HackingTheUniverse

You are browsing the archives of 2009 May.

Corannulene is a hydrocarbon molecule (C20 H10) that is formed from a cyclopentane ring (C5 H10) surrounded by five benzen (C6 H6) rings. Its curved geodesic surface puts it in the company of fullerenes including buckballs and nanotubes and for this reason the bowl shaped molecule is often called a “buckybowl”. Because of the five [...]

This is a chronology of the development of awareness about a new zer0-day vulnerability in MS IIS WebDAV. (so far…) Microsoft IIS 6.0 WebDAV Remote Authentication Bypass – [seclists.org] This is the original disclosure/advisory as discovered by “Kingcope” on May 12, 2009. Vulnerability Details This vulnerability allows remote attackers to bypass access restrictions on vulnerable [...]

Truecrypt is a free utility that performs encryption with a variety of options. It can encrypt individual files, groups of files and entire volumes. It creates a virtual disk that stores the files, can be mounted like a normal drive and handles the encryption/decryption process with real time access. When the virtual volume is not [...]

Ernest Rutherford was born in New Zealand in 1871. He was a physicist and chemist who is known for advancing knowledge of atomic structure. A famous experiment in 1909 that used gold foil to scatter alpha particles (a helium nucleus) and detect the angle of deflection showed that some alpha particles hit the target gold [...]

Modular robotics is about designing robotic systems that consist of simple modules that can adapt their configuration or change the way they combine to perform tasks. While adaptation can be limited to a specific range of tasks, many of the researchers in this field are working on systems that can “self-repair” and even “self-reconfigure”. Modular [...]

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was born in 1853 in Arnhem, The Netherlands. He was a physicist who collaborated with Pieter Zeeman to describe the Zeeman effect, for which both men were awarded the nobel prize for physics in 1902. The Zeeman effect describes how a magnetic field causes light to be split across spectral lines. The [...]

Utility fog is a concept developed by Dr. John Storrs Hall that describes nanoparticles that are polymorphic. The microscopic particles, known as “foglets”, would have the ability to float suspended in the air as a fog, or connect to other particles to form solid objects. The foglet particles would need some form of ability to [...]

The F-35 helmet display system offers fighter pilots an augmented reality 360 degree panoramic viewpoint for controlling their aircraft. How the F-35 Demon Helmet Looks Inside – [gizmodo.com] The helmet projects an augmented reality world inside its visor. This image is created by a visualization, targeting, and situational awareness marvel called Electro Optical Distributed Aperture [...]

Microsoft has announced a patch for fourteen vulnerabilities in PowerPoint that includes one which has been already used by exploit code in the wild (a “zero-day” exploit). MS09-017 is the patch designation. Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-017 – Critical – [microsoft.com] Executive Summary This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability and several privately reported vulnerabilities [...]

Aristarchus was born on the island of Samos in Greece around -0310. He was a mathematician and philospher and probably the first on record to propose that the Earth circled around the Sun instead of the other way around. He wrote a work titled, “On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon” which [...]