The guys over at H-online reported recently that they have some pretty good evidence that good ol’ Microsoft is eavesdropping onto your Skype conversations, and the results are pretty damning.

The method for detecting those sneaky little eavesdroppers was pretty ingenious though. The researchers sent two urls in their skype messages to each other. The urls pointed to servers that the researchers owned. For all practical reasons these urls were made specifically for the purpose of the test and should not be receiving any traffic from anywhere–unless of course Microsoft was listening.

Then they sat at wait at their servers to see if they received any traffic, and lo’ and behold barely a few hours later they received some rather funky traffic from an IP address registered to Microsoft in Redmond. busted!

The urls didn’t just end with the .com, but had sensitive material appended to it (or at least that’s what the researchers made it look like), and Microsoft used the url which meant they had to be eavesdropping on Skype messages and conversations. More importantly these urls were made to look like they held sensitive material, such as bank logins..etc etc, but Microsoft still used it, and worse even visited the sites to see what was on it.

Even more shocking is that Microsoft isn’t even denying the charge–yet, but they point out that they do scan urls once in a while to flag spam, but H-online isn’t buying it.

Couple of weeks before the election, we saw how the Deputy Minister of Information Communications and Culture was so into Information communications. Now, with the new cabinet being sworn in, I’m sad to say we’ll probably see more of the same ol’ same ol'.

Meet your new Deputy Minister of the Communication and Multimedia ministry–Dato’ Jailani Johari!!!

Apart from having a whooping 71 followers on twitter, and a mind-blowing 5 (yes that’s a single digit) connections on LinkedIn. Although,  he does have more than 2,000 likes on his Facebook page–which he started on April 15th 2013. Coming back to twitter though, did you know he follows a spine-chilling 12 accounts–must be some pretty heavy Communicating going on in the Ministry eh!

The encryption key that is responsible for keeping your sensitive bank details secret, is nothing more than a very very long number, and that number protects your money more than any steel door or armed guard ever could.

Bruce Schneier, whom I respect tremendously, points out that freedom and security are opposing ends of the same spectrum, people balance out freedom and security based on what they perceive. In other words, people would sacrifice their freedoms if they thought they needed more security.

A way to think about this, is the amount of Gated and Guarded communities we have sprawling through the Klang Valley (and even beyond). People are willing to sacrifice the extra money and give up some freedoms to live in a Gated and Guarded area, in some cases the premiums reach 100% just to live in a area that is guarded. Residents of these communities also experience the hassle of having to ’tap-in’ and ’tap-out’ of their areas in addition to the tremendous difficulty hosting visitors in these neighbourhoods.

Quick post for today. I need to start writing even though, I’m still depressed from LAST sundays election results.

However, I’m keeping myself abreast with all the hate going around, including the latest ‘Buy Chinese Last Movement’ or BCLM. If you don’t know what it is, just Google it and you’ll find out, it’s the latest in a string of racist movements that have spawned since Pru-13, and it probably won’t be the last.

Here's some quick tips on how to access blocked sites in Malaysia that is blocked by the ISP (Telekom, Maxis, Time..etc etc). Currently the ISPs in Malaysia are throttling and filtering specific traffic to websites like Malaysiakini, Facebook and even Youtube. Just in case, things get nasty post-election day, I thought I'd quickly put together a couple of ways you can access Malaysiakini and other online portals despite a Unifi censor.

In 2 days time, the South-East Asian nation of Malaysia will go through its 13^th General Election since 1955. Some might look negatively on the number 13, but for the vast majority of Malaysians the coming few days will either raise our hopes or shatter them.

Malaysia has had only 1 party in power since it’s independence—that’s a long time to be in power, and for the first time since 1955 the ruling party in Malaysia is under threat, not just to lose it’s 2/3rd majority in Parliament, but the entire elections altogether, and with it control of the Federal Government.

Heard about the latest allegation accusing the Malaysian BN government of using Finfisher on its own Citizens?

Well that allegation is true–to me at least, and here’s a taste of what Finfisher can do in the hands of the government.

Beberapa minggu lalu, saya telah menulis tentang sekeping artikel yang ’tidak bertanggungjawab’ oleh Malaysian Insider apabila ‘mendakwa’ kerajaan Malaysia mengintip rakyat Malaysia - tanpa sebarang bukti. Saya amat kecewa bahawa wartawan tersebut membuat kenyataan tersebut tanpa apa-apa bukti–apabila menulis blog tersebut saya kecewa dan saya marah!

Tetapi yang lebih penting–saya silap!

Mengikut laporan dari Citizenlab semalam–sekarang timbulnya bukti bahawa kerajaan Malaysia MEMANG mengitip rakyat–terutama sekali Rakyat Malaysia yang mengunakan Bahasa Melayu.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about an ‘irresponsible’ piece of journalism by the Malaysian Insider when the ‘claimed’ the Malaysian government was spying on Malaysian citizens–but they didn’t have any proof. I was very upset that a reporter would make such a bold statement and not back it up with any proof –so obviously the post was written in a caustic  and emotionally charged way–I was upset, annoyed, angry even!

More importantly though–I was wrong!

On Labour day, Citizenlab released a second report detailing out more info from they’re Finspy research.

I’ll let speak for themselves in an excerpt they prepared specifically addressing MALAYSIA: