radio – Page 48 – Stilgherrian

31 July 201131 July 2011

Talking LulzSec/Anonymous vs PayPal on TripleJ’s Hack

On Wednesday afternoon, LulzSec and Anonymous joined forces to encourage people to boycott PayPal by withdrawing their money and closing their accounts.

The back story is that PayPal has cut off WikiLeaks’ account, meaning that people could no longer donate money to WikiLeaks via PayPal. Anonymous launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against PayPal. Last week the FBI and others arrested people alleged to have been responsible for those attacks. So this week, the boycott of PayPal.

The joint statement by LulzSec and Anonymous makes for interesting reading. It describes DDoS attacks as “ethical, modern cyber operations”. Such things are actually a criminal act, despite what Anonymous may imagine the law to be. “Law enforcement continues to push its ridiculous rules upon us,” they write, when it’s not law enforcement who makes the laws, but governments.

The call for the boycott was unfolding as Triple J’s current affairs program Hack was going to air, and I phoned in a report. Here’s the audio.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.7MB)

I found it interesting that presenter Tom Tilley responded to my comment that DDoS is a crime by saying “Yeah I imagine there’d be people with lots of different points of view about what they’re doing and whether it’s indeed lawful.”. Personally I reckon the law in this is pretty clear. Pandering to their audience?

24 July 201124 July 2011

Weekly Wrap 59: Making paragraphs while the rain pours

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. While Sydney dealt with its wettest July since 1950, I was at the Bunjaree Cottages in Wentworth Falls, writing and writing and writing and writing. And talking on the radio.

“Make hay while the sun shines,” goes the old saying. But for a writer, it’s about making paragraphs while the rain pours. Being stuck indoors with a magnificent view really helps.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 97, “Amazon’s Vogels: cloud, start-ups, treadmills” My guest is Amazon’s chief technology officer, Dr Werner Vogels. A fascinating conversation, I found.

Articles

LulzSec hacks UK’s “The Sun”, News International, CSO, 19 July 2011.
LulzSec 1, Murdoch 0: News Int, the hacker, becomes the hacked, Crikey, 19 July 2011.
NEXTDC leases secure Canberra data centre, CSO, 19 July 2011.
Child exploitation material filters… same policy, different activities, Crikey, 20 July 2011. It’s perhaps not obvious from the headline, but this is about the “voluntary” blocking of child abuse material by Australian internet service providers.
Four lessons from LulzSec vs Murdoch, CSO, 20 July 2011. I argue that despite the hacking of The Sun having such a high profile, nothing will actually change.
Australia to consider right-to-privacy law, CSO, 21 July 2011.
Watchdogs welcome Australia’s right-to-privacy move , CSO, 21 July 2011.
Hackers target Tasmanian government website, CSO, 21 July 2011.
Guardian tech editor leaking information, claims LulzSec, CSO, 22 July 2011.
In IT’s dance of the inflating elephants, Microsoft is stumbling, Crikey, 22 July 2011.
DSD: Four mitigation strategies prevent 85% of intrusions, CSO, 23 July 2011.

Media Appearances

On Tuesday I spoke about LulzSec vs Murdoch on ABC 774 Melbourne.
On Wednesday I spoke with ABC Radio’s national lunchtime current affairs program The World Today about the FBI’s arrest allegedly Anonymous-connected hackers.
On Thursday I spoke with Louise Saunders on ABC 936 Hobart about the hack of a Tasmanian government web server.

Corporate Largesse

None. But there’ll be plenty next week. I’ll tell you more about that later this morning.

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: Potholes on Frenchmans Road, Wentworth Falls, photographed on 20 July 2011. This is a slightly modified version, here’s the original.]

22 July 2011

Talking Tasmanian goverment hack on ABC 936 Hobart

Yesterday the Tasmanian government was hit by a hacker.

Sp1d3r from the hacking crew S4t4n1c_s0uls got into a Debian Linux box and inserted his graphic into an email sent to state’s media.

I reported this for CSO Online.

S4t4n1c_s0uls has claimed responsibility for almost 100 website defacements this month, including sites in Brazil, Jamaica, China, India and the Philippines. Five Chinese government websites were hit, and one in the Philippines.

I spoke about the hack with Louise Saunders on ABC 936 Hobart, and here’s the audio.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.9MB)

The audio is Â©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 Louise Saunders’ drive program some time soon.

20 July 201120 July 2011

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.

19 July 2011

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 Â©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?

17 July 201117 July 2011

Weekly Wrap 58

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Most of it seemed to be about Google+.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 96, “Can Google+ kill Facebook? Twitter?” My guests were social computing and business futures consultant Kate Carruthers, Digital Citizens founder James Fridley, and freelance journalist and blogger Neerav Bhatt.

Articles

There’s no way I’m handing over data to Google+, for Crikey.
Online crime under-reported, under-researched, for CSO.
Amazon AWS algorithms watch for cloud-based hacks, for CSO, which includes material from my interview with Amazon’s chief technology officer Dr Werner Vogels.
Why rush? Let others find the Google+ privacy landmines, for ABC Drum Opinion.
Quintet nations agree on cybercrime action plan, for CSO. It seems the same five Anglosphere nations that have been sharing intelligence since WWII still consider themselves a unit.

Media Appearances

On Tuesday I was interviewed by ABC TV’s 7.30 for their story on voicemail hacking at News of the World. I wrote about that already.
On Friday I was interviewed on the same topic by Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa.

Corporate Largesse

While attending the AWS Cloud Tour 2011 on Thursday, I received ample food and drink at Amazon’s expense.
On Friday I met with analyst Arun Chandrasekaran from Frost & Sullivan. He paid for the coffee and juice.
On Friday I had another extremely long lunch with those unnamed people about that unnamed media project, but this time I managed to find my way back to where I was meant to be spending the night.

Elsewhere

[Photo: Kent Street, Sydney, photographed on Friday 15 July 2011.]

[Update 7pm: I didn’t think that last article for CSO would be posted today, but it was, so I’ve added it to the “Articles” list.]