|
|
Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 90 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
telna / 3U Telecom outage
The Conficker Worm: April Fool's Joke or Unthinkable Disaster?
Re: The Conficker Worm: April Fool's Joke or Unthinkable Disaster?
Re: The Officer Who Posted Too Much on MySpace
Re: Full minute increment billing and send-to-end billing (was Aussie Telco brings back the 30 second rip-off)
====== 27 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and
the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other
journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are
included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address-
included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article
herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the
email.
===========================
Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters,
viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome.
We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because
we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime. Geoffrey Welsh
===========================
See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:17:24 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: telna / 3U Telecom outage
Message-ID: <siegman-3C5958.14165430032009@news.stanford.edu>
The following is a email I just received from 3U Telecom, now "telna",
concerning a power outage in their long distance service over the
preceding day or so (which meant we could send and receive local calls,
but long distance calling just seemed to go nowhere).
I'm posting it here because of its potential technical interest, but
also because its prompt, helpful and informative content seems to be in
sharp contrast to the communications difficulties in dealing with other
telecom companies that are often reported in this group.
---------------------------------
Dear customers:
Please accept our apologies for the outage we experienced on our network
that lasted most of yesterday, Sunday March 30th.
A power surge caused an equipment to fail at our New York POP, which
houses most of the infrastructure used to provide our retail services in
USA, and spare equipments also failed. We immediately ordered
replacement parts to be delivered via air, but due to bad weather
conditions in New York, this shipment was delayed. Service could only be
restored late Sunday evening. All services are functioning normally at
this time
We want to assure you that this type of prolonged outage on our network
remains exceptional in the history of our company, and that all measures
are being taken to prevent this chain of events from occurring again.
Also, the outage was in no way related to the unfortunate timing of
launch of our new website www.telna.com, and announcement of our new
corporate name "Telecom North America", last Friday. Telecom North
America and 3U Telecom are one and same corporation, in existence since
2002 and renamed in January 2009. The management team, customer service
team, the rates and the network are still the same as you have been
experiencing since 2002.
Please note that in order to install additional equipment for redundancy
purposes, it will be necessary to conduct an exceptional maintenance on
Tuesday, April 1st, around 11 PM EST, 8 PM PST, and our services will be
interrupted for one hour at the most. This is not an April Fool's joke
:-)
We thank you for your patronage, and have redoubled our effort to
provide you the same outstanding service under the telna brand, as we
have been providing to you since 2002.
Respectfully,
Jean Gottschalk
President
Telecom North America Inc
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:08:30 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: The Conficker Worm: April Fool's Joke or Unthinkable Disaster?
Message-ID: <p0624085dc5f72b442d60@[10.0.1.6]>
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/the-conficker-worm-april-fools-joke-or-unthinkable-disaster/
The Conficker Worm: April Fool's Joke or Unthinkable Disaster?
By JOHN MARKOFF
MARCH 19, 2009, 6:25 PM
Update | 3:57 p.m. Added links to malware removal tools.
The Conficker worm is scheduled to activate on April 1, and the
unanswered question is: Will it prove to be the world's biggest April
Fool's joke or is it the information age equivalent of Herman Kahn's
legendary 1962 treatise about nuclear war, "Thinking About the
Unthinkable"?
Conficker is a program that is spread by exploiting several
weaknesses in Microsoft's Windows operating system. Various versions
of the software have spread widely around the globe since October,
mostly outside the United States because there are more computers
overseas running unpatched, pirated Windows. (The program does not
infect Macintosh or Linux-based computers.)
An estimated 12 million or more machines have been infected. However,
many have also been disinfected, so a precise census is difficult to
obtain.
It is possible to detect and remove Conficker using commercial
antivirus tools offered by many companies. However, the most recent
version of the program has a significantly improved capacity to
remove commercial antivirus software and to turn off Microsoft's
security update service. It can also block communications with Web
services provided by security companies to update their products. It
even systematically opens holes in firewalls in an effort to improve
its communication with other infected computers.
Given the sophisticated nature of the worm, the question remains:
What is the purpose of Conficker, which could possibly become the
world's most powerful parallel computer on April 1? That is when the
worm will generate 50,000 domain names and systematically try to
communicate with each one. The authors then only need to register one
of the domain names in order to take control of the millions of
zombie computers that have been created.
Speculation about Conficker's purpose ranges from the benign - an
April Fool's Day prank - to far darker notions. One likely
possibility is that the program will be used in the
"rent-a-computer-crook" business, something that has been tried
previously by the computer underground. Just like Amazon.com offers
computing time on its network for rent, the Conficker team might rent
access to its "network" for nefarious purposes like spamming.
The most intriguing clue about the purpose of Conficker lies in the
intricate design of the peer-to-peer logic of the latest version of
the program, which security researchers are still trying to
completely decode.
According to a research addendum to be added Thursday to an earlier
paper by researchers at SRI International, in the Conficker C version
of the program, the infected computers can act both as clients and
servers and share files in both directions. The peer-to-peer design
is also highly distributed, making it more difficult for security
teams to defeat the system by disabling so-called super-nodes.
Conficker's authors could be planning to create a scheme like
Freenet, the peer-to-peer system that was intended to make Internet
censorship of documents impossible.
Or perhaps the Conficker botnet's masters have something more
Machiavellian in mind. One researcher, Stefan Savage, a computer
scientist at the University of California at San Diego, has suggested
the idea of a "Dark Google." What if Conficker is intended to give
the computer underworld the ability to search for data on all the
infected computers around the globe and then sell the answers?
Malware already does this on a focused basis using a variety of
schemes that are referred to as "spear phishing," in a reference to
the widespread use of social engineering tricks on the Net.
But to do something like that on a huge scale? That would be a
dragnet - and a genuine horror story.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
***** Moderator's Note *****
On the one hand, this article has the old "Written on the subway"
flavor of so many of the alarmist tomes that appear in the wake of
every major malware outbreak. The ingredients are all there:
fearmongering, "once over lightly" technical detail, and predictions
of dire consequences to follow - if the readers don't buy the paper
tomorrow.
OTOH, it _does_ mention that neither Mac nor Linux computers are
subject to the worm. Having Linux recognized as a serious alternative
may be worth the hype: although the author did not point out that
Linux runs on PC's, like Microsoft's product, just having Linux "out
there" in the public consciousness is a step in the right direction.
Tune in tomorrow, film at eleven, ymmv, etc.
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:00:34 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: The Conficker Worm: April Fool's Joke or Unthinkable Disaster?
Message-ID: <pan.2009.04.01.00.00.32.585665@myrealbox.com>
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:45:51 -0400, Monty Solomon wrote:
>
> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/the-conficker-worm-april-fools-joke-or-unthinkable-disaster/
>
> The Conficker Worm: April Fool's Joke or Unthinkable Disaster?
>
> By JOHN MARKOFF
> MARCH 19, 2009, 6:25 PM
>
.........
> It is possible to detect and remove Conficker using commercial antivirus
> tools offered by many companies. However, the most recent version of the
> program has a significantly improved capacity to remove commercial
> antivirus software and to turn off Microsoft's security update service. It
> can also block communications with Web services provided by security
> companies to update their products. It even systematically opens holes in
> firewalls in an effort to improve its communication with other infected
> computers.
........
Woo-hoo! something that will force more people into spending even more
money upgrading their (obviously) inadequate Windows "security" tools.
Pity we all didn't start buying shares in the anti-malware vendor
companies a few weeks ago, their sales figures look like having (yet
another) boost......
I do wonder how long a scam has to go on before people realise that is is
a scam?
--
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: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:46:51 -0400
From: MC <for.address.look@www.ai.uga.edu.slash.mc>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: The Officer Who Posted Too Much on MySpace
Message-ID: <uVwAl.22830$i9.2250@bignews7.bellsouth.net>
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Mar 30, 12:06 am, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> That said, the question becomes "Whose business is it"? The issue is
>> not what he said or wrote, but rather whether he is entitled to a
>> private life when not at work: in other words, if a police officer (or
>> other civil servant) is ever "off duty".
>
> Certainly people are entitled to a private life.
But privacy is best enjoyed in private. As Lisa points out, we're
talking about his *public* life.
>> This isn't about computers or social networking sites: the medium is
>> being confused with the message. ...
>
> Social networking sites represent a new area because of their very
> wide distribution. As you may have heard, a kid was arrested for
> posting inappropriate pictures of herself on such a site, even though
> it was apparently restricted to her friends only. Suppose a kid, for
> whatever reason, flashes herself to her friends in a public park.
> Should she be arrested?
Bingo.
When I was doing computer security work, I dubbed this the
"small-circle-of-friends illusion." Some people imagine that when they
post something for the entire public to see on the Web, it's still
perfectly private and no "real" people (employers, authorities, etc.)
are to be allowed to see it!
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:09:33 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Full minute increment billing and send-to-end billing (was Aussie Telco brings back the 30 second rip-off)
Message-ID: <pan.2009.04.01.00.09.32.48124@myrealbox.com>
On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:43:06 -0400, Joseph Singer wrote:
>
> Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:13:13 +1100 David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
> wrote:
>
> <<After all major telcos in Australia were forced (by competitive
> pressure) to introduce per-second billing years ago, now the dominant
> player is returning to 30-second block billing:>>
>
> If only US purveyors of long distance and cell phones even had 30 second
> billing in the US! Pretty much all cell phone carriers charge in full
> minute increments and also charge as "send to end" meaning they bill for
> calls even the connection and ringing time before the end party answers.
> Carriers have the ability to charge as accurately as they choose to, but
> do not choose to do so since it uses lots more minutes with the
> combination of full minute increment billing combined with send-to-end
> billing will assure the most possible revenue for all calls. I dare say
> that if people were charged the actual usage in minutes many people
> could conceivably sign up for plans with less minutes allowed per month
> at a lower rate.
I still find it incredible that unfair billing systems that were once
necessary because of the technology involved are still in use, there is no
excuse in this digital era for anything but per-second billing on all
metered telco services.
Apart from the end-points of connections now (which are exclusively yours
and the other party in the call anyway, and already covered by a rental
portion of your monthly charges), most calls are carried on some sort of
packet network so the concept that you are "using" a resource for a
particular period is increasingly bogus.
Leaving a call up for 2 minutes of silence (which would cause little data
flow in any packet based interconnection) gets charged as much as 2
minutes of constant talk (which would cause many, many more packets to
flow), it just don't make any *technical* sense any more......
--
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.
------------------------------
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in
addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup
'comp.dcom.telecom'.
TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational
service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents
of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in
some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work
and that of the original author.
The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while
Pat Townson recovers from a stroke.
Contact information: Bill Horne
Telecom Digest
43 Deerfield Road
Sharon MA 02067-2301
781-784-7287
bill at horne dot net
Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom
Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom
This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm-
unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and
published continuously since then. Our archives are available for
your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list
on the internet in any category!
URL information: http://telecom-digest.org
Copyright (C) 2008 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved.
Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA.
************************
---------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.
Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing
your name to the mailing list.
All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the
author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only
and messages should not be considered any official expression by the
organization.
End of The Telecom digest (5 messages)
******************************
|
or 