Interesting bit of history is provided by the National Lancers on what Paul Revere was really up to on his ride:
Contrary to popular belief, Paul Revere did not set out on the night of April 18th, 1775 to alert the countryside to the impending British march. His specific goal was to ride to Lexington to warn two prominent Colonial leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, that their lives might be in danger. Having departed Boston by boat across the Back Bay, and narrowly averting notice by the H.M.S Somerset anchored there; he procured a strong, quick Yankee horse and rode west toward Lexington.
They go on to describe his capture by soldiers and how he told them that people were taking up arms, which led a heavily armed group of British soldiers to search for munitions in Lexington and eventually fire their guns into “fleeing crowds”.
I confess I did not make this post’s title up. I actually copied it from InformationWeek because I found it so funny. Is MI5 really going to e-mail a terrorist some alerts? How convenient for him/her…”Dear terrorist, this is an automated email message from MI5 just to let you know that our alert level is now Lavender, soon to be Magenta if you do not turn yourself in. This is your last e-mail alert.”
The United Kingdom’s Security Service — better known as MI5 — announced Tuesday that it will soon warn citizens of changes in the nation’s terrorist threat ranking via e-mail.
Oh, oh, I see now. But how will citizens know that it’s really MI5 writing to them? And how does this play into the hands of phishers who will send out warning email telling users to click on a link for terror alert information?
It appears the Russians (or at least Russian speaking users, perhaps someone who is a fan of Belfegor, coming from cedsl.simtel.ru:3128 (Oops 1.5.24 proxy) using 89.19.160.21) are trying the following Google query to find targets:
Looks like version 7.0.9 for Acrobat has been released today to address the PDF XSS flaw discussed last December and widely reported on January 3rd:
Adobe has provided an update to resolve a vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat. For more information, please refer to the APSB07-01 Security Bulletin. This cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in versions 7.0.8 and earlier of Adobe Reader and Acrobat could allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary JavaScript into a browser session.
Bad stuff if you use a browser and view PDFs…which is basically (almost) everyone who “browses the web”. Recently the debate had moved on to how the flaw allows remote attackers to browse files on your local system…