Tag: infosec

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Talking the ABC hack on “7.30”

Screengrab of Stilgherrian on "7.30": click for storyI was interviewed by ABC TV’s current affairs program 7.30 on Wednesday about the hack of an ABC website, in a story called Hacker attacks ABC, private information released.

The hack was apparently in revenge for the Lateline interview with controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The tweet claiming responsibility for the attack used the #OpWilders hashtag, the label for Anonymous’ ongoing protects against Wilders, but the operators of known Anonymous social media accounts are distancing themselves from this one.

Parts of the interview were also used in that night’s episide of Lateline, and a written story for ABC News Online.

It’s my third appearance on 7.30. I’ve previously spoken about the News of the World voicemail hacks and Anonymous’ hack of Stratfor.

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Weekly Wrap 140: China hacks, Telstra slows, and more

Welcome to the People's Democratic Republic of Burwood: click to embiggenThe week of Monday 4 to Sunday 10 February 2013 was… in the past. Shit, it’s already Wednesday night! I’ll just post this here now, with little commentary.

Well, one comment. We do seem to be getting back into the writing thing for 2013.

Articles

Podcasts

None. But wait.

Media Appearances

  • On Thursday I spoke about Twitter and TV on ABC Radio National’s Media Report.
  • Also on Thursday, I spoke about various internet things with Dom Knight on ABC 702 Sydney. I may or may not post the audio. Although I recorded it, there’s a chunk missing because mobile internet.
  • On Friday, I spoke about The Global Mail on Radio 2SER’s Fourth Estate.

Corporate Largesse

Still none. Was it something I said?

The Week Ahead

It’s half gone, and I’m making it up as I go along. But Sunday morning I fly to Maroochydore for Kickstart Forum 2013, so I’ll probably be in Sydney on the weekend.

[Photo: Welcome to the People's Democratic Republic of Burwood, being a picture of a building in Sydney’s suburbs that disturbs me, photographed from a moving train.]

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So China hacked some US newspapers…

Screenshot of NYTimes.com: click for original storyOn 31 January The New York Times reported that it had been hacked by China, their networks penetrated for some four months. The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post too. So naturally I ended up writing about it.

For Crikey I wrote China not the only ones taking part in cyber spookery, which puts these attacks in the context of the online espionage and sabotage operations of recent years.

“Countless organisations have experienced the same scenario in recent years,” I wrote. “But it’s big news this time because journalists were the targets.” Cynical, perhaps, but I gather security über-expert Bruce Schneier said much the same thing, so I’m kinda chuffed.

And for CSO Online I wrote Chinese attacks show up useless infosec, again.

“Recent attacks on US newspapers are further proof that, despite making billions, the information security industry is pretty much screwed,” it begins. That one won’t make me any friends. So nothing new there.

I must admit, I found both stories fairly straightforward to write. I guess I’ve been writing about this stuff long enough to feel confident about it.

China has denied the accusations, of course.

As it happens, this week’s On the Media podcast from WNYC begins with a six-minute backgrounder on the hacks which is well worth the listen.

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Weekly Wrap 136: Geekery and hot thoughts

Urban sophistication, or so it is imagined: click for originalThe week of Monday 7 to Sunday 13 January 2013 was supposed to be filled with thoughts about my work in 2013. Instead, there was too much urgent geekery, too much intense thought about certain non-work matters, and too much hot weather for my liking.

Some might also argue that there was too much wine. I couldn’t possibly comment on that point directly, except to note that there was also beer, cider and gin.

Nevertheless, the week did see the delivery of two media objects, which are here listed for your information and enjoyment, and yesterday I went on a long, random exploratory excursion.

Podcasts

  • The 9pm Heat Wave, which should need little explanation. Or a lot, actually. I’ll tell you my thoughts regarding The 9pm Edict and other podcasts within the next three days.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None this week either. Australia is still closed for summer. I daresay this will change in the coming week.

The Week Ahead

I’ll return to work at full intensity. I’m sketching out the details later today, at least for this first week, as well as posting more about my slowly-evolving plans for 2013. Stay tuned for that.

I’m in Sydney all week, it seems, staying at Lilyfield. And my new, erm, “health regime” starts tomorrow. Should I post my plans for that too, or just leave you to make suggestions?

Apart from that, there’s nothing locked in to any particular schedule, so feel free to send through the invitations.

[Photo: Urban sophistication, or so it is imagined, a house photographed yesterday in Maroubra, Sydney.]

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Weekly Wrap 133: Instagram, infosec and random nativity

Suburban Nativity: click to embiggenMonday 17 to Sunday 23 December 2012 was a week filled with plenty of work, plenty of stress and a small amount of exhaustion.

The media outputs are listed below, as usual. Towards the end of the week the long series of 5am and earlier starts was beginning to catch up with me, and on Thursday I accidentally slept in until lunchtime — and that was truly wonderful.

I decided to continue that level of sloth on the weekend. Well, apart from today, obviously. As mentioned below, there’s still quite a bit left to do before I can finally break for Christmas.

Also this week I dropped and broke my Samsung Galaxy S III, necessitating an urgent replacement. While doing that I discovered some gotchas with migrating data to a new phone, and I’ll write about that after Christmas.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 168, “2012 infosec review: Focus on crime, not cyberwar”. The second of our two year-end conversations. The panelists are Paul Ducklin, Sophos’ head of technology for Asia Pacific; Chris Gatford, director of penetration testing firm HackLabs; Jon Callas, chief technology officer at Entrust, and now also of secure messaging provider Silent Circle; and Stephen Wilson, managing director of Lockstep Group, which provides advice and analysis on digital identity and privacy technologies.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I had a very pleasant lunch indeed at Bistrode at the Hotel CBD in Sydney with a couple of chaps from Trend Micro. Needless to say, it was on their tab.

The Week Ahead

There’s tonight and one working day left before Christmas. In that time I have to produce a Patch Monday podcast, my end-of-year story for Crikey, and a follow-up to Friday’s story for CSO Online. I’ll be busy for the next 24 hours, though for all those things I’ve already got a plan in mind so they should be straightforward.

But then Tuesday is Christmas Day, and from then through to the end of the week I have precisely nothing planned. Sure, there’s a few little work-related things that’ll need to be polished off, but there are no pressing commitments. This pleases me immensely.

[Photo: Suburban Nativity, photographed on Stony Creek Road in Beverly Hills, Sydney, on 15 December 2012. The householders must do this every year, because the same nativity scene is visible in Google Street View imagery from December 2009.]

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Weekly Wrap 130: Storms, sunburn and a two-hour cruise

The week of Monday 26 November to Sunday 2 December 2012 was strange. It started with stormy weather, and the misty conditions continued until Wednesday. But by Thursday I was sunburnt and dehydrated in sweltering heat.

I should not have walked through the heat from Potts Point to the Sydney CBD, even though I could take a photograph of the city along the way.

It was also a stressful week. To the usual month-end cashflow blockage was added a series of strange problems with a client’s marketing email template.

The client had chosen to use an old template, and the line spacing fell apart in modern versions of Microsoft Outlook. Then some of the links to PDF files on their website didn’t work, with the links being somehow scrambled so they delivered a “404 File not found” error instead of the PDF file. Sometimes.

Eventually we discovered that the links broke — sometimes — when URLs containing white-space characters (such as “%20” for a space) were passed from Outlook to an out-of-date version of Adobe Reader.

Thankfully the week ended with some semblance of normality, and the weekend was restful.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Sunday morning I was asked, at the last minute, to be the bespoke Twitterer for ABC Radio National’s Sunday Extra. That just means that I had to listen to the program — which I was doing anyway — and tweet about it.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I attended the Retail Tech Forum at Wildfire Restaurant, Circular Quay, which was organised by Bass PR for various clients: Dassault Systèmes, who do many things but in this case provide 3D modelling and visualisation tools for retail environments; retail software systems vendor Island Pacific Australia; 3Q Holdings, who also do retail tech; Meridian Systems, who make “technology solutions” for the project management of “capital buildings” and the maintenance thereof; and analysts Frost & Sullivan. I daresay an article will come out of this at some point. Meanwhile, here’s the lunch menu and pictures of the beef short rib starter and the corn-fed chicken main course.
  • On Thursday I had lunch at Establishment with the people behind Uber Sydney, a smartphone-based service that provides on-demand ordering of a black town car. An article will come out of this eventually.
  • On Thursday afternoon I went on a two-hour cruise of Sydney Harbour aboard Matilda III, which was the Internet Industry Association’s Harbour Policy Party. The photographs start here.
  • On Thursday evening I dropped into The Indies’ Christmas party at the Burdekin Hotel on Oxford Street, The Indies being the four PR firms Bass PR, Shuna Boyd PR (which doesn’t seem to have a website?), Einsteinz Communications and Espresso Communications. I had just one glass of wine, my only alcohol for the entire day, before exhaustion set in.

The Week Ahead

Starting this week I’ll be based in Hurstville, a southern suburb of Sydney, thanks to a housesitting arrangement with someone who shall remain anonymous. I’ll be there until the end of the first week of January. Unless plans change.

This week is another busy week. I daresay I won’t get around to producing the Patch Monday podcast until Monday morning. I’ve got some writing to do too. Then on Tuesday, Optus is showcasing their 4G smartphones at a lunch in Surry Hills. On Wednesday I’m attending VMware’s Cloud Panel, a lunchtime event at The Star casino.

I’ll try to record next week’s Patch Monday podcast on Thursday, because on Thursday night I’m going to Fuel Communications‘ Christmas party and then on Friday I’m covering a one-day conference Privacy in the 21st Century (PDF), organised by the Communications Law Centre at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Since I’m covering that conference for both Crikey and ZDNet, it’ll be sensible to get that podcast out of the way.

[Photo: The Nepean was crossed. It has been my habit to take a photograph each time I cross the Nepean River en route from Wentworth Falls to Sydney or vice versa, which I then tweet with the caption Crossing the Nepean. Yesterday I missed, and the outbound train was already at Emu Plains before I could take a snapshot.]