Month: September 2016

Enlarge (credit: Ildar Sagdejev)

In August 2011, multiple servers used to maintain and distribute the Linux operating system kernel were infected with malware that gave an unknown intruder almost unfettered access. Earlier this week, the five-year-old breach investigation got its first big break when federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment accusing a South Florida computer programmer of carrying out the attack.

Donald Ryan Austin, 27, of El Portal, Florida, used login credentials belonging to a Linux Kernel Organization system administrator to install a hard-to-detect backdoor on servers belonging to the organization, according to the document that was unsealed on Monday. The breach was significant because the group manages the network and the website that maintain and distribute the open source OS that's used by millions of corporate and government networks around the world. One of Austin's motives for the intrusion, prosecutors allege, was to "gain access to the software distributed through the www.kernel.org website."

The indictment refers to kernel.org officials P.A. and J.H., who are presumed to be Linux kernel developer H. Peter Anvin and kernel.org Chief System Administrator John "'Warthog9" Hawley, respectively. It went on to say that Austin used the credentials to install a class of extremely hard-to-detect malware known as a rootkit and a Trojan that logs the credentials of authorized users who use the secure shell protocol to access an infected computer.

This week, scientists got their first look at images and data from the Juno spacecraft's initial flyby of Jupiter's polar regions, and they were thrilled to find an entirely different world than the familiar one which exists around the equator.

"It looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms. There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to—this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter. We're seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features."

Planetary scientists also weren't sure whether they'd find a hexagon like the one that exists at Saturn's north pole, but the spacecraft did not observe one (nor a square, pentagon, or other delightful geometric figures). Fortunately the mission has 36 more orbits around Jupiter to understand why one gas giant in the Solar System has a hexagon, and its neighbor does not.

Enlarge / The Clintons used one of these to run a mail server for Hillary Clinton's Blackberry. (credit: baku13)

As she was being confirmed as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton contacted Colin Powell to ask him about his use of a Blackberry while in the same role. According to a Federal Bureau of Investigations memorandum published today (PDF), Powell warned Clinton that if it became public that she was using a Blackberry to "do business," her e-mails would be treated as "official" record and be subject to the law.

"Be very careful," Powell said according to the FBI. "I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data."

Clinton told the FBI that she didn't take factor Powell's advice into her decision to use a personal mail server—a statement that seems obvious based on the tens of thousands of e-mails now being published as the result of lawsuits, congressional and FBI investigations, and Freedom of Information Act requests. Just how far she deviated from that advice is evident in the detailed history gathered by the FBI. Their information on the Clintons' e-mail infrastructure dates back to Hillary Clinton's tenure in the US Senate, and this new release shows how that infrastructure was intertwined with the information technology used by former president Bill Clinton's staff.

Enlarge (credit: Google Fiber)

As Google Fiber fights AT&T and Comcast over access to utility poles in Nashville, the new ISP says it hasn't been able to get access to 44,000 poles in the city.

Google Fiber launched in Nashville in April, but expansion throughout the city has been slow in part because of pole access problems. Under the current process, Google Fiber has to wait for other carriers to perform "make ready" work that gets poles ready for Google to attach its own wires. Google Fiber is pushing a "one touch make ready" ordinance that would authorize the ISP to make all of the necessary wire adjustments itself without having to wait for incumbent providers to send their own construction crews. AT&T and Comcast have fought against the proposal.

With a Nashville Metro Council vote scheduled for September 6, Google Fiber published statistics yesterday detailing the scope of its problem.