway, 27, who has long been reviled by international anti-spam groups, sent more than 90 million e-mails in three months, through just two of the servers he used.
With three other servers connected to him, investigators believe he sent 120 million e-mails to nearly 80,000 addresses.
He used a controversial software called Dark Mailer, which investigators say lets users tap into a network of zombie proxy computers to send bulk e-mails with near-total anonymity.
Those details arise from affidavits for search warrants executed Wednesday, when Soloway was arrested on a 35-count federal indictment accusing him of fraud, money laundering and identity theft. Jail time could be as high as 65 years.
The affidavits also revealed details about Soloway’s financial activities. They reported that spamming was his primary source of income and that he made $1.6 million from 2003 through 2006.
Profiles in IT
Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor, Intel engineers, created the first programmable CPU (4004) in conjunction with Masatoshi Shima, BUSICOM engineer, who provided the calculator design requirements.
Intel to introduce the 4004 to the general market in November 1971.
Microprocessor measured 1/8th by 1/6th of an inch—the size of a fingernail
It delivered the same computing power as the first electronic computer, the ENIAC, built in 1946, which filled an entire room and used 18,000 vacuum tubes.
It has 2,300 transistors when it was introduced in 1971
Intel® Core2 Duo processors contain over 291 million transistors.
The 4004 chip circuit line width was 10 microns or 10,000 nanometers.
Intel chips now have line widths of .065 microns or 65 nanometers.
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. By comparison, a human hair is approximately 100 microns or 100,000 nanometers.
The Intel 4004 microprocessor was produced on 2" wafers initially and then on 3" wafers.
Today’s microprocessors are produced on 12" or 300mm wafers.
The 4004 microprocessor is composed of 5 layers.
Busicom, a subsidiary of Nippon, renounced the exclusive rights for the 4-bit 4004 microprocessor for a better price. Agreement was signed by Robert :Noyce, Intel, and Mr. Yoshio Kojima, Busicom and Nippon.
In April 1972, Intel released the 8008, which could process data in 8-bit chunks. It was designed by Faggin and Hal Feeney.
The 8008 chip was designed for Datapoint, a terminal manufacturer in Texas that couldn’t pay for it at the end of the contract.
To settle, Datapoint granted Intel the rights to the chip, including the instruction set, which Datapoint developed.
The instruction set eventually became part of the basis for the X86 architecture behind Intel chips today.
Number of transistors: 3,500
In 1974, Intel introduced the 8080 processor.
It included a more complex instruction set
It came in a package with 40 pins
It included 6,000 transistors
IBM selected the Intel 8088 for the first PC in 1981.
Number of transistors: 29,000
Speed: 5, 8, 10 MHz
That sealed the deal for Intel and their market dominance.
My computer came in, but I have not had time to build it.
Nanolaser Lasers Output Can Be Tuned to Many Colors
Lasers in today’s electronics generally come in red—in everything from DVD players to bar-code scanners
The result uses nanocrystals for the basic laser material. As the size shrinks the effective bandgap of the material shifts.
The band gap, or difference in energy between conduction and valence electrons, determines the wavelength of light emitted. "
In nanocrystals, the gap changes with their size—the smaller the size, the larger the gap," says physicist Victor Klimov of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico
They developed a two layer nanocrystal (cadmium sulfide core and a zinc selenide shell) which trapped excited electrons long enough to be optically pumped for lasing.
International Space Station News
Russian computers fail after installation of new solar panel by US astronauts.
Power surges in the input circuitry during solar panel installation are blamed for failure.
Six computer stopped working.
The Russian computers that control oxygen and water supplies for the three-member crew of the orbiting station, as well as its stability
Four are working now after technicians bypassed the main power switch.
Lots of figure pointed going on now. Whose fault is it: US or Russia?
WEP Compromised Even Further
Researchers have discovered a new way of attacking Wired Equivalent Privacy
Erik Tews, Ralf-Philipp Weinmann and Andrei Pyshkin, Darmstadt University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany.
Breaking 104 bit WEP in less than 60 seconds.
40,000 data packets are needed for a 50 percent chance of success
85,000 packets give a 95 percent chance of success
What’s new that a Wi-Fi attacker no longer needs long periods of time nor much smarts.
The protocol, which is part of the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking standard, was superseded by WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) in 2003, then by WPA2, another name for the full IEEE 802.11i standard.
War Driving Equipment
Netstumbler
Cantenna
802.11b Orinoco Gold Classic Wi-Fi card manufactured by Proxim