Security

USAF Col. Charles W. Williamson III has proposed a plan for a massive military-controlled botnet that could be used to launch attacks at hostile networks. His vision involves turning otherwise unusable machines into a powerful cyber-weapon, stripping them down to the bare essentials and turning them onto aggressors.

In his own words:
"America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic."

In Col. Charles W. Williamson III's plan, the hard drives of the military botnet machines would be removed in order to conserve power and create a more environmentally-friendly weapon. Does it sound like a good idea? Think about it carefully and then consider the following.

The botnets that are used in attacks on government networks tend to be comprised of hijacked computers belonging to regular folks like you or me. It is our computers that the good Colonel would like to render into hunks of metal and plastic, not those of some aggressive foreign state or tangible adversary. [Armed Forces Journal via The Register]

Microsoft is set to make some significant changes to Internet Explorer 8 that should see the browser secured against ActiveX exploits. The changes will make the browser much more convenient than it previously has been, as users will be able to install ActiveX controls without Administrator rights. The onus will be on publishers to prepare their programs in order to meet new security requirements and will work for Windows Vista based systems.

In my travels of the World Wide Web, I came across something that was quite incredible and had to investigate further.  Artist Alex Dragulescu has created what can only be described as viral art.  The art was created from the disassembled code of some of a number of different viruses that have, at different times, plagued the Ether.

According to the artist:
"Malwarez is a series of visualization of worms, viruses, trojans and spyware code. For each piece of disassembled code, API calls, memory addresses and subroutines are tracked and analyzed. Their frequency, density and grouping are mapped to the inputs of an algorithm that grows a virtual 3D entity. Therefore the patterns and rhythms found in the data drive the configuration of the artificial organism."

The title image is Dragulescu's representation of PWSLineage.  His other works follow below.  If you want to see the images in all of their glory and perhaps make yourself an awesome desktop background, get over to the Malwarez site.  Given the URL, it looks incredibly sinister but is safe, I can assure you.

Stormy

MyDoom

IRCbot

Virutmytob

The NET-2000 Shooting Net Rod is not a useful item for most people, but this fact is rendered moot by the fact that it is totally and undeniably awesome. I used to have a problem with neighborhood punks stealing my gas (then I moved to Japan) and catching them like flies in a spider's web would have been an immensely satisfying experience; though I would be wary of doing such a thing for the dubious legalities of the situation.

Here is the hard data on the NET-2000 Shooting Net Rod. It is powered by compressed air and shoots a 52-square-foot high-strength nylon net up to 49 feet away. It looks like an oversized flashlight and costs $419. I get the feeling that net guns, no matter how cool they are, are in a legal gray area, so check things out thoroughly before you even consider making a purchase.

Available from Chinagrabber.

Source: Technabob