Tag Archives: America

[Muzaq] Vinyl Sales Still Increasing – Even in the U.S.

Although the widespread availability of MP3s in the U.S. leaded to a decrease in CD sales, the sales of vinyls are still increasing thru the last years. In 2011 vinyl sales went 37% up in the U.S.

In Germany the situation is different. The CD still gets sold very well. Market researchers suspect that the complicated copyright situation in Germany is responsible for legal mass downloads being established much slower than in the U.S.

The video is bilingual german/english. Enjoy.

 

[WTF] Did Stuxnet Sabotage Iran’s Nuclear Facilities?

Newspapers are full of speculations and details about this unique piece of software code, that obviously is a work by a government.Stuxnet used 4-zero-day exploits to infect computer networks running with Microsoft Windows. It was compatible to Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The Register writes:

(..) the Stuxnet worm was programmed to probe the hosts it infected for extremely specific settings. Unless it identified the hardware fingerprint it was looking for in industrial software systems made by Siemens, it remained largely dormant.

Experts say the quality of code is very sophisticated, there are nearly no side effects. It is estimated that the costs of the development of a virus of that quality goes into the millions of dollars. It also shows a very detailed knowledge of the attacked facilities.

There are some indications that Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz were the target of that virus.

The downside is we suspect this is the beginning of large scale cyber attacks. I don’t think that western Nulear Facilities are safe from such attacks. Let’s all hope the best. This virus is simply a nightmare.

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