Fun with automated speed cameras

For those of you who may have thought that automated speed cameras were a good thing.  Think about this one.

http://www.thesentinel.com/302730670790449.php

Local teens claim pranks on county’s Speed Cams

By Joe Slaninka

Special to the Sentinel

As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county’s Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past, including other students and even teachers.

Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera “Pimping” game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools.

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that “mimic” those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

Students are even obtaining vehicles from their friends that are similar or identical to the make and model of the car owned by the targeted victim, according to the parent.

“This game is very disturbing,” the parent said. “Especially since unsuspecting parents will also be victimized through receipt of unwarranted photo speed tickets.

The parent said that “our civil rights are exploited,” and the entire premise behind the Speed Camera Program is called into question as a result of the growing this fad among students.

The Speed Camera Program was implemented in March of this year and used for the purpose of reducing traffic and pedestrian collisions in the county. Cameras are located in residential areas and school zones where the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour or lower. A $40 citation is mailed to the owner of the car for violating the speed limit in these areas.

The Montgomery County Police said they have not seen or heard of this prank occurring but said they will keep an eye out for people committing the crime.

“I hope the public at large will complain loudly enough that local Montgomery County government officials will change their policy of using these cameras for monetary gain,” the parent said. “The practice of sending speeding tickets to faceless recipients without any type of verification is unwarranted and an exploitation of our rights.”

Edward Owusu, Assistant Principal at Wootton High School, said that he heard of local students pulling the prank when the school received a call from a parent informing them of its occurrence. “I have not heard of this happening among students at Wootton,” Osuwu said. “It is unfortunate that kids have a lot of time on their hands that they can think of doing such a thing.”

Montgomery County Council President Phil Andrews said that the issue is troubling in several respects. “I am concerned that someone could get hurt, first of all, because they are speeding in areas where they know speeding is a problem,” he said.

Andrews also said that this could hurt the integrity of the Speed Camera Program. “It will cause potential problems for the Speed Camera Program in terms of the confidence in it,” he said.

He said he is glad someone caught it before it becomes more widespread and he said he hopes that the word get out to the people participating in this that there will be consequences.

FTC kills scareware operation that duped over a million users

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/12/10/2319233.shtml

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/36235

“The Federal Trade Commission today got a court to at least temporarily halt a massive ’scareware’ scheme, which falsely claimed that scans had detected viruses, spyware, and pornography on consumers’ computers. According to the FTC, the scheme has tricked more than one million consumers into buying computer security products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus. The court also froze the assets of Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC to preserve the possibility of providing consumers with monetary redress, the FTC stated.”
I have been waiting for this to happen.  I have fought this garbage software many times overthe lest few years, and I keep seeing it.   Several variations of the same crap.  Regardless of the details, same basic principles.  Convince some poor user that their computer will roll over and explode in a few minutes unless they pay for the software that is causign the problem.  Regretfully, as the software vendor is outside of US jurisdiction, I doubt this will be any more than an minor annoyance for the crooks.

Massive hole in windows..(another one anyway)

http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/12/02/0133231.shtml

“The worm exploiting a critical Windows bug that Microsoft patched with an emergency fix in late October is now being used to build a fast-growing botnet, said Ivan Macalintal, a senior research engineer with Trend Micro. Dubbed ‘Downad.a’ by Trend (and ‘Conficker.a’ by Microsoft and ‘Downadup’ by Symantec), the worm is a key component in a massive new botnet that a new criminal element, not associated with McColo, is creating. ‘We think 500,000 is a ballpark figure,’ said Macalintal when asked the size of the new botnet. ‘That’s not as large as some, such as [the] Kraken [botnet], or Storm earlier, but it’s… starting to grow.’”

Some background on this hole and how it works:
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/10/23/1713220.shtml?tid=201

http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail;jsessionid=8cbbb6719c907342334ffd9256d8?execution=e1s1
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB08-294.html
http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2008/10/smb-vulnerablity-found-emergency-patch.html

Microsoft Response to the hole:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sdl/archive/2008/10/22/ms08-067.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS08-067.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-oct.mspx

I found proof-of-concept code available through google.  Took all of a minute.

Men Warned About Knockout Boob Bandits

http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/01/167233

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 01, @01:30PM
from the the-best-way-to-go-unconscious dept.

It seems that thieves in Uganda have taken a novel new approach to their business. A gang of robbers have been using women with chloroform smeared on their chests to knock their victims unconscious. “They apply this chemical to their chest. We have found victims in an unconscious state. You find the person stripped totally naked and everything is taken from him, and the victim doesn’t remember anything. He just remembers being in the act of romancing,” Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) spokesman Fred Enanga said. Now that the thieves have this new boob technology they will be virtually unstoppable.

Vista and the Myth of Upgrading

OK.  So I ran into this today and really felt like this was something to share with people.  First, keep in mind that I try to read Slashdot almost every day.  Here’s the article that caugt my attention:

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/12/01/0317244.shtml

Several readers pointed out a ComputerWorld UK blog piece on the expanding ripples of the Vista fiasco. Glyn Moody quotes an earlier Inquirer piece about Vista, which he notes “has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system”:

“Studies carried out by both Gartner and IDC have found that because older software is often incompatible with Vista, many consumers are opting for used computers with XP installed as a default, rather than buying an expensive new PC with Vista and downgrading. Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future.”

Moody continues: “What’s really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realized that they do have a choice — that they can simply say ‘no.’ From there, it’s but a small step to realizing that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic.”

The Slashdot article links to 2 other articles:

Punters buying used PCs to avoid Vista

http://www.theinquirer.net/feeds/rss/generic/en/GB/inq/latest/gb/inquirer/gb/inquirer/news/2008/11/27/punters-buying-old-second-hand

Punters are apparently scrambling to get their hands on used, second hand PCs, not just because they offer a cheap fix in tough economic times, but mainly because they come loaded with Windows XP rather than Vista.

Studies carried out by both Gartner and IDC have found that because older software is often incompatible with Vista, many consumers are opting for used computers with XP installed as a default, rather than buying an expensive new PC with Vista and downgrading.

Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future.

Josh Kaplan, president of computer repair outfit, Rescuecom, told PC World people wanted to stick with XP to avoid standardisation problems. His company has resold XP-based PCs to companies that use software that is incompatible with Vista and which would require a substantial upgrade to become compatible. ” Having five PCs that are Vista and five XP can create training and compatibility issues,” he said.

Of course, buying a second-hand PC without having to shell out for a Vista license is also much cheaper and certain cheeky resellers are attempting to bump up their own profits even further by selling computers with illegitimate copies of XP bunged in, something which Gartner severly frowns upon, by the way.

Naughty, naughty, chipping away at Microsoft’s billions like that.

You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Tut, tut.

and

http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1573&blogid=14

The Outlook for Vista Gets Even Worse

As someone who has been following Microsoft for over 25 years, I remain staggered by the completeness of the Vista fiasco. Microsoft’s constant backtracking on the phasing out of Windows XP is perhaps the most evident proof of the fact that people do not want to be forced to “upgrade” to something that has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system. But this story suggests an even greater aversion:

Studies carried out by both Gartner and IDC have found that because older software is often incompatible with Vista, many consumers are opting for used computers with XP installed as a default, rather than buying an expensive new PC with Vista and downgrading.

Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future.

What’s really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realised that they do have a choice – that they can simply say “no”. From there, it’s but a small step to realising that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic.

That may not have been the case before, but the similar poor uptake of Microsoft’s OOXML, taken together with the generally good compatibility of OpenOffice.org with the original Microsoft Office file formats, implies that we may well be near the tipping point for migrations to free software on the desktop.

That doesn’t mean everyone is going to rip out Windows and replace it with GNU/Linux, simply that they will stop upgrading Microsoft Office too, and start using OpenOffice.org on new systems instead. More people will come into contact with OpenOffice.org, and start using it at home – not least because they are actually *allowed* to take copies from office systems. Throw in Firefox usage that is starting to creep up to significant levels, even in the UK, and you have the recipe for a subsequent migration to GNU/Linux systems running these same apps that is almost painless.

I’m obviously not the only one thinking along these lines. Last weekend, Dell was advertising its new Inspiron Mini 9 in at least one national newspaper. This would have been unthinkable even a year ago, when the company’s fear of upsetting the mighty Microsoft by mentioning the “L” word would have been too great, and is further evidence that GNU/Linux is indeed becoming a mainstream option.

I’ve included the original text of the articles linked to here in case they disappear from the Internet.