Update
The alantic ridge is active again, in the past the New England has sever weather.
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Collider Hacker’s
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Though the Large Hadron Collider’s infiltration by hackers did not disrupt the historic project, experts warn that its computer systems are vulnerable — though at least their exploitation won’t destroy Earth.
Shortly after physicists activated the Collider on Wednesday, hackers identifying themselves as Group 2600 of the Greek Security Team accessed computers connected to the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, one of four key subsystems responsible for monitoring the collisions of protons speeding around the 18-mile track near Geneva, Switzerland.
A few scientists had worried that the experiment could inadvertently create a planet-swallowing black hole. Physicists called this impossible, or at least extraordinarily unlikely. But the hack raises a different sort of worst-case scenario: the largest and most complicated science experiment in history, intended to reveal basic information about the composition of matter, derailed by malevolent intruders.
“The LHC experiments have very complex computer systems for data recording and analysis and even more sensitive systems for experiment control, trigger and data acquisition,” said MIT physicist and Collider collaborator Frank Taylor. “You could imagine that penetrating the ‘real time domain’ could have catastrophic consequences.”
The hackers were stopped before they could access the Collider’s central computer system, but were described by the Telegraph as being “one step away” from full control of the CMS. They deleted one as-yet publicly unidentified file — the hacker equivalent, perhaps, of counting coup.
“We’re pulling your pants down because we don’t want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes,” wrote the intruders in a note left on the Collider’s website.
“There seems to be no harm done. From what [the computer security team] can tell, it was someone making the point that CMS was hackable,” said James Gillies, spokesman for Cern, to the Telegraph.
Computer security at the Collider has received less attention than other aspects of the historic experiment, but insiders have previously expressed concern.
In November, an article in the computer affairs newsletter of CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research, home to the Collider — warned of potential security breaches.
“Vulnerability scans at CERN using standard IT tools have shown that commercial automation systems often lack even fundamental security precautions: some systems crashed during the scan, while others could easily be stopped or have their process data altered,” wrote CERN computer security officer Stefan Luders.
The consequences of a breach, wrote Luders, “are inherent to the design of CERN’s accelerators and the affiliated experiments. All run a variety of control systems: some of them are complex, some of them deal with personnel safety, and some of them control or protect expensive or irreplaceable equipment. Thus, CERN’s assets and their proper operation are at stake.”
But those worried by hacker-unleashed black holes and Big Bang energies can rest easy. “The LHC is just a bunch of magnets that steer the proton beams plus radio frequency cavities to accelerate them,” said Northeastern University physicist Stephen Reucroft. “The amount of energy involved is miniscule. Similarly, the CMS is a magnet with a lot of sensors operating under a variety of voltages. Not much damage could be done there by diddling with the computer.”
Of course, damage is relative when discussing the controls of a six billion dollar experiment.
“Hacking is a bad thing,” said Lee Smolin, a professor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics who is not involved with the Collider. “It can damage the work of thousands of people who have been working for decades to advance science.”
Images: The endcap of the Compact Muon Solenoid Detector, from WikiMedia Commons; a screenshot of the CMS website (now unavailable) after the hack; and researchers standing inside the CMS, courtesy of the Insitute for Research on the Fundamentals of the Universe.
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The Hacker story
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It is hard to believe that “We the People” have to be aware of so many things as technology expands into its greatness.
Yet :We the People” have know idea of how far it can go until you read reports like the Hackers.
Hold on to your hats its going to be a bumpy ride.
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Hackers
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Report: Hackers Break Into ‘Big Bang Machine’ Computer Network
Sunday , September 14, 2008
Hackers have broken into one of the computer networks of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
A group calling itself the Greek Security Team left a rogue Web site describing the technicians responsible for computer security at the giant atom smasher as “schoolkids” — but reassuring scientists that they did not want to disrupt the experiment.
The hackers gained access to a Web site open to other scientists on Wednesday as the LHC passed its first test, sending its protons off on their dizzying journey through time and space, close to the speed of light.
The work of the scientists was not derailed and insiders scoffed at claims that the hackers were “one step away” from the systems controlling the experiment itself. The engineering team completed four days of scheduled work in the first 24 hours but what physicists are really waiting for is the big bang machine’s first collisions.
Apart from being wide of the mark from a scientific point of view, fears that the LHC might bring the world to an end this week were in any case premature because it was never going to smash any particles so early on.
This week’s successful start-up means that should happen sooner than expected, perhaps as early as the first week in October.
The hackers appear to have targeted the computer system of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, one of the four detectors that will be analyzing the progress of the experiment.
“We don’t know who they were but there seems to be no harm done,” said James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, the European Laboratory for Network Collision, and home of the LHC. “It appears to be people who want to make a point that CERN was hackable.”
For more on this story from The Sunday Times of London.
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China Landslides
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Death Toll From China Landslide Rises to 254
Sunday , September 14, 2008
BEIJING —
The death toll has risen to 254 in a landslide triggered by the collapse of an illegal mining dump, which engulfed a village in northern China, a government official said Sunday.
By late Saturday, rescuers had identified 128 of the dead bodies recovered after Monday’s accident in Shanxi province’s Xiangfen county, a duty officer surnamed Zhang at the Shanxi provincial government told The Associated Press.
The tally could rise as more than 1,000 rescue workers comb through 74 acres of sludge and mining waste covering the area, where hundreds more people could be buried.
The landslide Monday in Shanxi province’s Xiangfen county was triggered when the retaining wall of a mining dump containing tons of liquid iron-ore waste collapsed, inundating the village of 1,300 residents and an outdoor market with hundreds of patrons in a matter of minutes.
Authorities have refused to give an estimate for the number of people missing. Earlier in the week, state media quoted government officials as saying hundreds could be dead but later denied making those statements.
Rescue workers and survivors have told The Associated Press that hundreds remained missing.
Identifying the bodies has proved difficult because most of the workers at the illegal mine were migrants from elsewhere in Shanxi, or from Chongqing city and central Hubei province, state media has said, citing rescuers.
The official Xinhua News Agency cited the head of the rescue effort as saying the team was searching for bodies in a 330-yard ditch filled with silt.
“This is the toughest phase of the ongoing rescue,” the report quoted Lian Zhendong, chief of the rescue headquarters, as saying. “We will do our utmost to finish the search in three to five days.”
Power and telecommunications have been restored at the site, Xinhua said. An Associated Press photographer at the site said police have now blocked access to the disaster zone.
The head of Xiangfen county and the county’s Communist Party committee chief have been suspended from duty, Xinhua said.
Thirteen officials from the Tashan Mining Co., which ran the illegal mine, have been taken into police custody, including the chairman of the company’s board of directors, the mine owner, the deputy mine chief, and company accountants, it earlier reported.
Xinhua said the accident led to direct economic losses of $1.34 million.
The disaster underscores two major public safety concerns in China: the failure to enforce protective measures in the country’s notoriously deadly mines, and the unsound state of many of its bridges, dams and other aging infrastructure.
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Asia
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2 strong undersea earthquakes rattle Asia
September 11, 2008 11:12 AM EST |
TOKYO, Japan — Two strong earthquakes rattled Asia on Thursday, triggering alerts for a tsunami that harmlessly lapped Japan’s northern coast and another in Indonesia that didn’t materialize but briefly sent residents fleeing to high ground.
The more powerful of the quakes, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 hit at 9:21 a.m. off Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido at a depth of about 19 miles (30 kilometers), the country’s meteorological agency said.
A 4-inch (10-centimeter) tsunami rippled to shore 35 minutes later, but there were no signs of damage.
“There was some light shaking, but it was nothing major,” said Yukio Yoshida, a police spokesman in Hokkaido.
Authorities temporarily advised about 10,600 residents of Ofunato in Iwate Prefecture (state), about 125 miles (200 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, to evacuate their homes and ordered people to stay away from beaches.
An hour earlier, northeastern Indonesia was hit by a 6.6-magnitude quake that struck 55 miles (90 kilometers) beneath the Molucca Sea, the U.S. Geological Survey. Though on the same tectonic plate, the temblors were unrelated, local officials said.
A tsunami alert was briefly issued over the radio and television and people in the Maluku capital of Ternate, which was closest to the epicenter, fled from houses and buildings as the earth rumbled beneath them.
The feared wave never came, however, and there were no reports of casualties or damage.
“I ran out of the hotel with other guests and we fled to high ground,” Benyamin Otte said. “I could see people on the beach, checking to see if the were any signs of a tsunami, but everything looked normal. Within a half hour, we were heading back down.”
Indonesia and Japan are both prone to seismic upheaval due to their location on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
In December 2004, a massive earthquake off Indonesia’s Sumatra island triggered a tsunami that battered much of the Indian Ocean coastline and killed more than 230,000 people _ 131,000 of them in Aceh province alone.
A tsunami off Java island last year killed nearly 5,000.
Japan also is one of the world’s most earthquake prone nations.
In 1995, a magnitude-7.2 quake in the western port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people and experts believe Tokyo has a 90 percent chance of being hit by a major quake over the next 50 years.
Associated Press Writer Niniek Karmini contributed to this report from Jakarta.
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Recent earth Quake information
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http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php
Latest Earthquakes in the World – Past 7 days
Latest Earthquakes Magnitude 2.5 or Greater in the United States and Adjacent Areas and Magnitude 4.0 or Greater in the Rest of the World – Last 7 days
This list contains all earthquakes with magnitude greater than 2.5 located by the USGS and contributing networks in the last week (168 hours). Magnitudes 4 and above are in bold font. Magnitudes 6 and above are in red. (Some early events may be obscured by later ones on the maps.)
The most recent earthquakes are at the top of the list. Times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Click on the word “map” to see a ten-degree tall map displaying the earthquake. Click on an event’s “DATE” to get a detailed report.
If you cannot see the list, Click here to go to the top of the list.
Update time = Thu Sep 11 21:52:05 UTC 2008
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4.5 |
47.986 |
-128.481 |
10.0 |
OFF THE COAST OF WASHINGTON |
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3.1 |
19.336 |
-155.133 |
8.7 |
ISLAND OF HAWAII, HAWAII |
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5.6 |
-21.744 |
-178.544 |
591.9 |
FIJI REGION |
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5.7 |
-21.600 |
179.100 |
33.0 |
SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS |
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3.5 |
51.228 |
-177.089 |
0.2 |
ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA |
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2.9 |
36.652 |
-121.280 |
6.3 |
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA |
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2.7 |
36.654 |
-121.279 |
7.3 |
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA |
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5.4 |
32.915 |
105.613 |
10.0 |
SICHUAN-GANSU BORDER REGION, CHINA |
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5.1 |
-19.678 |
-69.034 |
107.1 |
TARAPACA, CHILE |
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3.4 |
32.701 |
-116.069 |
5.5 |
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA |
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3.0 |
52.804 |
-168.358 |
31.8 |
FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA |
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2.7 |
54.915 |
-161.674 |
34.7 |
ALASKA PENINSULA |
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4.6 |
31.001 |
103.660 |
10.0 |
EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA |
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3.1 |
54.062 |
-163.602 |
35.0 |
UNIMAK ISLAND REGION, ALASKA |
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2.8 |
19.106 |
-67.060 |
24.6 |
PUERTO RICO REGION |
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