Dec 3, 2008 | 1:18 PM
Category:
News
....If you had a 13 year old daughter that was getting this kind of advice from Planned Parenthood ....
From: www.bio-medicine.org...
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- New footage
released today from an undercover camera inside an abortion clinic in
Bloomington shows Planned Parenthood staff deliberately violating the
state's mandatory reporting laws for sexual abuse.
The footage shows Lila Rose, a UCLA
student journalist and president of right-to-life advocacy group Live
Action, posing as a 13-year-old girl. In an appointment with a Planned
Parenthood nurse, Rose says she has been impregnated by a 31-year-old
man, a clear case of child molestation under Indiana state law.
On
tape, the nurse acknowledges her responsibility to report the abuse,
but assures Rose she will not. The nurse says, "I am supposed to report
to Child Protective Services," but tells Rose, "Okay, I didn't hear the
age [of the 31-year-old]. I don't want to know the age."
She
then instructs Rose how to obtain a secret abortion by crossing state
lines in order to avoid Indiana's parental consent law. The nurse also
coaches Rose to cover for the 31-year-old man by saying he is only 14.
She says, "You've seen him around, you know he's 14, he's in your grade
and whatever. You know what I mean."
Rose said she
and other students in Live Action recorded the video over the summer in
a multi-state investigation of the abortion industry. Rose described
the undercover audit, called The Mona Lisa Project, as "demonstrating
the routine lawlessness of abortion providers at Planned Parenthood."
Rose noted, "Today's video release is only a sample from many hours of
similarly disturbing footage."
Planned Parenthood,
a tax-exempt nonprofit, made over $100 million in profits last year and
has a billion-dollar budget, nearly a third of which comes from
taxpayers through government funding.
Your tax dollars....Hard at work!
Dec 2, 2008 | 1:49 PM
Category:
News
FBI Warns of Holiday Cyber Scams
Tim Greene, Network World
With cyber Monday comes an FBI warning against spam containing malware and phishing attempts that appear to be greeting cards and ads for shopping bargains.
The
goal is theft of money and personal information, according to Shawn
Henry, the assistant director of the bureau's cyber division.
E-mails
attempt to lure victims to dummy e-commerce sites in hopes of gleaning
credit card numbers and passwords, the FBI says. By mimicking
legitimate sites, they lull unsuspecting shoppers into giving up the
information as they make what they think are legitimate purchases.
The e-mails look real, often containing legitimate company logos and live links.
In
some cases criminals direct users to genuine Web sites, but trigger
popups over them to capture personal information that they use to run
up credit-card bills and drain bank accounts, according to the FBI.
The
information entered will most likely be sold to other criminals who
will exploit them for cash and merchandise, the bureau says.
Greeting
card scams come in the form of e-mails urging recipients to click on a
link to read a greeting card that has been sent to them. When they do,
they are directed to a site where malicious software is automatically downloaded to their machines, the FBI says.
Other
attacks come in the form of e-mails informing recipients that one of
their accounts has a problem and to click on a link to clear it up.
When they do, they are taken to a fraudulent site where they are asked
for account numbers and PINs.
One scam is in the form of a
survey, at the end of which participants are asked for account
information so funds can be transferred to them in appreciation for
their help.
FBI tips to avoid becoming a victim:
* Do not respond to spam.
* Do not click on links contained within unsolicited e-mail.
* Be cautious with e-mail containing attachments and open only those from known senders.
* Don't supply personal information via e-mail surveys.
* Compare the links in e-mails to the links they connect to in order to determine if they match. If they don't, leave the site.
* Log on to Web sites that are advertised in unsolicited e-mail rather than connecting via links in e-mails.
* Contact the business that purportedly sent the e-mail to verify if it is genuine.
The FBI urges victims of cyber crimes to report them to the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.
Nov 29, 2008 | 6:33 PM
Category:
Weather
Anthropogenic Global Warning...(AGW)...
Anthropogenic:
Of, relating to, or resulting from the influence of human beings on nature <anthropogenic pollutants
Global:
Definition of global (adjective)
worldwide; universal; of the whole world
Warming:
- heating: the process of becoming warmer; a rising temperature
- imparting heat; "a warming fire"
Now, Perhaps you can see the reason for the climate extremist changing the term from global warming to climate change....???
Since the climate has been changing since before the dawn (?) of man, do you think that the climate extremist will have to adjust their 'term' again?
'Anthropogenic Climate disruption'...perhaps??? ACD....That's my guess...
Whats yours??
BTW, that lame green font color....was me... 'going green'. :)
How much carbon do you think these peope added to the atmosphere....
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D908GE800&
s
how_article=1
Now, Al is ranting about the Myans, well, they must have had a huge 'Carbon Footprint', way back when . Al is also appears to be bailing on the IPCC , or, is science bailing on Al? I wonder if Al figures in the infamous ' Myan Calander'?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/29/statistician
-
debunks-gores-climate-linkage-of-the-collapse-of-the-ma
yan-civilisation/
Nov 29, 2008 | 4:23 PM
Category:
News
Anthropogenic Global Warning...(AGW)...
Anthropogenic:
Of, relating to, or resulting from the influence of human beings on nature <
anthropogenic pollutants
Global:
Definition of
global (adjective)
worldwide; universal; of the whole world
Warming:
- heating: the process of becoming warmer; a rising temperature
- imparting heat; "a warming fire"
Now, Perhaps you can see the reason for the climate extremist changing the term from global warming to climate change....???
Since the climate has been changing since before the dawn (?) of man, do you think that the climate extremist will have to adjust their 'term' again?
'Anthropogenic Climate disruption'...perhaps??? ACD....That's my guess...
Whats yours??
BTW, that lame green font color....was me... 'going green'. :)
How much carbon do you think these peope added to the atmosphere....
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D908GE800&s
how_article=1
Now, Al is ranting about the Myans, well, they must have had a huge 'Carbon Footprint', way back when . Al also appears to be bailing on the IPCC , or, is science bailing on Al? I wonder if Al figures in the infamous ' Myan Calander'?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/29/statistician-
debunks-gores-climate-linkage-of-the-collapse-of-the-ma
yan-civilisation/
Nov 28, 2008 | 8:34 AM
Category:
News
.....And still going strong. The Sinowal/Mebroot trojan may be the Mac Daddy of them all when it comes to stealing your personal information via the internet . This trojans brilliant installation/execution technique is still foiling the attemps of even the best anti-malware applications to detect and remove it.
Sinowal infects mainly windows XP system at the present time, but, I'm sure that Vista systems will fall prey shortly.
Don't depend on Microsoft to write a fix (you never really can, can you?), or your bank to attack the problem
From: windowssecrets.com...
Don't be a victim of Sinowal, the super-Trojan
By
Woody Leonhard
The sneaky "drive-by download" known as Sinowal has been, uh,
credited with stealing more than 500,000 bank-account passwords,
credit-card numbers, and other sensitive financial information.
This exploit has foiled antivirus software manufacturers time and again
over the years, and it provides us in real time a look at the future of
Windows infections.
Imagine a very clever keylogger sitting on your system, watching
unobtrusively as you type, kicking in and recording your keystrokes
only when you visit one of 2,700 sensitive sites. The list is
controlled by the malware's creators and includes many of the world's
most popular banking and investment services.
That's Sinowal, a super-Trojan that uses a technique called HTML
injection to put ersatz information on your browser's screen. The bad
info prompts you to type an account number and/or a password. Of
course, Sinowal gathers all the information and sends it back home —
over a fancy, secure, encrypted connection, no less.
Washington Post journalist Brian Krebs wrote the definitive overview of Sinowal's criminal tendencies in his Oct. 31, 2008,
column titled
"Virtual Heist Nets 500,000+ Bank, Credit Accounts" — a headline that's hard to ignore. Krebs cites a detailed
analysis
by RSA's FraudAction Research Lab: "One Sinowal Trojan + One Gang = Hundreds of Thousands of Compromised Accounts."
Sinowal has been around for many years. (Most virus researchers
nowadays refer to Sinowal as "Mebroot," but Sinowal is the name you'll
see most often in the press. Parts of the old Sinowal went into making
Mebroot. It isn't clear whether the same programmers who originally
came up with Sinowal are also now working on Mebroot. Mebroot's the
current villain.)
Microsoft's Robert Hensing and Scott Molenkamp
blogged
about the current incarnation of Sinowal/Mebroot back in January. RSA
has collected data swiped by Sinowal/Mebroot infections dating to 2006.
EEye Digital Security demonstrated its "BootRoot" project — which
contains several elements similar to Sinowal/Mebroot — at the Black Hat
conference in July 2005.
That's a long, long lifespan for a Trojan. It's important for you to know how to protect yourself.
A serious infection most antivirus apps miss
I haven't even told you the scariest part yet.
Sinowal/Mebroot works by infecting Windows XP's Master Boot Record
(MBR) — it takes over the tiny program that's used to boot Windows. MBR
infections have existed since the dawn of DOS. (You'd think that
Microsoft would've figured out a way to protect the MBR by now — but
you'd be wrong.)
Vista SP1 blocks the simplest MBR access, but the initial sectors are
still programmatically accessible, according to a highly technical post
by GMER, the antirootkit software manufacturer.
The key to Sinowal/Mebroot's "success" is that it's so sneaky and is
able to accomplish its dirty work in many different ways. How sneaky?
Consider this: Sinowal/Mebroot doesn't run straight out to your MBR and
overwrite it. Instead, the Trojan waits for 8 minutes before it even
begins to analyze your computer and change the Registry. Digging into
the MBR doesn't start until 10 minutes after that.
Sinowal/Mebroot erases all of its tracks and then reboots the PC using
the adulterated MBR and new Registry settings 42 minutes into the
process. Peter Kleissner, Software Engineer at Vienna Computer
Products, has posted a detailed analysis
of the infection method and the intricate interrupt-hooking steps,
including the timing and the machine code for the obfuscated parts.
Once Sinowal/Mebroot is in your system, the Trojan runs stealthily,
loading itself in true rootkit fashion before Windows starts. The worm
flies under the radar by running inside the kernel, the lowest level of
Windows, where it sets up its own network communication system, whose
external data transmissions use 128-bit encryption. The people who run
Sinowal/Mebroot have registered thousands of .com, .net, and .biz domains for use in the scheme.
Wait, there's more: Sinowal/Mebroot cloaks itself entirely and uses no
executable files that you can see. The changes it makes to the Registry
are very hard to find. Also, there's no driver module in the module
list, and no Sinowal/Mebroot-related svchost.exe or rundll32.exe processes appear in the Task Manager's Processes list.
Once Sinowal/Mebroot has established its own internal communication
software, the Trojan can download and run software fed to it by its
creators. Likewise, the downloaded programs can run undetected at the
kernel level.
Sinowal/Mebroot isn't so much a Trojan as a parasitic operating system that runs inside Windows.
Windows XP users are particularly vulnerable
So, what can you do to thwart this menace? Your firewall won't help:
Sinowal/Mebroot bypasses Windows' normal communication routines, so it
works outside your computer's firewall.
Your antivirus program may help, for a while. Time and time again,
however, Sinowal/Mebroot's creators have modified the program well
enough to escape detection. AV vendors scramble to catch the latest
versions, but with one or two new Sinowal/Mebroot iterations being
released every month, the vendors are trying to hit a very fleet — and
intelligent — target.
Peter Kleissner told me, "I think Sinowal has been so successful
because it's always changing ... it is adjusting to new conditions
instantly. We see Sinowal changing its infection methods and exploits
all the time."
Similarly, you can't rely on rootkit scanners for protection. Even the
best rootkit scanners miss some versions of Sinowal/Mebroot. (See Scott
Spanbauer's review of free rootkit removers in May 22's Best Software column
and Mark Edwards'
review
of rootkit-remover effectiveness in his May 22 PC Tune-Up column; paid subscription required for the latter.)
Truth be told, there is no single way to reliably protect yourself from
Sinowal/Mebroot, short of disconnecting your computer from the Internet
and not opening any files. But there are some historical patterns to
the exploit that you can learn from.
First of all, most of the Sinowal/Mebroot infections I've heard about
got into the afflicted PCs via well-known and already-patched security
holes in Adobe Reader, Flash Player, or Apple QuickTime. These are not
the only Sinowal/Mebroot infection vectors by a long shot, but they
seem to be preferred by the Trojan's creators. You can minimize your
risk of infection by keeping all of your third-party programs updated
to the latest versions.
Windows Secrets associate editor Scott Dunn explained how to use the
free Secunia Software Inspector service to test your third-party apps,
and how to schedule a monthly check-up for your system, in his Sept. 6, 2007,
column.
In addition, according to Peter Kleissner, Sinowal/Mebroot — at least
in its current incarnation — doesn't infect Vista systems. Windows XP
remains its primary target, because Vista's boot method is different
and its User Account Control regime gets in the worm's way.
Don't look to your bank for Sinowal safeguards
So, you'd figure the banks and financial institutions being targeted by
Sinowal/Mebroot would be up in arms, right? Half a million compromised
accounts for sale by an unknown, sophisticated, and capable team that's
still harvesting accounts should send a shiver up any banker's spine.
I asked Rob Rosenberger about it, and he laughed. Rosenberger's one of
the original virus experts and was also one of the first people to work
on network security at a large brokerage firm.
"I'll be labeled a heretic for saying this, but ... from a banking
perspective, frauds like this have never qualified as a major threat. A
banker looks at his P&L sheets and writes off this kind of fraud as
simply a cost of doing business. Such fraud may amount to billions of
dollars each year, but the cost is spread across all sectors of the
banking industry all over the world.
"Banks have dealt with this kind of fraud for many, many decades,"
Rosenberger continued. "Forget the Internet — this kind of fraud
existed back in the days of credit-card machines with carbon paper
forms. The technology of fraud gets better each year, but this type of
fraud remains consistent. From a banking perspective, the cost to obey
government regulations dwarfs the cost of any individual case of fraud."
If the bankers aren't going to take up the fight against
Sinowal/Mebroot, who will? The antivirus software companies have a long
tradition of crying wolf, and their credibility has suffered as a
result.
In this particular case, the major AV packages have failed to detect
Sinowal/Mebroot over and over again. It's hard to imagine one of the AV
companies drumming up enough user interest — or enough business — to
fund a mano-a-mano fight against the threat. Besides, the AV companies are chasing the cows after they've left the barn, so to speak.
The folks who make malware these days constantly tweak their products,
often using VirusTotal or a proprietary set of scanners to make sure
their programs pass muster. A day or an hour later — before the AV
companies can update their signatures — the bad guys unleash a new
version. AV companies know that and are moving to behavioral monitoring
and other techniques to try to catch malware before it can do any harm.
The only company that seems to be in a position to fix the Master Boot
Record problem is Microsoft. But it's hard to imagine MS management
devoting the time and resources necessary to fix major security holes
in a seven-year-old product, particularly when XP's successors (I use
the term lightly) don't appear to have the same flaw.
This is short-sighted, however. It's only a matter of time before
Sinowal/Mebroot — or an even-more-dangerous offshoot — finds a way to
do its damage on Vista systems as well.
If Microsoft decides to take on Sinowal/Mebroot, the company is up
against a formidable opponent that draws on many talented programmers.
John Hawes at Virus Bulletin says "I recently heard someone estimate
that a team of 10 top programmers would need four full months of work
to put together the basic setup."
As Peter Kleissner puts it, "I personally think most people behind the
[Sinowal] code do not know what they have done. I would bet that more
than half of the code was written by students around the world."
Kleissner's in a good position to judge. He's a student himself, 18 years old. I'm glad he's on our side.
For tips on removal (god forbid you have to attempt to remove this) , go here...
http://windowssecrets.com/2008/11/26/03-Antivirus-tool
s-try-to-remove-Sinowal-Mebroot
Also, I have tried Secunia's personal software inspector. It works. A great way to keep your system fully patched with the latest security updates. Download here if you wish.....
http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/
Nov 26, 2008 | 7:52 PM
Category:
Entertainment
May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have never a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
Nov 25, 2008 | 8:08 PM
Category:
Political
Perhaps the 'big three' auto makers can learn a lesson from the Japanese...
Imagine that! Putting your employees on a temporary community service furlough when the line is down, with full pay! Everybody wins....The employees, the community and the auto maker (Public relations).
Of
course, due to being pressed under the stifling thumb of the UAW, and,
to a lesser extent, bad decisions by overpaid CEO's, this will never
happen with the 'big three'.
The bailout will ensure that fact..
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20
081121
144555.aspx
