I haven’t blogged in a while because I’m busy studying (yes, studying) for my OSCP certification. But what happened over the week, was just to mind-blowingly stupid to ignore. Here’s what happened…. A Taiwanese company released a game titled Fight of Gods, which as the name implies, has Gods fighting among themselves. But the developers didn’t ‘just’ use...
JJPTR wasn’t hacked
The fact that this RM2 company manage to raise RM500 million should be news enough, but claims that it lost all it’s money to ‘hackers’ is too hilarious for me to ignore. If you haven’t heard, a get-rich-quick scheme called JJPTR, claimed it lost RM500 million to hackers, which even with today’s depreciating ringgit would exceed a value of USD100 million. For...
Everything wrong with TalkingPoint’s “Cybersecurity” episode
Channel News Asia posted last week that hackers could steal your info by just knowing your phone number. Woah!! Must be some uber NSA stuff right–but no, it was a couple of guys with Metasploit and they required a LOT more than ‘just’ the phone number. The post was an add-on to a current affairs show called Talking Point, that aired an episode last week about cybersecurity...
Cyberwar assessment of Malaysia vs. DPRK
Would North Korea ever declare war on Malaysia? Probably not. But nothing is predictable when you’re dealing with a erratic despot who killed his own uncle with an anti-aircraft gun. Realistically though, few nations have the resources and political will, to launch a war, half-way across the world. And neither Malaysia nor North Korea are one of those ‘few’ nations. But what if...
Writing a WordPress Restoration script
WordPress sites get hacked all the time, because the typical WordPress blogger install 100’s of shitty plugins and rarely updates their site. On the one hand, it’s great that WordPress has empowered so many people to begin blogging without requiring the ‘hard’ technical skills, on the other it just gives criminals a large number of potential victims. Two years ago, when I...
So you got hit by Ransomware
Last Monday, I got a text message from my uncle saying his office computer was hacked, and he couldn’t access any of his files. Even without probing further, I already knew he’d been hit with ransomware and was now an unwitting victim in a criminal industry estimated to be worth Billions of dollars. After learning a bit more, I found out that the IT guys at the company backed up their...
Publishing Government Algorithms
On the 1st of February, Malaysians experienced yet another fuel price increase. Which was surprising because the price of oil and the ringgit conversion rate seemed to be favoring a drop. You see in Malaysia, the fuel prices are controlled and subsidized by the government, and it sets the price for petrol at the pump. In the past, fuel price changes were few and far between, but since 2007...
Relax dear-citizen your contactless card is relatively safe—ish
As Malaysia slowly (but surely) migrates to Chip and Pin, some banks have taken the opportunity to issue not just new Pin-enabled cards, but contactless-enabled ones as well. To be clear, Banks are only mandated to issue new Pin cards (replacing the signature cards you had before), but are taking the opportunity to also embed contactless capabilities into them as well. After all they’re...
Facebook giving China a censorship tool?
The New York Times reported this week that Facebook has ‘quitely developed’ a censorship tool, specifically for the Chinese government to suppress content on their platform. The piece writes: “the social network quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook...
Securing your StarHub Home Router
As with all new shiny equipment, a newly installed router in your home requires a few things to be configured to properly secure it. Goes without saying, that you should change your WiFi password the moment the technician leaves your home, but there are other things you’d need to configure in order to secure your router against common attacks. Now remember, even if you follow all the...