Defending the Internet

Today is anything but a normal Saturday for the people who run the Domain Name System, which converts human-friendly domain names like google.com into numeric addresses that are more useful for computers, The New York Times reports.

They plan to be glued to their monitors, looking out for signs of unusual network traffic, communicating with one other through encrypted, digitally signed e-mails or through a private telephone hot line maintained just for this purpose.

That's because on a quiet Sunday in mid-February, something curious attracted the attention of the behind-the-scenes engineers who scour the Internet for signs of trouble.

There, among the ubiquitous boasts posted by the hacking collective Anonymous, was a call to attack some of the network’s most crucial parts. The message called it Operation Global Blackout, and rallied Anonymous supporters worldwide.

It declared when the attack would be carried out: March 31. And it detailed exactly how: by bombarding the Domain Name System with junk traffic in an effort to overwhelm it altogether.

Engineers created a fast-track, multimillion-dollar global effort to beef up the Domain Name System, adding enough computing power to handle a denial of service attack.

Personally, I think they wanted to shut down this blog.

Don't lose your phone

Perp.

According to a new study, if you lose your smart phone, you have a 50/50 chance of getting it back. But chances are much higher – nearly 100 percent – that whoever retrieves it will try to access your private information and apps.

According to a study by Symantec, 96 percent of people who picked up the lost phones tried to access personal or business data on the device. In 45 percent of cases, people tried to access the corporate email client on the device.

Symantec called the study the “Honey Stick Project.” In this case the honey on a stick consisted of 50 smartphones that were intentionally left in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Ottowa, Canada. The phones were deposited in spots that were easy to see, and where it would be plausible for someone to forget them, including food courts and public restrooms.

Each phone also was loaded with programs to track what finders did with the devices, and to send that information to the researchers. Among people who found the phones, 72 percent tried to access photos, 57 percent tried to open a file called “Saved Passwords,” and 43 percent tried to open an app called “Online Banking.” 

Most of the apps on the phones were protected by passwords, but the username and password fields were already filled out, so that users could simply press a button to access them. Well over half of the people who discovered the phones, 66 percent, clicked those buttons to try and start the programs. The fact that the finders had to click a button to access the apps indicates that their attempts were likely intentional.

You should know that if you pick up and try to use my phone it will explode, spewing biotoxins and chemicals that will eat your flesh and make your eyeballs burst.

A sign of the times

After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.

Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said. 

In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project. 

“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

Gutenberg first used moveable type 573 years ago. The World Wide Web opened for business 21 years ago. I got all of this post from the Web. You will read it on the Web.