Rag Hand

It started when a rogue admin locked his bosses out of San Francisco’s Wireless network.

The office of San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has made public close to 150 usernames and passwords used by various departments to connect to the city’s virtual private network. The passwords were filed this week as Exhibit A in a court document arguing against a reduction in $5million bail in the case of Terry Childs, who is accused of holding the city’s network hostage by refusing to give up administrative networking passwords. Childs was arrested July 12 on charges of computer tampering and is being held in the county jail.

Posting these passwords in public creates a security risk, although the passwords are not enough to give a criminal access to the city’s VPN. The passwords are so-called “phase one” passwords, and must be combined with a second password to access the network, the source said.

Erica Derryck, a spokeswoman for the DA’s office, declined to comment on the matter. The mayor’s office, which supervises DTIS, did not return messages seeking comment for this story

From black hats everywhere:
“Thank you for giving us half of the puzzle. Now we don’t have to work so hard.”

To fix this they need to reset the passwords on every computer that connects to the city’s vpn.

Childs, an engineer principal with DTIS who used the log-in Maggot617, had been engaged in a monthslong dispute with management, and held onto the passwords even after he was jailed.

He finally decided that the Mayor?? was the only person that could be trusted with the keys to the network.

He also seems to think that he was surrounded by incompetents.

It’s not hard to expire passwords and force a change, even en masse.

Since the city didn’t start resetting everybody’s passwords the second they got at least part of the admin passwords back we can only assume one of three things:

A: They are overconfident, which means they think all hackers are sitting there stupidly trying to manually guess the remaining passwords.

B: They’ve talked themselves into thinking the problem is more difficult than it is and are looking for the funding to bring in an expert.

Or C: He’s right and they’re incompetent.

George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are having a conversation via Al Jazeera television. Bin Laden tells George Bush, “There is no point of engaging in further war. I can see total peace in the future!”

George Bush replies, “Oh yeah and tell me what you see?”

Osama answers, “I can see New York, with new great buildings on one side and beautiful new buildings on the other side, and everything is peaceful and wonderful.”

George Bush says, “Wow is that what you see? Well I’ll tell ya what I see for the future of Afghanistan… I see a house here, a house there, a small building here and small building there, but there are signs hanging in the middle of the street.”

Osama asks, “And what do they say?”

George answers, “Hell, I don’t know. I can’t read Hebrew!”

Russia and China have vetoed a United Nations resolution calling for sanctions to be imposed on Zimbabwe.

The US-authored resolution would have imposed an assets freeze and a travel ban on Robert Mugabe, the president, and 13 of his closest allies, as well as an arms embargo on the country.

UN sanctions “would have created a dangerous precedent, opening the way for Security Council interference in the internal affairs of states in connection with one or another political event … which is a gross violation of the UN charter,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

In its statement, Russia said it condemned violence and violations by both sides in Zimbabwe’s election period but judged that “the situation in Zimbabwe does not threaten either regional – let alone international – peace and security.”

China, which is major trading partner of Zimbabwe, said that the African nation was best left to conduct its own talks on how to resolve its political crisis.

Mugabe was sworn in for a sixth term as president after a June 27 presidential run-off which saw the opposition candidate withdraw amid widespread reports of violence and intimidation by ruling Zanu-PF supporters.

This is from Mail & Guardian Online 2006:
Analysts said Russia’s interest in the sub-region, following a determined push by China, signalled growing competition for Africa’s natural resources as the two economies boom.

The Zimbabwe visit follows a similar Russian foray into South Africa last month when President Vladimir Putin led business chiefs and pledged billions of dollars in investment to forge ties between the global mineral and diamond superpowers.

All that fuss and bother and nothing changes. Russia and China will continue to protect their investments and the only way Mugabe will leave power is the same way other dictators leave power. Either through assassination or by leaving the country one step ahead of an armed invasion.

Anyone who doesn’t believe Mugabe is a dictator hasn’t been watching the “elections” in Zimbabwe.

Senator Obama tells a Georgia audience that American children should learn to speak Spanish: “Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.”

He starts with a defense of Hispanic immigrants and then segways into a speech about how we need to teach our children to be multilingual.

He claims that the Hispanic immigrants will learn English. —- Bullshit!!!

They are not doing much of that now. Why should they? They manage to force our schools to teach the children of illegals in Spanish including at least one local school in which English is not only a second language the homework is given all in Spanish.

Why should they learn English when they can just turn our cities into little Tijuanas?

It was a nicely played move. But it’s nothing more than pandering to the Hispanic vote.

I know this has been done to death and it happens with every political race but flip-flops should be beachwear not political positions.

McCain said he objected lifting the ban on oil exploration off the US coast because he felt human activity is causing climate change. —He changed his mind.

Obama said he would “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies”. —Guess who said he won’t be opposing the FISA bill, which gives limited retroactive immunity to telecoms.

McCain was one of the key backers of President Bush’s plan for “comprehensive immigration reform”, which would have created “paths to citizenship” for illegal immigrants, while investing more money in border security. —During the primaries, McCain announced that his immigration focus would be on securing America’s borders, rather than on giving illegal immigrants the chance to become US citizens.

Obama recently hinted to Fortune magazine that his strong anti-free trade rhetoric during the primaries may not be reflected in his actual trade policy should he become president. —”Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” he said.

And on and on and on.

We have two politicians:
Obama who’s purportedly a liberal vs McCain who’s purportedly a conservative have both changed their stance on major issues, They do or say whatever is necessary to get elected. This has absolutely nothing to do with what they will try to do once they are in office.

McCain will keep us in Iraq until the end of days and Mr. “Bring ‘em home now” Obama is “refining” his stance.

The only thing that is certain is that big oil and government contractors will continue to get whatever they want.

If you’re Haliburton, Black Water, or a major oil company, Iraq is the world’s biggest cash cow.
And what’s good for Haliburton, Black Water and Big Oil is good for the country… Or at least good for the politicians. So we’ll be there a while longer

If you think there’s going to be anything other than cosmetic changes when we have a new president you are an idiot.