Viet-Justice

Capitalism is alive in Vietnam. Intel might be building a plant in the country boosting the economic importance of Vietnam in the Asian market. The Saigon High Tech Park is something fairly amazing. Foreign investors are throwing money at it like crazy.

In addition to selling users search terms to the federal government, Yahoo! has now gone politically correct by banning the use of Allah in email addresses. Osama, binladen, and raghead are also on the banned list but somehow killallmuslimsandarabs1 was allowed. This must be a half-assed glitch attempt to censor user names in the name of not offending anyone. It’s interesting what else slipped by.

The Southeastern Cybercrime Summit will be taking place Feb 28 at Kennesaw State University.  There are lots of speakers lined up and the CISO Panel will be featuring some exciting guests.

Brian Shield Executive VP, Chief Information Officer, The Weather Channel
Gene Scriven Chief Information Security Officer, The Home Depot
David King VP of Corporate Information Security for Bank of America

The good people at Counterterrorism Blog are running a report on a Seattle area web hosting customer that was hacked by the e-jihad.  Since the US Government just wrapped up a cyber attack drill it’s understandable that resources are devoted to studying the outcome of the operation.  Still it’s disturbing that there has not been more of a world response to the cyber attacks that are following the Mohammad Cartoon around.  Non-critical hack attacks are not a priority on anyone’s list, except for possible the IT Security community.  With a widescale cyber jihad in progress we need to wake up and realize that if these bored middle eastern hackers attempt something more than vandalism we might have a big problem.  The news media hype that power grids could be taken down by hackers is pretty much hype, but a Denial of Service against infrastructure that people depend on for leisure and convenience could really upset the stock prices of the companies providing the services.

Zone-H is reporting that Muslim hackers have started to attack European websites in retaliation over the Mohammad cartoons. There has also apparently been a lot of chatter on web message boards dedicated to Cyber Jihad discussing specific techniques to take over western web servers.  578 webservers in the .dk domain have been knocked over by cyber terrorists.  This is a grand opportunity for the west to retaliate and plaster the Mohammad cartoons all over the websites promoting this cyber terrorism.  Since US and EU hackers could operate from neutral countries there would be little risk to allied forces in launching a Prophetic attack back at these trouble makers.  Besides, taking a Jihad website offline could be nothing but helpful to the war on terror.  I doubt GWB or AG Gonzalez would complain.

The fools at StarFore are threatening BoingBoing for no good reason. Dennis Zhidkov, PR Manager for star-force.com obviously has no understanding of American law. He claims that he has contacted the FBI because writing an article about them is harassment. Hello, Mr. Zhidkov! Did you know that we’re really busy with the war on terror and don’t really have time to waste on harassment. Since being annoying is illegal due to the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 Mr. Zhidkov should turn himself in to the authorities and prepare for a Patriot Act Cavity Search. Because if you’re wasting the FBI’s time you must be with the terrorists. I also want to know if Leiji Matsumoto can sue Star-Force.com for making the Star Force in Star Blazers look like the forces of evil? I think the Star Blazers brand might suffer because of the idiots like Mr. Zhidkov and star-force.com.

Now you can have a bed that glows in the dark like your Honda Civic Type-R.  This is a must for any Asian.

This must be one of the sillier stories ran on News.com

The handbook from the Entertainment Software Association, the show’s promoter, says: “Material, including live models, conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing suit bottoms, are prohibited on the show floor, all common areas, and at any access points to the show.”

The Entertainment Software Association does have the right to regulate what goes on at their conventions, but I have to wonder if someone lost the memo that sex sells or if the Feminazis have truly taken over the organization. Still, there’s nothing saying that attendees can’t dress in prohibited garb. I wonder how the morons that run this show would take it if fans were to show up and volunteer to help their favorite vendor. Communism and feminism strike another part of American society. One has to wonder why appeasing the feminazis is more important that marketing and sales?

A student’s prank goes awry according to this article

Michael Stone was charged with a felony after making a blog post asking people to click on a link to the school’s website and then press F5 repeatedly to crash the school’s server.

“Michael said it was a joke,” City Prosecutor Frank Forchione said. “We showed him how we deal with this kind of joke.”

“It’s a crime and it is important we take this seriously … especially for school officials … it could have done a tremendous amount of damage,” said Canton City Prosecutor Frank Fronchione.

While not the brightest thing in the world, the punishment of a felony seems a bit overboard. A tremendous amount of damage would lead one to believe that the web server was permanently damaged, but according to the article it was behaving slow and not completely down. In essence Michael Stone engaged in something similar to a letter writing or call in campaign and did the internet equivalent of jamming up the school’s phone lines or burying them in paper hate mail. It’s not a polite thing to do the act of organizing a campaign is considered free speech. Since the story has made it to news blogs such as Slashdot where a link to the school website was posted, one has to wonder if Prosecuter Fronchione is planning on wasting more of the tax payer’s money by going after anyone who clicked links to the school’s website.

This is also the same school district where officials aren’t sure what caused so many girls to get pregnant. Must be that abstinence education they’re teaching.

Useful Contact Information:
Lake High School

With all the talk of NSA snooping going on, it was only a matter of time before old tech snooping came into fashion. Professor Goodman is a little angry that his correspondance with a friend in the Phillipines is being spied upon.

“All mail originating outside the United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside the U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination,” says the CBP Web site. That includes personal correspondence. “All mail means ‘all mail,’” said John Mohan, a CBP spokesman, emphasizing the point.

This should be a lesson to anyone who has friends, family, or pen-pals outside the US should now understand that your letters and packages may be cavity searched by US Customs. Some people may not have access to email where they live of course but I think nothing really beats using PGP or S/MIME to encrypt your email. I wonder how Customs would react to opening a letter and finding PGP encrypted text on paper.