Chad's News

Security researcher Christopher Soghoian, a Ph.D. student at Indiana University, published a web application that would generate a realistic-looking Northwest Airlines boarding pass with information that you supply. He said it would probably be possible use the boarding pass to get past security, but that it most likely would not work for getting on the airplane itself. He also stated that he had never actually used the program to bypass security. The purpose was to expose a flaw in airport security and try to shame the TSA into doing something about it. Note that this flaw is not new and has previously been “exposed” multiple times—but Soghoian is the first one to openly publish a boarding pass generator on the web.

It turns out that what he did is illegal, and he got in trouble. First, a Congressman called for his arrest. Then he got a visit from the FBI, with an order to take down the site. Then he got another visit from the FBI, but this time they confiscated his computer equipment. As one slashdot user states in his signature: “Civil Disobedience, it’s not just a good idea, it’s illegal.”

Soghoian has a blog, slight paranoia, where posts the latest news about his situation. He’s also taking donations for his legal defense fund.

http://www.wired.com/…

http://www.consumerist.com/…

UPDATE: The charges have been dropped [link2] [link3] in this case. All is well.

UPDATE #2: Okay, all is not well. The Transportation Safety Administration has opened an investigation into the matter. They could levy a big fine, but not criminal charges.

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s latest CD, “Straight Outta Lynwood,” has made it into Billboard’s top 10—a first for him. Much of the reason for this was the wide (and illegal) internet distribution of the video for “White and Nerdy”. You can listen to the song legally at Weird Al’s MySpace page, where you can also download the the highly amusing and satirical song, “Don’t Download This Song.” Most interesting of all, an AOL premiere of his video was cancelled because the video was prematurely leaked to the internet. But what at first seemed like a bad thing has turned out to be a very good thing.

http://arstechnica.com/…

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting interview of Weird Al by the Star Wars folks. Anyone who knows about the Star Wars Holiday Special and the Star Wars kid is definitely my kind of nerd.

UPDATE #2: And for anyone who wants a copy of the low-quality, poorly acted, and poorly written Star Wars Holiday Special, I have it on DVD and am willing to provide copies for $1.00—but you have to pay the cost of packaging and shipping, if any. If interested, just drop me a line.

Canadian officials were understandably upset when a US judge ordered a convicted sex offender to spend 3 years “exiled” in Canada.

http://today.reuters.com/…

Version 2.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. Download it here, and slightly more detailed release notes available here. As far as I’m can tell, there aren’t any major, must-have changes—the session save and tabbed browsing enhancements were already available via extensions. I’m going to wait a month or so before upgrading , so for those who update now, please let me know what you think.

http://www.mozilla.com/…

This site has an autorun file that tells someone how to return your lost USB drive. When they plug in the drive, the AutoPlay window will display a “Help! I’m Lost” option, which gives ownership/contact information that you specify. I suggest skipping the technical stuff in the article and just downloading the zip file at the end.

http://www.dailycupoftech.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

There is an interesting legal case going on in a US District Court, with ramifications for the entire internet. Spamhaus is an organization that publishes a spam blacklist, and it was sued by a blacklisted company earlier this year. Spamhaus initially participated in the proceedings but then withdrew, stating that a US court had no authority over a company based in the UK. A summary judgement was ordered, which Spamhaus ignored. Now the plaintiff is trying to get the Spamhaus domain name shut down, via a proposed court order (PDF) to both the US-based ICANN and the Canadian domain registrar Tucows. ICANN has stated that it cannot comply with the proposed order and that only Tucows can do so. Since Tucows is based in Canada, it does not have to comply with a US court order. So we have a US court possibly trying to shut down a UK organization by issuing a court order to a Canadian company. This is a true test of who really controls the internet. Note that the court order has only been proposed, and has not yet been signed by the judge.

Spamhaus’ blacklist is responsible for blocking about 50 billion spam messages each day. This is an estimated 75 to 90 percent of the total email traffic, so shutting down Spamhaus would cause a four- to ten-fold increase in the amount of email worldwide. Spamhaus is predicting doom and gloom if that were to occur.

http://arstechnica.com/…

http://arstechnica.com/…

http://www.itworld.com/…

UPDATE: The judge has denied the proposed order.

Internet Explorer version 7 has officially been released. Major improvements are tabbed browsing and better adherence to standards. That being said, I still prefer Firefox.

http://slashdot.org/…

UPDATE: And true to form, the first IE7 security vulnerability has already been discovered.

UPDATE #2: According to Microsoft, the problem is with Outlook Express and not Internet Explorer.

The Reuters news agency is opening a virtual news bureau in the online world of Second Life. The bureau will provide real-world news.

http://www.infoworld.com/…

http://today.reuters.com/…

PDF Pad has printable PDF files of calendars, graph paper, etc. It’s useful if you just need a few sheets and don’t want to purchase a whole tablet. It has some pretty unusual items too, like Smith charts and staff paper.

http://www.pdfpad.com/
(via Lifehacker)

Regular Chad’s News readers may recall this post, where I touted the fake motivational posters of Despair, Inc. Well now you can make your own. Just supply a picture, title, and text. Here’s one that I made.

Link: http://bighugelabs.com/…
(via lifehacker)

The US population reached 300 millon on Tuesday at 7:46am (EDT). The official counter is here.

http://today.reuters.com/…

I’ve often thought about doing something like this, if I were to ever be carjacked. Especially since my pickup doesn’t have a passenger airbag.

http://www.ktvz.com/…
(via digg)