Frank Bitterlich

… well, at least one of them

Nick Cubrilovic of TechCrunch wrote a very detailed and interesting analysis of the recent stealing of sensitive documents from Twitter by a hacker nicknamed Croll.

From The Anatomy Of The Twitter Attack:

Like other successful attacks, Hacker Croll used the same combination of patience, sheer determination and somewhat elementary methods to gain access to a frightening number of accounts and services related to Twitter and Twitter employees. The list of services affected either directly, or indirectly, are some of the most popular web applications and services in use today - Gmail, Google Apps, GoDaddy, MobileMe, AT&T, Amazon, Hotmail, Paypal and iTunes.

The most interesting aspect of this story, to me, is how weaknesses of the different services used in this attack complimented one another and ultimately made this “hack” possible in the first place.

A great read, even for non-techies.

In every country, in every society, there are people to think that everything was better in the past. But I can’t avoid noticing that recently, such claims have increased in both frequency and stupidity. The responses after the Viginia Tech shooting is a good example.

More and more people claim that the incident could have been prevented if students would have carried weapons. Concealed weapons. Because, so the reasoning goes, the attacker would have been shot before killing many of the students, or he might have even hesitated to start on his rampage at all, for fear of being shot himself.

Read More »

Oh my… looks like you will be able to BYOB onto aircraft again, and not have to buy the same thing you were forced to discard at the security check at the duty-free store and then take it onto the plane. From the European Parliament website:

The House adopted a resolution with 464 votes in favour, 158 against and 70 abstentions on the restrictions imposed by the EU on liquids that passengers can take on board aeroplanes. MEPs call upon the Commission to review urgently and — if no further conclusive facts are brought forward — to repeal Regulation (EC) No 1546/2006 (introduction of liquids onto aircraft). The particular amendment on the possible repeal was adopted with 382 votes in favour, 298 against and 15 abstentions.

Looks like the European Parliament is still able to make useful decisions after all. Or maybe the MEPs finally noticed that this ban - unlike most other EU regulations - annoyed these frequent-flyer types just as much as the normal citizens. Ahhh… no, that couldn’t be the reason.