Spammers Announce World War III 334
schliz writes with the stub of a disheartening article at IT News: "Hackers are deluging web users with malware-laden spam claiming that World War III has started following a US invasion of Iran. Security experts warned [yesterday] that spam emails with subject lines including 'Third World War has begun,' '20000 US Soldiers in Iran,' and 'US Army crossed Iran's borders' have been intercepted. The emails contain links to a malicious webpage that displays what appears to be a video player showing the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion."
WWIII (Score:2, Informative)
Sadly enough WWIII is called the War on Terror, and it has already started since September 11, 2001.
So the next war will be World War IV, which a BBS software package WWIV was named after. :)
Re:Doesn't sound like spam... (Score:5, Informative)
Bot nets are used to push out more malware-pushing content, the better to grow the bot net. These can be used very effectively to extort cash from web site operators by means of a site-debilitating distributed denial of service attacks. Many bot nets are used to try hugely random (and somewhat successful) SQL injection attacks from all sorts of random IP addresses, the better to target specific users of specific web sites with JS-based malware iFrames, etc. The days of just trying to get you to buy something are
Re:Doesn't sound like spam... (Score:3, Informative)
The standard definition of spam is "unsolicited bulk email". Remember, it's about consent, not content.
Re:Doesn't sound like spam... (Score:2, Informative)
Spam - Unwanted emails of a bulk, impersonal nature.
Spam is what people don't want. I know people that sign up for mailing lists (often thinking that it would be a monthly or less newsletter that might be interesting, but instead is daily "specials" and such), then tag their list they opted-into as spam. They don't want it, and they often don't have a single click opt-out (either through replies or web sites). Once they don't want it, it's spam, no matter whether they opted-in. Also, people refer to emails they get from friends and family that is bulk joke lists and such as spam. Non-commercial emails are still considered unwanted annoyances, and thus spam. The You-CAN-SPAM act has specific definitions that allow spamming from non-profits, those that you have a business relationship with, anyone that wants to send you unwanted emails if they will let you opt out, and such. That's the legal standard at which it becomes criminal spam. That's not the general public standard at which it becomes spam. Spam isn't illegal, just certain kinds of spam.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with the Prius is the energy cost of battery production. While the study that came out a while back drew a nonsensical conclusion, it does appear that the lifetime energy cost of the Prius is similar to that of a Hummer.
Supposedly this problem will be greatly mitigated when the new battery plant opens in Fremont, CA. (IIRC it was Fremont, anyway.)
Yes, if one allows breeders nuclear is certainly better than coal; coal puts absolute craploads of nuclear material (including a small percentage of fissile uranium) into the atmosphere; in fact, so much that if you could extract it and use it in nuclear reactors (it is mostly thorium, followed by non-fissile uranium) it would produce more energy than the coal burned.
Coal is horrible, nuclear is potentially not so terrible, but without breeders is definitely pretty foul. Anyway there are two feasible sources of electricity available to us right now: Small-scale wind farms are cheap and easy to build and attach to the grid, and small vertical wind turbines could be installed on almost any roof and grid-tied, and photovoltaic solar panels pay back the energy cost of their production in less than seven years, and have been known to do so for over thirty years.
Solar is kind of dirty, but the wind turbines can be made out of almost anything. And a lot of the dirtiness of solar production is involved in the energy input. But the whole point of the exercise is producing more energy output which requires a minimum additional investment in energy consumption and pollution - so long that it can be done at an acceptable environmental cost.
HR 362 / SR 580 : Rep. Gary Ackerman calls for war (Score:1, Informative)
I suspect attaching this to a non-event like a spam attack won't be read by many, but there is a serious side to this little non-article. Have a look at HR 362 / SR 580, and you'll see that certain individuals are actively planning authorisation to commit the first overt act of war against Iran.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=9377&context=va [globalresearch.ca]
http://www.infowars.com/?p=3202 [infowars.com]
I quote from HR 362: "Whereas nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran"
Well, that's all well and good, but doesn't sound so friendly when later followed by:
"...imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran..."
By gumbo, that sounds pretty much like an act of war to me, folks.
Fred Thompson might be a has-been contender for POTUS, but he's still got clout and buddies ...
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/west-urged-to-blockade-iran/2007/06/20/1182019197725.html [theage.com.au]
From what I can tell, the bill is due for a vote today (Friday) ... HR 362's co-sponsors include 96 House Democrats and 111 House Republicans.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:2, Informative)
On one hand, I completely agree with the sentiment of the poster - it's ridiculous to think that a spam campaign can affect a futures market - an average investor doesn't have access to such markets, and doesn't even have enough capital to trade a single oil futures contract.
On the other hand, though, I've seen rumors of this sort achieve exactly that result. On March 27th, 2007, around 5PM ET, a rumor was spread all over the wire services that Iran had fired on an US Navy ship in the Persian Gulf. The futures markets were closed, and electronic trading was very thin, so because of this rumor, the futures prices was taken all the way from $63 to $68 a barrel, almost 10% - in less than 5 minutes!! Within 15 minutes, though, the news spread that this rumor was not confirmed, and after 15 minutes of frenetic trading, the prices settled back to around $64 (I guess a dollar of a risk premium was priced in, just in case!). Within those 15 minutes, even with the markets closed, millions of dollars changed hands. Here's a link to a story from that day - http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN2722461720070327 [reuters.com] . Predictably, no one knows where the rumor came from, yet someone profited quite handsomely off of it.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm tired of this crap about Prius being the same lifetime energy cost as a Hummer. It's total bunk, and here's why: The Hummer's energy cost is in moving a giant object around inefficiently, which expends a lot of energy (Gasoline). The Prius's energy cost is creating it's batteries, which it then uses to move it around a lot more efficiently. However, when the lifetime of the Prius is over, all that energy isn't wasted. The batteries don't disappear. They are still there and can easily (And it's incredibly cost-efficient to do so) be recycled. Thus the 'total energy cost' of the next set of batteries is drastically lower.
So yes, the initial 'startup cost' of the batteries is high, but thereafter the batteries can be recycled an theoretically infinite number of times, which brings it's 'total lifetime energy cost' far below what a Hummer could ever expect.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Informative)
Those wind turbines are LOUD. Let me put one in your back yard and you'll run screaming from the house in less than 24hrs. ... ask the bird population how much they like us sticking a bunch of food processor blades into the air?
FUD, FUD, FUD.
Modern wind turbines are neither shaped like a propeller, nor do they operate at high speeds. Consequently, they don't make much noise, either.
The most efficient designs are all vertical turbines, many of which actually operate at fairly low RPMs, and some of which were used by the ancient Romans. So actually, ancient wind turbines didn't have these problems either.