mob

Eighteen months after a denial-of-service attack, the Estonian Ministry of Defense has posted a detailed report (PDF) on the attacks. While focusing on specific steps the nation needs to take to prevent another attack, the report contains global recommendations as well.

In May 2007, the Baltic nation experienced a series of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks as a result of its government's decision to relocate a statue honoring an unknown Russian person killed during World War II. At Black Hat in 2007, security expert Gadi Evron said the attacks were not directed by the Russian Federation, or any government entity; he … Read more

Women's-focused media and advertising company Glam Media has acquired StyleMob, a small social-media site consisting of a blog and some community features pertaining to fashion. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The rumor was first reported in Valleywag earlier on Thursday, where blogger Nicholas Carlson added that StyleMob's founders "weren't happy" about the acquisition. Glam Media recently raised significant venture funding and hinted that it would go in part toward purchasing smaller companies.

StyleMob, centered on "street fashion" rather than the runways of Paris and Milan, had already been a part of Glam's … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--"Dude, this sucks."

You could hear a whole lot of people saying that on Saturday night as the first real evening of South by Southwest Interactive Festival's after-parties kicked into gear. So how come it sucked? Well, it was the crowds. The lines outside the Google party at Light Bar, the Avenue A-Razorfish party at Six Lounge, and the 16Bit party at Scoot Inn were so long that they instigated plenty of woeful conversations about whether SXSWi had gotten so big and so mainstream that it just wasn't any fun anymore.

I, for one, … Read more

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

A 20-year-old Russian has been convicted for organizing some of the attacks on Estonia's government sites during spring 2007, the Agence France-Presse reported on Thursday.

"Dmitri Galushkevich is the first hacker to be sentenced for organizing a massive cyberattack against an Estonian Web page," Gerrit Maesalu, spokesman for the regional prosecutor's office in northeast Estonia, told the AFP. Galushkevich was fined 17,500 krooni (about $1,600). He admitted his guilt, said Maesalu.

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which some security experts have alternatively called a flash mob or the first-ever cyberwar, was prompted … Read more

Why anyone would want to bring back the cell-phone brick look is beyond us. Yet that's what the "Mini Mob" would like to do by stuffing modern technologies into its chunky, Flock of Seagulls-era frame.

It's really not as unwieldy as the originals, however--it's more of a scale model that's a little more than 4 inches long, according to Gadget Lab. Inside it sports an MP3 player, camera, and GSM technology (it's offered by a U.K. distributor).

We're not really into the '80s look, having destroyed all our Members Only … Read more

Is it a childhood nightmare, a modernized niche of folklore, a box-office-tested horror film staple, an ironic riff on American consumerism, or simply an undead corpse hungry for fresh human brains?

Maybe it's all of the above. On Saturday at noon, somewhere around 200 zombies assembled at a bar in midtown Manhattan and proceeded to terrorize the city well into the night. This was Zombiecon 2007, the third annual edition of the pre-Halloween flash mob, and these reanimated corpses took the day very seriously. Among the crowd were undead clowns, airline pilots, ballerinas, doctors, chefs, Roman generals, prom couples, and tennis players. There were also zombified versions of Santa Claus, Pirates of the Caribbean protagonist Captain Jack Sparrow, singer Amy Winehouse, and author Hunter S. Thompson.

(Others, like yours truly, just spruced up jeans and a T-shirt with theatrical blood and white face paint.)

Also spotted: Lindsay Campbell, host of video blog Wallstrip, in a full-on goth-zombie ensemble as she interviewed fellow members of the undead for the cameras.… Read more

I've seen a few good flash mobs in my day. San Francisco lends itself to the strange, including the simultaneous zombie mob and Critical Mass bike ride, which was chronicled by CNET's Declan McCullagh a few months ago. But what if you don't feel like riding a bike, or eating brains? Do sandwiches and potato salad sound better? Picnicmob is a new site full of questions like that--30 in fact. Answering them will help the service figure out where to sit you, in a virtual grid of picnic goers in an upcoming mass picnic flash mob, taking … Read more

While people without clothes on dominate a great deal of traffic online, the same can be said about those with clothes--otherwise known as the world of fashion. StyleMob, a new social network for street fashion, is opening up its doors on Thursday. Aimed mostly at female users, the service is a social network about clothes and people who like to show off their outfits. Users can pick who has the most style, and submit their own outfits or fashion inventions for others to rate and comment on. There's also the virtual equivalent of a fashion police with groups of … Read more