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Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 280 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Comcast takes steps against botnets
Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Blinkenlights
DoJ admits: telcos are an arm of the government
T-Mobile Sidekick belly-up death of cloud computing
Disconnecte cell phones and 911 access?
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===========================
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Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:03:40 -0400
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Comcast takes steps against botnets
Message-ID: <op.u1l74eyuo63xbg@acer250.gateway.2wire.net>
On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:39:11 -0400, AES <siegman@stanford.edu> wrote:
> An Associated Press story in this morning's paper by Deborah Yao
> headlined "Pop-ups warn of infections" describes a warning service being
> tested in Denver starting this week in which Comcast automatically
> alerts customers whose PCs they believe may have been co-opted by a
> botnet that this may be the case, and offers them a site with tips on
> how to remove virus infections.
>
> I'm just a garden-variety computer user, not an Internet security
> expert, but if this effort is being undertaken in good faith by Comcast,
> this seems to me to be a hopeful sign and a commendable effort.
Alas, "Pop-ups warn of infections" is the mechanism as well of the
purveyors of malicious software. I'd fear that Comcast users who're
aware of that fact will ignore Comcast's pop-ups, while Comcast users
who're more naive will come to trust even _un_trustworthy pop-ups.
Not all that clear which side will be the ultimate beneficiary.
Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:01:05 -0700
From: Richard <rng@richbonnie.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Message-ID: <5iv2d59i8es4bjr0gvlhu3e6f10oanl7u7@4ax.com>
>***** Moderator's Note *****
>
>Freak circumstances abound in the radio world, and it's entirely
>possible that a cell site that's not physically "closest" to a phone
>might be the one with the best signal strengh.
I have seen many freak propagation events at what should be
line-of-sight frequencies.
I live in Pahrump, NV, separated from Las Vegas by a mountain range
whose peak elevation is about 8000 feet above local terrain. One
night I had a 2-way 10-minute contact on 2 meters (146 MHz) ham radio
with a station on the other side of the mountains, direct from his car
to my car, no repeaters. We tried it again for several nights
following, but never could repeat it. We must have gotten a lucky
bounce off something in the atmosphere.
In the middle 1970's, I lived in southern New Hampshire, 20 miles
north of Boston. One night, while watching TV Channel 2 from Boston
of the air, the picture got strong interference. When the
interference cleared, I was watching channel 2 from New York City, 200
miles away. The New York signal completely overrode the Boston
signal. This lasted a couple of hours. I never saw the phenomenon
again.
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:29:16 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Message-ID: <pan.2009.10.11.07.29.14.295117@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com>
On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:27:16 -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
> In article <pan.2009.10.09.05.36.36.159967@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com>, David
> Clayton <dcstar@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>
>> There is an infamous murder case in Australia where one vital piece of
>> evidence was the (apparent) identification of the convicted person by
>> having his cell phone register on a particular antenna covering an area
>> at an exact time that discredited his alibi that he was on the other
>> side of town and placed him possibly within the vicinity of the crime.
>>
>> It has since emerged that the base station antenna pattern of the GSM
>> tower used in the court evidence could well have registered his phone
>> at the location he said he was in - because of the characteristics of
>> the radiation pattern that still has some functionality in the opposite
>> direction that the main gain area is - but the court just got a
>> simplistic technical explanation of how these things work.
>
> It would take a truly freak set of circumstances for that kind of
> gross 'location error' to happen.
>
> The base-stations engage in constant inter-communication, with regard to
> who 'hears' which phones with what strength. And the 'best tower' wins.
> AND when 'who hears best' changes -- as when the phone moves -- the
> phone will be 'handed off' to the new 'best tower'.
>
> In order for a phone to lock up with a 'distant' tower, for basic
> 'housekeeping' purposes, it would require that every 'closer' tower be
> getting a poorer signal.
.........
The whole point was that the signal from this handset was acquired by one
of the many directional antennas in the opposite direction that it was
supposed to work because the radiation envelope still had a significant
node that would work in the direction the handset was claimed to be
located by the defence.
Anyone that has worked with microwave equipment knows that unidirectional
antennas are not 100% directional, and there are significant usable nodes
outside of the direction most of the signal is supposed to go.
IIRC in this case the handset was (claimed to be) reasonably close to the
base station on the opposite side of the direction the prosecution claimed
as part of the evidence that resulted in a conviction, but post-trial
other experts showed that it could well have been located where the
defence actually claimed with all the factors of base station operation
taken into account.
The main point was that the initial evidence showed an over-simplistic
description of "perfect" antenna radiation patterns of all the microwave
antennas on this tower (which was probably initially done with good
intentions to simplify things for a non-technical audience - the jury) and
told that the signal could only have come from one direction, which was
patently incorrect.
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:16:34 -0500
From: Michael Grigoni <michael.grigoni@cybertheque.org>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Blinkenlights
Message-ID: <4AD19462.90507@cybertheque.org>
For years I had a version of the famous blinkenlights notice, typed
on a flexowriter, which had been taped to the LGP 30 when we got it;
sadly it and the LGP 30 are now gone (due to a catastrophe), but I
always assumed that the version on my note had been taken from a
Datamation article sometime around 1960. I would appreciate seeing
any versions that you all may have and any recollections of
where you have encountered it, and if anyone has seen it in the context
of telephone equipment or CO locations, and if anyone can confirm
which trade magazines may have printed it.
Here is the version as displayed by Wikipedia:
ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND
MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK,
BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN.
IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN
SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
This differs somewhat from my recollection and indeed the Wikipedia
article states that a great many versions existed.
Michael
***** Moderator's Note *****
This timeless warning was briefly popular at the start of the computer
revolution in the U.S., but use subsided amid acccusations of
politically-incorrectness because of the "Ginglish" language. Still,
it gets high marks for effectiveness: I saw it taped to a #1ESS
control panel in 1974.
Politicall-incorrect or not, it still has a place beside other
timeless warnings:
(Next to a paper cutting machine)
"Cut fingers will fall on this side. Please dispose of properly."
(In the MIT Laser Lab)
"Do not look into laser with remaining eye."
(On the wall at a driver-training school)
"Do not bet on your ego in a fight with the laws of physics. Physics wins every time!"
(On the desk of a probabtion officer in a Massachusetts courthouse)
"Attention, teenagers: 'No' is a complete sentence."
I'm sure there are others. ;-)
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:50:00 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: DoJ admits: telcos are an arm of the government
Message-ID: <4AD19C38.5030706@thadlabs.com>
Telephone Company Is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit
By Ryan Singel WIRED October 8, 2009 8:24 pm
The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers:
The nation's telecom companies are an arm of the government - at
least when it comes to secret spying.
Fortunately, a judge says that relationship isn't enough to squash
a rights group's open records request for communications between
the nation's telecoms and the feds.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation wanted to see what role telecom
lobbying of Justice Department played when the government began
its year-long, and ultimately successful, push to win retroactive
immunity for AT&T and others being sued for unlawfully spying on
American citizens.
[...]
WIRED article continues here:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/att-doj-foia/
As a reminder of how the NSA tapped the AT&T backbone:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/07/MNIST7NS9.DTL
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 04:12:24 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: T-Mobile Sidekick belly-up death of cloud computing
Message-ID: <4AD1BD98.2090703@thadlabs.com>
I suppose this slams the brakes on texting while driving. :-)
Long story short, it appears the "cloud" setup by Microsoft for
T-Mobile's Sidekick (apparently a Blackberry-like thingie) has
blown away and all the data is seemingly irretrievably gone.
BUT ... T-Mobile is still cautioning all users to "please DO NOT
remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power"
on the off-chance T-Mobile stumbles upon a miracle by Monday and
recovers all the lost data (contacts, calendars, to-dos, photos, etc.)
" T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a
" subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies
" ...
"Microsoft/Danger server failure"? That raises red flags. :-)
Full story here:
http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/board?board.id=06
And I was only grousing about losing some phone numbers when my
AT&T SIM went belly-up. I feel for those who got sucked into the
cloud computing concept.
Another article [about] why cloud computing is NOT for enterprises or,
for that matter, anyone:
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/features/article.php/3843151
***** Moderator's Note *****
I've got to tip my hat to Microsoft for having the confidence to name
a data-retention service "Danger". Maybe they should invest in the
"Cancer" brand of cigarettes ...
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:24:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Disconnecte cell phones and 911 access?
Message-ID: <3b3f71c3-f2c8-4433-a438-24afd364419b@d10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>
Some questions...
Is it still true that a cell phone that is no longer in service with a
carrier can still be used to dial 911?
Will such a phone transmit the GPS coordinates?
Can the phone be called back by the 911 center? They can seize a
landline and ring it back, but what about a cellphone or a
disconnected cellphone?
What calling number shows up at the 911 center from a disconnected
cell phone?
Thanks! Any other info would be appreciated.
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End of The Telecom digest (7 messages)
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