Security and Privacy topics
The Government has denied buying spyware from hacking team, they really should have checked with me before issuing the statement. On the 23rd of November 2015, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said denied that the Malaysian government had procured spyware from hacking team. In a formal response (in Parliament!!), the Minister simply stated “For your information, no such device was purchased by the...
From: jibby@Malaysia.gov Sent: 23 Dec 2015 To: orangbawah@Malaysia.gov Subject: Cybersecurity Year end message. *This message is intended for all Malaysian Government servants only, do not forward without prior approval* Greetings and Salam 1Malaysia. I want to use this year-end as an opportunity to discuss the important topic of Cybersecurity. This year was interesting for me personally, and for...
There is no greater danger of tech illiteracy, than the way we treat hackers. A society that doesn’t understand technology will view those who can manipulate it as wizards and sorcerers. Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic, and to most people that bar of being ‘sufficiently advanced’ isn’t set very high. The magic analogy is apt, even in...
In 2016, Chip and Pin will gradually be introduced in Malaysia, that means your Credit Cards now will prompt you for a PIN instead of signature during purchases. This will be a bit of a hassle, but it will be worth it, here’s what you need to know about it and credit card transactions in general. The 5 people you meet in card transaction First off, a short primer on credit card...
Passwords have always been a problem. For a password to be adequately secure, you need a certain amount of randomness (or entropy in geek) associated with the password to ensure it can’t be easily guessed. The password monkey is less secure than the password k3ithI$one$3xydev1l, but the latter is inherently harder to remember (although still very true). Remember you should use a different...
By now, you either know someone that’s been a victim of nasty malware or have yourself been on the business end of nefarious software. The perpetual duel between security companies and malicious elements in cyberspace has changed dramatically over time, and no change has been so dramatic as the rise of a new type of threat, a threat we call…ransomware!! …but what is Ransomware...
The simplest definition of a hacker, is someone who breaks systems. We tend to equate systems to computers, but that’s a limited definition of the term. A system can also refer to a legal system or a set of processes that have nothing to do with technology. For example, lawyers often hack around the law, looking for loopholes to exploit to give them an advantage in their case. A good lawyer...
Two weeks ago, Lowyat.net published a ‘challenge’ to their readers, one that would supposedly pay a cool RM100,000 to the winner.All you had to do was decrypt an AES-256 encoded blob of code (more accurately referred to as ciphertext). As expected, no one won. Because breaking that ‘military-grade’ encryption is beyond the capability of most normal human beings, and...
Are you afraid of Hackers? Do you lie restless at night thinking of what might happen if they got into your bank account, facebook profile, or e-mail. Perhaps you’re also worried about that they might hack into a forum you visit, or that they might get into your personal messages on whatsapp. It’s true that hackers are able to do all of these things, but the public perception of...
There are two types of governments in the world, Those that build complex surveillance software to spy on their citizens, and those that buy them–and our government is more the buying type. Few nation-states have the budgets to build out complex surveillance software, but some are finding that ‘off the shelf’ software sold by dodgy companies are just as effective at a fraction...