Blogevolve.com is a wonderful community blogsite. Not one of the big sites, but one with dedicated members who are having to battle against the curse of the present time - the sploggers! I have nothing against commercial blogs as long as it is obvious the site is a commercial site and not pretending to be a community site and out to confuse unwitting members like the sploggers do. A couple of links are all you really need on your sites, three at the most. i usually have only one - the link to where I gained the informtion initially , or to a story which is explanatory in more depth.
So I invite you to come on over for a visit some time; read a few posts and perhaps join up and be part of the community and comment on other posts within. We would love your contribution on whatever subject yu wish, and from whatever country you reside in. Just remember please, write in English!
Kiaora
http://blogevolve.com/blog/huttriver12
Facebook, Twitter disrupted by hackers attacking lone blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Suspicions suggest the hackers were from Russia; this has not been confirmed as yet!
The outage that knocked Twitter offline for hours has been allegedly traced to an attack on a lone blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia - known as "Cyxymu".
Twitter crashed because of a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers command scores of computers toward a single site at the same time to prevent legitimate traffic from getting through.
The attack was targeted at a blogger who goes by "Cyxymu" - the name of a town in Georgia - on several websites, including Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal.
But they could have just as well targeted Twitter itself. That's because the effects were the same whether the excess traffic went to the twitter home page or to the page for Cyxymu at twitter. Same with Facebook and LiveJournal.
Kazuhiro Gomi, chief technology officer for NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services, which hosts Twitter's service said the attacking computers were located around the world and the source of the attacks was not known.
The attacks seemed to come in two waves:
The first was a spam campaign consisting of emails with links back to posts by Cyxymu. This drove some traffic to the blogger's postings on various social-networking sites, possibly to disparage him as the source of the spam.
The second and more destructive phase consisted of the denial-of-service attack, which attacked the sites' servers by sending it lots of junk requests - presumably to prevent people from reading his viewpoints.
It would have been much harder for the perpetrators of the attacks to isolate Cyxymu's accounts on each social-networking site and shut it down. To do that, they would have needed to access his password by guessing it or somehow luring him into giving it out.
The blunt approach was easier - and more damaging.
Netsafe executive director Martin Cocker told the Weekend Herald that websites run from New Zealand were vulnerable to attacks such as those that heavily disrupted Twitter and Facebook.
Users of the social networking sites faced outages or delays after suspected "denial-of-service" attacks - in which hackers overwhelm a website's servers with communications requests - leaving millions unable to carry out their daily routines.
The attacks, which came a month after the White House website was targeted in a similar online assault, have underscored the vulnerability of fast-growing networking sites that have been heralded as powerful new political tools.
Mr Cocker said many denial-of-service attacks occurred every day, but most were launched by people without the means to do any real damage.
"A denial-of-service attack is literally bringing the website down ... as opposed to hacking a website trying to steal something from it.
Acknowledgements: Weekend Herald.
It is raining frozen cats and dogs here in New Zealand. We are right in the middle of our winter; a particularly wet and cold one this year. It is raining from one end of the country to the other. It is not the time of year for taking holidays. Snow is down to low altitudes in the high country and is very apparent too in the low temperatures being recorded.
Well, after having probably our best summer in a decade we can't be too disappointed I guess. I can stand the cold, and the rain too, but not together I'm afraid. The weather bombs have been destructive at times.
The saving grace is that when things start to deterioate in the northern hemisphere, they begin to improve here as well. Its a case of putting on some more warm clothes, an extra blanket or two and donning our wet weather gear.
Winter it may well be, but for the next couple of weeks our All Blacks international rugby team will be playing in the afternoons on hard grounds, warm weather in the South African republic, after wet nights here in New Zealand. The downside is we have to get up early in the wee small hours of Sunday mornings here.
http://blogevolve.com/blog/huttriver12
First three three Swine Flu fatalities recorded in New Zealand...
The first three fatalities of Swine Flu in New Zealand have been confirmed. They were an eight year old girl from Wellington; a 19 year old young man from Hamilton; and a 42 year old man from Christchurch. A geographical and age spread. Just the tip of the iceberg at this stage.
They all had underlying medical conditions; the young girl having been hospitalised with the virus. To date 945 cases of the H1N1 Influenza had been confirmed in NZ, but the real figure could be ten to twenty times that figure. Many may have had it and had recovered without actually knowing it.
For most New Zealanders this would prove to be a mild illness - about 40 people a year die from the seasonal influenza, which this year has been described as quite nasty.
The World Health Organisation(WHO)estimates there will be 2% severe illnesses or fatalities in cases worldwide.
The Swine Flu could be around for some time and spread throughout the community. Those with underlying illnesses or conditions such as asthma, could be at greater risk; they should seek immediate medical help if they became ill, medical authorities have stated.
There is no doubt at all that fatality figures will increase during this pandemic; those at risk should take care and see their doctors if feeling at all unwell.
