Month: October 2023

Review: The Fall of the House of Usher is a gloriously Gothic horror delight

Mike Flanagan knocks it out of the park with his last limited series for Netflix.

mysterious female figure in red cape and skull mask staring directly into the camera while revelers dance behind her

Enlarge / A wealthy pharmaceutical dynasty faces a horrific reckoning in The Fall of the House of Usher. (credit: Netflix)

Halloween approacheth yet again, and that means it's time for another classic horror miniseries from Mike Flanagan and Netflix, the partnership that brought us The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass. For his final (sob!) project with Netflix, Flanagan has gifted us with The Fall of the House of Usher. To say it's an adaption of the famous short story by Edgar Allan Poe wouldn't be doing the miniseries justice. What Flanagan has done is something quite extraordinary: it's more an inventive remix of the best of Poe's oeuvre, creating something that's entirely Flanagan's own while still channeling the very essence of Poe.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

In Poe's original short story, an unnamed narrator visits his old friend Roderick Usher, who has fallen ill along with his twin sister Madeline—the last surviving members of a once prominent family. The nature of their illness is never disclosed, but Roderick appears to be going mad, convinced his fate is tied to the Usher house—and there is an ominous crack starting from the roof running down the front of the house. Roderick accidentally entombs Madeline alive, believing she has died, and one dark stormy night, she re-emerges and attacks him in revenge. As the twins expire and the narrator flees in terror, the entire house splits in two and sinks into a nearby lake. It's pure Gothic horror, a genre that inspired Poe's many short stories and poetry in the early 19th century.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Biggest DDoSes of all time generated by protocol 0-day in HTTP/2

More than 8 years after the adoption of HTTP/2, DDoSers devise rapid reset attack.

How DDoSers used the HTTP/2 protocol to deliver attacks of unprecedented size

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

In August and September, threat actors unleashed the biggest distributed denial-of-service attacks in Internet history by exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in a key technical protocol. Unlike other high-severity zerodays in recent years—Heartbleed or log4j, for example—which caused chaos from a torrent of indiscriminate exploits, the more recent attacks, dubbed HTTP/2 Rapid Reset, were barely noticeable to all but a select few engineers.

HTTP2/Rapid Reset is a novel technique for waging DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service attacks, of an unprecedented magnitude. It wasn’t discovered until after it was already being exploited to deliver record-breaking DDoSes. One attack on a customer using the Cloudflare content delivery network peaked at 201 million requests per second, almost triple the previous record Cloudflare had seen of 71 million rps. An attack on a site using Google’s cloud infrastructure topped out at 398 million rps, more than 7.5 times bigger than the previous record Google recorded of 46 million rps.

Doing more with less

The DDoSes hitting Cloudflare came from a network of roughly 20,000 malicious machines, a relatively small number compared with many so-called botnets. The attack was all the more impressive because, unlike many DDoSes directed at Cloudflare customers, this one resulted in intermittent 4xx and 5xx errors when legitimate users attempted to connect to some websites.

Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Theoretische Physik: Planet Neun wird durch MOND-Theorie überflüssig

Eigentlich sollte die MOND-Theorie widerlegt werden. Doch ein Forschungsteam stellt die These auf, dass sie Asteroidenbahnen erklärt, für die bisher der hypothetische Planet Neun verantwortlich gemacht wird. (Weltall, Wissenschaft)

Eigentlich sollte die MOND-Theorie widerlegt werden. Doch ein Forschungsteam stellt die These auf, dass sie Asteroidenbahnen erklärt, für die bisher der hypothetische Planet Neun verantwortlich gemacht wird. (Weltall, Wissenschaft)

Advising Pirates to Use VPNs is “Positive News” Says Piracy Blocking Chief

Massimiliano Capitanio, head of Italian telecoms regulator AGCOM, believes the country’s all-new internet blocking system will deliver a bright future in the fight against pirate IPTV services. After receiving news that pirate operators are making VPN use mandatory for their subscribers, the response from Italy’s blocking chief was surprising. “Positive news,” Capitanio said.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

piracy encryptWhen Italy passed new law on July 14, authorizing widespread internet blocking and harsher punishments for pirates who supply or even consume illegal streams, football clubs and broadcasters breathed a sigh of relief.

Strong proponents of the law believe that Italy’s ‘Piracy Shield‘ blocking system will be a game changer when it arrives. Some appear completely convinced that almost no illegal content will be able to get through.

Others have heaped praise on the introduction of fines up to €5,000 for people who simply buy and/or consume pirate IPTV streams. That’s on the assumption any survive the ‘blocking system‘ set to “solve piracy” once its switched on.

Pirates Tend to Adapt

Those with a more pragmatic approach have likely considered how the internet works and appreciate the inherent limitations of blocking. The practicalities of hitting millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens with €5,000 fines suggests that on the balance of probabilities, that’s unlikely to happen at scale. That being said, a combination of semi-effective blocking and a few strategic high-profile fines could still reduce piracy by a few percentage points, providing nothing goes terribly wrong.

In stark contrast to those who believe blocking is the best long-term solution, hardcore pirates at both the supply and consumption ends of the market will simply declare the new anti-piracy dream dead, before it even starts. Armed with pirate IPTV subscriptions and cheap VPNs costing a couple of euros per month, a subset of Italian pirates already elude existing blocking measures and are highly likely to keep doing so.

Mandatory VPNs For Pirates

While not even AGCOM can do much about circumvention (at least not yet), up until now any decision to use a VPN has been a personal one. In countries where aggressive live blocking is already in place, notably the UK, VPN use is increasing but not necessarily due to personal choice. It’s now common for IPTV-configured set-top devices to arrive with a VPN as part of the deal; they not only defeat blocking but also prevent pirate sellers and support staff from being overwhelmed with blocking-related complaints.

This Thursday, Studio Previti linked to an article from Il Sole 24 Ore. It begins with a quote from a message sent by a pirate service to subscribers which acknowledges the new legal environment and imposes a solution.

“Dear customers, I wanted to inform you that from October 1, the Agcom action will come into effect. Therefore, it is mandatory to use a VPN,” the message reads.

Opportunities and Challenges

The VPN message came up during a technical workshop on Tuesday, organized by local anti-piracy group FAPAV to discuss the new legislation and related opportunities and challenges.

How the message was obtained isn’t made clear, but it was shared with attendees by Massimiliano Capitanio, head of telecoms regulator AGCOM and commander-in-chief of piracy blocking in Italy.

The next day, Capitanio addressed colleagues in a post on LinkedIn which references the ‘mandatory VPN’ message before flipping expectations on their head. Pirates may view VPNs as opportunities for them but with a little creative thinking, Capitanio believes the opposite is true.

“Positive News”

“On Tuesday I participated with great interest in the discussion on #copyright and #piracy promoted by FAPAV – Federation for the Protection of Audiovisual and Multimedia Content Industries together with Studio Previti Associazione Professionale,” Capitanio begins.

“The fact that criminal organizations, which run the piracy business, are inviting their ‘customers’ to hide behind #vpn systems is positive news. First: law 93/2023 hits the mark.”

According to the text, Law 93/2023 (pdf) empowers AGCOM to take “urgent and precautionary measures” to disable access to content distributed illegally. Under orders from AGCOM, ISPs must block DNS resolution of identified domain names and block routing of network traffic to IP addresses “uniquely intended for illicit activities.”

If the same content reappears on any future domain, subdomain, or IP address, no matter who operates them, additional blocking is authorized. In respect of live sports broadcasts (initially only Serie A football matches), preemptive blocking is available under an “abbreviated procedure without cross-examination” based on rightsholder or “trusted flagger” reports.

Pirates Advising Pirates How to Pirate ‘Safely’

How any of this might play out in the real world is left to the imagination but in short, AGCOM believes that VPN use in connection with pirated content damages a suspected pirate’s already limited chances of success as an uninformed ‘innocent’ infringer.

“Second: anyone who uses a VPN is not an unaware user but knows they are committing a crime,” Capitanio continues. “And therefore they risk a fine of up to 5,000 euros. And I have a feeling we’re going to read about some good ones.”

The law passed in the summer lists aspects of copying, distribution, and “making use of tools capable of eluding the technological measures of protection” as offenses punishable by a €5,000 fine. Herein lies the dilemma.

If the new blocking system lives up to the hype, nobody with a standard setup using an Italian ISP should be able to access pirate IPTV services. Changing DNS might work for websites but that’s no use for blocked IP addresses. Other than convoluted workarounds, that leaves VPNs as the most viable option to evade blockades and pirate content; unfortunately that’s still punishable by a €5,000 fine because piracy over a VPN is still piracy.

So, whichever way you cut it, pirates and/or pirating VPN users violate Italian law and the potential consequences include a €5,000 fine. Or rather that would be the case, if the anonymity provided by VPNs wasn’t actually the most important part of the overall technical equation.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Vodafone: Ende für Analogradio ab Januar 2024

Vodafone stellt in seinem Kabelnetz die Frequenzbelegung um. Damit rückt auch das Aus für den analogen Radioempfang näher. Ab Januar 2024 beginnt offenbar die Abschaltung. (Vodafone, Kabelnetz)

Vodafone stellt in seinem Kabelnetz die Frequenzbelegung um. Damit rückt auch das Aus für den analogen Radioempfang näher. Ab Januar 2024 beginnt offenbar die Abschaltung. (Vodafone, Kabelnetz)

Raketen: Ariane 6 wohl nicht konkurrenzfähig

Der Start der Ariane 6 verzögert sich weiterhin. Sie soll eine Konkurrenz für die Raketen von SpaceX sein. Doch hat sich die Esa da etwa verkalkuliert? (ESA, Raumfahrt)

Der Start der Ariane 6 verzögert sich weiterhin. Sie soll eine Konkurrenz für die Raketen von SpaceX sein. Doch hat sich die Esa da etwa verkalkuliert? (ESA, Raumfahrt)

Rocket Report: European rockets finally fly; Artemis II core stage issues

This week, Intelsat signaled confidence in Relativity Space’s Terran R rocket.

A Vega rocket rides a column of exhaust from its solid-fueled first stage, kicking off a mission to deliver 12 small satellites into orbit.

Enlarge / A Vega rocket rides a column of exhaust from its solid-fueled first stage, kicking off a mission to deliver 12 small satellites into orbit. (credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace)

Welcome to Edition 6.15 of the Rocket Report! We're now more than three-quarters of the way through the year, and as of Thursday, there have been 156 orbital launches since January 1. Last year, which set a record for global launch activity, we didn't reach 156 orbital launches until mid-November. At the cadence set so far in 2023, we could end the year at roughly 200 orbital launches. We'll see if the world's launch providers, led by SpaceX and China, keep pace for next couple of months. I'm betting they do.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

A Spanish rocket startup launched its first test flight. A Spanish launch company, named PLD Space, claimed success on Saturday after its suborbital Miura 1 rocket lifted off and achieved an altitude of 46 kilometers (29 miles) before plummeting into the Atlantic Ocean, Ars reports. Saturday's launch from Southern Spain is exciting for several reasons, but most notably because PLD Space is the first of Europe's new space launch companies to have some credible success. To that end, Saturday's modest flight represented the dawn of the European commercial space age.

Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments