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Monday, October 24, 2016

On Friday, a network of diverse Internet-connected devices targeted the Dyn domain registration service provider. It took down Dyn clients, including several popular websites such as Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, Reddit, New York Times, and Wired.

The attack involved targeting Dyn’s domain name system servers with a large volume of requests, rendering it incapable of serving replies to legitimate requests — a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. Users’ browsers and other clients sent requests to Dyn to resolve the respective web sites’ domain names to an IP, but did not get a reply within the time required.

The first attack started at about 7am local time (UTC-4) and was resolved in two hours. A second attack started at mid-day, and a third attack started at about 4pm local time. Tens of millions of malicious request sources were observed, interfering with legitimate Dyn traffic.

The reports noted the malicious devices included internet-connected devices — not only servers and desktops, but also webcams, digital video recorders, routers — referred to as the Internet of Things.

On Friday evening Dyn said a security company Flashpoint and a cloud services provider Akamai identified symptoms of malware Mirai participating in the attacks. The malware infects the devices by brute forcing their passwords. This strategy may work as a consequence of users’ negligence towards password security of stationary devices, which the users do not directly interact with in their everyday life while leaving them exposed to the Internet.

Matthew Prince, the CEO of an Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare said it’s a known issue, “There’s nothing really new about [this type of DDoS attack]. We’ve seen them for at least the last three years, they tend to be difficult to stop”.

Public release of Mirai source code was announced at Hackforums on September 30.

Dyn’s corporate headquarters are in New Hampshire.

Friday, May 5, 2006

Australian Prime Minister John Howard and federal industry minister Ian MacDonald today announced that the federal government would be providing Ford Australia with a AU$52.5 million (US$40.4 million) “financial assistance package”. Additional assistance will also be provided by the Victorian state government.

According to Mr Howard, the injection will secure Ford’s manufacturing operations in Australia “for the long term”.

From the package, AU$40 million will be used for the design and manufacture of Ford’s next model Falcon and Territory vehicles, which will be built in Australia.

Despite being given a major facelift in 2002 and another in 2005, the Falcon’s bodyshell dates back to 1998. The current Falcon will need to serve the company until at least 2007 when the new model is anticipated. In the meantime, it will face stiff competition from the completely new Holden Commodore (the Falcon’s major competitor) which will be released in the second half of this year.

The additional AU$12.5 million will be spent on the development of a light commercial vehicle platform, which will be built overseas and marketed to around 80 countries. Mr Howard said that the light commercial project would involve construction of a research and development centre, which will become the base for R&D projects in the region.

Mr MacFarlane said that the research facility was exciting for Australia and that it would put the Australian automotive in the spotlight.

“The funding has helped Ford Australia secure the largest automotive R&D project ever undertaken in Australia which is equally exciting news for local Ford employees and Australian component producers” he said.

“The project will see Ford Australia become a centre for automotive design and engineering excellence in the Asia Pacific region which will bring spin-off benefits for the broader industry,”

“This opportunity will put both Ford Australia, and the Australian automotive and components sectors on the world map as far as our automotive design and engineering capabilities are concerned.” Mr MacFarlane said.

Mr Howard claims that the projects will create 273 jobs and secure the future of the “iconic” Ford Falcon, which has been built in Australia since 1960.

The financial package is conditional upon Ford Australia giving the Australian automotive component industry an opportunity to supply components for the vehicles produced by the two projects.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Wayne Simmons is running for the Freedom Party in the Ontario provincial election, in the Don Valley East riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Wayne did not answer “Of the decisions made by Ontario’s 38th Legislative Assembly, which was the most beneficial to your this electoral district? To the province as a whole? Which was least beneficial, or even harmful, to your this riding? To the province as a whole?”

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Friday, April 22, 2005

A bill introduced last week by Republican Rick Santorum in the US senate, S. 786, could prohibit National Weather Service from publishing free forecasts online.

This would have no effect on The National Hurricane Center as the bill exempts forecasts meant to protect “life and property.”

“The weather service proved so instrumental and popular and helpful in the wake of the hurricanes. How can you make an argument that we should pull it off the Net now? What are you going to do, charge hurricane victims to go online, or give them a pop-up ad?” said Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

Barry Myers, executive vice president of AccuWeather a service that currently competes with National Weather Service free forecasts , said “the bill would improve public safety by making the weather service devote its efforts to hurricanes, tsunamis and other dangers”.

Last year the NOAA eliminated a policy that had prohibited them from offering services that could be provided by the private industry.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Latest figures from the US government say that the country’s economy gained 290,000 jobs in April, the largest single-month gain since March 2006.

According to the Labor Department, excluding temporary workers for this year’s census, the number of non-farm jobs increased by a seasonally adjusted 224,000.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, increased from 9.7% to 9.9%; the apparent contradiction is because 195,000 people who previously gave up searching for jobs started looking for work again, entering the labor force and augmenting the jobless rate.

The increases were larger than expected by economic analysts; according to a survey done by MarketWatch, economists believed the country would have added 185,000 jobs for last month.

President Obama commented on the numbers earlier today at the White House, saying: “This is the largest monthly increase in four years […] we’ve now seen job growth for four months in a row. These numbers are particularly heartening when you consider where we were a year ago, with an economy in freefall.”

Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Solar Impulse, an experimental solar-powered airplane, landed in Switzerland on Thursday after completing a successful 26-hour test flight. The flight was a proof-of-concept displaying that a solar-powered aircraft can accumulate enough power from the sun during the day to power it through the night. The team that designed and built the aircraft believes that, in theory, the plane could fly indefinitely, given that there is enough sunlight to power it.

The flight is the longest and highest flight by a piloted solar-powered aircraft, with an average altitude of about 28,000 feet, and an average speed of around 25 miles per hour. Pilot Andre Borschberg, a former fighter pilot in the Swiss air force, said “I’ve been a pilot for forty years now, but this flight has been the most incredible of my flying career. Just sitting there and watching the battery charge level rise and rise thanks to the sun. I have just flown more than 26 hours without using a drop of fuel and without causing any pollution.”

The plane can carry only one passenger, and contains 12,000 solar cells. However, the plane does have its setbacks; a blog on the project’s website reported after seventeen hours of flight that “Andre’s feeling great up there. His only complaints involve little things like a slightly sore back as well as a ten-hour period during which it was minus twenty degrees Celsius in the cockpit. That made his drinking water system freeze up and worst of all his iPod batteries die.”

The project’s intention is to show that emissions-free air travel is a feasible concept; however, the team does not believe that current propulsion methods will be replaced by alternatives in the near future.