Author: Stilgherrian

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Privacy rights for Australia, maybe, but where’s speech?

Early this morning, Australia’s Minister for Privacy Brendan O’Connor announced that the government will start a public consultation into whether Australia should have a statutory right to privacy.

The media release was emailed at 6.26am AEST, a clear sign that it was a calm, reasoned decision made as part of a long-term government strategy. Sorry? No? Read the release?

“The News of the World scandal and other recent mass breaches of privacy, both at home and abroad, have put the spotlight on whether there should be such a right.”

The Australian Law Reform Commission’s recommendation for such a law has been sitting on the table for three years now. But hey, something in the news cycle triggers a potential “announceable” and… disco!

Right then.

I’ve already written straight news stories today for CSO Online, Australia to consider right-to-privacy law and Watchdogs welcome Australia’s right-to-privacy move. I’ll be writing about the timing thing tomorrow for ABC’s The Drum.

Right now, though, I have one question. It’s a question I’ve asked before, but I was reminded by something Mark Newton said earlier this evening.

How come we don’t see such sudden action, ever, when is comes to giving Australians a statutory right to freedom of speech?

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LulzSec vs Murdoch: the lessons, and what’s next?

LulzSec’s hack of The Sun and other UK websites belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s News International yesterday was one of the highest-profile infosec breaches in history. But will it mean anything beyond today’s news cycle? I suspect not.

(If you’re not up to speed on this, please read my initial summary for CSO Online or a shorter but fresher story for Crikey.)

As I thought about this overnight, and after chatting with Paul Ducklin from information security vendor Sophos, I came to the conclusion that despite all the media coverage yesterday nothing will change.

I wrote that up as an op-ed for CSO Online, Four lessons from LulzSec vs Murdoch.

We’ve seen hack after hack after hack, but civilisation has stubbornly refused to crumble. We’ve cried wolf a few hundred times too often. We’re experiencing what Paul Ducklin from Sophos calls “hack fatigue”.

We only hear about successful hacks, from LulzSec or anyone else, Ducklin told CSO Online. “They can crow about every time they have a success,” he said, “but you never hear about the sites they never broke into.”

And the idea that LulzSEc’s high-profile hacks will suddenly focus attention on organisation’s information security vulnerabilities? Bah. We’ve been flooded with media reports of high-profile hacks for the last few years, from NATO to Paris Hilton, Google to prime minister Gillard.

After all those stories we held urgent meetings, changed our ways, and put infosec at the top of the business agenda, right?

Yeah right.

So now what? I’ll put my money on LulzSec being forgotten until their next high-profile attack, or their arrest.

[Picture: Early this morning Australian time, LulzSec tweeted: “The Sun taken care of… now what about the moon…”, linking to that image (source unknown). Is it a hint? Or a meaningless distraction?]

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Talking hacker arrests on ABC’s “The World Today”

While I was busy writing an op-ed on the LulzSec vs Murdoch saga this morning — and I’ll post more about that momentarily — I got a phone call from ABC Radio’s lunchtime current affairs program The World Today to comment on the FBI’s arrest of alleged Anonymous-connected hackers overnight.

The story is TransAtlantic arrests target hackers, and if you click through you’ll get both transcript and audio. You’ll hear me, as well as Patrick Gray, presenter of the Risky Business podcast on information security. The reporter is Sarah Dingle.

I’d be interested to know what you think of these arrests.

Patrick reckons they arrested nobodies.

This current batch of arrests will “bring to justice” a bunch of people who made no attempt to conceal their actions because they’re either technically useless or just didn’t care.

They’re “low hanging anons”.

But that won’t stop the mainstream media from portraying this as the establishment striking back at online troublemakers.

I reckon that while that may or may not be true, the computers the FBI has just seized will be handy evidence when it comes to tracking down other culprits. After all, their operational security has hardly been world class.

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Talking LulzSec vs Murdoch on ABC 774 Melbourne

I knew as soon as I posted my CSO Online and Crikey stories about the hack of the News International websites including The Sun this morning that I’d be asked to do some radio spots.

If you missed the story, this morning I posted a screenshot of the fake story posted on The Sun.

Sure enough, this afternoon I chatted with Lindy Burns on ABC 774 Melbourne. And here’s the audio.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.4MB)

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it hasn’t been posted on their website so here it is. In return, I reckon you might choose to listen to Lindy Burns’ drive program some time soon.

I also spoke with Bernadette Young on ABC Gold Coast, but my phone kept dropping out. I did record the audio, but it covered much the same territory. Would you like me to post it?

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LulzSec claims to hack The Sun: screenshot

High-profile hacking collective LulzSec is currently claiming to have hacked UK newspaper The Sun and redirected its home page to a fake story about the suicide of Rupert Murdoch.

While The Sun was looking just fine to me, there was certainly a story inserted into a News International website.

The screenshot shows the page at www.new-times.co.uk/sun/ as of about 0730 AEST this morning.

Gizmodo is currently saying the home page was hacked, but they’re also saying the hack was done by Anonymous. That’s journalism right there.

At 0815 AEST LulzSec then claimed to have redirected The Sun home page to their Twitter feed. I’ve just confirmed that to be true.

Since I write about information security, it looks like I’m in for a busy day. I’ll update this post as things unfold.

[Update 0910 AEST: I’ve had many witnesses confirm that The Sun’s home page did indeed redirect to the fake story. I will assume for the moment that the Next G mobile broadband I’m currently using is cached to buggery.]

[Update 1015 AEST: My story at CSO Online has just been published, LulzSec hacks UK’s “The Sun”, News International. Meanwhile, a few minutes ago LulzSec claimed that “News International’s DNS servers (link web addresses to servers) and all 1,024 web addresses are down.”]

[Update 1235 AEST: The consensus seems to be that News International has taken itself offline. There has been no further activity from LulzSec, apart from more of their trademark cocky tweets.]

[Update 1415 AEST: My Crikey story is now online, LulzSec 1, Murdoch 0: News Int, the hacker, becomes the hacked.]

[Update 1840 AEST: I’ve just posted audio of my interview with ABC 774 Melbourne on this story.]

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Patch Monday: Amazon’s Vogels: cloud, start-ups, treadmills

The cloud has levelled the playing field for business, says Amazon’s chief technology officer Dr Werner Vogels. Ten years ago, a start-up needed $5 million. Now, Vogels says, it’s “just $50,000 and a coffee shop around the corner”.

Vogels was in Sydney last week for a promotional event for the cloud-based Amazon Web Services (AWS). In a wide-ranging interview for this week’s Patch Monday podcast he discussed the cloud from both a business and a technical perspective, and responded to reports that Amazon may soon open an Australian datacentre and that the Sony PlayStation Network hack was launched from AWS servers.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

There is a slight audio problem for the first few minutes of the interview, but it’s worth persisting.

(The conference room tables were rubbing against each other as Vogels moved his hands, elbows on table. It wasn’t very noticeable in the room, but the sound was transmitted mechanically up into the recorder via the tripod it was sitting on. I did notice after a few minutes and fixed things, so you won’t have to endure it for long.)

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.