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Anniston's `Slammer' 08/04/03 TOM GORDON News staff writer CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait - The people who don't want U.S. troops in Iraq seem to be thinking they can achieve their goal by attacking convoys and killing soldiers. Inside a huge hangar-like warehouse in this sprawling Army post, a team of Anniston Army Depot workers is building a vehicle that they hope will better withstand attacks and better protect the convoys. The cab of this vehicle in the making is the hull of an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier. On its side is the nickname, The Alabama Slammer. When it is fitted on...

Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang Compiled by William Denton buff@pobox.com. Copyright © 1993 - 2003. Please send me corrections, additions, suggestions and comments. Edition 3.9.2. Version 4.0 is planned. Originally published as a pamphlet by Miskatonic University Press, 1993. This glossary may not be reproduced on the World Wide Web in any form. You can link to it using this URL: http://www.miskatonic.org/slang.html. This glossary may be reproduced for public consumption as long as it is copied as is and in its entirety and no extra charge beyond copying or printing costs is made. Other arrangements may...

Web magazine publishes, retracts virus hoax story NEW YORK (AP) - In a bizarre case of one journalist deceiving another, an Internet news site published -- then embarrassingly retracted -- a story that claimed a radical Islamic group was behind a virus-like attack that clogged the Internet. The Web site of Computerworld magazine published on Wednesday an article penned by journalist Dan Verton that he based on an e-mail interview with a person he identified as "Abu Mujahid," a member of Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahadeen. Verton wrote that "Mujahid" claimed the group, believed linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, had...

A leading civic group is gearing to take legal action against Microsoft, the creator of the computer software blamed for the disastrous Internet crash last month. People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) said it is considering filing a class action suit against the software giant for the ``Slammer'' worm which paralyzed the country?s Internet servers on Jan. 25 by unleashing huge volumes of Internet traffic. The worm was traced to a widely known flaw in Microsoft's SQL software, a Web server application. The group said it plans to build its case on a ``product liability law?? passed last July that...

Quite by mistake, I bought the New York Times yesterday. I thought it was Paul Krugman day, but he wasn't there - his column doesn't appear on a Thursday. So there I am, creaking open the coffin lid of this newspaper - picture the scene if you will, imagine a bit of mid-afternoon San Francisco sunshine at a usually-windblown outdoor coffee table - and I'm trying to open this ancient newspaper which looks like it was last redesigned in about 1879, and in fact looks even older than The Onion's parody of the New York Times as a turn-of-the-century newspaper,...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Computer security experts said on Thursday the recent "SQL Slammer" worm, the worst in more than a year, is evidence that Microsoft Corp.'s year-old security push is not working. "Trustworthy Computing is failing," Russ Cooper of TruSecure Corp. said of the Microsoft initiative. "I gave it a 'D-minus' at the beginning of the year, and now I'd give it an 'F."' The worm, which exploited a known vulnerability in Microsoft's SQL Server database software, spread through network connections beginning on Saturday, crashing servers and clogging the Internet. It hit a year and one week after...

1/30/2003 -- A U.K.-based security firm is estimating that economic damage from the SQL Slammer worm is already over $1 billion, making it the ninth most damaging malware attack yet in the firm's estimation. MI2g released the billion-dollar estimate on Thursday, which was an upward revision of a figure the group released earlier in the week. "It has also jumped in ranking from number 13 a few days ago to number 9 in terms of the worst malware attacks recorded by the mi2g Intelligence Unit," an mI2g spokeswoman said in a statement. The worm exploits a vulnerability in SQL...

<p>However, administrators and end users who aren't running Microsoft's SQL Server -- the worm's primary target -- have felt no need to defend themselves against the worm.</p> <p>Unfortunately, such complacency may turn out to be dangerous. Besides the full-blown SQL Server software, Microsoft also sells a stripped-down database engine called the Microsoft Desktop Environment (MSDE) which contains the same buggy code. MSDE is included not only in many Microsoft products but in quite a few third-party offerings (including medical imaging software used by hospitals to catalog MRI and CAT scans), though it's not always turned on by default.</p>

SEATTLE: Software giant Microsoft Corp fell victim to the weekend’s rampant Web virus when its own system administrators failed to install a simple patch that the company has urged users around the world to download. The SQL Slammer worm infected servers at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and flooded Microsoft’s network with traffic late last Friday and Saturday morning, Microsoft spokesmen said Tuesday. The worm caused havoc all over the world by replicating itself across servers and overwhelming many Internet sites with billions of false requests for data (see In.Tech, Jan 30). The worm had been identified in July, and...

Microsoft's policy of relying on software patches to fix major security flaws was questioned Monday after a series of internal e-mails revealed that the software giant's own network wasn't immune from a worm that struck the Internet last weekend. The messages seen by CNET News.com portray a company struggling with a massive infection by the SQL Slammer worm, which inundated many corporate networks Saturday with steady streams of data that downed Internet connections and clogged bandwidth. "All apps and services are potentially affected and performance is sporadic at best," Mike Carlson, director of data center operations for Microsoft's Information...

<p>As corporate IT departments go about the business of cleaning up their networks, there are strong indications that the SQL Slammer worm that brought down portions of the Internet over the weekend is based on the work of an obscure Chinese cracking group.</p>

<p>Some Bank of America ATMs were still out Monday, primarily in the Southeast, a bank spokesman said. And analysts blamed a dip in South Korea's stock market on the worm taking down most Internet connections in the country over the weekend.</p>

Internet cafes, online shopping malls and other Web-related businesses will likely take legal action as a result of their losses incurred by the virus-like worm which shut down millions of Web-based businesses over the weekend, industry sources said yesterday. It is not yet clear how and when they will take the steps, but officials from the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) said they have received messages that the businesses will form an alliance for a lawsuit against the ministry and major Internet service providers. ``Meetings have been organized by senior officials to discuss and how to deal with...

Published reports says key witnesses in her alledged insider trading case are re-interviewed.A published report Tuesday said federal investigators are again turning up the pressure on the possible insider trading case involving lifestyle diva Martha Stewart.The New York Daily News reported two sources familiar with the probe as saying several key witnesses have been asked to re-answer questions in recent days by investigators in Manhattan United States Attorney James Comey's office.That indicates that Comey is preparing to make up his mind whether he will file criminal charges against Ms. Stewart, sources told the paper.