Tag: hacking

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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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Talking voicemail hacking on 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide

It seems that awareness of the News of the World voicemail hacking scandal is starting to spread from media-about-the-media like Crikey through the mainstream current affairs programs to, well, mainstream talk radio.

Earlier this morning I was interviewed on the topic by Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa, and here’s the audio.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.6MB)

It was kinda fun to be interviewed by presenters Keith Conlon and John Kenneally. Keith taught me how to do radio when I started in that medium and he was station manager at what is now Radio Adelaide. I later worked with him and with John at the ABC. And the newsreader I heard just before our interview, Jane Doyle, was at the ABC at that time too. Small world.

The audio is ©2011 dmgRadio Australia, but since they don’t post many of their live interviews I’m doing their job for them. Besides, it’s not as if I get paid, and it’s not as if this ain’t a decent plug for them.

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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?

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Wanted: Your infosec war stories, anonymity preserved

Information security has an image problem, I reckon. No-one apart from the infosec geeks themselves know what’s really involved in hacking or fighting hackers. So the public thinks it’s all like the bullshit in movies.

Like Hugh Jackman creating a virus in Swordfish, pictured.

Does anyone remember the episode of Spooks where the office lights went out when the hacker breached the firewall?

Let’s fix that.

Let’s hear more about the real war stories. OK, everything has always gotta be so goddam SEKRIT! No-one wants to admit to an embarrassing problem. But I reckon we can tell some of these stories while leaving out the identifying details.

We don’t need to reveal which bank nearly had its data centre pwned by a 14-year-old Ukrainian, nor which vendor’s product provided the bloody great hole he came through. But we can certainly talk about the processes, the time pressures and the paranoia.

This week I’ve started writing for a certain as-yet-undisclosed masthead. I reckon we could do regular stories from the front line of cybersecurity. I’ve been told to go for it. And I reckon it’d be fun to write in a stronger narrative style for a change.

If you are, or know of, someone that I should meet for a few drinks in a quiet place while I take notes, please contact me.

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Talking information security on ABC Radio’s “Life Matters”

I seem to be becoming a go-to person for commentary on hacking and information security stories. On Thursday I did a spot on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters program, covering the basics of just how bad things are getting.

I think I got the balance right between paranoia and reassurance, but what do you think?

There’s a podcast over at the ABC website, along with a few listener comments. But I figured I’d embed the audio here for your convenience, and so it’ll appear in my podcast feed.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:23 — 8.0MB)

I daresay I’ll be doing quite a few of these little pieces over the coming weeks, so if you have any comments I’d love to hear them.

Obviously the audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.