pspan class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;"img alt="DoD_nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/DoD_nov_08.jpg" width="141" height="141" class="mt-image-center" style="text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;" //spanA rapidly spreading network worm, known as Agent BTZ, has prompted the U.S. army to put the use of USB drives and all removable data storage devices on hold temporarily, according to a href="http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/army-bans-usb-d.html"Wired's Noah Shachtman/a.br / br / Given the worm is based on a href="http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-071111-0646-99tabid=2"SillyFDC/a, which has been around for several years and has a low risk factor, the question has to be asked: is this over-kill by the Defense Department?/p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12685amp;cb=12685' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12685amp;n=12685' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pAccording to the report, Agent BTZ spreads by copying itself to USB drives and the like, so that when the drive is inserted into another computer, the worm replicates in a never ending cycle - every time a new drive is detected./p pUSB drives, as well as all removable storage devices, can run a program automatically on your machine based on the computer's configuration./p pWhile Autorun is featured in Windows OS as a convenience, strongyou do have the option of disabling it/strong, particularly as an unfortunate side effect can be the loading and executing of programs on your PC without your knowledge./p h2Autorun and AutoPlay/h2 pThere seems to be a little confusion about the differences between AutoPlay and Autorun so we've defined them here:/p pstrongAutoPlay/strong/p pAutoPlay is a Windows feature that lets you choose which program to use to start different kinds of media. You can change AutoPlay settings for each media type./p pstrongAutorun/strong/p pAutorun is a technology used to start any program automatically when you insert various media into your computer. While different from AutoPlay, the result is typically the same: when inserted, a specific program on the external device runs automatically./p pWhile you cannot modify the Autorun.inf file on the external device you plug into your machine, you can stop it from executing on your computer by modifying your registry./p pTo modify the registry setting, Microsoft has set up a page to help you determine which updates you will need, and then offers step by step instructions on how to disable Autorun. You can find it a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953252/en-us?spid=11737sid=353"here/a. /p pEven though disabling of Autorun seems a relatively painless process, clearly it isn't enough to soothe the Defense Department or security experts./p pShachtman, in his Wired article asked Ryan Olson, director of rapid response for iDefense whether banning external devices was "a bit of over-kill," and received the answer "I don't know." Although, Olson did offer: "The USB ban emshould/em be effective in stopping the worm."/p pPerhaps the Defense Department should have taken its lead from what has been drummed into home computer users over the years; that is, a href="http://www.us-cert.gov/current/#malicious_code_spreading_through_usb"use anti-virus software and keep your definitions up to date/a./p pWhat do you think?/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dod_protects_us_but_who_protec.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ArQ95HqAo0BtJprl37GEKpKCCm4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ArQ95HqAo0BtJprl37GEKpKCCm4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=6pvtSHxR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=8OmXPyC7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=WRX1pYd9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=WRX1pYd9" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ir1s7X1F"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ir1s7X1F" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=7w45iphL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=7w45iphL" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=AkqtuMyT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=StfnjoY0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/TY-y2YuKNO8" height="1" width="1"/

Publication Date: 2008 Nov 19 PMID: 19020047br/Authors: Ramot, D. - Macinnis, B. L. - Lee, H. C. - Goodman, M. B.br/Journal: J Neuroscibr/br/Many biochemical networks are robust to variations in network or stimulus parameters. Although robustness is considered an important design principle of such networks, it is not known whether this principle also applies to higher-level biological processes such as animal behavior. In thermal gradients, Caenorhabditis elegans uses thermotaxis to bias its movement along the direction of the gradient. Here we develop a detailed, quantitative map of C. elegans thermotaxis and use these data to derive a computational model of thermotaxis in the soil, a natural environment of C. elegans. This computational analysis indicates that thermotaxis enables animals to avoid temperatures at which they cannot reproduce, to limit excursions from their adapted temperature, and to remain relatively close to the surface of the soil, where oxygen is abundant. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that this mechanism is robust to large variations in the parameters governing both worm locomotion and temperature fluctuations in the soil. We suggest that, similar to biochemical networks, animals evolve behavioral strategies that are robust, rather than strategies that rely on fine tuning of specific behavioral parameters.br/br/post to: a href = http://www.citeulike.org/posturl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3DPubMed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26list_uids%3D19020047title=Entrez+PubmedCiteULike/a

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An anonymous reader writes "The Pentagon has suffered from a cyber attack so alarming that it has taken the unprecedented step of banning the use of external hardware devices, such as flash drives and DVDs [...] The attack came in the form of a global virus or worm that is spreading rapidly throughout a number of military networks."pa href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/21/201240amp;from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/11/21/201240"/a/ppa href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/21/201240amp;from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CqtunHh9NcR1DSPZ9_QThfbqrwQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CqtunHh9NcR1DSPZ9_QThfbqrwQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/DG4cYM0Hz0c" height="1" width="1"/

img src="http://m1.cdn.spikedhumor.com/1/168608_worm_in_her_brain_1.jpg" align="right" border="0" width="175" height="150" alt="Wash Your Hands!" vspace="4" hspace="4" /pWorm where it shouldn`t be.hrRated strong4.6841/strong / 5 | 414 views | a href="http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/168608/Wash-Your-Hands.html"12 comments/abr//ppa href="http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/168608/Wash-Your-Hands.html"strongClick here to watch the video/strong/abr/Submitted By: a href="http://www.spikedhumor.com/Profile.aspx?userid=98090"masterbiepo/abr/Tags: a href="http://www.spikedhumor.com/Default.aspx?p=searchtag=truequery=wash"wash/a a href="http://www.spikedhumor.com/Default.aspx?p=searchtag=truequery=hands"hands/a a href="http://www.spikedhumor.com/Default.aspx?p=searchtag=truequery=worm"worm/adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Spikedhumor?a=AQeyN"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Spikedhumor?i=AQeyN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Spikedhumor/~4/461437260" height="1" width="1"/