Internet Encyclopedia to List all 1.8 Million Species

The free Encyclopedia would focus initially on animals, plants, and fungi with microbes to follow.

From apples to zebras, all 1.8 million known plant and animal species will be listed in an Internet-based "Encyclopedia of Life" under a $100 million project, scientists said on Tuesday.

The 10-year scheme, launched with initial grants of $12.5 million from two U.S.-based foundations, could aid everyone from children with biology homework to governments planning how to protect endangered species.

"The Encyclopedia of Life plans to create an entry for every named species," James Edwards, executive director of the project which is backed by many leading research institutions, told Reuters. "At the moment that's 1.8 million."

The free Encyclopedia would focus mainly on animals, plants and fungi with microbes to follow, blending text, photographs, maps and videos in a common format for each. Expansion of the Internet in recent years made the multi-media project possible.

Demonstration pages at http://www.eol.org include entries about polar bears, rice, death cap mushrooms and a "yeti crab" with hairy claws recently found in the South Pacific.

"This is about giving access to information to everyone," Jesse Ausubel, chairman of the project who works at the Rockefeller University in New York City, told Reuters.

The Encyclopedia would draw on existing databases such as for mammals, fishes, birds, amphibians and plants. English would be used at the start with translations to other languages.

Edwards said the project would give an overview of life on earth via what he termed a "macroscope" -- the opposite of a microscope through which scientists usually peer.

Species would be added as they were identified. Edwards said there might be 8-10 million on earth, adding that estimates ranged from 5-100 million. Fossil species may also be added.

The encyclopedia, to be run by a team of about 25-35 people, could help chart threats to species from pollution, habitat destruction and global warming.

The project would be led by the U.S. Field Museum, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library -- a group that includes London's Natural History Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Royal Botanic Garden in Kew, England.

Initial funding comes from a $10 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and $2.5 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Extra funds would be raised in coming years.

Ausubel noted that 2007 was the 300th anniversary of the birth of Sweden's Carl Linnaeus, influential in working out ways to classify species. "If he were alive today we think he'd be jumping up and down celebrating," he said.

Copyright 2007 Reuters

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Corsair Debuts Uber Tough Flash Drives

The new Corsair Flash Survivor USB drives are described as being water-resistant, CNC-milled aluminum encased, and shock-proof and come in 4GB and 8GB configurations.

Corsair, a maker of computer accessories, today unveiled what they are calling the world's toughest USB flash drive. The new Flash Survivor line, available now in 8GB and 4GB memory configurations, is priced at around $130 and $60 respectively.

The Corsair Flash Survivor drives are described by Corsair as being "water-resistant, CNC-milled aluminum encased, and shock-proof." The drives have a waterproof seal which offers water resistant up to 650 feet. They are crafted from aluminum found in aircraft part production, rubber molded collar shielding and an outer metal tube for triple protection. They also reportedly deliver read/write performance up to 34MB/sec and 28MB/sec respectively.

The Flash Survivor family of USB drives is also pre-loaded with a security application that allows users to create a hidden, password-protected partition on the drive. The password is encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption.

“Corsair has built the Flash Survivor family specifically for customers with a ‘Bring It On!’ attitude – for someone who doesn’t want to worry if his/her equipment can stand up to the active lifestyle they lead,” said Jack Peterson, VP of Marketing at Corsair, in a statement. “Storing your valuable information on a USB flash drive capable of weathering the storm of everyday life while ensuring your data is safe – that is what Flash Survivor is all about."

Contest Winner: Vista More Secure than Mac OS

The security researcher who took home $10,000 in a highly-publicized MacBook Pro hijack, has been at the center of a week's worth of controversy.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Dino Dai Zovi, the New York-based security researcher who took home US$10,000 in a highly-publicized MacBook Pro hijack on April 20, has been at the center of a week's worth of controversy about the security of Apple Inc.'s operating system. In an e-mail interview with ComputerWorld, Dai Zovi talked about how finding vulnerabilities is like fishing, the chances that someone else will stumble on the still-unpatched bug, and what operating system -- Windows Vista or Mac OS X -- is the sturdiest when it comes to security.

Friday, the vulnerability was first identified as within Safari, but by Monday, QuickTime was tagged. Why the confusion? I knew exactly where the vulnerability was when I wrote the exploit; that is part of the basic vulnerability research usually required to write a reliable exploit. I intentionally did not reveal where exactly the vulnerability was in order to prevent others from reverse engineering the vulnerability from those details. Initially, I was only revealing that the vulnerability affected Safari on Mac OS X, the target of the contest. However, now ZDI [3com TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative] has been willing to publicly reveal that it affects many more system configurations, including all Java-enabled browsers on Mac OS X and Windows if QuickTime is installed.

As you were working with the vulnerability and exploit, did you know that it would impact non-Mac OS X systems? I had suspected that it might affect other platforms running QuickTime, but I did not have time to look into it.

You found the vulnerability and crafted an exploit within 9 or 10 hours. And you've said 'there was blood in the water.' Does that mean you had a head start -- in other words, prior research -- or was it all built from scratch? Is it really that easy to dig up a vulnerability? I had found other vulnerabilities in Mac OS X and even QuickTime in the past, so I had some familiarity with the code, but I only discovered this vulnerability that night. My quote that there was "blood in the water" referred to the fact that there were reports of other vulnerabilities in QuickTime, and even Java-related vulnerabilities in QuickTime over the last few years. In my experience, if a certain software package has had vulnerabilities in the past, it is more likely to contain other undiscovered vulnerabilities.

Halvar Flake and Dave Aitel, two prominent security researchers, use the fishing metaphor to explain vulnerability finding. Some days you go out and catch nothing, some days you catch something great. Sometimes you hear about some great fishing happening in a stream somewhere and there are lots of fish to catch until everyone else starts fishing there and the stream becomes overfished. In this case, I suspected that there would be good fishing in QuickTime and I got lucky and found something good in a short amount of time. This is far from the first time that I've gone fishing for vulnerabilities, however.

After the positive ID of the vulnerability, there were some unconfirmed claims that your exploit had been snatched at CanSecWest. Although those reports have been discounted, what can you tell us about how you protect your findings? And what are the chances that someone will independently dig out the vulnerability based on the limited information made public? I do everything that I consider reasonable to protect my security research. I keep exploits in encrypted disk images that are only mounted when necessary on hardened systems that are not always powered on. I am very conservative in what details I share and with whom in order to tightly control knowledge of the vulnerabilities. I often give my exploits non-obvious code names so that I can refer to them over non-encrypted channels without revealing anything about them. [But] with the details that have been released so far, I believe that is a very real possibility that someone may be able to independently dig out the vulnerability, but it won't exactly be trivial and I hope that whoever does acts responsibly with it.

With the ongoing 'Mac OS X is safe' vs. 'You're in denial' debate, what would you recommend to a Mac user as reasonable security precautions? I recommend that Mac users make their primary user a non-admin account, use a separate keychain for important passwords, and store sensitive documents in a separate encrypted disk image. I think these are fairly straightforward steps that many users can take to better protect their sensitive information on their computer.

As a researcher who works often in Mac OS X, what's your take on the amount of information that Apple releases when it patches vulnerabilities? I think that the amount of information that Apple releases with its patches is sufficient in the level of detail for a knowledgeable user to determine the criticality of the vulnerabilities. They do not, however, provide guidance on the level of criticality of the security update for less technical users. I do not think this is too much of an issue, though, as I believe that the vast majority of users should simply patch the security vulnerabilities as soon as possible regardless of their criticality.

How important in this case was it that 3com TippingPoint stepped up with a $10,000 prize? Would you have bothered if the prize money had not been there? For me the challenge, especially with the time constraint, was the real draw. I also hoped that the live demonstration of a Mac OS X exploit would provide some much needed hard evidence in the recent Mac security debates.

From your research on both platforms, is there a winner between Mac OS X 10.4 and Vista on security? I have found the code quality, at least in terms of security, to be much better overall in Vista than Mac OS X 10.4. It is obvious from observing affected components in security patches that Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) has resulted in fewer vulnerabilities in newly-written code. I hope that more software vendors follow their lead in developing proactive software security development methodologies.

What are you spending most of your time on these days? Last October, for instance, there were news stories that mentioned you showed a VM rootkit to developers at Microsoft. I recently co-authored a book, The Art of Software Security Testing: Identifying Software Security Flaws, which was just published by Addison-Wesley Professional in December. Also since around that time, I have been managing information security for a financial firm in New York City. I do still spend some of my free time researching software vulnerabilities, VM hypervisor rootkits, and 802.11 wireless client security.

The Best Vista Notebooks

The new version of Windows can be a challenge for some notebooks to run. Our tests will point you to the laptops with the power to handle Vista. Carla Thornton; testing by Thomas Luong

Right now could be a great time to splurge on a laptop, given that many come with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system to sweeten the deal. But is the new OS reason enough to jump now, or should you hang on to your trusty Windows XP laptop for a while longer?

To find out, we rounded up 15 Vista-equipped laptops from Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Micro Express, and Toshiba, in two categories: desktop-replacement models powerful enough to serve as your Primary PC, and ultraportables weighing less than 5 pounds. We tested speed and battery life and carefully evaluated screens, keyboards, and other vital features.

The best five notebooks in each category and awarded Best Buys:
1. HP Pavilion dv9000t
2. Dell XPS M1210
3. Micro Express NP5760
4. Acer Aspire 9810-6829
5. Toshiba Satellite P105-S6217

Rapidshare, YouSendit, MegaUpload - Free File Hosting Services Compared

Rapidshare is a name synonymous with free file uploading on the internet. If a file is too large to send as an email attachment, just upload it to rapidshare and email the file link to the recipient. Rapidshare also provides a delete link so that you can remove the file from Rapidshare servers once the recipient has download the file to his own computer.

When you download a file from Rapidshare, you will notice a download counter or a waiting limit. This is only for free rapidshare accounts and if you can spare a few Euros and buy a Rapidshare premium account, the download counter is removed. Plus you get unlimited downloads otherwise there's a restriction on the data that you transfer during a certain period.

Rapidshare will delete files that have not been accessed for 30 days or longer. Rapidshare premium account supports download managers and provide much faster downloads. There are very rare moments when Rapidshare provide free accounts for a week rapidshare.de/cgi-bin/freeaccount.cgi but it is next to impossible to get hold of them as the limit is exhaused very soon.

If you are a heavy user, the best bet would be to buy a Rapidshare Premium Account using either the credit card or PayPal. And other than Rapidshare, the other two popular file sharing services are:

Megaupload - No registration is required. File Size Limit: 250 MB. Your uploaded files will be deleted only after it become unused for 30 days. So, if many of your friends download it, over and over again, the files will always be there. The Megaupload site allows only one download at a time from a IP address. Fixed number of slots are provides based on your country.

YouSendIt - YouSendIt lets you send files up to 1GB. YouSendIt can send files securely (https) and scans files for viruses.When you send a file via the YouSendIt Web site, an e-mail goes to your recipient with a link to your file, which is stored securely on YouSendIt's server. The file will stay there for seven days or until it is downloaded 25 times, whichever comes first. You only have to enter a To email address; you are not required to enter a From address. You can also enter an optional message. No registration is required. Recommended large file hosting service.

Rapidshare doesn't have file search engine though you can use Google to search the rapidshare file URL. Here are some examples:

Search Videos on rapidshare.de avi|mpg|mpeg|wmv|rmvb site:rapidshare.de
Search Audio MP3 files on Rapidshare: mp3|ogg|wma site:rapidshare.de
Search archives or programs on Rapidshare zip|rar|exe site:rapidshare.de
Search pdf files, documents, ebooks, magazines: pdf|doc|lit|rar|zip site:rapidshare.de

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