Security and Privacy topics
A couple of days back, I was at my in-laws doing some browsing on their PC. Now my in-laws have a Windows XP laptop, that isn’t secured, which is fine because as far as I can tell, I’m the only one that uses it. Most of them now go to their phones or tablets for internet access–nobody uses PCs anymore!! But I noticed something strange. I wasn’t able to access Amazon, which...
Environment News Service, an environmental focused news website this week accused Malaysian government hackers of attacking it after it ran a story implicating Sarawak governor Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud of corruption and graft. As a result, the site was down for 2-hours, before the site manage to re-gain control. “The attack on our site came from a Malaysian government entity as identified by...
Last week, while I was flying from KL to London, I noticed a strange anomaly on the screen of the boarding gate at KLIA. Closer inspection revealed that it was an anti-virus warning that signaled the computer had been infected by a Virus (almost 2 days ago!!). As a techie, I quickly deduced 3 things from the screen. One, the computer was running Windows, and probably an outdated version of...
Are some laws worth following–in other words, are some Laws so idiotic that they should be ignored completely? That sounds anathema, because we have a romanticized definition of the law, we define the Law as a broad general agreement a society undertakes, and the law keeps society from tearing itself apart. In other words, the law is so sacred because without it–we descend into...
You all know how much I love nearlyfreespeech, it’s one of the best hosting providers out there. Here’s one more reason, recently they alerted me to a suspicious number of login attempts to my wordpress site, which usually means someone was trying to hack it. If you remember the post I did about the RHB bank scam, it’s quite common for hackers to inject pages onto a wordpress...
When you get behind the wheel of your car, and hit the road–you’re implicitly trusting ever other road user to play by the rules. You trust no one will go out of their way to crash into you, or that no one would swerve into you for an insurance claim, you even trust that pedestrians won’t hijack your car as you stop at the red light. Sometimes you mitigate these risk, by...
Last month alone I’ve received 6 phishing emails asking me to change my RHB banking password. I always wondered what would happen if I’d actually clicked on one of the links in the email–and today I did just that. Immediately I was transported to a dodgy world of sophisticated deception, and soon realized this was far more complicated that I initially expected. Before I proceed...
There’s evidence to suggest that mandating seat-belts actually increases the accident rate in a country. The hypothesis is that drivers are likely to take more risk in cars with visible security features like seat-belts than in cars without these safety features. Ironically feeling safe–is the most dangerous thing drivers are at risk from. In addition because car drivers felt safe...
On April 28th, 4 men were caught for installing card-skimming devices on ATM cash machines in Bangkok Thailand. They were all Malaysian. On the 14th of May, 6 men were caught for installing similar devices in ATM machines in Jakarta Indonesia. They were all Malaysian. On the 8th of June, 2 men were convicted in Singapore for installing card-skimming devices on ATMs in Singapore. They were both...
The truth is we all have something to hide–secrets we wished the world would never know. A political stance we once had, a video of ourselves after too many drinks, or even just a sentence we once uttered at a party somewhere. If you think you’ve got nothing to hide–you should think harder. So, when European Court of Justice recently ruled that Google had to comply with certain...