An anonymous reader writes "In what seems to be a repeat of what happened in July, a few news sites have mentioned that there is evidence of a campaign against Georgia. For example, both the government's and the president's sites are inaccessible, among other official websites. For some analysis, the RBN Exploit blog demonstrates various traceroutes that have failed to several sites. They also claim that the RBN (Russian Business Network cyber-crime organisation) are behind the attacks, and that 'Many of Georgia's internet servers were under external control from late Thursday,' before the actual war began. Finally, according to this Twitter account of someone in Georgia (written in Russian), he claims that 'Russia has blocked access to Georgian websites from within Russia' (rough translation)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The International Association of Book Towns ("a small rural town or village in which second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated") collects information about delightful bibliophiles' paradises. I once spent a magical day combing the shops of one of these places and by the end of it I was drunk on binder's glue, ink, and silverfish. I.O.B. - International Organisation of Book Towns (Thanks, Marilyn!)

A Comcast tech showed up at Consumerist reader's grandad's house and totally failed to understand how their cable was set up and billed. So he called them thieves, cursed at them, and disconnected their cable. Naturally.

I come outside to witness my grandpa and the Comcast guy in a screaming match. The Comcast tech is threatening to leave and I ask "What the heck is going on?!" Well, my Grandpa starts telling me that he disconnected his cable and says we do not have a cable account with Comcast and basically accuses my Grandpa of hijacking cable. Okay, last time I checked, most 74 years old probably don't know how to hijack cable. So my Grandpa gets really upset and starts back for the house. I'm trying to find out from the Comcast tech what is going on and my Grandpa comes back out 2 seconds later with a Comcast bill in his hand. He goes to hand it to the Comcast tech and he rudely replies "Sir, I don't want to see your fucking bill. If you don't go back in your house and quit disrespecting me, I'm going to just leave."

Meanwhile, I ask my Grandpa to try and let me straighten it out and go inside for a minute because I could tell at this point he was getting really upset. So I continue to ask the guy what the hell is going on all the while he is telling me he isn't going back in the house to hook up my internet because he doesn't appreciate my Grandpa "disrespecting him". Well, from what I saw, my Grandpa didn't really deserve to get his cable turned off and treated in such a way. I finally talk him into hooking up the internet (I needed it for school as my homework is submitted online). But the issue still remains with my Grandpa's service. So I ask the tech why he thinks we don't have cable. He replies "When I look up the phone number on the account, it only shows internet, no cable television. That's a red flag mam."

Comcast Tech Accuses 74-Year-Old Man Of Stealing Cable Service (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Researchers at DefCon in Vegas have demonstrated that they can make "high security" Medeco key-blanks out of the plastic used in credit-cards, and then whittle them into working keys by referring to low-resolution photos of original keys.

"Basically, we've destroyed Medeco's key control, because we can make (plastic keys) for any of their M3 locks and a lot of their Biaxial locks, which is their last generation of locks," says Tobias, who authored the book Open in Thirty Seconds, with Bluzmanis.

The researchers demonstrated the technique using a Medeco mortise cylinder that Threat Level purchased in California before leaving for Las Vegas. After buying the lock, Threat Level scanned the key and e-mailed the image to the researchers, who then created several plastic keys. When Threat Level arrived in Las Vegas with the lock, it took about six seconds to open the lock using a plastic key.

"It's keys by e-mail," says Tobias. "It's key-mail."...

The Medeco M3 key does have an extra feature to secure the lock -- a step protrusion on the side of the key that's designed to move a slider inside the lock. But last year at DefCon, Tobias and his colleagues showed how they could simply insert the end of a bent paper clip into a Medeco high-security lock to push back the slider, rendering the slider ineffective as a security layer. Once that is done, they're then able to insert the plastic key in this new attack, to lift and rotate the pins.

Researchers Crack Medeco High-Security Locks With Plastic Keys

(Image: Dave Bullock (eecue)/Wired.com)

On 2/7/06 this blog got an annex on wordpress.com that mirrored the content here.

The purpose was twofold: 1. It allowed people to comment on my writing and 2. It would trackback to blogs I Iink to. Over time these functions became less important. People don't pay so much attention to trackback, and I added Disqus to this site for comments, and don't even watch the comments on the annex. That's bad cause I miss important stuff, and people think I don't care. Oy.

So it's time to bid adieu to the annex, it'll stay there as long as Matt & Co keep wordpress.com running (thanks!) but this will be the last post to be mirrored there.

If you're subscribed to the feed please redirect your reader to this feed:

http://scripting.com/rss.xml

And since the first post there had a cool picture of comedian Jack Benny, I thought it was fitting that the last one should have that picture as well. :-)

Robbo sez, "Thomas Hawk was forcibly removed from the San Francisco MOMA by two security guards at the direction of the over-zealous Simon Blint, Director of Visitor Relations. How ironic is that? Why? Taking photos in the atrium. SF MOMA policy on this? Their own web site specifically allows photography in the atrium. Hawk had also previously confirmed this personally with Thea Stein in the Marketing and Communications Department of the museum. Didn't matter to Simon Blint who, according to Hawk, went all aggressive and power-trip happy, even trying to eject his companion."

If the museum has a photography allowed policy in their atrium as explicitly expressed on their website and someone identifies themselves as a photographer, artist and paying and supporting member of museum I would expect less hostility, aggression and harassment. Photography is an art and those of us who choose to practice the great art of street photography ought not be targeted by bullies like Blint. Many of the great artists, artists being shown in the SF MOMA itself were practitioners of street photography. It is ironic that the great Cartier-Bresson, who took thousands of photographs of unsuspecting people in his work, hangs in the museum while a photographer practicing the same type of work gets ejected by a power-trippy asshole. It's hypocritical and disappointing.

Simon Blint, Director of Visitor Relations at the SF MOMA, Yeah You Asshole, Photography is Not a Crime (Thanks, Robbo!)

This morning two editorials one in the LA Times and the other in The Moderate Voice, a political blog, provide a fresh perspective on the Edwards scandal.

The story broke in the National Enquirer, months ago, long before the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, yet mainstream press and bloggers failed to carry the story and investigate further. So far the stories have only been about the failure of mainstream press, but bloggers failed too.

CNN interviewed the editor in chief of the Enquirer, David Perel, yesterday.

Tim Rutten, writing in the Times says that this will "dethrone" mainstream media and "signals the end of the era in which traditional media set the limits of acceptable political journalism."

Shaun Mullen, writing in The Moderate Voice says: "The mainstream media let us down yet again by failing to take seriously first rumors and then credible accounts of the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair."

Neither statement goes far enough.

The reports were out there, there was tentative coverage in MSM and blogs, but the story we all took the word of reputable sources over the disreputable Enquirer.

Rutten is right, it'll never be the same again.

Update: I've Been Banned At DailyKos Because Of John Edwards.

That's what happens when you "blog" somewhere you can be banned for saying something unpopular.

Blogging is the unedited voice of a person.

Kos is definitely not a blogging platform, if this story is true.

The tenth collection of Fables comics, "The Good Prince" (and its companion volume, The Bad Prince) continues to delight with its thoroughgoing exploration of one of the better conceits in comics today. Fables is the long-running, multiple-award-winning comic series in which every legendary being of every land -- and all of the elements of storytelling, like the pathetic fallacy -- are exiled to earth by a cruel and conquering emperor.

The Fables creators have lots of room to play with this idea -- fourteen volumes so far, including four spinouts -- and they're really going for it. The side-plots have explored everything from Hollywood's vulnerability to Jack of Fables to the special problems of human-wolf mating, the handling of conspiracy nuts who get too close to the truth, and the claustrophobia of a whole world when you aren't allowed to reveal yourself in it.

But all the way through, Fables has been moving toward a conclusion, a major battle in which the Fables try to reclaim their ancestral lands from the evil emperor. And that's where The Good Prince comes in. In this volume, the stage is really set for the final conflict between the two armies, through a set of transformations to some of the series oldest and most complex characters (some of whom have been offstage for a book or two).

At nearly 250 pages, this book feels roomier than some of the others, and there's a lot of laying-of-groundwork going on, the sense of pieces being put into place for a major offensive. And for all that, there's still a complete and satisfying chapter in this one. Fables Vol. 10: The Good Prince, Link to all Fables collections, Link to free download of Fables 1

See also:
* Jack of Fables: great new Fables collection * Jack of Fables: Jack of Hearts - comic adventures of the legendary Jack continue
* Scherezade meets every fable of every land - comic

Kevin Fu (associate prof at the UMass Amherst/director of the Medical Device Security Center) gave a Black Hat presentation in Vegas yesterday in which he demonstrated a way of remotely disabling a pacemaker, using open radio technology. It sounds like other implantable devices, like those used for auto-administering drugs, would also be vulnerable to the attack. The attack relies on the fact that the control protocol for these devices does not use any cryptographic security -- that sounds like it'd be easy enough to fix for future models. Not sure how you'd field-patch the 2.6 million devices that have already been... installed to date, though.

A computer acts as a control mechanism for programming the pacemaker so that it can be set to deal with a patient’s particular defribrillation needs. Pacemakers administer small shocks to the heart to restore a regular heartbeat. The devices have the ability to induce a fatal shock to a heart.

Fu and Halperin said they used a cheap $1,000 system to mimic the control mechanism. It included a software radio, GNU radio software, and other electronics. They could use that to eavesdrop on private data such as the identity of the patient, the doctor, the diagnosis, and the pacemaker instructions. They figured out how to control the pacemaker with their device.

“You can induce the test mode, drain the device battery, and turn off therapies,” Halperin said.

Translation: you can kill the patient.

Defcon: Excuse me while I turn off your pacemaker, Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators: Software Radio Attacks and Zero-Power Defenses (Thanks, Kiltak!)

These Swiss casemodding overclockers have a sweet gallery of a case that looks like an old flying wing aircraft. Looks like it'd get good airflow, too. Gernsback Continuum Casemod (Thanks, James!)

ProQuo's Top 10 Creative Responses To Junk Mail has lots of good ideas for meatspace spam (making venetian blinds is a particularly good one). My favorite junkmail hack is to just write DECEASED on the envelope and put it back in the mail. Top 10 Creative Responses To Junk Mail (via Craft)

Shudder to think what would have happened if Edwards had come out on top after the primaries. No doubt he would have had to withdraw in disgrace, the way Eagleton withdrew in 1972. Could he have made it all the way to the nomination without it coming out? Hard to imagine, but if it had he might have destroyed the Democratic Party.

Stunningly self-destructive, for a guy who seemed so utterly in control, unshakable, willing to do anything to be President. He had it in for himself. Amazing that his wife knew and supported his run for President.

Did he coordinate the timing of this with Obama or is it a coincidence that he went on vacation the day the story broke, with a request that the press not pay any attention to him in the coming week? Or did Edwards spring this on him as well?

This should put to rest any thought of HRC being the nominee for vice-president. The skeletons in her closet are much worse, and some of them aren't even hidden. The press gave her a pass in the primary. It wouldn't happen in the fall, she'd be held to account for them, there was outright bribery in the last days of the Clinton Administration, and she was part of it. Not a bystander.

BTW, one more little bomb waiting to go off is the verdict in the Hamdan trial which came out yesterday. The question is -- will he be released when his term is up in 4.5 months. Let's see, that's just about the time the Bushes are leaving town and Obama or McCain is taking office. Could the jury possibly have been thinking of this? Is McCain getting an ad ready saying "Hamdan will not get out as long as I'm President" and throw the hot potato over at Obama. This will be a campaign issue, for sure. The Dems better get ready for it.