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MALPASS | Nukes and Your Future President

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I think we often forget just how terrifying nuclear weapons actually are. They may be fun to see used in films, but never in reality. The two bombs dropped Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only ever nuclear devices used in warfare and, as anyone who has taken high school history knows, the results were beyond catastrophic. Tens of thousands of people died from the blasts alone, with many tens of thousands more dying from radiation years later. Exact numbers are uncertain, but estimates state that about 80,000 and 40,000 people were killed by the explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.

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Council Votes to Contract Out Security for City Hall

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It only took one shoe flying towards Mayor Carolyn Peterson last spring to alert the Common Council that City Hall safety needs more careful attention.
Council members made repeated mention of taking “preventative measures” yesterday as they voted six to one in favor of hiring a security company to guard the entryways to City Hall. In a discussion that was extended into an off-the-record “executive session,” alderpersons debated the merits of contracting out security for a trial period extending until the end of March.

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Diagnosing Cornell's Security Breach

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At the present moment, Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) is slightly embarrassed to be dealing with a leak involving the personal records of 45,000 members of the Cornell community. Just slightly. Sadly, the pattern of how this breach happened is a common one seen in similar leaks. Some employee downloads highly sensitive data to an unsecured […]

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‘Bot’ Epidemic Infects Campus

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More than 1,000 Windows computers at Cornell fell victim to a widespread “bot” infection, the Cornell Information Technologies Security Office announced Friday evening through a University-wide e-mail alert.
A bot is a piece of malicious software, or “malware,” that can automatically perform various tasks that may range from downloading more malware to stealing passwords to attacking non-Cornell internet websites or servers.
None of the infected computers have shown observable change that can be seen by the user, according to Wyman Miles, manager of security engineering at the CIT security office. He explained that the lack of symptoms was probably a “deliberate attempt by the malware authors to conceal an infection for as long as possible.”