A logic bomb allegedly planted by a former engineer at mortgage finance company Fannie Mae last fall would have decimated all 4,000 servers at the company, causing millions of dollars in damage and shutting down Fannie Mae for a least a week, prosecutors say.
Unix engineer Rajendrasinh Babubha Makwana, 35, was indicted (.pdf) Tuesday in federal court in Maryland on a single count of computer sabotage for allegedly writing and planting the malicious code on Oct. 24, the day he was fired from his job. The malware had been set to detonate at 9:00 a.m. on Jan. 31, but was instead discovered by another engineer five days after it was planted, according to court records.[…]
On the afternoon of Oct. 24, he was told he was being fired because of a scripting error he’d made earlier in the month, but he was allowed to work through the end of the day, according to an FBI affidavit (.pdf) in the case. “Despite Makwana’s termination, Makwana’s computer access was not immediately terminated,” wrote FBI agent Jessica Nye.
Five days later, another Unix engineer at the data center discovered the malicious code hidden inside a legitimate script that ran automatically every morning at 9:00 a.m. Had it not been found, the FBI says the code would have executed a series of other scripts designed to block the company’s monitoring system, disable access to the server on which it was running, then systematically wipe out all 4,000 Fannie Mae servers, overwriting all their data with zeroes.[…]
As a final measure, the logic bomb would have powered off the servers.
Some have said in comments on there that (assuming it was really him — innocent until proven guilty an’ all that) delaying the trigger was a mistake, but I think it was clever. If it’d had a chance to go off then it wouldn’t have been so obvious what the motive behind it was by then.
BTW: I find it hard to believe that, with how easy it was to stick such a devestating code in & the huge oversight error (who the hell tells someone they’re fired and then leaves ‘em alone at their desk the rest of the day?), the lower range of recovery time was only a week. Ideally, of course, the shutdown would’ve been permanent…
Flipping through channels, stopped on CNN for some reason just as Jessica Yellin said (in reference to Obama saying “no lobbyists! Unless I want one!”), roughly, “everything from the tests your kids take at school to the price of corn at the supermarket…basically it’s because someone asked congress for a favor”.
I don’t think she realized what she just admitted. For her sake, she might want to hope her bosses don’t realize either, otherwise she’ll be looking for another job soon.
-Robert Reich says there need to be stronger unions. If he really meant that, then rather than advocate counter-balancing rules on top of the overwhelming anti-organizing ones he’d be calling for simply dismantling the ones that discoraged real labor organizing in the first place. But you knew that already.
-The concept of economic “stimulus” is bankrupt in and of itself. Acknowledging so is not in the interests of anyone in power, for obvious reason, so instead they bicker about the methods in order to keep up appearances of difference. House republicans, in the latest round of circus, say “more tax cuts will work, honest!“. Gimme a moment on this…
Considering the violence that our taxes fund, I’m all for resistance to it on principle, but 1) that’s clearly not what they mean, since they like war & just want to fund it via currency manipulation, & 2) within the statist assumption of “stimulus” being possible they miss the point. The reason for the panic is that the foundation of the U.S. economy is consumption beyond means, and with the fall of the (artificially propped-up in the first place) housing market & the revelation that the financial sector did the macro equivalent of tossing your life savings at the nearest roulette wheel, saying “black double zero” and walking away, getting further into debt to buy stuff is hard. Since they can’t acknowledge that the previous level of consumption was unsustainable, the political establishment is scrambling to get people to go back to it.
…and from there is the problem with the Republican plan. As I pointed out before, psychologically, people look at money they simply kept differently than money that shouldn’t have been taken that was returned to them. To be “stimulus”, people have to look at the money like “wow, now I can buy that new suppository-form iPod!”. Every year it’s proven that mere cuts don’t get that treatment. Long term this is meaningless though, since people having more bargaining power to begin with would make more sense, & “stimulus” is a bandaid over bullet wounds.
-More on savings & spending: government statistics folk: “See? Saving is going back up!”. Economists respond: “For a number of reasons, that’s either misleading or straight-up bullshit.”
-Shorter James Quinn: “Recent Japan is a better comparison to look at than FDR-era US. That’s not a good thing.”
“Cello scrotum,” a nasty ailment allegedly suffered by musicians, does not exist and the condition was just a hoax, a senior British doctor has admitted.
In a letter to prominent medical magazine, the British Medical Journal in 1974, Elaine Murphy reported that cellists suffered from the painful complaint caused by their instrument repeatedly rubbing against their body. […] But Murphy, now a baroness and a former professor of psychiatry of old age at Guy’s Hospital in London, has admitted her supposed medical complaint was a spoof.
“Perhaps after 34 years it’s time for us to confess we invented cello scrotum,” she wrote with her husband John, who had signed the original letter, which was published in the BMJ on Wednesday. “Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realize the physical impossibility of our claim.”
All you need to know about how funny I think this is is that back in tha day a friend of mine used to joke, in reference to ailments like “tennis elbow” & “swimmer’s ear”, that there was a medical condition called “stripper’s ass”.
Something else I don’t get: wall clocks that tick. Why do people still cling to them? The ticking is annoying as hell, I’d think once wall clocks could be made that didn’t tick that preferences would change. I can’t even sleep with a ticking clock in my room, remove that battery & shut it up. All I need is a nice, loud digital alarm clock: wake me up when I need to get up, be completely silent when I need to sleep or think, and show me what time it is any other time, the ticking is completely unnecessary.
I remember a childhood friend of mine, his parents had an electronic wall clock. It didn’t look like a huge wristwatch, it had the hands and shit, it was just an electronic display instead of the gears and tick tick tick TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK. What ever happened to those?
Watching “Marijuana Inc” at the moment (missed the original run earlier, basketball was on). The reporter is talking to this dude that used to smuggle tons of pot through San Francisco Bay, and he’s mentioning how ridiculously effective & efficient his business was.
Semi-random thought: Considering how the reason that drug smuggling is so profitable is because of the legal monkey wrench in the risk-reward equation, you gotta wonder what people like that would be doing if the War on Drugs didn’t exist. I suspect (at least in his case, and more than likely many more) a strain of business sense that’d be pretty productive in other fields.
But no. We live in a society where, thanks to the government, even something so relatively simple as pot gets huge profits. Meanwhile, the types that get the genius label end up being the blithering idiots currently sinking conglomerates on our dime. Wonderful…
Flipping through channels, happened upon That Which Is Unavoidable for a moment. CNN’s cameras seemed to catch Michelle looking like “enough already” at The Glorious Celebration Parade to Dear Leader, momentarily dropping the grin in boredom.
I think to myself “you & me both, girl!”, as I reach for the controller and fire up some Saint’s Row.
Yet another example of the nonsensical nature of drug laws. People like to get fucked up, and will go to any lengths and try any method to do so, plain and simple.
Eleven days after the presidential election, 100 people were invited to the home of Vernon and Ann Jordan. The guest of honor was former Time Warner chief Richard Parsons, but the belle of the ball was Valerie Jarrett, one of Barack Obama’s best friends and a newly named White House senior adviser.
All night the Jordans’ guests — many VIPs in their own right — surrounded Jarrett, eager to introduce themselves and welcome her to D.C. Business as usual. Every four or eight years, Washington’s primarily white, influential, moneyed set rushes to cozy up to the new power brokers in town: Texans when George W. Bush arrived, Arkansas buddies when Bill Clinton came to town. The city’s high-level social scene — dinners, black-tie fundraisers, receptions, ubiquitous book parties — is the place where money and experience are subtly traded for access and influence.
Except for the first time, the face of ultimate power is African American. With a black first family in the White House and a diverse group of appointees and Cabinet nominees, the all-white dinner party feels all wrong. Certain hosts are suddenly grappling with a new reality: They need some black friends. Overnight, black politicians, lawyers and journalists are hot properties, receiving engraved invitations from people they never got invitations from before. (emphasis mine)
This article, trumpeting the latest blend of powerbrokers, is about as far from the mark of what the real problem is as you can get without entering a vegetative state. As if we’re supposed to be all Woo Hoo! because the percentage of beltway players that could use a tan has gone down. Please…
See, the issue here isn’t what the people with influence look like. Their overwhelming whiteness has been historical coincidence due to previous factors, which is being dealt with already. No, the issue is this: as long as the same ideas and the same worldview are in charge, nothing will change, no matter how loudly the mainstream press cheers. If accepting the status quo is the price of admission then functionally we’ve not moved, and are merely sticking new blinds on a broken window.
