The slow Internet connection isn’t just you. The Web has been under one of its biggest-ever attacks since a Dutch Web-hosting company caused service to be disrupted and slowed down. Here’s how it went down: a Geneva-based spam-fighting group, Spamhaus, temporarily added a Dutch firm Cyberbunker, to an email blacklist that blocks out spam, and Cyberbunker did not react well. Cyberbunker infamously operates out of NATO bunker and boasts of hosting any Web site “except child porn and anything related to terrorism” -- which is most likely how it ended up on the list of spammers in the first place. In retaliation, Cyberbunker launched the attack, which has slowed down many sites, including Netflix and other services.

NYT:

A typical denial-of-service attack tends to affect only a small number of networks. But in the case of a Domain Name System flood attack, data packets are aimed at the victim from servers all over the world. Such attacks cannot easily be stopped, experts say, because those servers cannot be shut off without halting the Internet.

“The No. 1 rule of the Internet is that it has to work,” said Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who years ago pointed out the inherent vulnerabilities of the Domain Name System. “You can’t stop a DNS flood by shutting down those servers because those machines have to be open and public by default. The only way to deal with this problem is to find the people doing it and arrest them.”

The heart of the problem, according to several Internet engineers, is that many large Internet service providers have not set up their networks to make sure that traffic leaving their networks is actually coming from their own users. The potential security flaw has long been known by Internet security specialists, but it has only recently been exploited in a way that threatens the Internet infrastructure.

An engineer at one of the largest Internet communications firms said the attacks in recent days have been as many as five times larger than what was seen recently in attacks against major American banks. He said the attacks were not large enough to saturate the company’s largest routers, but they had overwhelmed important equipment.

Patrick Gilmore, chief architect at Akamai Technologies, a digital content provider, said “It is a real number, it is the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet.”

In what would be a deadly new low in the Syrian conflict, both sides are accusing each other of launching a chemical attack near the city of Aleppo. A Reuters photographer visited a hospital where people were suffering from breathing problems. “I saw mostly women and children,” he said. “They said that people were suffocating in the streets and the air smelt strongly of chlorine.” The Syrian government claims the rebels launched a chemical-laden rocket, killing at least 25 people and wounding 86, while the rebels say the regime fired the weapon. President Obama previously warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that the use of chemical weapons would be a “red line.”

Via:

Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi said rebels fired "a rocket containing poison gases" at the town of Khan al-Assal, southwest of Aleppo, from the city's southeastern district of Nairab, part of which is rebel-held.

"The substance in the rocket causes unconsciousness, then convulsions, then death," the minister said.

But a senior rebel commander, Qassim Saadeddine, who is also a spokesman for the Higher Military Council in Aleppo, denied this, blaming Assad's forces for the alleged chemical strike.

"We were hearing reports from early this morning about a regime attack on Khan al-Assal, and we believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents," he told Reuters by telephone from Aleppo.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday was already calling for the U.S. to put American troops on the ground inside Syria to secure the weapons of mass destruction.

Via:

Graham told The Cable in an interview Tuesday that whether or not the attack can be confirmed as the first use of chemical weapons in the 24-month Syrian civil war, the United States must devise and implement a plan to secure Syrian chemical weapons sites and deploy U.S. troops to do it if necessary.

"My biggest fear beyond an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is the chemical weapons in Syria falling in the hands of extremists and Americans need to lead on this issue. We need to come up with a plan to secure these weapons sites, either in conjunction with our partners if nothing else by ourselves," Graham said.

Asked if he would support sending U.S. troops inside Syria for the mission, Graham said yes.

"Absolutely, you've got to get on the ground. There is no substitute for securing these weapons," he said. "I don't care what it takes. We need partners in the region. But I'm here to say, if the choice is to send in troops to secure the weapons sites versus allowing chemical weapons to get in the hands of some of the most violent people in the world, I vote to cut this off before it becomes a problem."

A Turkish security guard and a suicide bomber were killed and several more were wounded early Friday in an explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkish media reported. “It was a huge explosion,” said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos, whose shop just 100 meters from the embassy was shattered. While no one has taken credit for the attack yet, Turkey has long called for U.S. intervention in Syria, and Turkey is hosting hundreds of NATO soldiers from the U.S. and elsewhere who are using a Patriot missile defense system along the border with Syria. Domestically, Turkey's main domestic terrorist group is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, whose leaders were killed last month in Paris.

Patrons celebrating "Coming Out Day" at a Moscow club were caught off guard by an attack on Friday when they initially thought masked men were part of a planned performance for an open mic session.

NYT:

The police in Moscow on Friday were seeking two dozen masked men who stormed one of the city’s most popular gay bars early Thursday and beat patrons — most of them women — with fists and bottles. More than 10 people were injured, and three women and a man were hospitalized after the attack, which coincided with a “Coming Out Day” party, club employees said.

The violence comes during an unnerving year for gay men and lesbians in Russia. Three cities, including St. Petersburg, have passed laws criminalizing “homosexual propaganda,” and a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, the country’s predominant faith, has endorsed an initiative to introduce the laws nationwide.

So far, no such law has been passed in the capital. However, a measure banning gay pride parades in Moscow for a century, until May 2112, was upheld by the city’s highest court in August.

Although homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993, discrimination against gays remains strong in Russia. Attempts to hold gay pride events have provoked violence by police and militant Orthodox activists.

Independent monitors say this was the seventh violent attack against gays in reported in Russia this year, but said the true number is much higher since many attacks go unreported due to the stigma.

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Failed former GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) -- truly, in her own element sounding alarms over "extremists" in other nations -- went into full attack mode on President Obama and his foreign policies, calling him the "most dangerous president we have ever had," and directly tying his policies to the violence in Egypt and Libya.

Bachmann, in remarks at the Values Voter Summit at Washington's Omni Shoreham hotel, accused the Obama administration of responding to the chaos - which resulted in the death of four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya - with "weakness and lack of resolve."

"This was an intentional act that was done by radical Islamists who seek to impose their set of beliefs on the rest of the world and we will not stand for it," Bachmann continued. "No one here is suggesting that all Muslims are radical (*cough*) but we should not be ignorant of the objective reality that there's a very radical wing of Islam that's dedicated to the destruction of America, of Israel, and Israel's allies, and what we're watching developing before our eyes today are the direct consequences of this administration's policy of apology and appeasement across the globe."

"I'm no master war strategist," (Indeed!) she said, but "appeasement doesn't work."

Bachmann also accused Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pushing "enforced Islamic speech codes" in U.S. counterterrorism training materials, referring to an FBI probe first reported by Wired Magazine in February that eliminated, wrote Wired, "over 700 pages of documentation from approximately 300 presentations given to agents since 9/11 ... describing 'mainstream' Muslims as 'violent.'"

Those documents, Wired reported, were purged due to "'factual errors'; 'poor taste'; employment of 'stereotypes' about Arabs or Muslims; or presenting information that 'lacked precision.'"

Bachmann then sounded alarms about Egypt's ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood, before urging the president to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stand in solidarity with Israel:

"And as President Obama needs to get his priorities straight, what he needs to do is cancels (sic) his interview with David Letterman – (cheers, applause) – cancel his meeting with Beyonce – (cheers, applause) – cancel his meeting with Jay-Z and instead agree to meet with the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu."(cheers, applause)

Then after tightening up her tin-foil hat, Bachmann declared that the attack on the Libyan consulate this week was part of a 10-year plan “to implement its Sharia-based speech code requirements worldwide.”

A full transcript of Bachmann's rant is below the fold.

Continue reading »

This may be the spookiest political ad ever: Chuck Norris, along with his wife Gena, have offered a dire warning to America, claiming that Americans face "socialism," (*Gasp!*) or something worse," and "1,000 years of darkness" if President Obama is re-elected for a second term in November.

In the Youtube video above, Norris and his wife warn of a "growing concern" that the America we know can be "lost forever" if Obama is re-elected.

“If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack,” Norris says. “We’re at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don’t change the course in which our country is headed.”

Gena Norris then cites the statistic that in 2008 more than 30 million Evangelical Christians stayed home on Voting Day and Obama won. *Gasp!*

She then quotes the late President Ronald Reagan, "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into 1,000 years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

Oh, Chuck and Gena? The name of that speech you quoted, "A Time for Choosing," also known as "The Speech," was presented during the 1964 U.S. presidential election campaign by future president Ronald Reagan on behalf of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.

Goldwater lost.The world did not end, or even plunge into 1,000 years of darkness.

Drama queens.

The hacktivist collective Anonymous says that it has attacked government websites in retaliation for the UK's handling of the Julian Assange case.

It claimed responsibility on Twitter for the denial-of-service attacks. Websites affected include the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office.

The latest attacks were launched on Monday and most of the affected websites appeared to be operating normally on Tuesday evening.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice website said it "had been experiencing some disruption" and that "The Ministry of Justice website was the subject of an online attack."

The Ministry of Justice website is a public information site, and held no sensitive or confidential data.

"Measures put in place to keep the website running mean that some visitors may be unable to access the site intermittently," said the spokeswoman.

[Via]

Fight for better jobs, better wages, and the rights of all workers!

Across New York, our livelihoods are under attack. After years of massive layoffs and high rates of unemployment, wages and benefits are being cut from what used to be middle class jobs. On top of that, workers are working longer hours without overtime pay, health insurance or any retirement benefits.

Meanwhile minimum wage jobs are the fastest growing sector in the state growing ten-fold over the past five years.

A minimum wage earner employed full time makes just of $15,000/ year. That’s hardly enough to get by in New York. And many low-wage workers have tips and wages stolen by employers, forcing them to survive on even less.

Full-time work shouldn’t keep you in poverty. It’s time for workers to band together and demand respect in our work places. It is time to tell our elected officials that New York needs a raise. It’s time for broader prosperity across the country.

[Via]

I previously reported on the Chicago police stopping and detaining Occupy journalists Tim Pool and Luke Rudkowski on May 20th during the #NoNATO protests, but in this video, a credentialed photographer is targeted.

Via:

Tracey Pollock, a credentialed photographer for The UpTake, is attacked by police in Chicago during an anti-NATO protest on Saturday. Before the attack, police were using their bicycles as weapons to force back the crowd which was staging a march without a permit.

Police had formed a barricade; as you can see from the video, there was some sort of incident along the barricade. Pollock tried to get closer to see what was happening when a police officer reached up, grabbed her lens and tried to rip her camera away.

The officer then pushed her over some bicycles.
Pollock was wearing a large press badge and as you can hear from the audio, even bystanders could tell she was part of the press. Protesters behind the bicycles pulled her to safety.

Pollock was bruised in the incident but not seriously injured. She says she never crossed the police barricade.

I shudder to think what might have happened if the protesters hadn't been able to reach Tracey. There is no doubt there is much government support behind such treatment of the media, and the brutality heaped on protesters as well. How else could they continually get away with it?

Italian hacktivists with the group Anonymous took down the Vatican website Wednesday.

In an online statement, they accused the Vatican of historical transgressions, including burning books, executing critics and leading people to believe in a "pay to get access to paradise" plan. The hackers also claimed the Catholic Church allowed children to be molested by clergy, the protected the guilty when the abuse was discovered.

They said the attack was not intended at "the true Christian religion and the faithful around the world, but to the corrupt Roman Apostolic Church and all its emanations."

"You refuse to decree practices and object [the] result of progress, such as condoms or abortion, as clinical wounds to eradicate," according to the statement.

A Vatican spokesman confirmed the attack but declined to comment on the source, according to USA Today. Several other Vatican-related sites were taken down, including the site for its newspaper.