Google Talk Worm Origin Found?

"Hey check out this video! http://tinyurl.com/xyz,"; says an old friend by Google Talk IM. Well sure, you think, I'd love to see a video from you - it's been a long time! Maybe you got an IM like that this afternoon, too. Maybe you got six.

There's nothing wrong with clicking on such a link, but when the site that loads as a result, Viddyho.com, asks for your Google Talk username and password in order to view the video - then you should know that trouble is afoot. Surprisingly, a whole lot of tech savvy people fell for it today. Update: The Harvard Crimson says it has unearthed the person responsible for the Viddyho worm.

Daniel Carroll reported tonight on the Harvard Crimson newspaper's site that he did a little tracing backwards, further than other reporters on the story had, and found that a San Franciscan named Hoan Ton-That appears to be responsible for the site that was harvesting the user credentials of worm victims. Ton-That's web hosting account has been suspended, Carroll reports that he's learned from the company. The alleged author of the worm didn't respond to his requests for comment but has a twitter account here and apparently was in this author's home town of Portland, Oregon just last week. (We were not plotting the attack together, I swear.) Ton-That's Twitter bio reads: "Anarcho-Transexual Afro-Chicano American Feminist Studies Major" - which sounds like either an immature joke or a pretty bad ass bio to us.

The Tech Issues

We do think there are some big issues to discuss here, too, though.

The fact that many otherwise tech savvy people are falling for this trap shows that legitimate experiments in user authentication (like OpenID) still have a whole lot of explaining to do and secure APIs need more adoption. This could just as easily have been Facebook or Twitter that hijacked your Google Talk account - we give them our passwords and just trust that they won't.

Satellite Collision Creates Dangerous Debris

 

The satellite collision that destroyed two U.S. and Russian orbiters on January 10, 2009, added more than 500 bits of debris to the roughly 18,000 pieces of known space junk orbiting Earth (shown in an artist's conception).

The collision occurred about 491 miles (790 kilometers) over Siberia, putting most of the debris well above the path of the International Space Station, which circles about 220 miles (354 kilometers) above the Earth. Although it will take a few days to get a complete picture of the debris field, NASA officials calculate that the crash would have thrown only a very small number of objects in the space station's direction.

"There are actually debris from this event which we believe are going through the space station's altitude already," NASA's Nicholas Johnson told CBS News, but the risk to the station is very small.

 

Courtesy: NGC

New Google Ocean Takes Google Earth Beyond the "Dirt"

Exploring the oceans no longer requires a wetsuit.

Ocean in Google Earth, which launched today, builds on the free, popular 3-D mapping software Google Earth by allowing users to navigate underwater in unprecedented clarity.

New "layers" to the satellite-based software include topographic maps of the seafloor; locations of shipwrecks and algal blooms; and even maps of the tiny phytoplankton that provide the bulk of the ocean's food chain.

Within the layers, users can explore multimedia features that combine data and maps with videos, quizzes, and other interactives.

The new fish-eye view—accessible via a free upgrade—aims to provide a public platform for users to talk about the oceans, said John Hanke, director of Geo Products at Google.

"It really is a means... [of] raising geographical awareness of oceans and … the pressures that are being put on life in the ocean," he added.

Into the Blue

The idea first came to well-known marine biologist Sylvia Earle at a conference in Madrid a few years ago, when she addressed Hanke during a presentation.

"I just blurted it out," Earle, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, recalled. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)

"I said, I hope someday, John, you'll finish [Google Earth]. You've done a great job with the dirt, but there's all that water out there—the world is blue."

Seventy-two percent of the Earth is covered by oceans.

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Courtesy: NGC