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USA Edition | Today Is Saturday, May 25, 2013 |
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Socratic Warning
Newsroom Magazine
May Challenge
Or Demand
Critical Thinking
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The intellectual roots of critical thinking date back to the Greek philosophers.
Socrates discovered, by means of probing questions, that in the exchange of competing ideas, people sometimes make confident claims based on unreliable assumptions or failed logic.
Such arguments, he discovered, were either erroneous in fact, absent sufficient foundation, or failing in logic. Instead, most arguments were based on confused meanings, inadequate evidence, or contradictory beliefs.
Socrates' contributions to critical thinking were many -- for he established new ways to think about contentious issues in terms of the quality of assumptions, facts and logic.
Thus Socrates demonstrated that persons may have passion, or power or high position but yet be deeply confused and irrational.
Good journalism, like compelling debate, is based on a clear understanding of facts and the logical construction of one's argument. And that is what the Socratic Method and The Sophist Tradition is all about.
Evidentiary Approach
The Socratic Method is the preferred way to examine issues.In the Socratic mode of questioning, postulations, ideas or arguments are examined for their clarity and logical consistency by systematic analysis of facts, assumptions and logical methodology to support a conclusion.
Socratic analysis is accomplished by means of a series of probing questions that systematically examine the quality of an argument or conclusion.
Understanding the quality of information, argument or one's conclusions, is fundamental to critical thinking -- and the goal of critical editing.
Historical Foundation
Socrates’ practice was followed by the critical thinking of Plato (who recorded Socrates’ thought), Aristotle, and the Greek skeptics, all of whom emphasized that things are often very different from what they appear to be.Only the trained mind is prepared to see through the way things look to us on the surface (delusive appearances) to the way they really are beneath the surface (the deeper realities of life.)
From this ancient Greek tradition emerged the need, for anyone who aspired to understand the deeper realities, to think systematically, to trace implications broadly and deeply; for only thinking that is comprehensive, well-reasoned, and responsive to objections can take us beyond the surface.
Means Of Analysis
The common denominators of Critical Thinking requires, for example, the systematic monitoring of thought; that thinking, to be critical, must not be accepted at face value, but must be analyzed and assessed for its clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, and logical validity. All reasoning occurs within points of view and frames of reference.All reasoning proceeds from some goals, objectives, and has an informational base. All data, when used in reasoning, must be interpreted. That interpretation involves concepts, that concepts entail assumptions, and that all basic inferences in thought have implications, and each of these dimensions of thinking need to be monitored where problems of thinking can occur.
Questioning Chain
The result of the collective contribution of the history of critical thought is that the basic questions of Socrates can now be much more powerfully and focally framed.In every domain of human thought, and within every use of reasoning within any domain, it is now possible to question:
• ends and objectives
• the status and wording of questions
• the sources of information and fact
• the method and quality of information collection
• the mode of judgment and reasoning used
• the concepts that make that reasoning possible
• the assumptions that underlie concepts in use
• the implications that follow from their use
• the point of view or frame of reference within which reasoning takes place
Jeffrey Slee
Logician
| Browsing Engineering Staff Materials | Organized In Date Order | [ 18 items ] | |||
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Newsroom Magazine makes no assertion that either the Anonymous attribution, or the truthfulness of these materials are authentic. Our technical and engineering contributors find the technical aspects of these materials credible both in terms of the methods described and the potential for inconvenience to Internet users world-wide were such an attack to occur.
Newsroom Magazine Publisher Robert Butche
Washington
Criminal Attack Aimed At The Internet’s Root Nameservers
Root Nameservers
Distributed denial of service attacks on root nameservers are Internet events in which distributed denial-of-service attacks target one or more of the thirteen Domain Name System root nameservers.
The root nameservers are critical infrastructure components of the Internet, mapping domain names to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and other resource record (RR) data.
Attacks against the root nameservers can impact operation of the entire Internet, rather than specific websites.
Source: WikiPedia
The materials transcripted in this article were posted to an Internet sharing service February 12, 2012 by persons claiming to be, or affiliated with, the criminal hacking group known as Anonymous.
Newsroom Magazine makes no assertion that either the Anonymous attribution, or the truthfulness of these materials are authentic. Our technical and engineering contributors find the technical aspects of these materials credible both in terms of the methods described and the potential for inconvenience to Internet users world-wide were such an attack to occur.
Were such an attack to take place, as described, it would adversely impact global Internet traffic as long as it persisted.
Were such an attack to take place, as described, it would adversely impact global Internet traffic as long as it persisted.
The purpose of the statement attributed to Anonymous is to bring down the Internet by means of overwhelming the 13 root domain name to IP address servers that undergird all Internet traffic using URL address notation i.e. http://sitename.domain.
IP addressed traffic, used in most non-browser connections, or computer to computer communication, is not impacted by interruptions to the global DNS system.
DNS infrastructure attacks are not new. Two earlier attempts to bring down the global domain name server system in 2002 and 2007 produced mixed results.
Statement Attributed To Anonymous Hacker Group
In order to shut the Internet down, one thing is to be done. Down the 13 root DNS servers of the Internet. Those servers are as follow:
A 198.41.0.4
B 192.228.79.201
C 192.33.4.12
D 128.8.10.90
E 192.203.230.10
F 192.5.5.241
G 192.112.36.4
H 128.63.2.53
I 192.36.148.17
J 192.58.128.30
K 193.0.14.129
L 199.7.83.42
M 202.12.27.33By cutting these off the Internet, nobody will be able to perform a domain name lookup, thus, disabling the HTTP Internet, which is, after all, the most widely used function of the Web. Anybody entering “http://www.google.com” or ANY other url, will get an error page, thus, they will think the Internet is down, which is, close enough. Remember, this is a protest, we are not trying to ‘kill’ the Internet, we are only temporarily shutting it down where it hurts the most.
While some ISPs uses DNS caching, most are configured to use a low expire time for the cache, thus not being a valid failover solution in the case the root servers are down. It is mostly used for speed, not redundancy.
We have compiled a Reflective DNS Amplification DDoS tool to be used for this attack. It is based on AntiSec’s DHN, contains a few bugfix, a different dns list/target support and is a bit stripped down for speed.
The principle is simple; a flaw that uses forged UDP packets is to be used to trigger a rush of DNS queries all redirected and reflected to those 13 IPs. The flaw is as follow; since the UDP protocol allows it, we can change the source IP of the sender to our target, thus spoofing the source of the DNS query.
The DNS server will then respond to that query by sending the answer to the spoofed IP. Since the answer is always bigger than the query, the DNS answers will then flood the target ip. It is called an amplified because we can use small packets to generate large traffic. It is called reflective because we will not send the queries to the root name servers, instead, we will use a list of known vulnerable DNS servers which will attack the root servers for us.
DDoS request —> [Vulnerable DNS Server ] Normal client requests \ | ( Spoofed UDP requests | will redirect the answers | to the root name server ) | [ 13 root servers ] * BAM
Since the attack will be using static IP addresses, it will not rely on name server resolution, thus enabling us to keep the attack up even while the Internet is down. The very fact that nobody will be able to make new requests to use the Internet will slow down those who will try to stop the attack. It may only lasts one hour, maybe more, maybe even a few days. No matter what, it will be global. It will be known.
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download link in #opGlobalBlackout
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The tool is named “ramp” and stands for Reflective Amplification. It is located in the \ramp\ folder.
———-> Windows users
In order to run “ramp”, you will need to download and install these two applications;
WINPCAP DRIVER – http://www.winpcap.org/install/default.htm TOR – http://www.torproject.org/dist/vidalia-bundles/
The Winpcap driver is a standard library and the TOR client is used as a proxy client for using the TOR network.
It is also recommended to use a VPN, feel free to choose your own flavor of this.
To launch the tool, just execute “\ramp\launch.bat” and wait. The attack will start by itself.
———-> Linux users
The “ramp” linux client is located under the \ramp\linux\ folder and needs a working installation of python and scapy.
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“He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.” Benjamin Franklin
We know you wont’ listen. We know you won’t change. We know it’s because you don’t want to. We know it’s because you like it how it is. You bullied us into your delusion. We have seen you brutalize harmless old womans who were protesting for peace. We do not forget because we know you will only use that to start again. We know your true face. We know you will never stop. Neither are we. We know.
We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not Forgive. We do not Forget. You know who you are, Expect us.