honestpuck writes "Security has long been a concern for Unix administrators who find themselves connected to the sometimes dark and dirty world of the Internet. With the advent of personal operating systems with file sharing, remote login and built-in web servers, and the spread of broadband networks with their always-on connectivity, it should now be a concern for everyone." Specifically, honestpuck is talking here about Mac OS X; read on for his review of Sams Publishing's Mac OS X Maximum Security.

GPez writes "The first of I'm sure many RPC DCOM worms affecting Windows is on its way, according to the Internet Storm Center. Patch those systems!" According to the site, "The worm uses the RPC DCOM vulnerability [affects Win2k through Server 2003] to propagate. Once it finds a vulnerable system, it will spawn a shell on port 4444 and use it to download the actual worm via tftp."

tjones2 writes "Seems like Microsoft isn't content with sad state of email these days. They now want to "make engaging with communities easier and friendlier". This means extending their reach into Usenet." Fortunately most of Usenet is such a cespool that really they can only make it better. And after cornering the market on email worms, imagine the benefits they can bring to NNTP!

payndz asks: "I'm currently writing an SF novel, and came up with a weird thought for a piece of background flavour that, if there's any scientific basis for it, might get expanded into a larger element. The most up-to-date theories for the creation of the universe 13.7 billion years ago (give or take...) suggest that at the Big Bang, matter *and* antimatter were created. Over time, the fact that there was slightly more matter than antimatter means that mutual annihilation has left a universe of matter. (I'm not going to open up the whole can of 'dark matter' worms, unless somebody wants to...). I have a 'what if' question, which since Hubert Farnsworth isn't around I thought would get some good responses here: what if, rather than antimatter being annihilated by matter in the universe at large, there are 'clumps' of both matter and antimatter making up the universe? Since our clump is almost entirely matter, billions of LY away could there be galaxies made up of antimatter?More to the point, what physical properties would these galaxies have? Would a star made of antimatter function in the same way as a matter star, and would its emissions be made of antiparticles? Can you have anti-photons, and if you could, what impact would they have on any matter they illuminated? Could life evolve in an antimatter environment?"

An anonymous reader writes "DARPA's OASIS program consists of more than 20 research projects in intrusion-tolerant systems. The basic idea is to concede that systems will be penetrated by malware and hackers, but to keep operating anyway. Other projects take a wide variety of technical approaches to providing intrusion tolerance. MIT's Automatic Trust Management uses models of trust to choose from a variety of ways to achieve system goals; Duke/MCNC's SITAR (Scalable Intrusion Tolerant Architecture) adapts tricks from fault-tolerant systems and distributes decision-making; BBN-Illinois-Maryland-Boeing's ITUA employs unpredictable adaptation. Shutting down the military while waging war is not an option, but the idea of continuing to operating critical defense systems even after known penetration by hostile hackers or damaging worms will take some getting used to."

This week's Slashdot interview guests are the 'point people' for Federal criminal actions against online file-traders and software misapproprators. They know some Slashdot readers may have little sympathy for what they do all day. Be that as it may, this is a great chance to understand what it's like on the enforcement side of the intellectual property coin. We have a special set of 'ground rules' for this interview (below) supplied by the Department of Justice that we must ask you to read before submitting questions.

Major Byte writes "Rob Kolstad's MOTD (pdf) column in Usenix login; passes along a few distilled factiods from a CAIDA analysis of the 'Sappire/Slammer' Worm. When it was at full blast it was scanning over 3 billion systems per hour--a speed that 'a "better" vulnerability would have enabled infection of the entire internet in 15 minutes, a "flash worm" or a "Warhol Worm."' I think 'better' to mean 'able to infect across a lot of platforms.'"

You asked nmap creator Fyodor many excellent questions, and his answers (below) are just as excellent. You'll want to set aside significant time to read and digest this interview, because Fyodor didn't just toss off a few words, but put some real time and energy into his answers.

Slashdot Games is still camped out at E3 in Los Angeles, and having finished hands-on reports on the Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo booths, we're going on to look at some of the other major exhibitors. Next up is Sega, so read on for more info about new Phantasy Star Online, Sonic, Worms, and Virtual On titles, plus the rather smart Billy Hatcher with his Giant Egg.

rekrutacja writes "Soldat is a multiplayer action game which takes the best from games like Liero, Worms, Quake and Counter-Strike, and gives you fast action gameplay with lots of gibs and gore. It only requires a modem and a PC with a 333mhz processor, since it was written to meet the reality of the Polish Internet, still dependent on modem connections and cheap computers." For those countries and locations where you can't get broadband, and PCs just aren't that swift, what other action-based shooters are still reasonably playable?

Scoria writes "CNN is reporting that hundreds of live worms, fourth or fifth generation descendents of the subjects of a scientific experiment conducted aboard Columbia, have been discovered amongst the shuttle wreckage. The worms, C. elegans , share many biological characteristics with humans and are the size of a pencil tip."

Slashback updates and clarifications regarding recent posts on CodeCon, the rumored takeover of Vivendi by Microsoft, SDF, DDoS and NWLink (and IRC and AUPs), and more. Read on for the details, I'm out of letters.

mbenzi writes "This article from GovExec describes how the feds worked to prevent a worm that could have been orders of magnitude worse than Code Red. Short on details, but an interesting timeline."

jnazario writes "In Dealers of Lightning, Michael Hiltzik illustrates a remarkable setting where research was leading to commercial products. Not all of it, though -- he is telling the story of Xerox PARC and discusses both technologies that made it to commercial shelves and too many that didn't. This is the central story of the book, told with great joy and creativity as well as skill. I got this book originally because I wanted a good read on the origin of network-based worms. What I got was one of the better books on the subject of the history of the computer industry I have yet found." Read on for more on Dealers of Lightning.

Roland Piquepaille writes "This opinion is not mine, but the one of Tim Mullen, from SecurityFocus Online. In this story, he expresses some strong ideas regarding systems infected by worms. "I believe you should have the right to neutralize a worm process running on someone else's infected system, if it's relentlessly attacking your network. I've even written code to demonstrate the process. Though the initial news coverage of the concept was grossly inaccurate in conveying my ideas, it has stirred up a constructive dialog. I knew my idea was controversial, but I was wrong about something -- I figured everyone in the security biz would "get it" and that the hard part would be convincing everyone else that if they can't or won't secure their machines, we as the defenders would have the right to terminate the process attacking us. It has turned out to be the opposite." The author then looks at the criticisms about this strikeback idea raised by some security experts -- to dismiss them of course. Check this column for a summary or read the original story for more details."

Were you the eccentric cousin with a chemistry set? Peter Kukla contributes the review below of Oliver Sack's Uncle Tungsten, which sounds like a fun read about growing up curious about chemicals. (Don't worry -- the book sneaks in lots of information about the periodic table and its contents, besides.) For certain families, the science-centric childhood Sacks describes may seem perfectly ordinary. For others, it may give a glimpse into what your kids could learn, given some curiosity and the right environment.

eecue writes "The world's most popular DNS package is once again vulnerable. Even the advisory says it's only a matter of time before worms are written.... just like a couple years ago. I guess this is why i run tinydns."

jlechem writes ">New Scientist is reporting that U.S. scientists have doubled the life span of nematode worms with no apparent physiological side affects. Before scientists were able to double the worms lifespan but they were unable to reproduce. The breakthrough was achieved by turning certain genes on and off at certain times during the development cycle of the worms. While limited to worms right now, the researchers believe this could eventually lead to longer human lifespans. So what happens to those people who don't want to live forever?"

Jeremy Erwin writes "In this whitepaper, Brandon Wiley suggests a possible design for a "superworm", a coordinated network of worm nodes. Typically worms are designed to infect as many hosts as possible, but as overly rapid growth can lead to early detection, this is a suboptimal strategy. The worm, dubbed Curious Yellow uses communication between worm nodes to ensure optimal infection rates."

Some of your questions for Dr. Cerf (Vint to most people) were technical, and some were political. All discussions of Internet policy end up being a mix of the two, it seems, and Vint is heavily involved with both (although I'd have to say not only from his answers here but also from personal conversation he and I have had that his main interest is the technical side).