Happy New Year!

Google celebrates the New Year and the birth of TCP/IP 25 years ago, milestone invention leading to the modern Internet.


The New Year Article

Google's Search page's logo changes from time to time, usually to reflect current events or special days. Today, January 1, 2008, Google's logo celebrates the new year and the 25 years of TCP/IP. Clicking the logo leads you to a search results page with articles about TCP/IP.

Google logo for the celebration of New Year and 25 Years of TCP/IP
courtesy by Google.com

Today's IP networking represents a synthesis of two developments that began in the 1960s and 1970s, namely LANs (Local Area Networks) and the Internet, both of which have revolutionized computing.

The Internet protocol suite came from work done by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the early 1970s. After building the pioneering ARPANET in the late 1960s, DARPA started work on a number of other data transmission technologies.

In 1975, a two-network TCP/IP communications test was performed between Stanford and University College London (UCL). In November, 1977, a three-network TCP/IP test was conducted between the U.S., UK, and Norway. Between 1978 and 1983, several other TCP/IP prototypes were developed at multiple research centres. A full switchover to TCP/IP on the ARPANET took place January 1, 1983.

Of course, today is also the start of a new year.

Here we are in 2008, and I thank you people for visiting Sonicsoft Wired's blog. Happy New Year everyone!

Storm Worm Changes Tactic

Storm Botnet changes the message it sends to unsuspecting victims, prefering to exploit the new year celebration instead.

Storm Botnet Drops Strippers Lure, Switches to New Year's

Just a day after unleashing spam featuring Christmas strippers, the Storm botnet switched gears yesterday and began duping users into infecting their own PCs by bombarding them with messages touting the new year, said security researchers.

According to U.K.-based Prevx Ltd. and Symantec Corp. in Cupertino, Calif., the botnet of Storm Trojan-compromised computers started sending spam with subject headings such as "Happy 2008!" and "Happy New Year!" late on Christmas Day. The messages try to persuade recipients to steer for the Uhavepostcard.com Web site to download and install a file tagged "happy2008.exe," said researchers at both firms.

However, the file is actually a new variant of the Storm Trojan.

Marco Giuliani of Prevx reported that the company had seen two general variants by early Wednesday. "The first has been online for about 10 hours, and we've seen 166 different repacked versions of it," said Giuliani in a posting to the Prevx company blog. The Storm code has been repacked every few minutes using a polymorphic-like technique since Monday, when the botnet started spreading stripper spam. Frequent repacking is a trick malware authors use to deceive signature-based antivirus software.

The Storm botnet's herders are also using fast-flux DNS (Domain Name System) tactics to keep the Uhavepostcard.com site operational, said Symantec. Fast flux, which the Storm botnet did not originate but has often used, is another antisecurity strategy; it involves rapidly registering and de-registering addresses as part of the address list for either a single DNS server or an entire DNS zone. In both cases, the strategy masks the IP address of the malware site by hiding it behind an ever-changing array of compromised machines acting as proxies.

The notorious Russian Business Network malware hosting network has become infamous for using fast flux to hide the Internet location of its servers, making it difficult for security researchers, Internet service providers or law enforcement officials to track the group's cybercrimes

source: www.computerworld.com