Apple is shutting down Beats Music for good on November 30th, at which point subscribers will have to move over to Apple Music if they want to keep using their music library and playlists. Beats Music hasn't been accepting new subscribers since around the time Apple Music went live on iOS, so its shut down has just been a matter of time. But now that Apple Music is available on Android, Apple seems to be ready to fully shift Beats Music users over to its new service. Beats Music provides a migration tool, which will let anyone who's still using it move everything they've already set up over to Apple Music. Those who don't will have their subscription canceled.

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After acquiring comics download platform Comixology last year, Amazon is again tightening its grasp on the digital comics industry. The retail giant announced a new deal last night with publisher Marvel that will allow Kindle owners to download single issues of the publisher's comics directly from Amazon's store. The deal makes more than 12,000 Marvel back issues — from Spider-Man to Star Wars — available on Kindle without requiring the use of the Comixology app.

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Doctor Who is getting his own Lego set. In a video today, Lego announced it will be producing an official "Doctor Who and Companions" set, based on an outpouring of support for a fan proposal made last year. The project isn't finalized yet, so there are no official design or availability details, but the company has promised to share that information on its YouTube channel later this year. The current pictures are from a fan version designed by gaming artist Andrew Clark, showing classic Doctor Who staples like the Cybermen and K-9 alongside more recent villains like the Weeping Angels. It's still unclear if any of Clark's models will survive to the final product.

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This post is available in Spanish (Este post está disponible en español).

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One of our clients was being attacked by a layer-7 DDoS attack for more than a week. The attack was generating around 5,000 HTTP requests per second, which took his site and server down. It also caused his hosting company to suspend his server for “ToS violation”. Yes, some hosting companies consider a ToS violation if you are suffering a DDoS. It is mostly an excuse to protect their networks, but very annoying for someone victim of an attack.

After a week of pain, he found our Website Firewall (WAF) product, the rest as they say is history. We were able to quickly block the attack and restore his site to normal operations. If that was all that there was to the story, then many would find this to be a very uninteresting story.

A Diamond in the Ruff

As is customary in our lab, we began analyzing the attack to see if there was anything else we could learn. That is when we noticed something curious, the IP addresses hitting the server were always constant.

We did some operating system identification (using p0f) and the attack was coming mostly from web servers running on Windows and Linux:

This is a bit unusual, most layer-7 DDoS attacks leverage compromised desktops and very few of them actually run on Linux. We also started checking the banners of these IPs and we saw a variety of web servers, but the majority of them were running Apache:

There were also a number of other IP addresses that were not displaying the server banner (or too slow to respond to our HTTP queries). This is the breakdown of the most used web servers on the IP addresses attacking our client:

These were but a subset of the most active, in total we found close to 2,000 different IP addresses causing the damage (each one hitting the server a few times per second).

As far as location, most of them were coming from China, Taiwan and Thailand:

Another interesting point is that more than 300 of them were using “AppServ Open Project” (version 2.5.9 or 2.5.10), which unfortunately bundles an old and outdated version of PHPMyAdmin.

Compromised Web Servers

From what we could gather, it seems someone created a bot net of compromised web servers that are running AppServ, outdated Apache, outdated IIS and other vulnerable software (e.g., PHPMyadmin).

This setup gives the attackers good power when attacking sites as they remain anonymous behind proxies. In this scenarios, they specifically focused on Layer 7 HTTP flood attacks, but it could have as easily been DNS application, an SSDP attack or any number of the available options when it comes to DDoS.

We will be contacting the network/hosts responsible for them to see if we can get them patched or shut down.

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If your are a victim of a DDoS attack and need help, let us know, we’d love to help, you can start here.

[Originally published December 17, 2009.]

Dear Santa:

How does my lord? I am fine. I believe ’tis possible you did not receive my wish list last year, or that it fell into unsavory hands and was rudely tampered with before reaching you, as all you brought me was a chastity belt and some granny underpants. I pray that this one flies to you untainted since this year hath really sucked. I wish for the following:

— He’s Just Not That Into You (book and DVD)

— “All About Me” Lock and Key Diary

— National Geographic Flower and Leaf Pressing Kit

— Coastal Deluxe Automatic Inflatable Life Vest

Fingers crossed,
Ophelia

Dear Santa,

The trifles you brought me last year meant absolutely nothing. What’s the point of gifts when everything is falling to shit all around you? Why didn’t you steal the family account information I left out for you last year? That would have meant something.

Do you ever feel like everything is just a big conspiracy? Do you ever want to hurl yourself out of your sled and fall down, down, down onto the cold hard street below?

Look out for the slings and arrows.

— Hamlet

Hail, Santa, King of the Elves!

Many thanks for the male-enhancement products you brought me last year. But as my wife has since forsworn me, I will not be needing them again. Hence, I devote this year’s list to her Christmas wishes. She demands the following items:

— A gift certificate for LATTICE eyelash treatment

— A Wonderbra (size: 36D; color: Midnight Animal)

— Arctic-raised Reindeer Pâté

— “Buns of Steel” DVD

— Dolce & Gabbana Bling Sunglasses

— One ticket to Barack Obama’s 2010 New Year’s Day Brunch [or another exclusive political event]

Santa, may I be frank? My Lady says that if she does not receive all of these anon, she will fly into a murderous rage. Just thought you should know.

— Macbeth

P.S. If you find a posset of cocoa labeled “For Santa,” do not drink it.

Dear Santa, sweet, sweet Santa:

This Christmas, we wish for nothing more than peace, love, and understanding (LOL). We pray that you will fly like a nimble-pinioned dove to bring our parents copies of Chicken Soup for the Vengeful Soul. And perchance a little Valium for Lady Capulet?

Should Time slow her swift-footed pace, and night’s cloak agree to hide you, do you think maybe you could bring us some stuff too?

— Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” video and poster.

— DVD of The Secret Life of the American Teenager (Season 3)

— Quick-Escape Portable Ladder

— Motorola IMfree Personal Instant Messenger

— Plethysmograph Pulse Recognition Processor

xoxoxoxoxo,
Romeo and Juliet

Dear Santa,

Everyone says you don’t exist, but I believe in you. We share many a talent, my jolly friend: I, too, am a merry wanderer of the night, and sometime fit I into tiny spaces to break into people’s homes. I don’t leave gifts (unless you count that turd I left in Mistress Quickly’s ale pot Monday last). I can steal most of the stuff I desire, but I need you, O round sprite of the night, to gather me these two things:

— An Indian boy (Not for me, it’s a present for my boss. Must be authentic, and not a cheap Chinese knock-off.)

— A meeting with a TV executive. I have a rollicking idea for a show: “2 1/2 Pucks.” It’s about me, Wolfgang Puck, and that elfin young man from Real World: San Francisco. We would all live together in a loft in the Meat Packing District. Hilarity ensues.

In return for these gifts, I will happily humiliate your wife (if that type of thing amuseth you).

— Puck

Dear Santa:

You’re probably thinking about skipping my palace this year since I’m Queen of Egypt, but if you really love me you’ll prove it by showing up. I mean, it’s not like I have everything. Do you know how many messengers I’ve had to kill this year just to get some good news around here? And if I want a basket of asps, do you think I just have one lying around? I’m so sick and tired of being judged by old white guys like you thinking, “Oh, she’s so spoiled and so beautiful and such a big ol’ whore bag. It’s not like she needs anything.” Well I got news for you, Santa. There’s a real person inside this gorgeous body, and she has real feelings. I’m lonely, okay? L-O-N-E-L-Y. And depressed. You know what? Fuck it. If you can’t even bother to come and check up on me, then you can just screw yourself and the sleigh you rode in on. I’m going to kill myself right now. Okay, I just did it. I’m dead. Are you happy? You depressed me so much that I’m dead. Seriously. Nice going, old man.

— Cleopatra

P.S. In case you decide to come to my funeral, maybe you could bring me some Bonne Bell Lipsmackers to take with me to the Underworld.

Santa!

I had this crazy dream that I ate your reindeer. But then this morning your face appeared in a puddle of maple syrup. So I licked you up.

— Falstaff

A funny thing happened this morning. Yahoo kicked out the latest update to its already pretty sweet Flickr for iPhone app and, in the process, ensnared me in its growing population of users. The most immediate new tweak in Flickr 2.20.1134 is the addition of live filters, allowing you to preview the post-processing effect before it's actually applied. This was a feature that Instagram used to have, and it's one that many of its users have missed since it was unceremoniously yanked away.

Flickr is now the go-to app for anyone looking for a big photography community and a full suite of filter options. The stock filters provided in the new app are an improvement on the old set, but Yahoo hasn't stopped there and has added customization...

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Though recent attention paid to Yahoo often focuses on its refreshes of tired products or its famous CEO, Marissa Mayer, the easily forgotten story is that the site is still really freaking popular.

Yahoo properties got more unique U.S. visitors than any other company’s in July, according to comScore. They had 196.6 million, compared to 192.3 million for previous leader Google.

What’s more, Yahoo’s numbers didn’t include the new Yahoo-owned Tumblr, which came in 28th place.

Yahoo’s ascendance was first pointed out today at Marketing Land, by Greg Sterling, who theorized that it was the first time since 2008 that Yahoo had been in the top spot.

However, comScore VP Andrew Lipsman said that Yahoo had taken first place as recently as May 2011. He noted that Yahoo and Google have been “very close for the past several months.” In June, Google was ahead by less than four million.

But don’t get too excited, Yahoo fans. These Web traffic stats don’t include the all-important category of mobile.

Lipsman said it’s quite possible that Google will regain the top spot in upcoming comScore multi-platform rankings, given how strong the company is on phones.

Yahoo spokeswoman Anne Espiritu said the company doesn’t comment on third-party metrics; Google has not gotten back with a comment.

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Pixar famously scatters easter eggs throughout its films that point to the movies that came before them and to the movies that are coming next. It seems like a way for the always-charming movie studio to have a little bit of fun with its fans — but what if those easter eggs were more than just casual connections? One theory suggests just that by compiling a single master narrative through all of Pixar's feature films, from the first Toy Story through Monsters University.

In the theory, published Thursday by blogger Jon Negroni, Pixar's films fall into roughly three groups within the same universe: first are films with intelligent animals, second are films with complex machines, and third are films in an apocalyptic future filled...

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If you've ever wanted a tiny figurine of yourself, a studio based in Hamburg, Germany by the name of TWINKIND can now make your dreams come true. The creative minds at TWINKIND have embarked on an ambitious project that involves 3D printing at a commercial level, allowing interested customers to take part in a revolutionary process that could very well make pictures and picture frames obsolete.

People willing to participate and purchase a scale model of themselves (starting at 225 euros), each photorealistic sculpture reaching anywhere from 6 to 14 inches in height, are invited to have a full body scan. The process, which uses a multi-camera 3D scanning system, is not invasive or harmful to the body at all though. Participants can pose in any way they choose and it only takes a few seconds. Once the quick scan is complete, the digital data is then translated and transformed into a tiny model made of polymer plastic powder.

For any one in Hamburg that's interested, there is currently a pop-up studio that's accepting customers through appointments. According to the company's website, the figurines are said to take approximately 2-5 weeks to complete due to "high demand and an uncompromised technical process."

TWINKIND website
via [CollabCubed]

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing's aptly titled Phoenix soars above viewers, made from the remnants of old construction sites in China. The large-scale sculptural installation consists of two massive birds, each comprised of countless materials that include steel beams, hard hats, chains, pipes, tanks, tools, and other remnants from the migrant laborers who worked on the urban construction sites. The project is the result of two years of collection and assembly.

Xu's enormous creations, weighing 12 tons and measuring 90 and 100 feet in length, are sculptural representations of cultural evolution and the lives of those who have given their energy and strength to spark a cultural and architectural change in China. The project states: "At once fierce and strangely beautiful, the mythic Phoenixes bear witness to the complex interconnection between labor, history, commercial development, and the rapid accumulation of wealth in today’s China."

Phoenix is currently on display, for the first time ever outside of China, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) through October 27, 2013.

Photo credit: Hideo Sakata/MASS MoCA
Xu Bing website
via [farewell kingdom, Junkculture]

Pixar is diving into its back catalog of beloved characters for a new movie set to hit theaters November 25, 2015. Finding Dory, the sequel to 2003's Oscar-winning Finding Nemo, will center on the loquacious, memory-deficient Blue Tang fish supporting character voiced by Ellen DeGeneres. The story will focus on reuniting Dory, who was seen swimming alone in the original film, with her loved ones. DeGeneres will return as the voice of Dory and Andrew Stanton will resume directing duties. Albert Brooks was previously confirmed back onboard, too, reprising his role as the voice of Marlin.

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(I am working a morning shift at a cafe. We are serving breakfast. A little boy and his mother enter the cafe.)

Me: “So, what will it be?”

Child: “I WISH TO DEVOUR THE UNBORN.”

(There is a sudden silence and everyone turns to look. The mother looks very embarrassed.)

Mother: “Eggs… he would like some eggs…”