I’ve been trying to get to Wonderfest in Japan for over ten years now and have been blocked for a number of reasons. Still I am amazed at the sculpting level of some of the garage kit makers year after year.
Here’s some examples from this year’s winter wonderfest. All from Nekomagic.com
The show runners have set up special licensing deals with the anime producers so that figures made from anime can be made and sold without special licensing deals. So many of the figures made and sold at these shows are anime related. Many others are original work. This is only a sample of the works at a typical Wonder Festival.
This is a sort of search and discover newsletter of my findings of things that may relate to technology in one way or another. It might be the latest gosh wow tech, it might be something as old of humanity. It might relate to science large or small. It might be art for art’s sake. Or somebody just doing something funky. Because I think that technology is just the representation of human creativity and breaking boundaries. So I’m certainly not going to place boundaries here except that it won’t be the same old, same old. So almost no gadgets or yacking about the latest phone or whatever, unless of course it involves taking them apart or destroying them in unusual ways. Or putting them to work in imaginative ways that most people won’t even think of. So buckle up, it’s going to be a fun ride.
This week: lathe work, Lego Porsche crash test, Human bombs dropped from a B17 and more.
This is a post series on cybercrime. For more posts click here or the cybercrime tag below.
Apparently the French police have realized the vulnerability of ransomware, the fact that the extortionists have to communicate with their victims and since the French do not have the vested interest in maintaining the TOR network they went for the actual TOR hardware.
WannaCry communicates with a command and control server hosted on the Dark Web, on a .onion address. Aeris suspects his servers were used as first hops in this connection, hence the reason police seized his property, hosted via French hosting provider Online SAS.
Most Tor servers are configured to log very few details, such as uptime and status metrics, so to safeguard the privacy of its users. Unless Aeris made customizations to default configs, French police have no chance of finding any useful information on the seized servers.
Tens of Tor servers disappeared on the same weekend
In the media storm caused by the wave of WannaCry attacks, this small incident went unreported outside of French media. Aeris also confirmed the seizing of his servers on Twitter.
The investigation is led by France’s cyber-crime investigation unit OCLCTIC (L’Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication).
The activist pointed out that tens of other Tor nodes in France disappeared over the same weekend. In a private conversation with Bleeping Computer, the activist shared a list of 30 servers he is currently investigating regarding these mysterious disappearances.
As the Bleeping Computer article pointed out, seizing the hardware isn’t going to do the French much good once the servers are cut from the TOR network. On the other hand, with 30 odd nodes gone just in France, and the possibility that the French could go after other nodes in the EU, it could be that the TOR network in the EU will be essentially shut down.
The people at TOR have taken a “we’re not responsible” take on ransomware and attempted to hide behind common carrier laws to prevent the decriminalization and exposure of the people using the network for criminal means. It may be that the Wannacry attack was the last straw for many law enforcement agencies.
For anybody wanting to know how to catch people on TOR.
JMorThis is a sort of search and discover newsletter of my findings of things that may relate to technology in one way or another. It might be the latest gosh wow tech, it might be something as old of humanity. It might relate to science large or small. It might be art for art’s sake. Or somebody just doing something funky. Because I think that technology is just the representation of human creativity and breaking boundaries. So I’m certainly not going to place boundaries here except that it won’t be the same old, same old. So almost no gadgets or yacking about the latest phone or whatever, unless of course it involves taking them apart or destroying them in unusual ways. Or putting them to work in imaginative ways that most people won’t even think of. So buckle up, it’s going to be a fun ride.
This week, the army’s side arms, a truck stuck under a bridge in Tokyo, 1984 E-mail, how fast can a fidget spinner spin before it tears itself apart and more.
I wasn’t going to write about SF this week, but this showed up. Vox posted some commentary about the recent BookExpo in NYC, Apparently the convention is shrinking.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre | The falcon cannot hear the falconer | Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold | Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world | The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere | The ceremony of innocence is drowned | The best lack all conviction, while the worst | Are full of passionate intensity. -- W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
