church

Red Hat board member trades one mission for another

Steve Albrecht, a longstanding Red Hat board member, has resigned from Red Hat's board effective June 30, 2009. The reason? Albrecht, originally tapped six years ago by Red Hat chairman Matthew Szulik, will serve as a mission president in Japan for the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), starting in early July.

It's a new mission for Albrecht, but will require many of the same attributes that made him a successful board member for Red Hat. My father also serves as a mission president in the LDS Church (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and I've seen … Read more

Social engineering cracked Palin's e-mail account

Details describing how someone hacked into Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account emerged on Thursday, and it appears to have been done with little more than social engineering, the process of acquiring personal information through social manipulation.

Meanwhile, the Knoxville News Sentinel is reporting that a 20-year-old University of Tennessee student has been contacted in connection to the federal investigation of the break-in. Further details are not known.

Since Tuesday, anonymous posters using a forum on the 4Chan.org Web site have been circulating password-protected zip files containing the contents of the now-deleted e-mail account once belonging to the Republican … Read more

Inside CNET Labs 10: The still-beating heart

This week Dong visits the "Church of All Faiths" and uncovers the "Church of False Advertising."

Eric nerds it up about the WoW: Lich King beta, which is awesome of course. Seriously, how is Blizzard going to keep everyone from re-rolling as a Death Knight? We guess that just means the other classes are due for some serious buffs. We hope so at least.

Last, but not least, Dong explains the proper ways to eat a still-beating heart..not kidding.

To subscribe to this podcast, visit us at our main page and click the link on … Read more

Record with your heroes

Correction: The original post implied that the Church is no longer active. In fact, the band has been touring and putting out albums continuously for almost 30 years, and Tim Powles is still their drummer. Apologies for the mistake.

Modern musical technology makes the world smaller.

Example: Seattle band Half Light are big fans of Australian art-rock band The Church. [Disclosure: I played bass with another incarnation of Half Light in 2004 and 2005 and am still friendly with the band.] Americans of a certain age probably remember The Church's 1987 hit "Under the Milky Way," but … Read more

Where Bakalar isn't just his name...he's actually Back-a-lar

EPISODE 39

Today, we actually get it right! We sucker in Tom Merritt to talk about Amy Winehouse's drunken badness, a guy gets denied an all-star game marriage proposal, unlimited cell phone minutes, and N+, like stick figure lemmings...but for Xbox 360, and Pimp My Ride for Wii. Listen in on the fun!

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Anonymous posts another video against Scientology

Editors' note, 11:00 a.m. PST: This blog has been condensed from an earlier version.

A group calling itself Anonymous is continuing its war against the Church of Scientology with a new video posted Monday. In its latest video message, the group seeks to dispel the notion it is a group of super hackers and, as though to prove it, includes a call for real-world protests outside Scientology centers worldwide on February 10. Friday night, the Church of Scientology issued a statement about the online attacks.

The latest two-minute video from the group continues to use a computer-generated voice, … Read more

Church of Scientology responds to Internet attacks

After several days of Internet attacks by a group calling itself Anonymous, the Church of Scientology has responded with a comment about the posting of one of its videos. A response on Friday evening from the Church of Scientology did not address CNET News.com's specific request for comment on the denial-of-service attacks themselves. Instead, Karin Pouw, public affairs director for the Church of Scientology, focused on the leak of a Tom Cruise video on YouTube earlier in the week. The response reads, in full:

As the Church previously announced, the pirated and edited excerpts of Mr. Cruise were … Read more

Whose Internet is it anyway?

This week we've seen two Internet events that are more alike than dissimilar. On Wednesday, an Estonian court convicted a 20-year Russian for his part in last spring's distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on that nation. On Thursday, word of mounting DDoS attacks on the Church of Scientology spread. Ultimately, both events could have larger repercussions.

The attack on the Estonian Web sites was prompted by an Estonian government plan to move a statue and grave sites honoring Russian-Estonians who died fighting the Nazis. Gadi Evron of Beyond Security said at last year's Black Hat USA that he … Read more

Technical aspects of the DDoS attacks upon the Church of Scientology

Dr. Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks has been looking at the technical side of the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks upon domain registered to the Church of Scientology International. In general he finds that while there have been a lot of DDoS attacks, the early ones were mild. They were, however, stronger than the DDoS attacks upon various Estonian sites last spring. As a protective measure, the Church of Scientology has since moved its domain to a more protected space.

Prior to the move, Nazario found that on January 19, there were 488 DDoS events, all of which appear … Read more

Anonymous steps up its war with Scientology

A group of vigilantes--calling themselves Anonymous, or Anon--are escalating their attacks against the Church of Scientology in what they consider to be Internet censorship by issuing new video challenges. In one video posted to YouTube, Anonymous addresses the many news organizations covering the war, stating that the group has been watching. While the individuals behind the effort generally support the coverage, they also severely fault the media.

"We find it interesting that you did not mention the other objections in your news reporting. The stifling and punishment of dissent within the totalitarian organization of Scientology. The numerous, alleged human … Read more