#and the oldest version i could find is from 2014 and it mentioned the name thing

[sonknuxadow]

you sent me down the Sonic name rabbit hole and the misinformation is even more stupid then originally intended.

Archie Sonics Middle name being Maurice had only appeared twice in comic form, once as a definite joke and once as a dubious joke (hard to say if it was serious since it doubled as a throw back joke) but Maurice was kinda an inside joke for the most part and they even poked fun at it in one of the Sonic Prime adverts.

Olgilvie is where it gets stupid. Sonics 'first name' was never given in canon but was allegedly posted on Penders own website, saying that he intended it to be his first name but never actually applied it. I say allegedly because finding actual proof is basically impossible. There's no screenshots of the website, Penders never posted about it on social media and there doesn't appear to be any interviews with Penders saying so either. It is entirely possible that this was just a made up rumour/someones personal head canon posted on a mid 90s forum that spun out of control.

yeah i definitely think his middle name being maurice was just a joke at first and it was only mentioned by the characters themselves twice that i remember, but there were also multiple character profiles for sonic that mentioned his middle name being maurice and/or sonic not being his birth name, so it Was intended to be canon. but again the same cannot be said for olgilvie, i cant remember a single time the name was ever mentioned in the comic and other writers have said that it isnt considered canon

as far as penders himself talking about this goes, i actually did manage to find a couple tweets of his that mention it but theyre actually very recent and in response to someone asking about it, i still cant find the original source for this claim anywhere. but i do have some stuff to say about the tweets so.

part of the conversation is cut out because i didnt wanna post screenshots of some random persons tweets, but basically someone was asking where he originally confirmed this, where the inspiration for the name came from, and if anyone else used it. which as you can see he didnt really answer that first question. and he also says he DID use the name in one issue, but hes blatantly wrong here because issue 53 doesnt say sonics name is olgilvie, just that his birth name isnt sonic and his middle name is maurice. so hes definitely misremembering some details here

now im not saying this is actually what happened but wouldnt it be so funny if penders never intended for his name to be olgilvie specifically but someone on the internet just made it up and it became so widespread that penders himself even believed it and thats why no one not even him can provide the source for where this was originally stated

[sheliesshattered]

This Isn’t A Ghost Story extras for Chapter 8: The Temple

The eighth and final chapter of This Isn’t A Ghost Story has been posted! You can find it here on AO3 and here on Tumblr. Below the cut are extras for this chapter and a few things for the story over all. I’ve had such fun writing this fic, and hope you’ve all enjoyed reading it and following along with the writing process here too!

Like the previous chapter, chapter 8 is named for the location where it takes place, in this case the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, which is near the Valley of the Kings, Thebes, and modern Luxor, on the west bank of the Nile.

As mentioned in both this chapter and previous chapters, several sections of the temple have stars painted on a blue background on the ceilings:

The ‘towering statue’ Clara comments on is one of a line of statues depicting the pharaoh Hatshepsut as the god Osiris, only a few of which are still standing:

Here’s a short video showing both the exterior and interior of the temple from earlier this year.

I came across the Temple of Hatshepsut fairly early in my writing process, when I was looking into what archaeological dig sites were active in the 1910s and 1920s. This photo from the late 1920s shows the continuing work going on in the area (that’s the Temple at the back left), and served as part of the inspiration for Clara’s memory of finding the Doctor at a dig site in Thebes in 1921:

About a month into writing This Isn’t A Ghost Story, I was grappling with the detail of Clara’s wedding ring, based on the poll results you guys gave me. I had been toying with going with an emerald for her ring, since emeralds have some interesting ties to ancient Egypt, but I also really wanted to go the route of a TARDIS-blue sapphire, and in particular a star sapphire really appealed to me, for its look and its symbolism. The results of that little impromptu poll clearly pointed to a star sapphire -- but also suggested I tie it into the world-building somehow.

Those two elements came together in my head rather abruptly when I remembered the star ceiling at the Temple of Hatshepsut, and after digging into the history of Hatshepsut, I realized it worked almost too well. On 28 June this final epilogue chapter sprang into being in basically the form you see it in here, baring a few edits I’ve made to it in the three months (!!) since then.

As the Doctor says in this chapter, the Temple was designed and overseen by Hatshepsut’s head advisor Senenmut, and many modern Egyptologists do in fact believe that the two may have been lovers during Hatshepsut’s time as pharaoh. While there are many stylized statues of Senenmut (including a few of him with Hatshepsut’s daughter, to whom he served as primary tutor), archaeologists have also found ostracons, chips of limestone that ancient artists used as throw-away sketching surfaces, that depict Senenmut in what he more likely looked like in life:

Please tell me I’m not the only one who sees this resemblance: 

And then there’s Hatshepsut herself, who is depicted in numerous different ways throughout art and statuary, sometimes shown as more typically male in her role as pharaoh, but more often shown in what Egyptologists believe she looked like in life -- large eyes, full cheeks, and a small chin:

I mean:

Once my brain made that connection, I really couldn’t let it go.

I had originally planned to end the story with the sequence in the Cairo museum that eventually became chapter 7, but the connection between Clara and the Doctor and the real historical Hatshepsut and Senenmut -- with the added parallel of Senenmut as tutor and guardian of Hatshepsut’s daughter corresponding to the Doctor watching over Margot in Ghost Story, even -- was just too good to pass up. 

Senenmut’s tomb is as the Doctor described it, with the oldest known astronomical ceiling of any tomb or temple in Egypt:

His tomb is very near to the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, and tunnels into the cliffside such that it is extremely close to Hatshepsut’s own tomb, which is entered from the Valley of the Kings, on other side of that mountainous area. This has only further fueled speculation that the two were very much in love -- as pharaoh, Hatshepsut had to have her tomb built in the Valley of the Kings, and as a commoner Senenmut couldn’t be buried there. But they could design their tombs such that they would be as close as possible to each other, even if the entrances are miles apart.

Part of my goal with this final chapter was to give a hint at a larger story that this version of Clara and the Doctor are just a part of. I left the possibility that they had once been Hatshepsut and Senenmut intentionally open-ended, so the reader can make their own decision. They might have been, they might not have been, but in the end what matters is that they are together and in love now. 

Similarly I also wanted to make allusions to both Doctor Who canon -- Senenmut as an ancient astronomer, and Clara’s comments about travelling the stars together in their next life -- as well as the wide variety of fanfiction that exists for this ship. In a way there are thousands of versions of them scattered about out there, finding each other and falling in love over and over again. This Isn’t A Ghost Story doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s part of a much larger multi-layered story that is constantly being told and re-told. And in many ways, that’s what I love best about fanfiction versus any other genre of fiction.

The process of writing this story has been so interesting and rewarding, frustrating at times and huge amounts of fun at other points. With this final chapter posted, This Isn’t A Ghost Story is officially the first multi-chapter, non-series fanfic I have ever actually finished, in more than a decade of posting fanfiction online. This is the first time I’ve made myself wait to start posting a story until it’s nearly complete, and I documented more about my process thoughts here on Tumblr than I have for anything I’ve written previously.

It has been a fantastic nearly four month journey, and so much of that is down to the lovely interactions with those of you reading, both here and over on AO3. From the early interest many of you expressed way back at the beginning of June, to the comments and cheerleading on my #process thoughts posts throughout the summer, to all the many wonderful and humbling comments on the story on AO3, I could not have made this journey without you guys. With what a strange, stressful, and often depressing year 2020 has been, I know that when I look back on this year, this is what I’m going to remember the best, taking this journey along with all of you.

And on that note -- do any of you have any questions about Ghost Story? Anything about the writing process or the world building or really anything at all, I am more than happy to answer in as much detail as you like. Feel free to ask here, or on AO3, or use my Tumblr askbox, now or at any point in the future. ❤️

@tounknowndestinations​ had asked about the timeline I worked out for the entire story, that I’ve been keeping under wraps for fear of spoilers. Originally this started as just a way to keep straight how many years had passed -- ‘do I say eighty-six years here, or eighty-seven??’ etc -- but eventually ballooned from there to cover the entire narrative, and even some of the timeline that is only hinted at in places. This is its final form in my working googledoc:

1875: the Doctor is born

1885: the House is built

February 1899: Clara the 1st is born

13 May 1921: the Doctor and Clara the 1st meet in Cairo, she is 22, he is 46

12 May 1923: the Doctor and Clara the 1st marry in Glasgow, she is 24, he is 48

June 1925: Clara and the Doctor return from Egypt

August 1925: purchase of the House

23 Nov 1927: the Doctor dies, age 52

21 August 1928: Margot is born

23 Nov 1928: Clara the 1st dies, age 29

8 April 1956: Ellie is born. Margot is 27

23 Nov 1986: Clara is born. Ellie is 30

1991: at 5 years old, Clara tells Ellie and Margot about the ghost 

September 2000: Ellie dies of cancer, age 44. Clara is not quite 14

January 2010: Dave Oswald dies of a heart attack, age 56. Clara is 23

October 2014: Margot dies, age 86, leaving her house to Clara, who is nearly 28 

16 Nov 2014: Clara has the nightmare that begins to unlock her past life memories

13 May 2021: Clara and the Doctor return to Cairo to mark 100 years since they met, the Doctor is restored to life

18 May 2021: Clara and the Doctor visit the Temple of Hatshepsut, which leads Clara to wonder if perhaps they have met and fallen in love before

Thank you so much to all of you who have followed along during the writing process, to everyone who has reblogged chapter posts here and commented on AO3, and everyone who has cheered me on during the past four months. You have made writing this such a joy, and I cannot wait to share my next project with you. ❤️

[fxndingsolace]

13. Who are five of your favorite characters? (In the rp community or otherwise) & 14. What are five of your favorite ships? (In the rp community or otherwise)

——————–QUESTIONS FOR MUN 

13. Who are five of your favorite characters? (In the rp community or otherwise) 

I think everyone’s characters I interact with are special and lovely but I guess I can shout some characters out! Please don’t get offend if I don’t mention you BECAUSE I REALLY DO LOVE EVERYONE’S CHARACTERS. I wouldn’t interact with ya otherwise cries.

In no particular order: 

Yongguk – Been a favorite of mine since 2014. Couldn’t possibly ever change that. He’s just a downright sweetheart and he makes me sad because I feel as though my muse does not deserve such a character as an opp. Thank you, Paula, for blessing me with your character. otl.  @starguk-seoulstars

Dongsun – Probably one of the well written characters I’ve had the chance to write against. He’s complex and is very real. He’s relatable and a character you end up rooting for to be happy. Honestly Pinee writes beautifully and knows how to capture her characters’ thoughts and emotions perfectly.  @eastsolis

Jerdess – I mean shit his character inspired one of my own I think that’s like the best compliment of one’s character that you could possibly get? But I really do love Jerdess. You want to pick him up and squish him! He’s simply an enjoyable character to not just write against but to read. The amazing mun of Jerdess could easily write a book about him and I’d buy it. 100% @mervcilleux

Wonbin – The more I interact with him, the more I’m just intrigued by him. I want to learn everything there is to know about him. Which is exactly what you want from any character you write. He has some internal struggles and that’s what makes him human. I think anybody could relate to his desire for freedom and the struggles of confinement? I don’t know I’m just very interested. I also really want to read more of his present life with him being an ex-soldier. I’m generally just a sucker for war stories. @latibulx

Seungyoon – He’s just such a sad character but he’s genuine and real. I relate best with angsty characters and he’s got a lot going on with him. And honestly I just want to wrap him up in a blanket and never let go. Every time I write against him, I just feel so much sympathy and I’m rooting for him in the end! @kyunshies-muses

BONUS: 

Wangji -- I mean this is very obvious considering I rp an AU version of Wang Yibo but I simply adore Wangji. I also love the mun’s writing and their portray of Wangji. It’s very on brand of his character but I mean we all as writers have our own spin on things. I’m excited to finally interact with said character as I have really been just stalking from afar. Honestly all this mun’s characters are 10/10. Highly recommend ! @alloycoded

  14. What are five of your favorite ships? (In the rp community or otherwise)

I don’t like this question because it might hurt people’s feelings. I also don’t have defined main ships purposely to avoid any hurt feelings because I truly do love all of my ships.

BUT since it said otherwise, I can list you some of my favorite pairings I’ve rp’d in the non-kpop fandom ;D  I do apologize for not giving ya what you want but I mean did say rp community or otherwise~

elektra natchios & matthew murdock  (marvel / canon) – UGH. OKAY literally would die if I could have this pairing again. they are my babies and only rp’d them once for a hot second and – I could never find my matt to my elektra since. Sad life. 

faye & leo (supernatural / OC ) – I have a thing for “bad” girls and good guys it seems. anyways she was witch turning to dark magic and he was a psychic who helped her with controlling her powers / emotions. fun stuff. 

loki & mantis ( marvel / non-canon ship) – such an odd pairing but it worked. I never pictured shipping loki with anyone before but damn loved every minute of it.

alecto carrow & evan rosier ( harry potter / non-canon ship) – just a lot of teen angst in amidst of a wizardry war breaking out. probably one of my oldest ships in the game. 

 rogue & remy ( marvel / canon ) – can you tell I’ve been in marvel rps before? LOL but honestly such a short time to rp them but they were amazing. they had a huge black dog named bear. very loving and supportive of each other. definitely one of my more happier ships. :) 

[mistahstroke]

Spotted at Grand Central, bags in hand, {LUPITA NYONG’O}. No, that’s a mistake. It’s {ORORO MUNROE}, they are a {CANON CHARACTER} and come from {X-MEN}. They are {THIRTY-FOUR} and I’ve heard they are {EMPOWERING}, as well {REBELLIOUS}. They happen to hold {THEIR} memories. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

Hi everybody! I’m Mipsy and this is my LIL INTRO about me: I’ve probs been rping for about 10 years now, so I’ve been around the block, and I love writing! I’m 27, I’ll be honest, I just feel old, in the central timezone! I use she/her pronouns, but you can call me ‘dude’ honestly, if you want to, dude. I don’t mind, I use it all the time. I’m nocturnal, so nighttime in the central is the best time to catch me! Despite me slowly becoming a morning person, I LIVE at night! I also really enjoy writing, so much, I like to write a lot, but please don’t be intimated! It’s just how I get my muse going, and a big reason why I joined this group, cause literate.  But longer replies require some time, so I’m a little bit slow too, with longer ones. So chill activity works for me. Speaking of chill, I’m chill af, and friendly as a cucumber, is that a thing? It sounded better in my head. Anyway, enough of that, in this house we stan one queen™, and that is Ororo Munroe, aka Storm! She’s first of my six babies, and probably the one I love the most, so she could be considered my main. I’ll finish the others within the next couples days, maybe over the weekend, but If you’d like to plot with any, hmu on IMs! And I’ll do my best to explain their changed lives or kept memories. I have them all worked out in my head pretty much, so plot away! Reminder the others are: Haymitch Abernathy, Jane Volturi, Clint Barton, Mera, and Hank Pym! Did I mention I’m a hoe for dem dc/marvel comic book characters? Let’s PAUSE, I think I said enough, and move onto Storm, shall we?:

Welcome to New York, what is your character’s name?

Ororo Munroe, but many people like to call her Storm. Among other things...

Where have they been pulled from in their fandom?

Ororo is being pulled from various X-men comics, but primarily from STORM (2014) the comic, which I can send any of you the link if you’d like to read it too, all you have to do is ask. It’s basically a stand-alone comic that focuses on Storm and her time as an X-Men, as well as what she does outside of it, as she travels the world (no spoilers). She can be pulled from the end of the comic, since I read all the Issues, so she’s familiar with a number of X-Men and mutants. In this New York, she’s been here for three years now, and she’s become comfortable. Too comfortable for her liking, but she can’t leave, so she continues to do her best with the people here. Ororo retains her memories, and her abilities, so she continues to be a humanitarian to the world, mutant and human-alike, because she shares the same ideals as Charles Xavier: that we all must work together to achieve peace. Anything or anyone that disturbs that, Ororo feels she must challenge (just as she does in the comic).

Do they have a job, and if so what is it? 

Storm works as a teacher or, particularly, as Professor Munroe at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Because Xavier’s School exist here, it only makes sense to her, to teach here as well. 

Is there any other information about your character that members might find helpful?

aiight, so just IN CASE any of ya’ll don’t know who my girl storm is, i’ll give you a lil background on her ( before the comics go all off into different universes and get all confusing )

ororo is a descendant of an ancient royal line of white-haired, blue-eyed sorceresses ( possibly mutants ). it’s the most distinguishable feature about her, other than her eyes turning white. here and here is an example of what she’ll look like in the rpg. tight, right?? she’s a part of the oldest royal family on the face of the earth, at least in her universe. her family’s kingdom lies in africa.

since her mother was a princess, technically, storm should be a princess / queen, she’s royalty basically. her mother, princess n’dare, rebelled against the responsibilities of their title and traditions, feeling the role was forced on her. she instead chose to marry an american photojournalist by the name, david munroe, and moved with him to manhattan. this is where ororo was born.

while she was still an infant, they moved to cairo, egypt. but when she was five, her family was caught in an arab-israeli conflict. a plane crash destroyed their home and killed her parents. ororo was left buried under the rubble, next to her mother’s body. after fighting it, she managed to escape the rubble with nothing but the clothes on her back. the trauma left her with severe claustrophobia.

homeless and orphaned, storm was forced to live on the streets. her childhood, or lack thereof, forced her to grow up fast in order to survive. her maturity now, is thanks to those severe hardships she faced, as a child. though she also learned a trick, to survive.

ororo was taken in by a band of thieves in cairo, who taught her the art of thievery and hand to hand combat, both of which she still uses to this day. thievery more so for picking locks.

she stuck with the gang and thievery life for years, until around twelve when she felt a strong urge to wander south and left cairo. it’s while traveling, ororo accepted a ride from a stranger, a man, who attempts to rape her. ororo kills the man with a knife, but from that moment on, she swears to never take a life again.

that’s the basics of ororo, i can tell ya. she meets charles for a second time ( she’s met him twice, first trying to steal from him ), and the rest is history.

abilities: storm controls the weather, hint her name “storm”. and because she also retains her powers, she can also use them here in this nyc. she can control all different aspects to the weather, even atmospheric forces, but to simplify it: she’s the natural disaster queen™. she can cause all sorts of catastrophes, kill hundreds of thousands of people, all based on her power and emotions, and that’s another thing! her abilities are emotion-based, which is why she tends to detach herself from her stronger emotions in order to protect the people around her / not hurt anyone. but i’m thinking i’d play with the much lesser version of this in the rpg, like it’s raining let’s make it sunshine, so don’t worry guys.

but i’m not lying about this, she literally had to get on the x-jet and leave the planet in order to mourn a dear friend’s death. my poor bby </3

storm has yet to do more than dab into magic. her ancestors used magic, and storm does possess the signature markings of a witch ( her blue eyes and white hair from her mother’s side ) as well as her mutant abilities.

i’d love if we got some more x-men here! or any from xmcu! or the gifted! wolverine, charles, jean, forge ( comics ), callisto ( comics ), hank mccoy, erik, mystique, jubilee, lorna dane, emma frost, yeah! even time-displaced i’ll take! i love me some mutants.

storm: “i go by many names.” haha, naw, well, yeah? ororo has gone by many titles and she’s really not defined by a single one: goddess, queen, professor, windrider, witch, high priestess, and there’s plenty more. but ororo would rather help others, than to be a queen or all powerful.

storm does feel a kind of emphatic connection to not only the weather, but to nature itself. she does care about the environment in a way. it comes from the same connection she feels from the weather.

i will interchangeably call ororo, storm and vice versa, since many of her friends call her storm. although her name is ororo. even ororo has said many people have called her storm ( comics )

okay just hmu on IMs if you’d like to plot!

[xgenesisrei]

Paul’s Female Co-Workers

by Vicki Priest

Considering that there were no women that had any kind of leadership role in the religion of Israel at the time of Christ, it is truly radical that there are so many women mentioned in the New Testament who promoted the faith and who in fact had leadership roles. Jesus led the way for women to not only find salvation and comfort in him, but to realize what Galatians 3:28 says: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That the latter church chose, for the most part, to forget Jesus’ lifting up of women and change words in the translation of Paul’s writings – some are shown below – is unfortunate (to say the least) and makes arguing for the accuracy of many translations more difficult.

But who were Paul’s co-workers, and what level of leadership did they really have? For right now, let’s focus on three: Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junia. There is so much that could be covered that information on their roles is presented in a concise list format:

Priscilla -apparently well-educated, and thus from an influential Roman family.

Priscilla and Aquila, her husband, taught Apollos more about Christianity after they had heard him speak publicly (Act 18:26). Priscilla was the primary teacher, as evidenced by her name being given first. Of the six times she and her husband are mentioned in the NT, she is first four times. “The order of names in ancient times indicated priority of role and importance” (Schmidt 178). St. Chrysostom (AD 347-407) confirmed that Paul placed Priscilla first for good reason. Significantly, whether ahead of her husband or not, she taught a man.

She is acknowledged as being well known by the gentile churches (Romans 16:4). She would not have been well known unless she had leadership functions. Paul refers to her as synergos (Romans 16:3), the same word he used for Timothy and Titus, who preached and taught. She was a “fellow worker” (synergos) withPaul, not a silent and passive female.

One of the oldest and largest catacombs in Rome bears her name, as do several monuments.

No one really knows who wrote the Book of Hebrews, and the suggestion that Priscilla wrote it is not discounted even in the Archaeological Study Bible (Garrett); some suggest, too, that she “polished up” Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Phoebe -carrier of the Roman epistle to Rome from Corinth, a 400 mile journey.

In Romans 16:1-2, Phoebe is referred to as a diakonos, or deacon. “Deaconess” was not a word at that time and was first used in AD 375. The common word “deacon” is most often translated “minister” in the King James Version, though it is rendered “deacon” three times; however, when that word is used with Phoebe, the KJ translators used “servant” instead. Amazingly, the slightly earlier Miles Coverdale bible had kept the word “minister” for Phoebe, but recent translations still use “servant.”

Paul called himself a deacon (diakonos) in 1 Corinthians 3:5, and it is used for Timothy in Acts 19:22. Deacon is used with “co-worker” (synergos) and commonly meant someone who teaches and preaches; the person would have some authority in the church. Another thing to consider is that the term deacon was masculine and only males functioned as deacons in Greek culture. Paul very well knew what he was doing when he used that term for Phoebe.

Paul not only said Phoebe was a deacon, but a ‘prostatis’ (Romans 16:2) as well. Prostatis “meant ‘leading officer’ in the literature at the time the [NT] was written” (Schmidt 181). To us it would mean something like “superintendent.”

Origen (AD 185-254), who was not a feminist, wrote that based on Romans 16:1-2 Phoebe had apostolic authority.

Junia

Junia is found in Romans 16:7, where the name is still often mistranslated “Junias.” The name “Junias” was non-existent at that time. The Archeological Study Bible (Garret, p 1860) notes that “the more common” reading in Greek is “Junia.” She probably was the wife of Adronicus, the other person mentioned in that verse. For the greater part of church history—the first 1300 years—all acknowledged that the person was a female! Why did bible translators in the last several hundred years change Adronicus’ companions name? Because Paul referred to them both as apostles, and outstanding ones at that. St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and Peter Abelard all considered the person to be a woman.

Paul did not restrict the word “apostle” to the twelve only (he called James an apostle and interchanged it with the word diakonos), as is common today. Origen wrote that women had “apostolic authority” in the church based on Romans 16.

The note on Romans 16:7 in the Apologetics Study Bible (ASB) goes almost as far as what Origen wrote and thought, but why can’t our Christian culture acknowledge what Paul actually wrote?  Interesting, isn’t it?  I, the author of this paper, am female, yet I have a bit of a hard time personally accepting female church leaders.  I believe my view is based on both personal and cultural factors, but knowing what Paul wrote and what Christ did, I would not argue that a congregation is wrong in having a female leader. This is the note from the ASB (Cabal, p 1704):

Many claim that Junia (or Junias), designating one of Paul’s relatives, could be either a man’s or a woman’s name. In fact, the masculine form, Junias (as a contraction of Junianus), has not been located elsewhere, whereas the feminine Junia is common. Of course, if this person was a woman, this would be an intriguing fact, particularly since Paul called Andronicus and Junia “apostles.” J.D. G. Dunn suggests they were husband and wife—a reasonable assumption. The precise status of all who are called apostles isn’t clear. Some were close associates of the apostles, such as Barnabas (Ac 14:14) and James (Gl 1:19), but also see the Greek term apostolos in 2 Co 8:23 and Php 2:25.

Source: https://withchristianeyes.net/2014/08/28/new-testament-views-of-women-pauls-co-workers/ Works Cited and Recommended Reading Anonymous. “Women in Ancient Israel.” Bible History Online. n.d. http://www.bible-history.com/court-of-women/women.html(accessed June 2011). Cabal, Ted, General Editor.  The Apologetics Study Bible.  Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2007. Cowles, C.S. A Woman’s Place? Leadership in the Church. Kansas City : Beacon Hill Press, 1993. Dunn, James, General Editor. Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible.Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003. Faulkes, Irene Bonney. “Question of Veils in India.” Dr. Irene Faulkes Articles. 2011. http://revirene.org/Question%20Of%20Veils.htm(accessed June 2011). Garrett, Duane A, General Editor. NIV Archaeological Study Bible.Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005.Schmidt, Alvin John. How Christianity Changed the World. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001. —. Veiled and Silenced: How Culture Shaped Sexist Theology. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1989.Zondervan. “Interview with Alvin J. Schmidt.” Zondervan. n.d. http://www.zondervan.com/media/interviews/product/pdf/0310264499_authintrvw.pdf (accessed June 2011).

[viking369]

Music and Politics Rant

This is a long one. If you're looking for the TL;DR version, sorry oh denizens of Short Attention Span Theatre, there isn't one. This is cross-posted from my other blog. My oldest (Thing 1) and I recently had a debate over the relative musical merits of Kate Bush: I think she has merit, Thing 1 thinks she does not. It was one of those debates and ultimate disagreements that reasonable, educated people have that, far from being destructive, add the sort of spice to life to keep it from being an unrelieved death march. I'm not a fanboy for anyone, including Kate Bush. I long ago started thinking of her as the Charles Ives of pop music: a pile of interesting ideas that often deliver something significant but at least as often get in each other's way. Like Ives, people tend to either love her or hate her and have legitimate reasons for both positions, but tend to simply entrench for "reasons." And this sort of "debating" got me thinking (a dangerous prospect). The whole discussion with Thing 1 started when I watched a 2014 BBC documentary on Kate Bush. I thought it was pretty well done. It showed a number of intelligent, talented people who find merit in Bush's work. It interviewed Lindsay Kemp, who still had four years left in the tank at that point, and showed his influence on art rock at the time (basically everybody from Bowie on) (It also showed a couple of other things, perhaps without meaning to. It showed through Kemp's gestures the extent of mime vocabulary's influence on what might be characterized as "gay mannerisms", Kemp being a dancer and choreographer with heavy mime influence, having studied with Marcel Marceau. It also shows the difference between European artists and intellectuals and US pseudos. In the interviews, several people casually remark on having seen Kemp's "Flowers", based on Jean Genet's "Notre Dame des Fleurs". You would be hard-pressed to find any in the US to this day, outside of core LGBTQ+ culture, who have heard of Kemp, "Flowers", or even Jean Genet other than by reference.). And then toward the end it shows why rock critics as a group are ignorant, vicious little parasites. More on that below the fold, wherever the Hell that might be. Once upon a time I was in newspapers, and one of the things I did was write music reviews. It was a paycheck, and as I’ve noted elsewhere, I’ve always been closely involved with music. I wrote by two rules: 1) Be consistent, and 2) make it about the music on its own terms. On the first point, it doesn’t matter if the readers agree with you; they just need to know what to expect from you. If they know you don’t like a particular artist or a particular type of music, they can read you through the appropriate filter. The second point breaks in two. First, it’s about the music, not the people. I did not savage Van Halen because they were pricks who brutalized the little people who had to service their every whim. I went after Eddie Van Halen (who let’s face it was the real core of the band) who went shredding up and down the fretboard at random with no regard for chordal or modal structures (In fairness to Mr. Van Halen, he no longer plays like that and is a far superior musician than when every blockhead with a K-Mart electric six-string thought Eddie was God and gave us a generation of speed monkeys with zero musicianship.) (The speed monkey syndrome unfortunately spread to other instruments. It was the overwhelming norm among the Celtic fiddlers who followed Bonnie Rideout to Ann Arbor and insisted on playing faster than their talents, compensating by dropping notes out at random, and then blaming all the rest of us for all the ensemble issues. To all of you, I give an eternal, “Fuck you and the banshee of an instrument you tuck under your hiply stubbled chins and rape with your bows.”). Second, you have to put it in the music’s own frame of reference. It makes no sense to pan a Metropolitan Opera performance of Cosi fan Tutte because it isn’t a Black Sabbath concert. I realized early on that almost no rock music critics could grasp either of my rules (From this point on, you may assume that “Robert Christgau is a wanker” is flashing subliminally in the background.). From the beginning of such things, Rolling Stone has been the center of rock criticism (I just damned near wrote “crock recidivism”. I’m not a nice person.). It has also been the center of what is wrong with rock criticism for just as long. These guys were groupies. They were wannabes who couldn’t cut it, so they hung out with the guys who could, basking in the limelight. The reviews weren’t reviews, they were hagiographies. “The music must be great because I party with these guys.” “They must be significant because I party with these guys.” Everything was on a chummy, first-name-only basis (“Mick and Keith were really rockin’ it Thursday night.”) that became the norm for roughly forever (Cam Crowe slipped a screamingly funny joke about The Rocket’s review style in his movie Singles.). As tastes changed and their substance-abuse buddies died, faded away, or became arena bands (and now nostalgia bands playing the Peppermill in Wendover), Rolling Stone found itself unsuccessfully playing catch-up, jumping on every bandwagon that rolled down the street in a desperate attempt to get in front of The Next Big Thing and failing miserably. If it weren’t for Matt Taibbi, that rag would have no reason to exist. In the 70s other rags stepped into the breach, but they took the Stone’s style sheet and were all clones of one another. They couldn’t comprehend my rules, either. I remember one of these rags (probably Circus, but who honestly gives a shit at this point, they were fungible) going after every Harry Chapin recording because it “wasn’t rock.” Well no shit, Sherlock. Chapin wasn’t a rocker, he was a folkie, self-proclaimed, and condemning him for not being what he wasn’t was…well…not even wrong. Congratulations, rock critics, you just earned Stephen Frys’s second-greatest insult, right after “I almost care.” There was one exception to the Clone Wars: Creem. But that didn’t make it good, just different. Admittedly, Creem was covering a lot of things no one else was, including the early days of punk and all that was happening over at CBGB. But my gods the pretension. Memo to Lester Bangs: Just because you covered something doesn’t mean you invented it. Just because you came up with the label “punk rock” doesn’t mean you created punk rock. Punk rock was created by garage bands (US) and pub bands (UK) (I always envied the UK guys because no matter how, frankly, BAD you were, there was someone willing to book you. Here in the US? Not so much. Although you could always get homecoming and prom gigs if you were just another shitty cover band.) (Punk was spawned by my half-generation, the Late Boomers. The reason was simple: We were fucking sick and tired of the hypocrisy of the Early Boomers, our big brothers and sisters. They were the 60s Children, the Flower People, and they were still peddling that bullshit even though the wheels had fallen off the wagon and there was a global recession. They accused us of being self-centered for not “working for change” like them while they busily leveraged the huge advantage of having sucked up everything before we ever got on the scene. They took their 60s, corporatized, commoditized, packaged, and slapped a smiley face on them, and expected us to swallow it all without question. The problem was that we just didn’t believe hard enough in the dream. Meanwhile we were saying, “The fuck? Our dreams hit the wall at 110 per in Fall ’73! The wreckage is everywhere, but you dicks and everybody else is just stepping over it like it isn’t there!” We wanted to wave our private parts at them, so we did. Which is a long way of telling you Millennials that, if you lump the Early and Late Boomers together, your ignorance is showing. Yeah, there are plenty of Late Boomers who sold out [You hear me, Barry Obama? You sold us all out, but history will always remember you fondly because you landed between the Texas Turd Tornado and Hitler 2.0.], but we were the first ones to face the New Normal you folks are now dealing with. You need old wise men and women for your villages? Trust me, we’re available in hordes.) As yet another aside, there were garage bands, and there were garage bands. None of us were very good, but most of us wanted to improve to something resembling competency. The early punkers simply didn’t care (Hell, a lot of them, such as the New York Dolls, were so bad they made The Kingsmen sound like conservatory virtuosos. And the Noo Yuck critics, apparently on permanent bad acid trips from frequent visits to Andy Whore-wall’s Fucktory, kept rubbing out one after another for them all. “Daringly campy!” “A raw, animal sound!” Shit-shoveling by rapidly deteriorating white guys desperate to continue being perceived as bleeding edge.). Fortunately, this only lasted a few years before a lot of the punkers decided it maybe would not be so inauthentic if they actually learned how to play their instruments. I don’t care what John Lydon continues to blow out his ass, Black Flag was never boring. But I really can’t leave the topic of pretension without a mention of The Village Voice, the self-proclaimed font of all things cool and hip for over six decades and running. In reality The Village has been overrun with gentrifying yuppie scum straight off the set of Thirtynothing since before Rudy Giuliani parked his malignancy in the Mayor’s Office, and The Voice has followed suit. And Robert Christgau was at the center of it all. It has never ceased to amaze me how someone so admittedly ignorant could be such an expert on everything. He admits he is “not at all well-schooled” (understatement) in 50s and 60s jazz, yet he has reviewed jazz artists such as Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Sonny Rollins without any of that context and has declared Frank Sinatra the greatest singer of the 20th Century (A meaningless statement. How can you compare Sinatra and, say, Pavarotti? You can’t, and anyone with a lick of humility and two brain cells to rub together doesn’t even try.) while apparently ignorant of Nelson Riddle’s role in creating Sinatra’s best albums. He was an early promoter of punk, right through all the “authentic vs. poseur” wars, blissfully unaware that this was not a rebellion unique to punk but rather was a recurring fight in music, most recently before that in the “this is jazz/this is not jazz” that started with the rise of bebop after the Second World War, that caused a butt-ton of damage to the genre, and that Miles Davis was a pivotal player in until he finally got over it and put on that shiny red leather suit and released Bitches Brew, which Christgau unironically nominated to Jazz & Pop as jazz album of the year in 1970. He considers the New York Dolls one of the five greatest artists of all time. Please. The Dolls were influential, true, and for two reasons: 1) Their show was cheap and entertaining and so readily copiable and copied, and 2) their musicianship was so crude a half-trained baboon could cover it. Not exactly reasons to put them in GOAT contention. Finally, Christgau doesn’t like and is nearly completely ignorant of classical music. This tells me so many things, but two bubble immediately to the surface: 1) He has neither the music history nor the music theory to hold 90% (at least) of the opinions he’s been paid for over the last half-century, and 2) he’s a shallow little shit who needs to sit in a corner and STFU. And believe it or not, all that was just a warm-up to get around to John Harris. Toward the end of the Kate Bush documentary is a roundtable discussion of her latest album (Aerial) by several UK rock critics, including Harris. Harris makes the remark that the music sounds like something you’d hear in a department store and that it’s obvious Bush hadn’t been in a studio for 12 years. I’ll start with the statements themselves and then turn to their wider ramifications. Department store music? I’d like to know where Harris hangs out that this is the ambient Muzak. Let’s chalk this one up to hyperbole and move on to the “12 years” remark. He doesn’t really elaborate on this (not entirely his fault, given the roundtable format) so we can only speculate on his actual point. Do her pipes sound rusty? Not really. Does the technology sound dated? No (And trust me, I keep up. It’s not like I sit around listening to Sergeant Pepper’s going, “Oh wow, they played those tapes backwards!”), and even if it did, that would be one to lay on the producer and the engineer. Is the music dated? An ambiguous word, “dated”, but I’m afraid we’ve finally reached what Harris was driving at. By “dated” do we mean it doesn’t sound like other music being produced now? First, when has Kate Bush ever sounded like anyone else, and second when did sounding like everyone else become a standard of musical quality? It hasn’t and it shouldn’t, but I’m afraid this is the point Harris is trying to make. Perhaps, though, he meant this sounds like her old material. Saying that an artist is repeating themself is a helpful criticism, especially if you explain why you think so. Frankly that’s a point I can agree with; I find a certain sameness in her work since Hounds of Love. But that isn’t even remotely what Harris says. He says she sounds old-fashioned, which is never a useful comment, merely a pejorative one, and worse, a pejorative aimed not just at the artist but at the listener. You are listening to old-fashioned music. You are old-fashioned. You are outdated. Catch up! Under the best of circumstances, this is unmitigated bullshit. Coming from Harris, it is unmitigated bullshit that is part of a career full of it. Harris’s cred as a “serious person” essentially rests on his 2003 book The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock (repackaged in 2004 as Britpop: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock) and the follow-up BBC Four 2005 documentary The Britpop Story. His thesis is that 90s Britpop was the last great shining moment for UK pop. No, really. At this point, let facts be placed before a candid world. The UK has been a popular music powerhouse for quite awhile, and by “powerhouse” I mean a global influence. Let’s start arbitrarily with Gilbert & Sullivan, pass the baton to Ivor Novello, and then to Noel Coward. The Second World War made hash of it all, and the post-war generation found that the US had stolen the baton, but rather than going gentle into that not-so-good night, both the rockers and the mods invaded the US and stole much of the thunder back. This continued into the 70s, whether you’re talking about arena bands, metal, prog rock, or punk, and on into the 80s, again whether you’re talking about power pop, synthpop, or New Wave. Big influences that can still be heard around the world. Compare Britpop. The whole point of Britpop was to be a calculated foil for Grunge and as safe and marketable as possible, the perfect theme music for the Tony Blair years. It has so little edge it couldn’t leave a mark on a piece of talc. Its influence has been negligible except as a template for profitable pap. In 1997 the whole sham came unraveled as Oasis released the bloated disappointment Be Here Now and Blur abandoned the field to join the US “lo-fi” movement. Their lasting influence is Coldplay, and let’s be honest, if Coldplay is your gold standard, I’m afraid you actually have a pyrite mine. But Harris thinks Britpop was the shining end of UK rock. There are a number of holes in this assertion; two are glaring. First, there are still plenty of new bands in the UK churning out good stuff (That Harris seems blissfully ignorant of these bands makes me wonder just who is out-dated and needs to catch up.). Look them up yourselves; I’m not falling into the trap of naming a few here. Suffice it to say they’re diverse, and you’re likely to hit on several you consider acceptable regardless of your musical tastes. They’ve even been having an influence in the EU, but we’ll see what Brexit brings (Influence in the US? Not so much since we have reached a level of insularity here that rules out anything beyond our borders having merit, in spite of having access to it all on The Interwebz.). And these bands have a Hell of a lot more to offer than the Britpop slag did. Which brings us to glaring hole two. As noted previously, Britpop didn’t really have an impact. None outside of the UK, and damned little in the UK on any time scale longer than the life of a mayfly. Britpop was a nothingburger with a side of flies and a So? Duh! Harris, though, raises this localized, ephemeral phenomenon and turns it into the last scion of the UK pop tradition. This should just be considered a bad case of the sillies, except that Harris’s new schtick is political commentary, especially for The Grauniad. In keeping with The Graun’s policies, his position is “Support Remain but maintain that ‘both sides have merit’.” Which raises his Britpop position from silly to ironic, because Harris’s thinking on Britpop (“It was important in the UK, ergo it was IMPORTANT!”) is just the sort of insular, UK=World mentality that made Brexit possible. Brexit happened, for the most part, because of a bunch of people who believed that, whatever the puzzle was, the UK was the only piece that mattered. Harris’s elevation of Britpop on so high a pedestal rests on the same belief, even though he’s a Remainer. So it’s unintentionally ironic. It’s symptomatic of a malignant mindset. And it’s still silly. And so I give you Christgau and Harris, Exhibits 1 and 2 in my case for the beyond-uselessness of rock critics. And the former is still being allowed to write revisionist histories of the music of the last half-century while the latter is still being allowed to…well…write. What a world.

[terabitweb]

Original Post from Security Affairs Author: Pierluigi Paganini

The popular expert unixfreaxjp analyzed a new China ELF DDoS’er malware tracked as “Linux/DDoSMan” that evolves from the Elknot malware to deliver new ELF bot.

Non-Technical-Premise

“This report is meant for incident response or Linux forensics purpose, TO HELP admin & IR folks”, with this the very beginning sentence starts the new analysis of one of the reverser of the worldwide extended security community, the head of MalwareMustDie team, (Mr.) unixfreaxjp. And the first thought coming at the mind is: while everybody is looking for “fame” and “glory” here there is someone who is working hard just “TO HELP”. It is there a security group greater than this?

But let’s go to the finding.

The new unixfreaxjp’s analysis talks about a new China ELF malware DDoS’er “Linux/DDoSMan” which seems to be a new DDoS botnet client installer that utilized the old Elknot bot binary (also known as ChickDDoS or Mayday) along with a new ELF bot (as downloader and persistence function installer): these are two ELF bot binaries which are dropped by the new found Linux/DDoSMan .

About this attribution unixfreaxjp comments on Virus Total as follows:  “This is the new bot client of the “DDOS manager” toolkit used by China(PRC) DoS attacker.  (….) The code seems inspired from multiple source code of China basis DDoS client, like Elknot. Not xorDDoS or ChinaZ one, not a surprise since many of code shared openly.”

But what kind of malware is this Elknot Trojan? How the MMD team found this in the first place? The story is well documented going back in the past years when one project of MalwareMustDie (MMD) team was very active to monitor the China origin ELF DDoS’er malware threat since Aug 2012. The growth was very rapid at that time (Sept. 2014), as described on the MMD blog when MMD detected 5 variants active under almost 15 panels scattered in China network.  There is a video describing their work that shows many of Elknot analysis was posted.

On the MMD blog is still possible to read “I am quite active in supporting the team members of this project, so recently almost everyday I reverse ELF files between 5-10 binaries. They are not aiming servers with x32 or x64 architecture but the router devices that runs on Linux too.” We could say here to have a ““Mirai” idea “ante-litteram” 2 years before. Firstly written, the Linux/Elknot was analyzed and published publicly in the kernelmode.info as per below post:

Which links to the MMD behavior analysis report in 2013 in here and further debug report  as follows in here: the latter one it describes the committed malware name as Linux/Elknot. The further analysis and report of the ELknot infection is written nearly in the kernelmode.info in the same thread. Thank you to the admin team of KernelMode who still keep the documentation of this malware analysis still available until now.

Linux/Elknot malware that time is known for multiple standard packet flood in several protocols (UDP, TCP, ICMP & HTTP) and amplification DNS attack of the China series of this DDoS trojan was firstly introduced by the this malware, before Linux/BillGates started to be detected. We can say Linux/Elknot series is the oldest root of the many ELF flooder built by adversaries in the same territory, and one of the most popular ELF flooder in that territory within 2014.

But if we go on the Akamai blog we can still find a reference to Elknot posted on April 4, 2016 on a topic referred to “BillGates”, another DDoS malware whose “attack vectors available within the toolkit include: ICMP flood, TCP flood, UDP flood, SYN flood, HTTP Flood (Layer7) and DNS reflection floods. This malware is an update and reuse from the Elknot’s malware source code. It’s been detected in the wild for a few years now.”. So we can see that Akamai blog explicitly talks about Elknot linking directly the web page of MalwareMustDie blog and telling with the language of the politically correct that for the “botnet activity, most of the organizations are located in the Asia region”. If we go deeper in the Elknot series analysis on MMD blogs  mentioned above (“about the ARM version of Eknot basis with so many specific modification reversed and reported”)  we get many interesting information and we learn a lot about China malware including Elknot scheme.

Figure 1: The ARM version of Elknot malware on MMD blog

And inside this post we can find  a lot of considerations about the behavior of the malware and of the threat actor like the encryption of the binary and of the communication: “This a sign of protection, someone want to hide something, in the end that person is hiding EVERYTHING which ending up to be very suspicious – So the binary could be packed or encrypted protection, we have many possibility.

Further details of this family of ELF malware we posted regularly in here:–>[link]”

The further details on Linux/AESDDoS are on kernelmode.info as is referred by unifreaxjp on his new analysis that can be found here: https://www.kernelmode.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3483

The new Malware

But let’s go back to the new analysis: we have a combination of “new” and “old” code  that is allowing the bot client to perform an interaction client and server involving multiple platform used by this botnet: the ELF bot (the client) is delivered on compromised devices in  Linux platform while the C&C (Win32 PE) is in listening mode on a Windows platform waiting for a callbacks sent by the bot-installer, the one that executes the new ELF is the “downloader” and “installer” while the old Elkont code is responsible to manage the DDoS related configuration part, in example: to execute commands sent from C2, sending statistic data of the infected servers , threading, DDOS attacks, etc, as is shown in the next figure.

Figure 2: The C2 software for Linux DDoS

Going deeper in the unixfreaxjp’s analysis we read more about the new scheme adopted in the malware configuration:

“The C2 tool is having IP node scanner and attack function to compromise weak x86?32 server secured auth, DoS attack related commands to contrl the botnet nodes, and the payload management tools. Other supportive samples are also exists to help to distribute the Linux bot installer to be sent successfully to the compromised device, it works under control of the C2 tool. This C2 scheme is new, along with the installer / updater. The Elknot DoS ELF dropped is not new.”

But let’s see what are the execution binaries and what an administrator will see during the first stage of the infection, because this analysis is made for the purpose to raise the system administration awareness:

Installation related code execution:

Code execution:

execve("/tmp/upgrade"");   // to execute upgrade

execve("/bin/update-rc.d", ["update-rc.d", "python3.O", "defaults"]); // for updating  the malicious task

execve("/usr/bin/chkconfig", ["chkconfig", "--add", "python3.O"]); // for persistence

What administrator will see:

(Unknown) process with image executed from /proc/{PID}/cmdline, with forked from “evil” crond (dropped, executed and deleted malware) process.

The Client Side

Giving a look to the bot client we’ll see that once the malware has infected the remote host the installer ELF will read all server process info by launching open(“/proc/{PID}/cmdline”) for the further malicious purpose. The bot client then will collect infected systems data to send to the C2  in the URL as per shown by the screenshot below, the purpose of this data sent to C2 is for informing the C2 what system is infected so the C2 can send the traffic data back to infected machine with the upgrading binary for the further infection, and also for the statistic of the infected machines. The data of infected machine will be shorted by the Windows C2 utility tool called “Manager” as per shown in the above Win32 GUI screenshot, and that C2 tool will send the infected machine data to the static page served on another host in the web (which seems now is abandoned by the adversary).

Figure 3: Header of the ELF communication

The C2 data is sent from bot client via the malware’s “fabricated” headers as follows, to be processed further as per described previously. This below HTTP header is unique and can be used to mitigate the threat, which is a new action (not spotted in Elknot).

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencodedrn

Content-Length: {SIZE OF SENT DATA}rn

Host: 193[.]201[.]224[.]238:8852rn

User-Agent: LuaSocket 3.0-rc1rn

TE: trailersrn

Connection: close, TErnrn

In contrary, Linux/Elknot bot client series will send or receive its data to C2 always in the encoded form instead, with a lot of padding 00 in between. They are using assembly obfuscation to rotate the encoded values. And the way Elknot communicate to the C2 is not using the HTTP protocol but directly write the communication data in the packet to the specific established TCP/port (original protocol often used by China basis malware, windows or linux platform).

After the initial communication is established, the C2 sent the “upgrade” to the Linux/DDosMan bot client according to platform of infected server: it is saved, renamed  and executed on the infected node as the upgrade version of the initial malware. The bot client will start its main function. The analysis of unixfreaxjp says that its further process, including to drop ELF binaries embedded in the main ELF binary, is to execute them to perform their parts of malicious activity. “The dropped & executed “downloader” embedded ELF is actually the one that responsible for the “persistence setup” operation too. This part haven’t been seen in Elknot. And this is not even in the main sample file too. In THIS dropped ELF you can see well the downloader and the persistence installer in the same file.”

See the next figure for the explanation:

Figure 4: Snapshot of the Installer/downloader

Additionally the same connection is reused and the initial code that opens the connection toward the C2 responsible to manage the update of the malware on the infected node.

“So only one dropped binary is the Elknot.” says unixfreaxjp, “Obviously, there is no DDoS functionality in the main sample ELF file or the Downloader ELF file too, the Elknot has it, and the adversary tend to use that function from the C2 tool.”

The Server Side (C2 Tool)

Regarding the C2 tool we have a “Win32” PE and it has the Elknot basis C2 form, along with many additional other forms as we reported in the Figure 2. We can see the scanner tool, interface to write code execution to Linux shell after attack has been performed successfully. With these capabilities  the threat actor can use any kind of compromised Windows machine to manage the C2 from its attacks.

To perform the malicious intent the attacker will need the ELF file to send, the script to be sent to hacked PC and the ELF file to be installed after infecting along with its execution toolset.

In order to have an idea on “how the adversary work in making this toolset” MMD has produced a very interesting video published on Youtube describing the techniques adopted  by the China threat actors

Figure 5: MMD Video on Youtube describing China threat actors techniques to delivery malware

Reversing the C2 tool it smells of  China even if the reader is not able to translate.

and recording them live from a compromised server.

Figure 6: MMD reverse of the C2 Tool

Adversary’s infrastructure info are in the following

The adversary network is as per below (domain, IP and port)

cctybt.com.     3600 IN A 103.119.28.12 tcp/8080

193.201.224.238 tcp/8852

Located in these networks:

AS136782 | 103.119.28.0/24 | PINGTAN-AS | AP Kirin Networks, CN

AS25092 | 193.201.224.0/22 | OPATELECOM, | UA

For the full IOCs and other details of the malware please refer to the Mr. unixfreaxjp research at: https://imgur.com/a/57uOiTu

About the Author: 

Odisseus – Independent Security Researcher involved in Italy and worldwide in topics related to hacking, penetration testing and development.

unixfreaxjp team leader of the MalwareMustDie team.

window._mNHandle = window._mNHandle || {}; window._mNHandle.queue = window._mNHandle.queue || []; medianet_versionId = "3121199";

try { window._mNHandle.queue.push(function () { window._mNDetails.loadTag("762221962", "300x250", "762221962"); }); } catch (error) {}

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Elknot malware, DDoS)

The post BREAKING: new update about DDoS’er Linux/DDoSMan ELF malware based on Elknot appeared first on Security Affairs.

#gallery-0-6 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-6 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-6 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-6 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Go to Source Author: Pierluigi Paganini BREAKING: new update about DDoS’er Linux/DDoSMan ELF malware based on Elknot Original Post from Security Affairs Author: Pierluigi Paganini The popular expert unixfreaxjp analyzed a new China ELF DDoS’er malware tracked as “Linux/DDoSMan” that evolves from the Elknot malware to deliver…

[makingscipub]

When space becomes the last refuge for the soul

The last few years have been bad, in terms of climate, politics, humanity. I don’t expect this new year to be much better, unless we all pull our socks up, so to speak.

Where once we were forward looking and outward looking, embracing the new, engaging with others, many are now more and more inward looking, afraid of the new and of others, and our horizons of expectations are shrinking.

But while our everyday horizons are shrinking, we still have ‘new horizons’ in space (I know, bad pun). And that is something to be grateful for.

Today is the day that NASA’s space probe New Horizons flies by the farthest and possibly oldest cosmic body ever explored by humans. With this probe NASA is going almost literally to the edges of the world to take pictures and more of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule.

People had speculated about the existence of the Kuiper Belt, a belt of icy space objects, for a while but evidence for it was only found in 1992! New Horizons started its journey towards it in 2006, reaching Pluto in 2015 and sending back the most amazing pictures. Ultima Thule is one million miles past Pluto.

New Horizons is supposed to beam back first scientific data on Ultima Thule’s geology, composition, atmosphere and more today – and pictures of course! And so far things are looking good. These data and images might give us insights into how planets, including our own dear little earth, were formed.

If you want to know why and how the new icy object of interest was chosen to be ‘scienced’, you can read this interesting thread by Alex Parker; and for updates follow NASA’s New Horizon twitter account.

Beyond borders

The name Ultima Thule is based on a mixture of Latin and Greek and mythology of the far north. As Wikipedia points out: “Thule (/ˈθjuːliː/ THEW-leeGreek: Θούλη Thoúlē, Latin: Thūlē) was the place located furthest north, which was mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature and cartography. In classical and medieval literature, ultima Thule (Latin ‘furthermost Thule’) acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the ‘borders of the known world’.”

I have used an image of ‘Thule’ as represented on a medieval map by Olaus Magnus (1539) as the featured image for this post.

But there is also music! When trawling the internet, I found that in 1971 a German band called Tangerine Dream included a song entitled “Ultima Thule” in their rock album “Alpha Centauri”!

It is always nice to find these intersections between science and culture! We are all connected by space, time and culture. We should not let people draw us apart or erect real or metaphorical borders between us!

Collaboration and togetherness

While I started writing this post on the morning of 1 January, 2019, I switched on the radio and discovered that the Radio 4 Today programme was devoted to space. My ears pricked up especially at 8.36 or so when Jason Crusan of NASA said: “If you want to go quick go alone. If you want to stay go together.” Another version of this saying goes: “If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go together.” Togetherness is key.

If you want to broaden your horizons, go together; don’t withdraw into splendid isolation. This could be a motto for the new year, couldn’t it?

This made me think about what has happened since the beginning of 2016, when our horizons began to narrow, while, at the same time, our space horizons started to expand. I only list a few events that caught my eye.

All these missions are based on international collaborations, on people working together, not apart.

In 2016 the NASA’s spacecraft Juno reached Jupiter; the Kepler mission continued to verify more than a thousand newfound alien planets; the Hubble Space Telescope sent pictures back of water vapour plumes erupting from Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa. 2016 was also the year that ESA’s historic Rosetta mission concluded as planned, with the controlled impact onto the comet 67P it had been investigating since 2014.

In 2017, NASA’s Cassini probe, which had been orbiting Saturn since 2004, plunged to its death. In 2018, NASA sent a new lander to Mars; it sent the Parker Solar Probe to the sun; it sent a spacecraft to an asteroid called Bennu, and he European and Japanese space agencies launched BepiColombo, a mission to explore the planet Mercury. And so on…..

Between 2016 and 2018, when our world was shrinking, space was there as a solace for the collective soul.

A moral imperative

I have quoted him before, but I’ll do so again now, as we enter a new year where we need all the moral guidance we can get.

Immanuel Kant said in his Critique of Practical Reason (1788): “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.”

Let’s do that, all of us!

The post When space becomes the last refuge for the soul appeared first on Making Science Public.

via Making Science Public http://bit.ly/2AqFMst

[itsasif007-blog]

10 origin stories of famous sports

New Post has been published on http://liststories.com/10-origin-stories-of-famous-sports-2/

10 origin stories of famous sports

Whether people play, or just watch, sports are a big part of many people’s lives. Besides just being entertainment, sports are also tied to many countries’ national identity, and are a billion dollar industry. Have you ever wondered how these sports got their start? Even if you think you know, what’s interesting is that the origins of sports are filled with myths and legends. These are the real stories about how these beloved games were invented.

10. Lacrosse

Lacrosse is North America’s oldest team sport and originated with the Eastern Woodlands Native Americans and some Plains Indians tribes. The game was played by warriors of the tribe to keep them fit and strong. Many of the rules were different from modern day lacrosse. Notably, the field of play could be 0.6 miles long. Besides just ensuring that the warriors stay in shape, the game was also important to their society. It helped strengthen diplomatic alliances, supported social conformity, and they used it to honor the gods.

In the 1840s, Europeans became interested in the game. The first recorded match between Europeans and members of the Mohawk tribe happened in August 1844. In 1856, the Montreal Lacrosse Club was formed in Quebec, Canada. When the Prince of Wales visited Montreal in August 1860, lacrosse’s popularity grew even more. A month after the Prince’s visit, a dentist named William George Beers wrote the first official rules and instructions for the game and replaced the deerskin ball with a rubber version. Since then, the game has grown in popularity and there are currently two professional lacrosse leagues operating in North America.

9. Golf

The origins of golf are highly debated. The Scots take total credit for it, and they are kind of right. The modern foundation of the game started in the mid-15th century in Scotland. Those rules included swinging a club at a ball and moving it from point A to point B using the least amount of strokes possible.

However, there is evidence that the roots of the game sprouted in the small town of Loenen aan de Vecht in the Netherlands when it was played there in 1297. That year was the start of an annual tradition, where, on Boxing Day, the townspeople played a game named “colf.” The game consisted of two teams of four players who took turns hitting a wooden ball with a wooden stick towards several consecutive targets. Besides the mention of colf in 1297, there is other evidence of golf-like games being played throughout the Netherlands centuries before the game of golf first appeared in Scottish literature in 1636. However, as we mentioned, this is highly debatable and many Scottish people don’t believe it to be true.

8. Ice Hockey

Canadians are generally considered polite and modest people. However, one thing that many Canadians are gleefully boastful about is their ice hockey heritage. According to them, it’s their game. They are the best at it, and they invented it.

However, according to a book that was published in 2014, hockey was probably invented in England. There are references to the game all the way back to as early the 1790s, and beyond that, it is unclear who created the game. What is known is that the game was popular in England for centuries. Notable people who played included King Edward VII and Charles Darwin.

As for why it’s called hockey, the theory is that in the early games, a cork bung was used as a puck. Bungs were most commonly used as a stopper in beer casks and a popular drink at the time was hock ale.

Why Canada is often associated with hockey is that the first organized public game was played in Montreal on March 3, 1875. Before that, games were just played casually. About 40 people attended the the first game, which is a few more than the Arizona Coyotes get now.

7. Rugby

Rugby supposedly got its start in 1876 when 16-year-old William Webb Ellis was playing soccer at the Rugby School in Warwickshire, England, and he picked up the ball and ran with it. Unfortunately, the story can’t be true because Ellis died in 1872, four years before he was credited with inventing rugby.

The real story is that the game did grow out of the Rugby School and it was promoted by the school’s headmaster Thomas Arnold. The rules were first written in 1845 and it’s believed that the game grew out of soccer, but it’s unclear who was the first person to pick up the ball and run with it.

After boys attended the school and learned the game, they wanted to continue to play as adults. This is how the first intercounty games were organized, leading to the first clubs, which resulted in the formation of the International Rugby Football Board in 1884.

6. Cricket

To many people in North America, cricket is a bit of a mystery and seems quite complicated. However, it’s beloved in many other countries around the world and watched by billions of people. In fact, it is the second most popular sport in the world.

Cricket is believed to have gotten its start in the 13th century in rural England, where it was played by shepherds. The wicket gate of the sheep paddock was used as a target and then a ball of rags or wool was pitched at the target. An opposing player would use a shepherd’s crooked staff to prevent the ball from hitting the target.

The game was popular regionally and continued to be played throughout the centuries. The first recorded 11-to-a-side match was played in 1697 in Sussex for a prize of 50 guineas. Eight years later, the first intercounty match happened between Kent and Surrey. Rules were probably already established at this point, but the oldest known written rules for the game are dated 1744.

5. Tennis

It’s believed that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all played some form of tennis. However, the linage of modern tennis starts around 1000 A.D. when it was played by French monks in a monastery. They would play with their hands and a wooded ball, so it was more like volleyball. The net was usually just a rope that stretched across a courtyard. This is also where tennis got its name. While playing, the monks would yell ‘tenez’, which is French for ‘to take’, while they served the ball. Over the next two centuries, the game gained popularity throughout Europe and by the 13th century there were 1,800 indoor courts. By 1500, wooden frame racquets that were laced with sheep guts became common, as did balls made from cork.

However, the game was much different than it is today. According to The History Channel:

Games took place in narrow, indoor courts, where the ball was played off walls with roved galleries and a number of openings. Players won points by hitting the ball into netted windows beneath the roves, with the net being five feet high on the ends and three feet in the middle, which created a pronounced droop.

Modern tennis didn’t really start to emerge until 1873 when the rules were first published. In 1877, the first tennis tournament was held at Wimbledon, where they decided on the court shape and size and adopted tennis’ method of scoring.

4. Basketball

We bet it wasn’t really a surprise that Canadians claimed to be the inventors of hockey. However, did you know that a Canadian actually invented one of America’s most beloved sports, basketball?

Dr. James Naismith of Almonte, Ontario was born in 1861, and after years of working as a lumberjack, he got his degree in physical education from McGill University in Montreal. After graduating, he moved to the United States, where he got a job at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts.

There, he was tasked with finding a suitable activity for a group of “incorrigibles.” The winters were cold in New England and the boys had to stay inside and quickly became bored with all the indoor games of the day. Naismith developed basketball based on a game he played as a child called Duck on a Rock. Naismith had the school’s janitor hang up two peach baskets high up at each end of the gym and a soccer ball was used. The first game was played on December 21, 1891, and the final score was 1-0. So, both teams were slightly better than the Philadelphia 76ers. Eventually, the peach baskets had holes cut in the bottom because the janitor got sick of climbing up a ladder to retrieve the ball.

From there the game grew in popularity and Naismith was alive to see it adopted into the Olympics in 1936 in Berlin. Naismith, who was the first coach of the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team, also saw the birth of NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship. He passed away on November 28, 1939.

3. Baseball

The most common legend of the start of baseball is it was invented in Cooperstown, New York, during the summer of 1839 by Abner Doubleday. After inventing the game, Doubleday went on to become a hero in the American Civil War. The only problem is that none of that is true. In 1839, Doubleday would have still been at West Point.

Baseball probably descended from two games from England. The first is a game called rounders that was a children’s game that came to New England with the colonists, and the second is cricket.

The foundation of modern baseball started in 1845 when a group of men in New York formed the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. The most influential member of the club was a bank clerk named Alexander Joy Cartwright who came up with many of the rules that are the foundation of baseball. This included a diamond shaped infield, foul lines, and the three strike rule. Another rule that he removed, which certainly would make baseball a lot more exciting today, is that he got rid of the rule that players were allowed to throw the ball at a runner to get them out.

2. American Football

The first game that would eventually become American Football, or gridiron football, happened on November 6, 1869, between players from Princeton and Rutgers. However, that was more of a soccer game. After that game, Yale developed their own sport that was called “The Boston Game.” It was like soccer, but if a player was being pursued by an opponent, he could pick up the oval ball and run with it, or throw or pass it. If he wasn’t being pursued, he had to kick it with his feet. Then on May 14 and 15, 1874, Yale hosted McGill University from Montreal and they also had their own set of rules for football. On the first day, they played the Boston Game.

On the second day, they played McGill’s version of football, which had more of a rugby element to it. It had 11 men per side, used an oval ball, and a player could pick it up and run with it at any time. After the games, the Yale team decided they liked McGill’s version better and adopted it. Yes, you read that right. The foundation for American football was developed by a Canadian university.

Yale’s football Captain from 1876 to 1881 was Walter Camp. He was responsible for the Intercollegiate Football Association adopting two important rules. He got rid of the opening scrum and introduced the rule where the team had to give up the ball if they didn’t move it a certain amount of yards after a specific number of downs. Camp was also responsible for many other innovations that makes football what is today. This includes 11-men-per-side, the quarterback position, the line of scrimmage, offensive signal calling and football’s unique scoring system

One thing that you may be wondering is, why is association football called soccer in North America? Well, it may be surprising to know that it is a British term. It was what they called the sport for nearly a century. Essentially, the sport is formally called Association Football, or for short, Assocc and at the time, it was common for people at English schools added “-er” to the end of words. Then, Assoccer gradually morphed into soccer. British people used soccer interchangeably all the way into Post-World War II. North Americans always called it soccer to differentiate between it and gridiron football. After World War II, America had a cultural explosion, and the British started to adopt the word football because soccer had become too American “too American.”

1. Soccer

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world today, and it could be because it’s an innate part of the human experience. Games similar to soccer can be dated all the way back to 2,500 B.C. in Ancient Egypt, where people kicked a ball around during the feast of the fertility.

In China, from 476 B.C. to 221 B.C., people played a sport called cuju, which roughly translates to “kick the ball with foot.” The point of the game was to kick a leather ball stuffed with feathers through a cloth hung between two posts. They could use any part of their body, except for their hands. Soldiers used to play it in order to keep in shape.

A similar game was played in Ancient Rome as well. There were 27 players on each team and they only had to get the ball in the other team’s goal. Because this was Ancient Rome, people were injured and killed while playing it, which sounds way more exciting than watching modern soccer.

Games similar to soccer continued to be played all the way through the middle ages and the contemporary age of soccer started in 1863. That’s when rugby football and soccer splintered off and the Football Association in England was formed. This governing body gave more rules and regulations, giving birth to modern day soccer.

Robert Grimminck is a Canadian freelance writer. You can friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, follow him on Pinterest or visit his website, or his true crime YouTube channel.