This just in from a tech buddy of mine.
I’m not trying to cause alarm, but if you’re running Windows, how about you kinda drop everything you’re doing and install the latest Microsoft security updates real quick, so you’ll be prepared when this latest security hole is inevitably exploited.

Microsoft has yet another very serious security flaw that give anyone with the right know how total ccess to your computer. I don’t know all the details – but it might be the biggest one yet. If you remember the SoBig virus last fall – this one will similar in that it doesn’t require you to get email for you to be attacked or hacked.
I say “will be” because right now there is no virus. But the flaw is there and it will be a matter of days before someone write a virus to take advantage of the flaw. And – your anti-virus software will have no effect. Microsoft has posted a patch and that is how you protect yourself – download and install that patch.
Here’s the link to Microsoft’s Windows Update:
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
I am also asking that those of you who have blogs and newsletters and high traffic web sites post this warning on your front page and include it in your newsletters. The best defense to this virus is to stop it before it begins. As you all know – this virus will affect non-windows users in that the new viruses turn windows computer into spam robots and we are still getting the bounce messages from the last virus. Let’s see if we can stop this before it starts by first – patch your computer now – then – tell everyone to patch theirs. You can cut and paste this warning into your blog or newsletter.

Security God Bruce Schneier explains why computer profiling as a preventative measure for detecting potential terrorists just doesn’t work. At all.

Terror Profiles By Computers Are Ineffective
By Bruce Schneier for Newsday.

Even those who say that terrorists are likely to be Arab males have it wrong. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was British. Jose Padilla, arrested in Chicago in 2002 as a “dirty bomb” suspect, was a Hispanic- American. The Unabomber had once taught mathematics at Berkeley. Terrorists can be male or female, European, Asian, African or Middle Eastern. Even grandmothers can be tricked into carrying bombs on board. One problem with profiling is that, by singling out one group, it ignores the other groups. Terrorists are a surprisingly diverse group of people.
There’s also the other side of the trade-off: These kinds of “data mining” and profiling systems are expensive. They are expensive financially, and they’re expensive in terms of privacy and liberty. The United States is a great country because people have the freedom to live their lives free from the gaze of government, because people are not deemed suspects for possible future crimes based on extensive surveillance sweeps. We as a people believe profiling is discriminatory and wrong.
I have an idea. Timothy McVeigh and John Allen Muhammad – one of the accused D.C. snipers – both served in the military. I think we need to put all U.S. ex-servicemen on a special watch list, because they obviously could be terrorists. I think we should flag them for “special screening” when they fly and think twice before allowing them to take scuba-diving lessons.
What do you think of my idea? I hope you’re appalled, incensed and angry that I question the honesty and integrity of our military personnel based on the actions of just two people. That’s exactly the right reaction. It’s no different whether I suspect people based on military service, race, ethnicity, reading choices, scuba-diving ability or whether they’re flying one way or round trip. It’s profiling. It doesn’t catch the few bad guys, and it causes undue hardship on the many good guys who are erroneously and repeatedly singled out. Security is always a trade-off, and in this case of “data mining” the trade-off is a lousy one.

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Here’s a nice article about the subject that isn’t just trying to scare you, and actually tries to answer the question “What can really be done about it?”:
Some Simple Solutions to Identity Theft
Credit agencies must be more vigilant. A first step: quickly and routinely alerting consumers that their credit histories have changed
By Alex Salkever for BusinessWeek.

Most of the damage could easily have been prevented if the credit agencies adopted the common-sense practice of directly notifying individuals whenever a change on his or her report occurs, and whenever a third party accesses their credit report. Yes, it might cost the credit agencies more in overhead. But credit agencies spread such costs around to customers, banks, car dealerships, and others that pay to access consumer credit ratings. How hard is that?
This criminal case has many security experts worried because it points up some glaring weaknesses in credit reporting. Your credit information — in effect, your financial identity — can easily be stolen by alert thieves with access to sensitive information. Yet, credit agencies don’t share with individuals what’s going on with their credit reports — unless consumers ask. This anomaly will become a national economic issue as identity theft grows.

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Slashdot interviewed Ibiblio Director Paul Jones.

DRM is the general term for the groups of solutions to the need for creators to be compensated for their work while allowing their audience to easily access those works. Or at least that would be ideally what DRM should do.
When DRM goes wrong, it tramples on the rights of the citizens to have access to information that they have legally purchased, want to criticize, parody, legally reuse or share.
When DRM goes wrong, it creates barriers to innovation and creativity. It biases access and reproduction of information to only certain technologies.
When DRM goes wrong, it creates and perpetrates closed markets and monopolies.
When DRM goes wrong, everyone suffers. It takes us back to the Stationers Guild, a response to the printing press. “The Stationers Guild obtained monopoly rights in the printing and probably distribution of all books, a monopoly codified by the Tudors in a licensing system aimed at censoring religious dissent” which lasted until the early 1700s.
When DRM goes wrong, it is called Palladium.
The good news is that Palladium is vaporware – so far.

For “turning the most heads” at the Etech conference last week.

I’m not saying this story is true (consider the source 🙂 — but if it was true, China would sure be smart.

Why bother with all of the usual Double Agent hassles when you can just sit back and hack into the entire military industrial complex from the comfort of your own home?

See the LA Times story by Eric Lichtblau:
CIA Warns of Chinese Plans for Cyber-Attacks on U.S..