Adding to the hype is the claim that almost all machines running TCP can be attacked, regardless of the vendor.  Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, all manner of embedded devices, etc., are all supposedly vulnerable.

It seems like a “vulnerability” like this (that is, one that will completely cripple the Internet) is announced once a year.  A few details[t2.fi] are released to the media that make the vulnerability sound really scary in an effort to hype the conference where the full details are going to be discussed (which, in this case, is “T2 ‘08″ in Helsinki, Finland).

Call me a skeptic, but these usually turn out to be false.  The sallacious details released to the media are mere propaganda items to increase interest.  This particular vulnerability will probably turn out to be a non-issue except on your local network, which should be a (relatively) trustworthy area, anyway.

To sum it up: don’t go jumping out of a window yet.

Messr. Harris at The Times either has no idea what he’s writing about or owns a ton of stock in Cisco or Juniper. Or perhaps both. The following line from the article is particularly ridiculous:

If, for example, Google wants to support IPv6, it will need to build a whole new IPv6 web service, complete with new domain names, servers and bandwidth.

Hogwash, my good chap! The only bloody thing good ol’ Google will need to do is get IPv6 addresses from its ISPs. Its servers undoubtedly already support IPv6 as do almost all recent Un*x and Windows OSes (Linux and Mac OSX included). All Google will have to do is tell its servers what each one’s IPv6 address is and everything will work just the same as it has. No need for a new domain name, new servers, or new bandwidth. And certainly not any new code for their web services.

In fact, what I said above isn’t even necessarily true: Google doesn’t need to get an IPv6 address from its ISPs because there is an IPv6 prefix[wikipedia.com] already reserved for all the old IPv4 addresses. In essence, if you have an IPv4 address, you already have an IPv6 address that will route to all other IPv6 addresses–if only your upstream ISPs supported IPv6.

I tend to believe that Google has already prepared for this. I’m betting that their servers are already configured for IPv6. Their routers are probably configured for IPv6. Google might even have pure IPv6 connections to the Internet already. It’s hard for me to confirm my suspicions, though, because I don’t have a pure IPv6 connection to the Internet although I could setup something like 6to4[wikipedia.com].

Messr. Harris pumps the same old doom-and-gloom line that has been going around since the mid-1990s. Yes, friends, back when IPv6 was started the “experts” were prediciting we would run out of IPv4 addresses within a few years. Over a decade later, the new “experts” are predicting another three years.

Here’s a prediction: NASA will land men on Mars before IPv6 makes its way down to the home user, and I’m talking about his Cable/DSL router, not his actual PC.

Still, Facebook is beginning to get cluttered and annoying thanks to the proliferation of extensions with their constant annoying questions. For the last time, I do NOT WANT TO PLAY RISK VIA FACEBOOK!!! Get a life, buy the board game, gather up some friends, and freaking talk to another person tête-à-tête!!

This service sounds very useful and is likely to be used by many people. My concern is that as the diversity and sensitivity of data Google is storing increases, so does it’s attractiveness as a target for those with malicious intent. According to Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search services and user experience, the service involves an additional layer of security and the data is stored separately from Google’s other data. Mayer stated that, “We certainly have put in place the foremost privacy policy[google.com] that we could construct.” We all hope so!

Whew…for a second there I thought my generation was going to be banned from working! It’s not like that would make that many of us angry…just don’t take away our Internets!!! You don’t want us to get angry!

So these networks are not air-gapped, the only foolproof way to prevent one network from talking to another. To make matters worse, it seems that the administrative network is accessible via Wi-Fi (for maintenance personnel), particularly while the aircraft is sitting at the gate. So a sufficiently skilled 16-year-old Johnny Q. Hacker could sit comfortably in an airport terminal with his laptop and attempt to hack into a 787’s administrative network.

I hope they are using WPA2 with AES encryption and rolling keys…

While people are undoubtedly interested in accessing this type of content on-demand over the Internet, I wonder whether Wal-Mart’s move indicates an unwillingness in consumers to pay for such services. It will be interesting to see whether Apple has better success with their movie rentals.

In other news, dozens of RIAA and MPAA execs have been found cowering in the fetal position in the corner of their offices…