Star Wars Uncut - Episode IV: A New Hope (Director's Cut)

http://www.starwarsuncut.com/watch

Finally, the crowd-sourced project has been stitched together and put online for your streaming pleasure. The "Director's Cut" is a feature-length film that contains hand-picked scenes from the entire StarWarsUncut.com collection.

SWU has been featured in documentaries, news features and conferences around the world for its unique appeal. In 2010 we won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media.

We can't thank everyone enough for making this such a special project.

CIA's "Facebook" Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

from Onion News Network Season 1 Episode 9

Pwnie Awards 2011 - Nominations Open

http://pwnies.com/

It is time to open the nominations for the Pwnie Awards 2011. We invite all members of the security community to look back at the past year and nominate all great bugs, lame vendors, amazing research and of course, songs. The full list of award categories and the submission form can be found at the nominations page.

We will accept nominations until July 20th, after which the top five nominees in each category will be announced on this website. The winners will be determined by a vote of the Pwnie Award judges shortly before the award ceremony.

The Pwnie Awards ceremony will take place during the BlackHat USA reception on August 3, 2011, starting at 6:15pm. The Pwnie Award organizers thank BlackHat for their generous sponsorship.

CDC: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.

[...]

The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?”

Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too!

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Very smart move by the CDC to add some humor to the serious (and sometimes dry) subject of emergency preparedness.

They have also created various buttons & banners to capitalize on the recent 'Zombie' attention surge...

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Defeated by Marketure

Via Securosis Blog -

Officials today revealed that the "Advanced Persistent Threat" (APT) has been completely defeated by vendor marketure, analyst/pundit tweets, and PowerPoint presentations.

"APT is dead. Totally gone. The term APT is meaningless now" revealed a senior official under the condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the press -- as if anyone believes that anymore.

"Advanced Persistent Threat" was a term coined by members of the military, intelligence, and defense industries to define a series of ongoing attacks originating from state and non-state actors primarily located in China, first against military targets, and later against manufacturing and other industries of interest. It referred to specific threat actors, rather than a general type of advanced attacks. Revealed through major breaches at Google and reports from Lockheed-Martin, APT quickly entered the Official Industry Spin Machine and was misused to irrelevance.

[...]

Self-proclaimed independent security pundit Rob Robson stated, "The APT isn't dead until I say it is. I will continue to use APT in my presentations and press quotes until I stop getting invited to RSA parties".

When asked in an unrelated press conference whether this means China is no longer hacking foreign governments and enterprises, Cybergeneral Johnson replied, "We have seen no decrease in activity." Johnson continued, "If anything, we've seen even more successful breaches due to agencies and companies believing the latest security product they purchased will stop the APT. We are still in the middle of a long-term international conflict with a complex political dynamic that could materially affect our military and economic capabilities in the future. I don't think a new firewall will help".

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Man, am I glad that is over... ;)

Filmmaker Produces First Film Designed to Put You to Sleep

Via AOL News -

Most filmmakers wouldn't want to be told their films put people to sleep, but it's a compliment to director Sondra Lowell.

In fact, putting people to sleep is her goal as the self-proclaimed inventor of a new genre she calls "film sleepy."

Lowell has made two such films thus far. The first, "WebcamMurder.com," is mostly shots of people sitting around in front of webcams 24/7, wondering how to get Web surfers to tune in on their uneventful lives. "It sounds a lot more excited than it is," she told AOL News.

[...]

But Lowell didn't start out wanting to make boring films. In her case, it's a matter of making cinematic lemonade out of lemons.

"I've always wanted to make a movie but found I was good at putting people to sleep," Lowell said. "I took classes at UCLA and the teachers would fall apart when I made a script. People would tell me that I didn't understand how to make a story and told me the scenes should build on each other.

"I thought I was doing that, but people fell asleep. It took me awhile to realize I was on to something."

That something was "film sleepy," a genre that respects the idea that an audience has the right to grab 40 winks while the film is on the screen.

"People are so connected to the Internet or their smart phones that they need a way to let go," she said.

Lowell believes that her films are a non-narcotic way for people to fall asleep, but admits all the evidence is apocryphal.

"I've showed these film to large audiences hoping to see if everyone falls asleep, but I fall asleep myself and can't tell if anyone did," she said.

Security Advisory for NetWare 6.5 OpenSSH (“On Exploitability”)

TippingPoint ZDI reports Remote Code Execution (RCE) Vulnerability in Novell Netware - ZDI-10-169

Novell classifies the bug as a Denial of Service and says they won't be issuing a patch. NetWare 6.5 is out of general support and Novell will only create fixes for issues rated "critical". DoS isn't a critical bug...yada yada.

ZDI disagrees and provides a proof of concept of RCE in rather unquie narratative format.

Hilariousness ensues.

P.S. - Are nominations for Pwnie Awards 2011's "Lamest Vendor Response" group open yet?

USA vs England Highlights (Lego Remix)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXo2nm2ODF0

Humor: Andy Griffith Football Story From 1953

Andy Griffith's famous 1953 stand-up monologue about college football. It has become one of the most beloved comedy recordings of all time.

The illustrations used in this video were drawn by George Woodbridge, a Mad Magazine artist. The comic illustration appear in Mad Magazine in 1958.

---------------

Hat-tip to Sources and Methods

Windows 3.1 Implemented in JavaScript

http://www.michaelv.org/

Humor: Extrahop - IT Blame Game (aka Blame Generator)

http://www.itblame.com/ - Who do you want to blame today?

Network: "The NAT gateway rewrites IP addresses without stripping or adjusting TCP timestamps. A recent upgrade enabled PAWS on the production servers, which caused some new connections to be ignored occasionally."

Virtualization: "The compiler is generating object code that uses the movzbl instruction, which results in a SIGILL from the Xen hypervisor. We recompiled everything with -mno-tls-direct-seg-refs to work around the problem."

Storage: "Our NFS server was configured for 8K blocks over UDP on a 1500-byte LAN segment. IP fragmentation occurred, and lost fragments were not retransmitted. This problem overwhelmed the network with a great deal of noise."

Database: "The latest app rollout included a schema change that is causing some of the stored procedures to fail."

Humor: XKCD - Fall Foliage

http://xkcd.com/648/

Photo of the Day - Series of Tubes Entrance

Entrance to the series of tubes?



I told this photo just outside of the Peppermill during Defcon 17.

A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

Check out the AES's full story....
http://www.moserware.com/2009/09/stick-figure-guide-to-advanced.html

Northern Virginia Rap Battle - Arlington vs. Fairfax

Arlington, VA is super gangsta...



But Fairfax County wasn't going to just stand by and sit on the sidelines....



The only thing missing is Loudoun Country...which in 2007 had the highest median household income in the United States at $107,207, beating neighboring Fairfax County at $105,241.

Where's my Loudoun crew at??

Big ups to Chris Rasmussen (@ckras) for the links....

World's Most Expensive Bicycle

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7941794.stm (Video)

A Danish designer has created what he claims is the "world's most expensive bicycle".

Coated throughout with 24-carat gold and studded with hundreds of Swarovski crystals, the bike is on sale for 80-thousand euros.

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In the video, I love the last young lady's reaction....

"In Denmark, we just steal bikes...we don't pay for them, so to pay that large amount of money...its just silly"

It's silly indeed.

More pictures of the bike can be found here.

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This story made me think of a little bike I encountered back in Amsterdam in 2006...



Stolen? Abandoned? Not sure, but definitely not ride-able.

What Stormtroopers Do On Their Day Off

Via wildammo.com -

Stormtroopers aren’t fighting in battles every single day like you see in the Star Wars films. Here’s what they do when they have some free time.

Photographs by Stéfan. View his entire daily series of Stormtrooper photographs here.

Kevin Spacey Tries, Fails To Explain Twitter To Letterman

XKCD: Sheeple

http://xkcd.com/610/

Pirate Bay Nemesis Has Name Changed By Pranksters

Via TorrentFreak -

Anyone brave enough to take on The Pirate Bay with a view to shutting them down automatically makes millions of enemies, some of which become motivated enough to actually do something about it. Antipiratbyrån lawyer Henrik Pontén knows all about getting on the wrong side of pirates and just recently had yet another reminder that he is widely hated on the Internet.

Just recently Pontén received a letter from the Swedish tax authority (Skatteverket) informing him that his request for a change in his personal details had been accepted, which came as quite a surprise since he had made no such request.

From May 29th 2009, said the letter, 43 year-old Henrik Pontén would have his name changed and become known as Pirate Pontén, undoubtedly to the high amusement of millions of file-sharers.

“The pirate movement have previously tried threats and when that doesn’t work, they do this,” Pontén told Aftonbladet.

Labeling the name change as a “silly” act, Pontén remains determined to press on and get his original name back. “This only makes me more convinced that I’m right,” he said. “The pirate movement often speaks about the importance of personal integrity, but the name change violates my integrity.”

Pontén and others like him around the world are continuing to discover that most people in opposition to their plans have access to a keyboard and the Internet and that is all they need to do their tiny part in annoying those that set out to annoy them. One person alone can cause enough damage, multiply this by thousands or millions and the whole situation can become entirely unmanageable.

Pirate Bay users will tell you that they have grown used to Pontén and his activities against them. Equally Pontén says he has grown used to piracy advocates harassing him in return.

“The way I see it, there is a campaign against anyone who disagrees with the piracy movement,” notes Pontén. “They are trying to restrict our freedom of speech. Previously they have tried threats, now they are trying other methods,” he added.

Pontén told Aftonbladet that the Pirate Party should distance themselves from this type of threat and harassment, although why they should be required to do so is not clear. There is absolutely no suggestion that the Pirate Party was involved in changing Pontén’s name but nevertheless, vice chairman Christian Engström felt compelled to comment;

“To poke fun at the opposition is perfectly ok, but this kind of conduct is just bad form. We distance ourselves from threats and trouble-making. It does not benefit the party,” he said.

Interestingly, no identity check is carried out in Sweden for name change applications, the person concerned just receives a letter to inform the change has been carried out.

Ingegerd Widell, head of the registry at Skatteverket, said that Pirate Pontén will get his original name back in due course.