Internet – Page 72 – Stilgherrian

13 July 201130 December 2011

Talking voicemail hacking on ABC TV’s “7.30”

I was interviewed by ABC TV’s current affairs program 7.30 yesterday for a story about voicemail hacking, More allegations against Murdoch media.

Interestingly, most of the soundbites we recorded were about how easy it is to access someone’s voicemail, but the resulting story was more about whether something like the News of the World scandal could already be happening in Australia.

Recording this piece was a pleasant reminder of working in daily live radio. The pace is kinda fun. The ABC called me at 2.15pm, and arranged for the crew to meet me at 3.15pm. We drove to a nearby park and recorded the main interview as well as the cutaways in a total of 45 minutes. And that was in between the noise of aircraft taking off, motor cycles, and pedestrians and cyclists walking between me and the camera.

I’m shown using both laptop and phone. Does that put me into the category of mouse-using TV expert?

12 July 201112 July 2011

Weekly Wrap 57

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week I said something’s gotta give. This week it gave.

Stress and exhaustion and a much lower productivity level than the previous two weeks has led to this post being two days late.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 95, “Malware? It’s just business!” Malware, these days, is so good that it simply has to be produced by professional development teams. As Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of AVG, explains, malware is distributed automatically, and runs on millions of target computers without causing any visible signs that something bad is happening.

Articles

Air-gap security an “enduring fairy tale”: Byres, for CSO. Further commentary on the security of industrial control systems from Eric Byres, essentially a follow-up to my Son of Stuxnet within a year: expert for ZDNet Australia.
Cyber threats the focus for Quintet of Attorneys-General, for CSO.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

On Monday 4 July I had an extremely long lunch with people who are continuing their interest in having me work with them on a forthcoming media project. I still can’t say much, except I will drop in one word: Television.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: The Wilds of Lilyfield, the view eastwards towards the Sydney CBD from the corner of Lilyfield and Balmain Roads.]

03 July 201103 July 2011

Weekly Wrap 56

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week was busy enough, but this week was even busier. Something’s gotta give.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 94, “ISP filtering goes ‘voluntary'”. Even though Australia’s controversial mandatory internet filtering program is at least two years away from being implemented, internet service providers will soon start filtering child exploitation material on a voluntary basis. My guests are Peter Black, who teaches internet and media law at the Queensland University of Technology; Network engineer Mark Newton; Lyle Shelton, chief of staff of the Australian Christian Lobby.

Articles

The only NBN monopoly seems to be on ignorance, for ABC Drum Opinion. My response to opponents of the National Broadband Network claiming that it’ll destroy competition in the telecommunications industry.
Internet filtering isn’t compulsory, but everyone will volunteer, for Crikey, covering the recent news the “voluntary” of filtering of the internet will soon begin in Australia, covering child exploitation material only.
Voluntary filtering removes the controversy, for CSO. In this op-ed I explain how the voluntary filtering makes sense technically and politically, if not necessarily for effective child protection.
Drug spam rules, thanks to WikiPharmacy: Symantec, for CSO. It’s a shame I didn’t notice that my headline is a crash blossom.
If Facebook killed Myspace will Google+ kill THE social network? Crikey. At rather short notice, when I’d already been up very early to wrote two other articles, I was asked to write a piece covering the news of both Google launching Google+ and Myspace being sold for UD 35 million and how that’d affect Facebook. This is what resulted.
Interpol blacklist goes live in Canberra, for ZDNet Australia. “Voluntary” internet filtering started on Friday.

Media Appearances

Two radio spots this week, and a guest appearance on someone else’s podcast.

On Wednesday I spoke with ABC Gold Coast about Google+ and how it’ll affect Facebook. There’s audio at the link.
On Thursday I was talking about information security for business on Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast.
On Friday I was talking about Myspace, Google+ and Facebook on ABC 774 Melbourne. Again, there’s audio at the link.

Corporate Largesse

None. I am reliably informed that the drought will be broken next week.

Elsewhere

[Photo: A misty dawn at Bunjaree Cottages, 1 July 2011. This is the view from Roselle Cottage, not normally rented to the punters. The much-battered camera in my phone does not do this scene justice.]

01 July 2011

Talking Myspace on ABC 774 Melbourne

In 2005 Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace, as the orthography went, for USD 580 million. Yesterday he sold the operation, now branded Myspace or even just My_____, depending where you look, for a mere USD 35 million. Not exactly a profit.

The buyer was Specific Media, an advertising targeting company. One of the investors is musician and actor Justin Timberlake, although the size of his stake has not been revealed.

There’s now plenty of speculation about whether Myspace will build on its recent music focus, and how it’ll shape up against the monster that is Facebook and the new contender, Google+.

Yesterday I chatted about all this stuff with Lindy Burns on ABC 774 Melbourne. This time she got my name right.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:33 — 3.8MB)

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 next week.

30 June 201101 July 2011

CSO: Voluntary filtering removes the controversy

My first op-ed for CSO, “The Resource for Data Security Executives”, has just been posted. It’s voluntary ISP-level internet filtering, but a different angle from my Crikey piece earlier today.

After nearly four chaotic years, Australia’s internet filtering scheme is finally coming together in a way that makes sense technically and politically, if not necessarily for effective child protection.

The chaos wasn’t all communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy’s fault. The “clean feed” was announced as Labor policy back in March 2006 by then-leader Kim Beazley. ISPs would filter out the nasties hosted overseas, where they couldn’t be hit with a takedown notice from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

But Conroy’s name was on Labor’s Plan for Cyber-safety published just five days out from the federal election in late 2007, and once in government it was Conroy’s job to explain that plan and sell it to voters. Everyone presumably imagined it’d be a protect-the-kiddies no-brainer.

Problem was, neither the plan not Conroy’s explanations were clear…

As I say, it’s my first outing for CSO, but if all goes according to plan there’ll be more. And in case you’re wondering, CSO is a job title. Chief Security Officer.

30 June 2011

Crikey: Internet filtering isnt compulsory, but…

Over at Crikey I’ve written a summary of what’s happening with Australia’s internet filter.

Australia’s mandatory internet filtering by internet service providers (ISPs) won’t happen for at least two years. But we’re getting filtering anyway. Voluntarily. By ISPs. Next month…

Telstra and Optus are expected to have their filters ready within weeks, although the situation with Primus is unclear…

The Internet Industry Association (IIA) is also about to release a voluntary industry code that would see an estimated 80% to 90% of Australian internet connections filtered by the Interpol blacklist over the next year. Attempts to access domains on the list would be redirected to an Interpol block page.

Overall, I reckon the process that’s now unfolding could well result in the gvernment’s planned mandatory ISP-level filtering disappearing off the table entirely.

As a bonus link, here’s Interpol’s explanation of their “worst-of” blacklist of child exploitation material.